Valis wrote, >My problem, post-Means, is that socialism, as it would play out >in an urban-industrial matrix, is, to a distressing degree, >an extension of the thing it is meant to replace. > > I think there's a problem with language here. Christians, > capitalists, Marxists, all of them have been revolutionary > in their own minds. But none of them really mean revolution. > What they really mean is a _continuation_. What Valis and Means state as "a problem" is for me simply a datum. Marxists are no _better_ than capitalists or christians. But neither is there any possibility of return to -- or of -- what is at any rate an unknowable state of [ab]original innocence. Continuation is the name of any conceivable game. Land claims are also a continuation and not a disenchantment. Sadder but wiser, perhaps. But if not wiser, even sadder. "Though it is normal to speak of the Biblical patriarchs of GENESIS as a trio, and though the original threesome is entrenched in the mantra-like formulae of the liturgy, Joseph ekes out a natural quartet. Through him, through his efforts and activities, as earlier through Isaac and Jacob, the line begun by Abraham is continued. But the texture of Joseph's activity differs, so that some distinction is warranted. The dominant issue in the case of the original three is the issue of the nation's foundation. The issue in the case of Joseph shifts decisively to the nation's continuation. Joseph operates among the nations, not, as do Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, against them." regards, Tom Walker
