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.