Re: The Psycho-epistemolgy of MMP

On Sun, 2 Feb 2025 5:55:00 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:

On Sun, 2 Feb 2025 2:28:41 +0000, W.Dockery wrote:
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On Sat, 1 Feb 2025 20:58:37 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:
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On Fri, 17 Jan 2025 13:45:51 +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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moved from
https://www.novabbs.com/arts/article-flat.php?id=254114&group=alt.arts.poetry.comments#254114
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On Thu, 16 Jan 2025 0:20:56 +0000, W.Dockery wrote:
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That's Michael Pendragon, always the Peter Keating styled second hander.

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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).
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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Thanks for reminding me. It was actually MMP who did that by bringing
NAMBLA to the group. That triggered Jim, just the way MFH triggered him
after he was told that it was really about child molesting.

Why do you lie so much, George?
(That's a rhetorical question, as you've already intimated that your
pathological lying stems from you having been abused as a child.)
When Pickles joined the group, he simply posted ongoing entries in a
proposed bibliography of some Magnum Opus he had been working on for
years.  To the best of my recollection, this tome-in-progress was an
attempt to tie all of literature, culture, and history together via
Jewish themes explored in Bob Dylan songs.  Suffice to say that Pickles
had gone off the deep end decades before.
I attempted to engage Pickles in several conversations regarding his
posts, but he either ignored them, or spat back some angry, and
impolite, remarks.  Since I didn't relish the idea of getting into a
flamewar with another nutjob (he reminded me of the 50s group's nutter,
"PhillyGuy"), I took to ignoring his posts.  Since he only posted once
or twice a week, ignoring him required little to no effort.
At some point Jim and Pickles got into a flamewar regarding Ginsberg.  I
don't recall who started it.  Most likely Jim had condemned Ginsberg as
a child molester, and Pickles (who worshipped Ginsberg) spazzed.  Their
fight had been going for what had become a fairly large-sized thread
when I decided to see what all the bruhaha was about.  (As I said, I'd
been ignoring Pickles' threads, and having no interest in Ginsberg, had
been avoiding this thread as well.)
When I read Jim's accusations, I google Ginsberg and discovered that
he'd openly discussed having had sex with minors, hinted (as strongly as
possible, considering that statutory rape is a criminal offense) at
having had sex with boys aged 14 or under (he said that was the age when
boys were most desirable), was a member of NAMBLA and had been serving
as that organization's poster boy, publicly championing them and their
agenda (to legalize sex between adults and children).
I was appalled that a public figure was able to be a member of NAMBLA,
and to speak about having had sex with minors, and was somehow not only
a free man, but was still considered a renowned poet and even a cultural
icon.  I therefore joined in the argument, backing Jim.
I don't know if I was the first to introduce NAMBLA into the group.  I'm
sure that it must have come up once or twice in the 15 - 20 years of
flame wars before my arrival -- but whatever.  I'm pretty sure that I
was the one who'd introduced it into that particular argument.
In an attempt to defend Ginsberg, Pickles told us that he had been to
NAMBLA meetings, listened to speakers at NAMBLA conventions, and taken
NAMBLA members out to dinner on several occasions, and could attest that
they were all good people.
NancyGene quoted posts Pickles had made in another forum, wherein he'd
argued that "legal age" was a meaningless concept, that the majority of
civilizations and cultures had no such age, that incest was not only
common in other cultures, but was a desirable thing.
Pickles not only defended his stance in said quotes, but further
informed us that he'd had sex with 14-year old girls (impregnating one
of them), and told us that he felt it was perfectly fine to have sex
with a 13-year old... but that if you went for anyone younger, you were
risking getting hurt because children that young were unable to maintain
lasting romantic relationships.
Nice guy, that Pickles.
Since you have always been jealous of Jim's popularity here, and since
Pickles was a friend of your lifetime ally, Will Donkey, you jumped into
the fray as well.  You not only supported both Ginsberg and Pickles, but
you mistakenly claimed that NAMBLA had done more to support LGBT rights
than any other organization.  You later retracted that claim, but the
damage to your reputation had already been done.
BTW: Who is MFH?  I'm having difficulty placing the initials.  Is it a
typo?
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