Re: The Psycho-epistemolgy of MMP

On Fri, 31 Jan 2025 23:38:44 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:

On Fri, 17 Jan 2025 13:13:15 +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.

>
I see your point and now can agree completely.

>
For now I think of him as the Toohey type, but that could just be my
personal bias. The difference being that: Wynand was a Nietzschean; he
just wanted the power to control reality for itself, without any regard
for how it was used; while Toohey did have an agenda, a malevolent one
of stamping out and destroying all independent thought and creativity.

Hmm... as a publisher, I foster creativity -- providing other poets with
a forum in which to showcase their works.

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.

>
I didn't remember this fact but it isn't at all surprising.

>
It just came up as a casual aside in one of the threads he opened to
flame "My Father's House," and I'm sure he'd call my use of it "out of
context" as he was trying to make a different point. The actual context,
of all those threads, was that he was claiming to have discovered that
"emotional and physical child abuse" and in addition "the probability of
sexual abuse," in my upbringing.
>
Then one day, out of the blue, he added this comment:
>
"I'm sure I received much worse from my father than you did from yours.
But I *never* willingly submitted to it."
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.arts.poetry.comments/c/vhO7kDQSMqw/m/9XUjiy-GCQAJ?hl=en
>
His point was the second sentence, but I found the first sentence more
shocking.
He imagined that I had repeatedly experienced emotional, physical, and
even sexual abuse from my father; but he was also convinced that he had
"received MUCH SORSE" from his own father than anything he imagined
happening to me. (stress added)

You're projecting again, George.  My father was never even remotely
sexually abusive.  Unlike your father, for whom you claimed to have
bared your bottom every night, my father never had me remove a stitch of
clothing.  Nor, like your father, did he ever so much as touch, much
less smack, my rear end.

So I pressed him on it, and got this follow-up comment:
>
""I ran from my parents when they wanted to punish me. And when they
caught me (and they always did), I fought tooth and nail until I was
beaten into submission. And my punishment was always worse for having
fought back -- but I only ran a little farther and fought back a little
harder the next time."
>
I found that even more disturbing. Fight and flight are not rational
responses, but animal ones based on fear. He was afraid; but of what?
Not of being beaten, obviously; even the most scared boy would not incur
two beatings because he was afraid of one. Hia "puniahmwnra" hdd to be
something far worse.
>
That is as much as he revealed, but it was revealing enough.

You're projecting again, George.
I ran from corporal punishment because I have a natural dislike for
physical pain.
But let's focus on the second sentence (mentioned above), which you
correctly noted was my point: "I *never* willingly submitted to
[corporal punishment]."
Unlike you, I was a child of spirit.  You'll note that I also said that
I "fought back."  I meant that literally.  I was a holy terror as a
child, and did some pretty horrible things which I prefer not to
elaborate on here.
As I'd also noted in relation to your "My Father's House" poem; I cannot
imagine a child so broken in spirit that he would lie in bed with his
pajama pants pulled down every night, waiting bare-assed for his father
to come in and spank him/whip him with a belt.
The thought of a child that broken fills me with sadness.

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.

>
Some comments about his relationship with his mother, as well as his
father, are probably in order here, but I'd prefer to deal with one
topic at a tie.

Since you never met them, you are certainly not the one to make any such
comments.
My mother was a wonderful parent.  She was fun to be with, spent all of
her day with my siblings and I, and was always encouraging our
creativity.  (She was also beautiful, looked like a movie star, well
educated/a school teacher, and was loved by everyone who met her.)  I
have nothing but good memories of her.  My mother thought that I (and my
siblings) were the greatest children ever born -- and inadvertently
contributed to any narcissistic tendencies I might have today.  She
enrolled me in dance and music classes, the Cub Scouts, bought me
presents for each of my recitals (including a pet lamb), and was
convinced that I was going to grow up to be a movie star.
She did believe in corporal punishment, as did most parents of her
generation.  IIRC, you said the same thing in defense of your parents --
although keeping you in the house doing chores all day, refusing to
allow you in the living because "boys are filthy," and whipping your
bare ass every night go far beyond corporal punishment. My mother would
never have treated me in such an unloving manner.  Hell, I'd tie up her
guests while they sat in the living room chairs, and she'd just laugh
and tell them I was just having fun -- which was quite true, although
her guests often failed to appreciate it.
My father was also handsome, in a dark, Sicilian kind of way.  He was
even more intelligent than my mother, but since he worked all day, he
wasn't as involved with us as my mother.  He did make time for us
though, taking us fishing, digging for antique bottles with me in the
woods behind our house.  He rarely hit us when my mother was alive --
and then, only when we did something really bad ("Wait till your father
gets home!").  He suffered an emotional breakdown for two years after my
mother's death, during which time he was prone to bouts of physical
violence. I always stood up to him, but a 12-year old boy can't do much
against a 47-year old man.
After the first 6 months, his violent outburst gradually became less
frequent, and had stopped altogether by the time two years had passed. He felt bad about it, and did his best to make it up to me for the
remainder of his life (he passed 11 years after my mother).  He even
bought me an MG! He died when I was 23.  He'd been disabled by a series
of strokes three years prior to his death, and I returned from the Navy
to take care of him.
Unlike the self-admittedly autobiographical narrator of your poem, I've
never wanted to go back to my childhood home and burn it down.  In fact,
I was deeply saddened when the new owners made it over, making it almost
unrecognizable.  I often daydream about buying and putting it back the
way it was in the 1960s and 70, with all of the flowers and blossoming
bushes and trees my father planted.
Except for my mother's untimely death and my father's consequent
breakdown, I had an excellent childhood -- insofar as my relationship
with my parents went.  We were far from rich (lower middle income at
best by my grandmother's estimation) but my parents spoiled us rotten. We had a swing set, a jungle gym, a swimming pool, and a tent in our
back yard, dozens of pets, they turned their den into a toy room and
filled it up with toys (my father built us a huge three compartment toy
box to keep them in, and grew up thinking that we were rich.
In many ways, my childhood was as far removed from yours as possible.
But, yes.  During the time of my father's breakdown, I have no doubt
that I endured far more severe physical beatings than you ever did. Best of times/worst of times, as Charles Dickens would say.

More later, but I wanted to get these two points on record quickly.

>
Same here, excellent observations on "Harry Lime."

>
thanks. I have no idea if anyone will even read them here, aside from
you and I, but if I don't get them down then no one ever will.

Enjoy yourself psychoanalyzing the above.  And, speaking of literary
characters, my Grandmother always compared me to O. Henry's "Red Chief."
--