Decadence! Haven’t kept up with the reading goals like I’ve been meaning to. The economic type language is just a tough egg to crack. I have an easier time with Plato. Of which I have been poking around out lately, mostly for the Theory of Forms. I think I’ll wait until I get to university to try and study the Great Masters. I feel Plato is important, but he’s a bit of an staunch enemy to Deleuze and Nietzsche, and I feel like I haven’t really gotten anything out of Aristotle because of this. Some theological type things have had me curious lately. Big moves coming soon…
The main thing that’s been on my mind the last 2 days is relating Heidegger’s Gestell to Marx’s ‘Super-Structure’ or modes of ideology, and how these relate to perspective. Both ideas seem to come from this idea of man being a tool-making animal and the relationship to Nature therein. I have to say it has given me new interest in yet another direction, because I used to have a preoccupation for Human Evolution, and I’ve been filling up the quiet minutes of the day listen to lectures on Homo Naledi and such. Heidegger likes to think he has cornerstoned ontology, but I don’t currently understand how his notions of Gestell and Standing Reserve aren’t just ways to beat around the bush when it comes to surplus-value + base/superstructures and of an ontology of difference a la Deleuze. I guess in this “turn” period which starts to focus around the ontology of difference and of the importance of the event, Heidegger is simply the last of the Modern philosophers. He’s got bigger balls than the rest of “the existentialists”, and more of a backbone. I think it may be dye to an aversion to substance-based philosophies? Is it just the combination of that and a fear of materialism? Proper fears to be sure.
I believe that the past of human history is important to understanding where to go next. I don’t know how to parse this up though. This is why I feel Steigler is going to be a big contribution to my thought now that I’ve been introduced to him. I’ll look him up here soon to see if any schools have a program that he’s in. Of course, for a post-human situation, the history of physiognomy and anthropology is extremely important (Though I think a notion of consciousness ‘growing’ is a dangerous problem we often see in anthropology and with evolutionary psychology). I need a mentor desperately. If I found one I would give up my life right now and dedicate it to study.
I’ve been looking at too many varied readings, and I feel like my head is all muddled. It’s time for a deep dive into a specific text. Too bad all the minor philosophers are responding to the major ones… the list is far too long again.
But what I wouldn’t;t give to be standing on top of Lake Lahontan right now. I miss Nevada dearly, I miss the mountains. I think of the area often. Jagged volcanic rocks and petroglyphs carved into the stone, bleached by desert sun. There’s a wonderful mystic silence. It’s harder to imagine the causal drive to Grimes Point ( A popular tourist outlook with said petroglyphs) as being nearly 300-500 feet underwater!!! as of a few thousand years ago or less. The history of the landscape is amazingly dynamic. So are the peoples, The Paiute. I think my new connection to the nomadism of D+G is lending to the bliss I get from reminiscing on that environment. They were a highly nomadic tribe, and I always found that interesting. It’s the same reason I found interest in the Scythians and others Eastern Steppe folks.
Final part- Need to wrap up, going to start recording Nietzsche’s letters for Project Gutenburg. There’s a story in the area that comes from the Paiute about ‘giants’ with white skin and red hair that used to terrorize the Paiute people with war and cannibalism. They were able to gang up with other groups and trap them in Lovelock Cave, where they filled the entrance with reeds and brush to smoke them out once and for all. And That’s all folks.
P.S. was just doing some more reading about the Paiute and apparently a shaman named Wovoka (Preceded by Hawthrone Wodziwob) started the Ghost Dance movement. Wodizwob was from the ‘bulb-eater’ tribe thusly named: Tövusidökadö. These people had no political governance or leadership, and were largely nomadic. Around the time of Wodziwob’s death (And the death of their nomadism), a famine swept through the area massacring 1/10ths of them, and traumatizing the population left remaining. Lo and behold! Quick reading shows that Wovoka, the man responsible for spreading this message quickly to surrounding tribes, supplied it with the corollate of a prophecy from heaven, from whence had he been picked by the Lord to transmit the message of deliverance from evil and the reclamation of their land (But not before the raising of the dead Paiute, ergo Ghost Dance). He was a devout Christian! Kind of! He basically adapted Christian eschatology to Native practices. Some tribes even danced for the resurrection of Christ haha. These lead to the massacre at Wounded Knee. All things are connected.
Rustle in the Bush 
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