Re: The Psycho-epistemolgy of MMP

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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.

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.

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On Sat, 1 Feb 2025 3:45:06 +0000, Michael Monkey Peabrain aka
"HarryLime" wrote:

Wow.  I was going to George and his Donkey stew in their own juices for
a while, but then the Donkey reposted this.
George Dance certainly has been busy in my absence.  LOL.
Unfortunately, the link to the original article says that it's been
removed, so I can't read it in context (assuming that anyone, other than
the Donkey, responded to it), or see why George was writing about me in
alt.arts.poe -- a group which I'm unfamiliar with.

welcome to this thread, Mr. Monkey; I was wondering when you'd show up.
Thank you, too for illustrating one of the subjects -- why you lie and
misrepresent so much -- by snipping and lying about the thread youre
replying to. To take them in turn: neither of my two posts were written
during your "absence" from the group; there was no other "original
article", no link to one, and nothing about that non-existnt article
being removed; and nothing has been posted in this "alt.arts.poe" group
you've apparently just made up.

As to the psychobabbled Ayn Rand analogy... just wow.

Of course this all goes back to my having called the Donkey a
"second-hander" (like Peter Keating in Rand's "The Fountainhead").  As
if to prove my statement, Will turned around and seconded it back to me.
In similar fashion, my having compared George to Ellsworth Toohey on
several occasions, is being second-handed back to me as well.

But then
George is the one who claims that "tit for tat" is his personal "system
of ethics."  It's also his justification for his stock in trade rebuttal
of "IKYABWAI."

Got it: you say that comparing someone to a Randian character is
"psychobabble" and that you did it first. It's not logical to claim
both. As well, your latter claim sounds like your well-known "preemption
game" (as I've labeled it): "What he said about me isn't true because I
said it about him first." Which is not logical either.
All that tells me is that you're getting defensive, and your
defensiveness is causing you to engage in transference.

Now... if I were an Ayn Rand character, which one would I be?
>
Not Keating or Toohey, of course (I'm nothing like the Donkey or
George).  Nor Gail Wynand -- I'm a poet, not a newspaper man or a social
engineer.

Interesting. The only poet in any of Rand's novels was Lois Cook. Do you
seriously identify with Lois Cook?

Nor am I a Howard Roark.  While I share several of his "egoistic"
beliefs ("egotistic" in the novel, but Rand later wrote that she would
change it), I would never rape anyone or blow up a building.
>
I identify more with John Galt from "Atlas Shrugged" -- as I'm more of
the passive resistance martyr type.  But even that isn't a very good
match.

It's quite revealing that you'd identify with Rand's most perfect (IHO)
character, but don't think he's good enough either. But I'm afraid I
can't see any match at all, other than Galt convinced a group of people
to move to a hidden site and
waited for the world to die without them; which you claim to have done
to aapc.

If we must pseudo-psychoanalyze me by comparing me to a literary
character, I identify most with the following: Goldmund (from Hesse's
"Goldmund & Narcissus"), Wolf Larsen (from Jack London's "The Sea
Wolf"), Manfred (in Byron's dramatic poem of the same name).  I would
expand that list to include the cinematic character Arthur Parker from
"Pennies from Heaven" as well.
For the benefit of illiterates like George and his Donkey, allow me to
briefly describe the relevant characteristics of each of the literary
and cinematic characters listed above.  Goldmund is an artist during the
late Middle Ages who abandons the monastic life, pursues his art at the
expense of financial security, and achieves, the Jungian process of
"actualization" through a series of romantic encounters.
 Wolf Larsen is
a Darwinic Atheist who identifies with the Rebel-Hero, "Lucifer," from
Milton's "Paradise Lost," whose dying words (actually, word) dismiss
religion and morality as "Bosh."
Manfred is the ultimate Byronic hero,
who refuses to accept Divine judgment at the end of his life, declaring
that his deeds were his own.
And Arthur Parker was a Depression Era
sheet music salesman who defiantly clung to his belief that life must be
like it is in the songs -- even when facing the gallows for a crime he
didn't commit.

So you identify with characters who (1) are financially unstable, (2 and
3) reject religion (and ethics), and (4) have a delusional view of the
world. That's illuminating, but it doesn't answer the question we were
debating.

In short, I'm an Epicurean-Pantheist-Luciferic-Byronic Romantic who
always seeks to find the ideal in a less than perfect world.
>
As to my alleged "lying."

This is another example of George's "IKYABWAI" ethical system at work.

"Why do you lie so much, Dunce?" is a catchphrase question that PJR
would often put to George.

So you're copying "PJR" again (which is probably one reason Will came up
with the theory that you're mostly a "second-hander" like Keating.

Why I revived it in PJR's absence, George
immediately began tit-for-tatting it back to me.

No, Lying Michael; I don't use that phrase. Whenever I catch you in a
lie I simply note it by calling you Lying Michael, and move on.

I don't lie in Usenet groups (well, maybe a little one now and then for
humor's sake -- told with a wink to those perceptive enough to pick up
on it) -- it's too easy to get caught.  Conversations here are archived,
and anything one says can and will be used against them at a future
date.

As I've explained to you many a time; nor is it a good yet here you are,
trying it yet again.
The question, as Will asked, is why you do it.

I also find George's description of how abused children are prone to
becoming lying adults telling -- as George also had an abusive parent
(actually both of George's parents were abusive).

No, Lying Michael, that is not what I said (which is probably why you
tried snipping it.) I said it's reasonable to think that all children
try lying to escape punishment at some time. Whether they continue it,
as children and later on as adults, is contingent on how well it worked
for them.

It seems that George
has finally answered PJR's ongoing question of "Why do you lie so much,
Dunce."

I've answered that question many a time, usually with "Why do you
project so much, Piggy?" - the same phrase I use on you when
you copy it. Of course, with him (and with you) it's as much conscious
preemption as much as unconscious projection, but
there was no point trying to explain all that to him.