In The Open, Theriomorphous talks about animal nature being transfigured into the animal kingdom. If In the end "the relations between animals and men will take new form..." then what was the point of religion? Religion teaches man to internalize his inner animal. He learns to be civil and well mannered and somewhere inside of man a savage lives. A beast so well trained and contained that one in the same can fool the other and even forget his existence. Is it no point to religion but a mere experiment by God to challenge his creation to ultimate selflessness that we indeed lose the true self (animal) for a civil being and under these living conditions man must ignore who he was created to be for God's games who fools us into thinking we are here for a purpose. If man does obey God or play his game in the end in death the reward is to be reunited with the true beast who has been enslaved, ironically within the self, just beneath our flesh and bones. The post historical period then means that man must UN-know. He descends back into nature so that "what disappears is man properly so called". I can not image the long and complex process by which man must collapse his complex being, who he will probably struggle to know and understand until he is reunited with the simplicity of the animal world. The human has come to mean so much to the world in fact everything to the world and suddenly he fades into nothingness, a foreign state that he never had a chance to experience because God wanted him to rule the land. How does man go back into nature as an animal? Does it begin with war oppression and ignorance, where the subtle traces of the animal shyly comes out?
If the intellectual definition of man is no more, then art, love, play etc. loses all forms of definition. Man defined these terms and our new nature un defines them. After the post historical non-human, we can and will walk past a loved one, as they may as well equate to that of a rock. But then again in nature, animals can identify their offspring, and they offer them protection, shelter and food. Maybe in the animal world the meaning of love won't be defined but it will just simply be a thing, a natural thing. Perhaps animals do not know what love is but who are we to say that they are not partaking in it. Still, it blows my mind to think of a human in nature painting (as stated in the text) and it merely being a skill of the human nothing more. Not to sale, not for the eye to admire just because it is able to be done by the animal human, just like the bird creating a bird's nest. In post historical nature man just is. He is purposeless. Ironically, he just does what he has been doing in the old world of domination, but now it seems to not be special. Man is standing along side the lion, the ant, the fly, and he does his daily work or task but it is just because it is in his nature. That is unthinkable for me as the human now does all things with purpose and reason.
However, how does man ignore his dominant features in this environment. For example, a hypothetical in post historical nature: A man and a fox see something that they both want. Who gets it first? Whoever has the most strategic plan in getting that item will likely get it. Here humans have lost knowledge of the word strategy but they do not forget how to strategize. They remember how to make things, because, in fact it is more natural now. Human will still know how to make a bow and arrow. They will make them like ants make ant hills or birds make birds nests, and just like they use them, humans will use the bow and arrow. He will realize that it can shoot kill the fox that wants what it wants, meaning that man would still have conscious and if that be the case nothing was ever lost in nature after all. Hands to grasp, legs to stand, and arms to reach would still seemingly be critical factors in grabbing things and in seeing far distances, hence human would remain the top species.
In this post history man would not last as a basic part of nature. He would simply have to rediscover out of this circumstance and re-learn himself as 'all knowing man', who once dominated nature. Once he sees this, there will be the process by which he slowly begins to take over again. The process of man using the world to come into a new understanding will keep happening and post history will not be one time thing, but something reoccurring as to establish natural order, but humans will continue to disrupt this order.
The only way this forgetting man as he once was is in the disappearance of language. But this is so complicated because single languages are built into cultures, and societies, then all languages follow common rules of linguistics and phonetics. Language and mind are so deeply connected that to forget is not even stripping the human of language. In a book called Patterns of the mind, Ray Jackendoff explains that this expression of language can be 1. Mental Grammar, where mind is an abstract computational system. 2. Nativism or innate knowledge. 3. Constructivism where our experience of the world is somewhat dependent on how our minds perceive the physical world/ mind and experience. All of these do not disappear in the animalization of man. It may not exist as a word any longer, but in nature the human will still be able to communicate with other humans in some way, therefore communication of the human can never be cut off. But to counter myself, we still struggle with language as man unacquainted with his inner beast. Language is a cop out in a sense everything is about what we say and in the animal world everything is about what is sensed to be. Lose of language may make man normal because communication is innate in us. Human would have to communicate in nature just as he has to communicate now, because he is the smartest, but the not the fastest and or strongest. Man needs to talk where animal often times only needs to use his senses. For instance like the tick in the Ueuxkull, it merely needs to smell butyric acid emanating from the skin of mammals and she dives HOPING to land on her pray and if not she goes back and waits for another mammal to come by. She does this alone she does not need to communicate with another tick to do this it is instinctive for ticks to use their sense of smell, where for man it is instinctive for them to use the mind the senses and communication.
This reading is mind blowing! I really enjoyed the text, but being so invested I prodded at the ideas and found problems or maybe they were just things that I could not understand. Ultimately I think that man being normal in nature can not exist, and even if he went through the end of the world as we knew it into nature it would be a continued cycle, there would just be Adam and Eves that found there way out of ignorance or nature because we are just to smart to exist as beast in the animal world. Man has to create a world conducive to his distinguishing characteristics. Man can not dumb himself down in nature. Even if knowledge and language no longer existed, man's body and mind would tell him that if he is not confined like other animals then he knows that for whatever reason the universe may have it to be; he should rid himself of that animal and dominate as the prevailer of the universe. And if reunification with the animal happens for mankind, some may be happy to be a beast, but one human somewhere will not be content with being a normality in nature, he will ascend and the cycle revamps because all of man will follow.
If the intellectual definition of man is no more, then art, love, play etc. loses all forms of definition. Man defined these terms and our new nature un defines them. After the post historical non-human, we can and will walk past a loved one, as they may as well equate to that of a rock. But then again in nature, animals can identify their offspring, and they offer them protection, shelter and food. Maybe in the animal world the meaning of love won't be defined but it will just simply be a thing, a natural thing. Perhaps animals do not know what love is but who are we to say that they are not partaking in it. Still, it blows my mind to think of a human in nature painting (as stated in the text) and it merely being a skill of the human nothing more. Not to sale, not for the eye to admire just because it is able to be done by the animal human, just like the bird creating a bird's nest. In post historical nature man just is. He is purposeless. Ironically, he just does what he has been doing in the old world of domination, but now it seems to not be special. Man is standing along side the lion, the ant, the fly, and he does his daily work or task but it is just because it is in his nature. That is unthinkable for me as the human now does all things with purpose and reason.
However, how does man ignore his dominant features in this environment. For example, a hypothetical in post historical nature: A man and a fox see something that they both want. Who gets it first? Whoever has the most strategic plan in getting that item will likely get it. Here humans have lost knowledge of the word strategy but they do not forget how to strategize. They remember how to make things, because, in fact it is more natural now. Human will still know how to make a bow and arrow. They will make them like ants make ant hills or birds make birds nests, and just like they use them, humans will use the bow and arrow. He will realize that it can shoot kill the fox that wants what it wants, meaning that man would still have conscious and if that be the case nothing was ever lost in nature after all. Hands to grasp, legs to stand, and arms to reach would still seemingly be critical factors in grabbing things and in seeing far distances, hence human would remain the top species.
In this post history man would not last as a basic part of nature. He would simply have to rediscover out of this circumstance and re-learn himself as 'all knowing man', who once dominated nature. Once he sees this, there will be the process by which he slowly begins to take over again. The process of man using the world to come into a new understanding will keep happening and post history will not be one time thing, but something reoccurring as to establish natural order, but humans will continue to disrupt this order.
The only way this forgetting man as he once was is in the disappearance of language. But this is so complicated because single languages are built into cultures, and societies, then all languages follow common rules of linguistics and phonetics. Language and mind are so deeply connected that to forget is not even stripping the human of language. In a book called Patterns of the mind, Ray Jackendoff explains that this expression of language can be 1. Mental Grammar, where mind is an abstract computational system. 2. Nativism or innate knowledge. 3. Constructivism where our experience of the world is somewhat dependent on how our minds perceive the physical world/ mind and experience. All of these do not disappear in the animalization of man. It may not exist as a word any longer, but in nature the human will still be able to communicate with other humans in some way, therefore communication of the human can never be cut off. But to counter myself, we still struggle with language as man unacquainted with his inner beast. Language is a cop out in a sense everything is about what we say and in the animal world everything is about what is sensed to be. Lose of language may make man normal because communication is innate in us. Human would have to communicate in nature just as he has to communicate now, because he is the smartest, but the not the fastest and or strongest. Man needs to talk where animal often times only needs to use his senses. For instance like the tick in the Ueuxkull, it merely needs to smell butyric acid emanating from the skin of mammals and she dives HOPING to land on her pray and if not she goes back and waits for another mammal to come by. She does this alone she does not need to communicate with another tick to do this it is instinctive for ticks to use their sense of smell, where for man it is instinctive for them to use the mind the senses and communication.
This reading is mind blowing! I really enjoyed the text, but being so invested I prodded at the ideas and found problems or maybe they were just things that I could not understand. Ultimately I think that man being normal in nature can not exist, and even if he went through the end of the world as we knew it into nature it would be a continued cycle, there would just be Adam and Eves that found there way out of ignorance or nature because we are just to smart to exist as beast in the animal world. Man has to create a world conducive to his distinguishing characteristics. Man can not dumb himself down in nature. Even if knowledge and language no longer existed, man's body and mind would tell him that if he is not confined like other animals then he knows that for whatever reason the universe may have it to be; he should rid himself of that animal and dominate as the prevailer of the universe. And if reunification with the animal happens for mankind, some may be happy to be a beast, but one human somewhere will not be content with being a normality in nature, he will ascend and the cycle revamps because all of man will follow.
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