I am thrilled Scott has something new--I haven't heard of it and it's good the old-timer is still putting out the good word.

Austin might be the best place.There had been much development and urbanization, but the geography and ecology of the area is god-awful beautiful. All the young folks are hipsters, but it doesn't bother me. There are old rivers, old buildings, and brutal hills, tarantulas, and fire ants, ancient oak trees, and dry river beds. I speak Spanish here when I can. In the late 1830s two fellas lived in a small cabin and raised cattle. It was a potentially lucrative thing, but dangerous, because you had the Mexican threat and he Indian threat. The Mexicans invaded San Antonio and all but 12 families stayed in Austin. Not soon after, one of the two fellas went from town to check on the cattle. It was bad timing: an Indian tribe killed him. The other fella didn't give up and kept working that land. Much of it was later donated, and you can ride your bike up and down Shoal Creek still.

I think some of these philosophy types were real far out guys, too extreme. I'm going to enjoy myself, eat well, ride in the sun baked hills. The women here are pretty. Did Hegel ever ride up a fucking hill? Did he ever eat smoked sausage in Texas Hill Country? Did he ever go to the river and hang out with half-naked latina women? Danny and Stephen have the right idea. They work hard, then the go home to a good family and drink beer and ride horses.

I have a truck stored in Anchorage that needs driving. You'll have to jump it, secure the hood, put some air in the tires, put in fresh gas, change the wipers. The blower needs fixing. Other than that, the Jeep is a good truck. You can use the Jeep to explore Alaska and you can use my land as a base to live and camp. There's a sleeping bag and a mat in the truck along with a pair of boots and rain gear. You'd be doing me a favor if you got the truck running and went to see the land. Just visit Kevin and bring him something, some food for his family and some good stories. He knows that area better than anyone, and recognizes hard working men who are men of character and courage. Karl too, of course. But Karl already predicted my path. He already saw a hole in my vision. Guys like me are cursed with legibility. The ******* were minor lords of Scotland. We weren't even nobles, just land lords, advisers, lawyers. Been that way for 10 centuries.  Scott has to be in the same position--he makes fun of himself, that he's a professor, that the entrance to even read his books means a fella has mastered legibility.

I ran in to two old timers 2 days ago and I told them of my travels. I told them I saw things in the mountains that dwarf my whole concept of what's really out there. That's the business, that there's that great hidden energy in the mountains, like a big pile of cocaine, and all a man has to do is accidentally ride his bike up the Andes.

I think Hesiod was on to an old, old, history. It was when man walked across an earth that was splitting apart. He spread out, and there was a freedom and greatness never since experienced. The whole population of Earth was incredibly small. This is the loss of a golden age that Hesiod woefully lamented about--its loss, its passing. 9000 years ago he wrote about a lost age. That's gotta wake a man up. This guy won his freedom through writing. He was a slave with his singing. He and one other guy made their mark. The other guy's name was Homer, but that plant blew up and now they truck it.

However, the great event was your ride on Ruta 3. It was a violent break with Western thought. They need to get a few young guys out there to go out alone, and see what that was all about. That will settle these pissing matches of the hipsters. The very memory of that god-deathful wind makes me cower. Never in my life was I ever more in awe of nature. Its cruelty. Its brutality. I didn't matter. I regressed to a beast. I felt no better or more special than any creature on earth. What fucking philosopher gets this sort of shit. eh? 

Reponse to comment on Who Where the Gods?

My comment was "too many characters," and so must be published as a post. 

I agree with "The nature of his connection to the earth remains the question." As the earth is being destroyed, perhaps the question goes away or a new question emerges, or man no longer asks questions, and then man goes away, either silently,  or violently. Perhaps humanity marches towards a great Jante's parade, and yawns itself to one genderless, emotion-free death.

The use of the term surplus is diverse, perhaps diverse among cultures and the context in which the term is used. If I understand the way the word is being used, it is used in the economic, mathematical sense. It is also identified as a problematic: surplus is a bad thing, and has led men astray, changed them in a bad way: it started with farming and has led to the creation of New York City (the epicenter of some force that without a doubt is destroying earth--I only need to recall how close a huge damn was to being built in Patagonia. If it had been built, it would have destroyed the river I had seen. The epicenter in that context was Santiago, but Santiago is Chile's New York City.)

But the term to me is perplexing, and I wonder if the criticism or description of surplus is really just a criticism of an *attitude* or tendency rather than an actual thing. Is your description of surplus a criticism of the Western methodology of making legible and transforming the earth (and men and women with it), an attitude that could be described by using the word "technology," insofar as technology could be described as man's relationship to the earth, as you point out?

I point out my confusion with the term surplus because I have had two completely opposite feelings about surplus: times when I see to much of something that has spoiled, retarded, and corrupted man (malls, fast food, suburban isolation, excessive use of automobiles in lieu of walking or bike riding, destruction of forests for newspaper), and an abundance of something that has enriched man--such as a lake in Patagonia that is full and abundant of glacier-fed water, or a bakery full of hot empenadas, or an abundance of bicycle inner-tubes.

 For there should be no guilt or shame in abundance--whether the abundance occurs naturally in the earth (a lake of drinkable water in Patagonia, for example), or whether it is an abundance of food that man has cultivated, or an abundance of things man has made.

If there is a guilt or shame--if we have identified a problematic--if we say that surplus is a problem, what we are saying is that we are doing something wrong, we are not living correctly, we have a bad technology which is destroying us and the earth.

Understood as a problematic, the term 'surplus' is an attitude of legibility which measures the earth in order to exploit, dominate, and control the earth, and exploit, dominate and control man. It is an *adversarial* relationship to both earth and man, a desire to dominate and transform, rather than an attitude to work with the earth and learn from the earth.

The term has great irony, because man is making and *storing* his abusive transformation of the earth. Seen as a negative economic 'good,' the products of this transformation are not surpluses, but vortexes. Hence the last sentence should read: "I believe it is the notion of vortex that is missing."

If you can successfully identify and describe this problem of vortex, you will enlighten all human beings about their destiny. You will provide an ontological foundation for man's teleology. You will be given a fine cabin in the Black Forest.

Man is damaging the earth and producing things of inferior quality to the earth (for example, the suburban divisions you speak of, the Ikea furniture I just assembled made from Brazilian rainforest wood--I find it strange that I never made it to the Amazon, but I am directly responsible for destroying the Amazon before I have a chance to visit). If I am to correctly understand the import of your use of the concept of surplus, I am going to replace the word "surplus" with "damage" or "earth-cancer" or "earth-attack."

If you want to conduct an anthropological study of man's attack on the earth, look no further than what I am doing: living in a city, riding my folding bike 21 miles to an Ikea, and buying items from China, India, Pakistan, and Brasil. I am certain that most of the 'goods' that I have purchased have further entrenched the matrices which I criticize.

Who were the gods?

The modern view point makes this clear: Don't ask this question.

The gods represented a world that limited the domination of one sort of 'class' or type of humans. By asking about the gods, we revisit a time the the current dominant class was subordinate.

To limit the world to one God, or to say God is dead, or the gods are dead: this is the the dominate world view. We allow a folksy, whimsical reminiscence of the gods, but only as an accessory to a materialistic world-view that has denounced the gods, made a mockery of their value.

The mono-theistic, materialist God, is the spirit of the state. Scott speaks of the organically flowing garden, how a garden flourishes when each small plot of land is cultivated to its special uniqueness. The time of the gods was the same thing: we had millions of feelings of spirit, and people were free to express these feelings. At some point came coercion on a wide-spread scale. This is where the human race got in trouble.

The struggle, now, is between human freedom and its diversity, and a distrust of human freedom, and a desire to coerce, control, and cull humanity to one shape and form.

The gods are man's way of speaking to his earth on his own terms, in the many ways man landed on his specific place on earth, and freely made best of his surroundings. The earth is large and diverse, and men and women have a unique way of speaking to their earth wherever it may be.

The gods, for any man or woman, should be obvious. If they're not, there is coercion, and where there is coercion, there is an attack on the gods, and, what I think is the same thing, an attack on the earth.

The Golden Age of Everything

"...Mary chose the better part.

    What is the better part? It is God, and consequently everything, but it is called the better part because it must be chosen; one does not receive everything as everything, that is not how one begins: one begins by choosing the better part, which is, nevertheless, everything."

Kierkegaard, The Journals

For one man, it may be his claim to his piece of frozen ground on an abandoned park in the middle of a city afraid of its own cold as he runs in the deep ruts in pitch black, or up a mountain in great hunger, only to find God's nourishment laid there for him in the Summer. For another man, it may be his claim both against the wind and for each piece of a map he turns down, inch by inch, as he fights the barren Ruta 3, each spot of shade a salvation, each sip of water an anointment against death, which for him would mean no more movement. For another man, it might be a small hill not really close to anything, but that he can call his own.

But none of these men 'received everything as everything." No, all of these men began "by choosing the better part, which is, nevertheless, everything."