/lit/ - Literature

>>12578065
we might even say that there are a sort of category of post-Marxist or heretically Marxist or Marxist-kryptonite figures: i would put D&G in that category as the prime example, but Land, Baudrillard and Bataille are in it as well. all of these guys not only offer pretty comprehensive arguments against Marx, they offer serious questions about Hegel as well.

but after 1990 a lot of things change, and i think after 2016 as well. whatever it is that sustained the general mode of existence after WW2 goes on a considerable detour in the 1990s and 2000s, and disaffection with that detour reaches its zenith in 2016 with Trump. it's not hard to come to a rather sad and grim conclusion: hey look, it's just all about money. but this is a *triple* whammy: Death of God, death of socialism, death of capitalism. now you've got a fucking wicked recipe for a true cocktail of total continental despair. breaking the built-in theological allure of socialism may have been a necessary task; what if in the end this thing is just grounded in senseless pleasures? what if you can't unironically root for as brainless an ideology as just getting all the things you want? what if - more recently, if you're Uncle Nick - the evil corporate overlords you have been kind of secretly rooting for, in your absolute despair, have to wind up getting into bed with socialism all over again, and leading to Woke Billionaires as the worst of both worlds? what then?

neoliberalism won the 20C, over fascism and communism. that both of those are on the rise today is not surprising, but i don't expect great gains to be won by any of them anymore; i would expect grinding deadlock, disaffection, general stupidity, boredom, grief, anxiety, and rising dread about things that actually do require a unified world acting in concert - climate, for instance, or poverty, or migration, or lots of other things. even neoliberalism today is in a state of total bewilderment about what to do: look at Rogan's podcast with Jack Dorsey, he has no idea what to do with the monster that he himself has made. i don't know what's going to play out in the next election, but there's virtually nobody in it to root for. the Chinese are going to try and continue to exert power over there in the way that they do, and maybe turn the CCP into the human equivalent of Google for the Han people. everything's fucked up.

(cont'd)

>>12073708
but it is why i ultimately want to talk about lightning also. and wastelands. and other things. i was thinking about this, how much beyond a certain horizon, Capital becomes as natural, as Clean a Flow, as air, or electricity. about what it would mean to be struck by lightning, or what it is that makes a spectral glow a glow. it is not purely the libidinal, and it is not purely an untapped electricity, and it has to be more than rage too.

post-apoc scenarios are always scenes of exteriorized Burnout, as much as cyberpunk heroes - and cities - are scenes of an interiorized one, some kind of cataclysm, or disaster, unseen. IRL doesn't this have to come back to a discourse on lightning itself?

>Heidegger takes note of Heraclitus’s use of the image of lightning to describe the context created by the way being unifies what-is: Heraclitus says both that logos steers all things through all things and that the thunderbolt steers all things. Heidegger’s own notion of this cultural context as a “lightening” or “clearing” in which things show themselves plays on this same imagery. The logos lets everything be gathered into a unified totality, but our understanding of the character of this totality can be changed in a flash – a lightning flash of insight which casts new illumination on our world. -- Dreyfus & Wrathall

asking What Heraclitus Meant By This has been the world's oldest pastime for philosophers. and i think there is more in that bucket yet. and then some.

>>12073727
well, a lot of this is my own musings, and honestly, i would love to tell you that i had a book of my own to shill. i have been trying to write one for a very long time, and i pretty much always fail. so i'm trying some essays instead of fiction. but this, you do not want. try the /acc reader or the YT link in the OP for a start. or any of the other things. the manic kind of stuff i talk about comes from mostly just poking through the post-apoc theme park in which i live. it's been a long ride. Marty Glass' Yuga is a good read. there's also a shitload of links in the OP of these threads to explore, maybe something there will excite. have fun.

>>12073736
this is a legit good post. hold that thought.