Feeling For the Cyclops/On History & Truth/Gravity's Rainbow/Larry Robinson/

(P1) Philosophical

Cyclops Redux

Come on now. How many of us, other than artists like Henry Fuseli, have actually considered the life and feelings of the Cyclops after his encounter with Odysseus? I know that I hadn't. Like the Native American whose experience is changed forever by the white invader, the incredulous Polyphemus not only finds his defenses proved insignificant, he has also lost his hope in vision. All that's left to him is his basic rudimentary "humanity" portrayed so well by Fuseli as the solace provided by an animal friend.

For the first time, I feel deeply most deeply, for Cyclops and even deeper than previously for all people disturbed, uprooted and deprived of sight by myopic invaders, conquerors, occupiers and oppressors.


On History

Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.
-Santayana

What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. -Hegel

On Truth

The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and to offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand.

-Gotthold Lessing (1778)

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(P2) Political

Thomas Pynchon On War

It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology...by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying, "Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake," but meaning, most likely, "dawn is nearly here, I need my night's blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more..." The real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms -- it was only staged to look that way -- but among the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by the ruling elite...

- Thomas Pynchon (ostensibly on WWII) in Gravity's Rainbow

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(P3) Poetical

Like a child, I cannot wait for Christmas to put Larry's important message-poem on the P3

A Christmas Carol

Away in a manger

or a crack house

or under a bridge

or in a bombed-out village

or a refugee camp

or in the mesquite shade close to the border wall

some Mary is giving birth.

Even as you read this

a child is being born.

What if one of these were the promised one,

the beacon of hope,

the seed of a new light

in a dark time?

What if they all were?

What gifts would you bring

if you were wise?

- Larry Robinson

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