Re: The Psycho-epistemolgy of MMP

On Sat, 1 Feb 2025 17:30:21 +0000, Will 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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More later, but I wanted to get these two points on record quickly.

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Hello George, I haven't been able to look at the newsgroup since last
night Friday became really busy.

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I can sympathize with that. I ended up cancelling the Dancehall today;
around 6 pm I remembered it was Saturday. MD started putting together a
list (I think of Wedding songs), but it can keep; a week off isn't going
to hurt.
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PS - I did check the deaths this year before I pulled the plug.
Wikipedia is keeping an active page, and I check it every week.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2025_deaths_in_popular_music
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You'll be sad to know that Marianne Faithfull just died. I didn't think
we could get enough of a list to do her justice - I could remember just
3 songs. But I could be wrong; you may remember, I didn't think we get
enough songs for Tina Turner either, and we had more than enough; so I'm
willing to look at it again.