The Crying of Lot 49. Group Read 2024

[David Morris]

*1. Modern world has lost its: “enchantment [ ] spiritual/religious chain
of being”*

A?) How/Why did “it” get lost?
B?) Shall we try to define “it”?  Or should we assume it is ACTUALLY
ineffable?

*2.  Losing that connection in modernity[…]*

A?) What? Big jump of assumptions (see 1.A? above)
B?) What about “Modern” makes it the change-maker?

*3.   **individualism […] *
*therefore is wholesale pervasive narcissism.*

A?)  I don’t think individualism is the core of the problem (or Modernism)

B?)  I don’t think  individualism is even remotely connected to narcissism


On Tue, Jul 9, 2024 at 2:31 PM Mark Kohut

> *The Ethics of Authenticity *by Charles Taylor
>
> This: the modern world has *lost its enchantment. (This, in a famous
> quote from Weber, a Pynchon fave, we know). That enchantment held all of us
> in a spiritual/religious chain of being*, so to speak. [See The Great
> Chain of Being book or concept] Wherein we were all connected beyond our
> {puny) selves. That great chain bound us in communities of all kinds. Basic
> earthbound communities as well as others. In which we defined ourselves. (
> PS, this organic community concept is what I would argue is Morris's
> fingering of Pynchon's Garden of Eden nostalgia, but in history not myth. P
> shows and says so in *Against the Day, imo. *And it is in another P fave,
> Henry Adams*)*


* Losing that connection in modernity,*


we are thrown back on our *individualism*. THAT is the problem Taylor
> tackles. Such individualism, he sez is psychologically grounded in nothing
> beyond itself, (as the word kinda implies. I have ordered his* Sources of
> the Self)*) Such individualism is self-grounded, kind of like Morris's loop
> analogously and *therefore is wholesale pervasive narcissism*. --(He uses
> others here; he says this is seen everywhere by some, such as Lasch in his
> book The Culture of Narcissism. Which I read but while not fully "woke", so
> am looking at again) The whole rootless culture echoes it--allusion to Echo
> Court intended. This reflection tower is everywhere, is also a mirror.
>  Seeing the men wanting Oedipa can be seeing full-blown narcissism in all
> of them. (Oedipa not feeling any sexual relevance in her situation may be a
> way of saying she ISN'T narcissistic anymore.)
>
> All of the religious-like signs Oedipa sees that are signs that do not
> lead to religion as known are like the disenchantment of the--her--world.
> (This, from Weber, seems very likely to me as part of Pynchon's intent.)
>
> Taylor works hard in the rest of his book to show how individualism can
> overcome itself, he thinks.....(an authentic connection to the polity of
> one's country is one way---Taylor is Canadian and near the end he contrasts
> his Canadian readers with "the country just south of us" )
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>