Sunday, July 26, 2009

The Newtonian Apocalypse

After World War 2 the Enlightenment was dead. Atomic science
and war machines had destroyed Newtonian Proofs. The
Fission and Fusion of the Atom had left two laws broken. The
instability of Eternal Truths had allowed the essentialism of death
and destruction through Thermonuclear weaponry. An age of
finding truths instead created an age of probability, statistics,
destruction and convenience. The increase in Metaphysical
Terror fostered an hysteric rise in marketing and convenience.
All the Grand Narratives were replaced by interest in
survival, oblivion and destruction. We see this in the
Contemporary Psyche with the multiplicity of sameness
through a bad infinity of choices. "Free Market"
epistemology and the lottery have supplanted Economy.
Every choice is a wager or an identity statement. Terror
drives us to the Market. Even places of Worship and Banks
have the same sacral opulence, silence and spacing.

Probability hides essentialism under the cloak of an
event. An event has no breadth and must die with its happening.
Statistics is the Anti-Science which essentializes death through
erasing presence with its annihilation. It maps this annihilation
in equations. It is a kind murder of conscience. Why not fall
into the average?

Much of the essentialism of death and fallenness was marked
by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit. His Philosophy was also deeply
entrenched in the War Machine outlook.

The collapse of Enlightenment narratives also led to a
crisis of narrative in literature. No better example than Thomas
Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow--though there are many others. Pynchon's
multiplicity of venues display the above mentioned rise of statistics and
lapse in humanity brought on by the Hyper-Death drive in WW2 with the
V1 and V2 rocket landings across the area of Greater London.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow.----

Tyrone Slothrop

Velvetnose said...

I woke up this morning and I fell out of bed. Should've quit while I was ahead.
Trouble waiting to happen

I turned on the news to the Third World War. Opened up the paper to World War IV. Just when I thought it was safe to be bored.

Trouble waiting to happen.

The mailman brought me the Rolling Stone. It said I was living at home alone.
I read things I didn't know I'd done. It sounded like a lot of fun
I guess I've been bad or something
Trouble waiting to happen.

My day was over by a quarter to ten
I climbed right back into bed again
I'd write this down if I could hold a pen I might get better but I don't know when.

Trouble waiting to happen to us all