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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: Thu, 13 Feb 2025 07:05:14 +0000
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On Sun, 9 Feb 2025 4:52:51 +0000, HarryLime wrote:

> On Sun, 9 Feb 2025 2:28:41 +0000, Will Dockery wrote:
>> On Sat, 8 Feb 2025 20:58:37 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:
>>> On Fri, 17 Jan 2025 13:45:51 +0000, Will 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.
>>>>
>>>> Interesting, I'm starting to think both Harry Lime and Jim Senetto were
>>>> actually projecting in their critiques of "My Father's House."
>>>
>>> I can imagine that for the Lime sock (MMP). As far as his Chimp, though,
>>> I don't want to leap to that conclusion for him. Remember, he is the
>>> less intelligent of the two, and in consequence he just believes and
>>> says whatever MMP tells him to. That could be all he was doing in those
>>> threads as well.
>>
>> It seems that Senetto took the lead in attempting to drive Stephan
>> Pickering from the newsgroup though, but that may have been fueled by
>> Senetto's obvious Antisemitism.

Dr. David Scheimmer read several of Senetto's posts and detected his
prejudice right away.

> Jim Senetto is my friend

Nut jobs of a feather, after all.

😏

> Now please take PJR's oft-prescribed advice and go die of cancer.
>
> --

You're sounding rather malicious tonight, Pendragon.

HTH and HAND.