Inamoraty Stoics (The Crying of Lot 49 Chapter 5)

I mentioned communication as one of the fundamental aspects that keep the world alive and “organized” so to speak. In this chapter, communication is again brought up in a bigger and more specific way by mentioning the Maxwell Demon machine. This machine will only organize the molecules/information that it contains if a person, a “sensitive”, is able to catch its message and communicate with the Demon: “Communication is the key, cried Nefastis. The Demon passes his data on to the sensitive, and the sensitive must reply in kind” (pg 84). Basically, this machine shows how things, even science, are unable to work without communication; however, Pynchon mocks this dependency on communication that us humans have. The author jokes about communication stating that only some humans understand the real message. “Only people with the gift. Sensitives, John calls them” (Pg, 69). Now, the machine communicated with a sensitive through a picture of Clerk Maxwell; however, this picture was a picture specially selected from the “Christian Knowledge Society” (pg, 69), which made me think that the “sensitives” were Christians only, and they could only communicate through faith. This was weird in the sense that Pynchon passed on to mock religion and the difficulties that a religious being goes through to supposedly receive a message form God. While Oedipa fights desperately to communicate with the machine, monks fight even more wholeheartedly to receive the word of God which in the end, allegedly, they receive.

“…I’m a member of the IA. That’s Inamorati Anonymous. An inamorato is somebody in love. That’s the worst addiction of all” (pg, 91). In a sense I deeply agree with Pynchon when he refers to love as the worst addiction. Well, love is a wonderful thing, and although I haven’t experienced true love towards another person that isn’t part of my family, love is still just wonderful. Love is an extended and complex theme but I had never before seen it as an addiction. It is strange to look at love as something that as soon as it takes hold of you it doesn’t ever loose its grasp. In this way, Epictetus came to my mind. Well, if you start to love someone, you will eventually love that person for the rest of your live making you somewhat dependent on the existence of this person. As a consequence, if this person dies or is gravely injured in someway, you will probably mourn your beloved until death, in contrast to what Epictetus tries to tell his readers about the world and love. Generally speaking, Epictetus motivates its reader to achieve happiness by looking at events in an indifferent way. This emotion is reflected in the Inamorati Anonymous in the sense that by loosing themselves form love’s grasp, they will never look at a person or object with another feeling than that of indifference eventually causing, in a Stoic point of view, happiness.