The Crying of Lot 49. Group Read 2024

[Mark Kohut]

Many cultural historians and social psychologists have written of the
movement toward greater individualism in Western history.
Many say it parallels the growth of democracy in the West, which is a
logical connection. The American Revolution, The French Revolution
at least partly born from the Enlightenment, which started the
disenchantment, Weber and others would say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture_of_Narcissism

I thought my connections to some ways of your seeing Lot would resonate but
they don't seem to. I don't think much I wrote here
will change your mind, so we will probably just have to differ...

On Wed, Jul 10, 2024 at 5:46 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> *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
>>
>