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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: Sun, 2 Feb 2025 17:45:36 +0000
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On Sun, 2 Feb 2025 5:44:22 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:

> 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.

I do think we could get a nice but short Marriane Faithful collection
together using her material from both the 1960s and her 1980s comeback.

I'm not sure what she recommended in the more recent past but I wouldn't
be surprised if something was released.

Next week?