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From: will.dockery@gmail.com (W.Dockery)
Newsgroups: alt.arts.poetry.comments,rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: The Psycho-epistemolgy of MMP
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2025 13:45:52 +0000
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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.

Interesting, I'm starting to think both Harry Lime and Jim Senetto were
actually projecting in their critiques of "My Father's House."