Re: The Psycho-epistemolgy of MMP

On Sat, 1 Feb 2025 23:24:09 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:

On Sat, 1 Feb 2025 5:20:24 +0000, HarryLime wrote:
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On Fri, 31 Jan 2025 23:38:44 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:
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On Fri, 17 Jan 2025 13:13:15 +0000, W.Dockery wrote:
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On Fri, 17 Jan 2025 4:07:04 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:

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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.

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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.

>
Doesn't help; I'm sure that both Wynand and Toohey would have said they
were "fostering creativity." As a publisher, Wynand employed several
columnists who could write what they wanted -- unless they wrote
something he didn't like, in which case he'd "ban" (fire) them. That
last sounds like you. While Toohey's war on independent thought and
creativity was to assemble a collective of mediocre talents and promote
the hell out of them. That also sounds like you.
>
I'm afraid the question is still unresolved, and you haven't done a
thing to help resolve it.

You are devaluing Wynand.  Wynand's motivations were originally noble
(in Ayn Rand's view), but he became corrupted (or, rather, compromised)
over time.  Once having established a position of wealth and power, he
wanted to hold onto it, and was willing to compromise his ethics in
order to do so.  This is opposed to Roark, who is willing to risk
everything he owns, and all of the progress he has made in the hierarchy
of his chosen field, to be true to his personal values.
Wynand redeems himself later in the novel, and is last seen having
returned to his original, Ubermenschian self.
Toohey, otoh, is a one-dimensional symbol of the Communist party
leaders.  Toohey pretends to represent the people, but is using their
collective support as a means to self-empowerment.
I, otoh, don't fall into either category.  I am not a successful
publisher who is seeking to maintain his empire; nor am I a manipulative
Communist supporting mediocrity, in order to gain allies/power.  That,
as I'd originally pointed out, is why you publish, promote, and
otherwise enable the work of inbred, no-talent sub-morons like your
Donkey and his Stink.
My motivations for publishing are much more straightforward than that. I want to be able to present my work in a format of my choice: a
literary journal alongside of other poems (by other poets) that I
admire.  One is said to be judged by the company one keeps.  My poems
may therefore be judged by the poems that appear alongside them.
One of the first publishers to accept one of my poems for publication
was "The National Library of Poetry." They presented themselves as if
being accepted by them was an honor (and offered $150.00 leatherbound
editions and even pricier brass plaques proclaiming one's inclusion),
but turned out to be a notorious vanity press.
It was embarrassing to list them in cover letters as one of my sole
publication credits.  Many of my other early credits, while more
legitimate, were equally embarrassing (stapled one-sided photocopied
volumes filled with poorly written, amateurish pieces, etc.).  I decided
to take matters into my own hands, by creating a high quality
publication of my own.
Over the course of a few years, that publication grew into one of the
most respected Indie poetry journals out there.  This is not wishful
thinking on my part.  I was publishing the best small press poets, in a
high quality, perfectbound journal that received annual writeups in
books like "The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror," Datlow & Windling, eds.
I loved every poem that I published in it.  I felt (and continue to
feel) that I was extremely fortunate to receive poetry of that quality,
and to be able to place my own works alongside of them.  They benefitted
from having their poetry displayed in a forum that was read by many of
their fellow writers, and that was mentioned in various publications.  I
benefitted from having my poetry published alongside of works that were
as good as (if not better than) I felt it was.
Win-win.
I left the world of small press publishing 20 years ago, when both of my
poetry journals (I'd added the less dark "Songs of Innocence" as a
sister publication to my roster), were going strong.  This was due to a
combination of physical burnout, the responsibilities of being a parent,
and the emotional pain caused by the deaths of several of my regular
contributors (KNR, in particular, with whom I'd become close through
personal correspondence).
Now that my children are grown, I'm slowly working my way back into the
small press publishing world.  The game field has changed considerably,
but I'm once again starting to attract first rate talent for my
publishing endeavors.
I don't see this as being similar to Wynand or Toohey in any way.  I am
providing a platform for both myself and other small press writers.  I
do not charge for my publications -- no submission fees, reading fees,
etc., and I do not receive any money for sales (the print volume is sold
through Amazon at cost).  It is not an altruistic act by any means -- I
am merely helping myself by helping others: creating a publication that
I am proud to have my poetry displayed in.
That's more of a Roark-like act (providing superior buildings for others
as a means of ensuring a venue for personal artistic expression for
himself); but, as I said, I don't identify with Roark, whose egoism
reaches morbid degrees wherein it justifies rape and dynamiting
apartment buildings.

Why does Michael Pendragon lie and misrepresent so much?

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MMP has told us he was abused as a boy, and I think that fact is key.

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

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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.
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Then one day, out of the blue, he added this comment:
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"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.

>
Now that is interesting. Your father used to beat you regularly, in
addition to his "punishments," but not on your read end. Where exactly
did he regularly hit you?

That should be clear to you from my previous statements.  I said that I
stood up to him, and fought back.
If you imagine the famous fight scene between Luke and Dragline in "Cool
Hand Luke" -- only without the boxing gloves, and replace Luke with a
12-year old boy, you'll get the picture.

""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" had to be
something far worse.
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That is as much as he revealed, but it was revealing enough.

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You're projecting again, George.

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No, MMP. I was never afraid enough to react that way to my father's
punishments. Perhaps I originally reacted like that to being punished,
back when it was my mother or Granny doing the hitting; but I'd
definitely outgrown that by age six.

That's the point, George.  You weren't afraid.  You accepted it as the
norm.

I ran from corporal punishment because I have a natural dislike for
physical pain.

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Virtually everyone dislikes physical pain. But not all of them will
blindly lash out or run away out of fear of it.

I disagree.  Only someone who has been thoroughly broken in spirit will
passively submit themselves to physical punishment.

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.

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I'm sure you did. Your whole family, in fact, sounds like a terror:
ehildren would hit children, parents would hit children, children would
hit parents. The only thing you haven't told us is whether your parents
hit each other.

Children fight.  Parents punish children for fighting.  Back in the day,
parents usually did so with some form of corporal punishment.  That was
par for the course at the time.
But I have never known any other children who would dutifully report to
their bedroom, pull down their pajama pants, and lie there bare-assed
waiting for their father to spank them.  That's really too pathetic for
words.

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.

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Leaving aside your lies (for humorous effect or not) about what I
actually wrote in my poem or what I told you later, Lying Michael, I'll
repeat that I can imagine a child so scared that he'd fight or run
mindlessly, even though he'd know the result would be a beating in
addition to the dreaded "punishment".

Why did "Cool Hand Luke" keep picking himself up and facing Dragline --
even though all of the other inmates (Dragline included) were telling
him to "Stay down, Luke"?  It's something in one's nature -- a spirit
that refuses to be subjected to any authority; that refuses to be
punished for its acts, that refuses to be subjected to the will of
another.
As an Ayn Rand fan, I'd have thought that you would be one of the first
people to recognize that spirit.  But then you don't really seem to
*get* what Rand is all about.

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.

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Since you never met them, you are certainly not the one to make any such
comments.

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Now, that's ironic coming from someone who loves to comment on others'
parents when he's never met any of them. Unlike you, though, I'll base
my comments on what you've actually said about them.
>

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.

>
That's helpful; it doesn't contradict my theories but rather supports
them.

So you say, although you haven't expressed them (or, more probably,
formed them) as yet.

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.

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Incidentally, Lying Michael, they go far beyond anything you've read in
my poem or anything I've told you about it later, as well. I can
understand how desperate you are to change the subject to that poem of
mine - if you do succeed, of course, I'll just move things to a new
thread and leave this one open to write in after you've moved on.

Is that why you and your Donkey create so many threads on the same
topic?  To avoid addressing points that you don't want to (or can't)
address?
I thought it was just to create so many repetitious threads that your
adversaries will eventually give up and allow you to get in the
all-coveted "last word."  (Another childish conception of "winning.")

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.

>
You'd "tie up the guests" a la Red Chief and your mother would laugh at
them? I suppose you didn't get many repeat guests.

For once, your suppositions are correct.

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.
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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.

>
That last is interesting. Is that what you meant about "finally getting
the upper hand" in your relationship with him?

No. It isn't.
I don't recall the "upper hand" statement, but would assume I was
referring to my having reached an age-height-weight where I was better
able to defend myself against 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.

>
I've read that is the normal response to unresolved issues from one's
childhood: wanting to go back and fix it all up. But that wouldn't make
for a very dramatic ending to a work of fiction and remember, as I told
you, I was writing dramatic fiction, not autobiography.

I didn't say that I wanted to fix up my broken childhood, George.  I
said that I wanted to restore my childhood to *exactly* the way it had
been when I was young.

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.
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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.

>
That is not what you said earlier, MMP. In the quoted text you
distinctly mention that you fled from and fought both your parents.

You are conflating two separate portions of my childhood.
Before the age of 12, I often received corporal punishment for things
that I did.  And I have to admit that I did some *extremely* horrible
things, and well deserved any punishment that my parents would have
dished out.
However, I did not submit to the punishments, but ran... and, when
inevitably caught, fought tooth and nail against my parents as they
attempted to administer said punishments.
I do not wish to get into the gory details here, but suffice to say that
I made Patty McCormack look like an angel in "The Bad Seed."
From the ages of 12 - 14, I was defending myself against the physical
blows of my father, who was suffering from an emotional breakdown due to
my mother's death.  I was not being punished at that point.  I was
simply an unwilling outlet for his frustration with fate.

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."

>
It may be good background material, but for now it will just go into the
file with all the rest.

I have left my childhood behind me, George.  The good and bad memories
alike, have little to no bearing of the person I have become half a
century later.
If, otoh, my psychological reading of you is correct, your childhood
experiences have left you with permanent emotional scars, which cause
you to see others as untrustworthy, scheming, lying, egomaniacal,
power-hungry "thugs" who are forever conspiring to bring about your
undoing.
You seem to know enough about psychology to grasp how such an outlook
might stem from a lack of trust in the love, and intentions, of one's
parents.
--