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From: George J. Dance@novabbs.com (George J. Dance)
Newsgroups: alt.arts.poetry.comments,rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: The Psycho-epistemolgy of MMP
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2025 05:44:26 +0000
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On Sat, 1 Feb 2025 17:30:21 +0000, W.Dockery wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Jan 2025 4:07:04 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:
>
>> moved from
>> https://www.novabbs.com/arts/article-flat.php?id=254114&group=alt.arts.poetry.comments#254114
>>
>> On Thu, 16 Jan 2025 0:20:56 +0000, W.Dockery wrote:
>>
>>> That's Michael Pendragon, always the Peter Keating styled second hander.
>>
>> Essentially we're in agreement; but I have to raise two non-essential
>> points of disagreement. First, I would rather not refer to the subject
>> as "Pendragon." The subject's real name is unknown; "Michael Pendragon"
>> is just one of his socks, albeit the most prolific one. I would prefer
>> to refer to him as "MMP" (which doesn't mean you have to, of course, if
>> you disagree).
>>
>> Second, I don't think that Peter Keating is the best 'type' to describe
>> MMP in the novel. Both Keating and MMP are social metaphysicians - they
>> think that reality is whatever people believe it is, the "consensus"
>> view of reality. But so do half the novel. Where those two are different
>> is that Keating is content to follow the consensus, while MMP believes
>> he can actually control reality by controlling others' beliefs. That
>> makes him more like two of Rand's other protagonists from that novel,
>> Gail Wynand and Ellsworth Toohey. Which of those matches him best is
>> still an open question.
>>
>>> Why does Michael Pendragon lie and misrepresent so much?
>>
>> MMP has told us he was abused as a boy, and I think that fact is key.
>> Lying is one tactic children usually try at some point to escape
>> punishment, and an abused child has all the more reason to keep at it ad
>> learn how to do it successfully. Since MMP comes across as clever (at
>> least 120 IQ), it is also fair to think that he was able to learn to lie
>> successfully. So it is fair to conclude that he did learn to lie
>> successfully, and escape punishment, more than once.
>>
>> While no one can blame a child in that position for lying, his doing so
>> successfully would be giving him the wrong feedback, making him think
>> that he actually was changing reality by changing his parents' beliefs -
>> telling him that in fact reality was whatever one wanted it to be, and
>> that he could be that one.
>>
>> More later, but I wanted to get these two points on record quickly.
>
> Hello George, I haven't been able to look at the newsgroup since last
> night Friday became really busy.

I can sympathize with that. I ended up cancelling the Dancehall today;
around 6 pm I remembered it was Saturday. MD started putting together a
list (I think of Wedding songs), but it can keep; a week off isn't going
to hurt.

PS - I did check the deaths this year before I pulled the plug.
Wikipedia is keeping an active page, and I check it every week.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2025_deaths_in_popular_music

You'll be sad to know that Marianne Faithfull just died. I didn't think
we could get enough of a list to do her justice - I could remember just
3 songs. But I could be wrong; you may remember, I didn't think we get
enough songs for Tina Turner either, and we had more than enough; so I'm
willing to look at it again.