Ruminations on "Dialectic of Enlightenment"

Read the beginning of "Dialectic of Enlightenment" and had a few thoughts. Haven't gone long-form in a bit so excuse my indulgence, not without vanity. I resist constantly an urge to simplify, monadify, I'm a Cancer like Leibniz and shouldn't there be an universal schematic? Again it's vanity and I can't remember when my thought wasn't fractious, amorphous, lacking in linear narrative. I sat and read the Adorno and Horkheimer and had the sense of the schema dissolving. There's the recurring analogue I've touched on before; the "total-field", Ganzfeld I've imagined (imaged) the Infinite. I had a thought of the good art dismantling schematics, being the Miró of the mind, truly destructive. But the apophatics, the negation, whatever they'll posit opposed to positivism becomes illuminating.

I see the systems, the "ways," the "scare quotes," the curious "stream-of-consciousness" I'm continually accused of (ha!). The systems are sets erected, "erector sets" to use a juvenile metaphor. I've imagined them as maps, sections of roadways, literal "ways", paths, Tao(s). It's a construct, imaginative, a self-realized blueprint or means of orientation. I've built my own system and felt the vainglory, been consumed by my concoctions, a victim of fantastical conceptions. I try and laugh with Borges outside myself (ecstatic), observe the "philosophical wreck[s]" with a Duchampian disaffection. Yet I slip inevitably into the trap of my own system! I, me, my own system! Ha! When my system disintegrates I feel the infinity of my being; the prior map is discarded, the exterior (the image) molts and the dynamic, cyclic reality of saṃsāra prevails. The great difficulty of the systems are the finity and NO SYSTEM ESCAPES A FINISH.

I had a few thoughts about "unit," proportion and "standard" as well. There's a curious relation between "unit" and "unity", there was the insistence on proportion and the "movability" of the module in de Lubicz. I've encountered the same in my polemics against fixed-do and alphabetic musical notations. The proportion, the relation, the allegory, analogue and association are of import, not the "quantity." A listing of the frequencies of Chopin's Études gives me no sense of its musicality and only sends me reeling for another map. The relation to the standard is of no import, the relations of the composite parts ought to have supremacy. "Dialectic" begins with "The Concept of Enlightenment" following a preface deprecating the increased ad-ministration of society. I think of ad-mixtures, ad-juncts, ad-monitions and the choice of word. I imagine (image) the superimposition of the system, the adding of superfluous layer, the seemingly endless labyrinth of bureaucracy perpetuating... They've chosen "concept" as a bit of the title not without purpose. I'm brought continually to meditations on the first lines of the Tao, bits about "name" and note Adorno and Horkheimer's usage of "nominalism" and my own flagrant misuse of terminology I do not understand. I note again my meandering of thought.

I can't assume the enthusiasm they embody in launching their "new school," the conviction in the utility of their ideas even while they deprecate Platonic utility. I note the bloated, juvenile enthusiasm of an art manifesto; the storm and stress Pound claims is of vital poesy but Schopenhauer terms a mimesis of text. I admire the vitality of it, the innocence, the idealism and its purposive activity. But I find it no less fantastic than a plain fiction. Again a manufactured system; an all-too-human technology imbued with our own inherent (and private) ability to err. Yet a system of nonsystems is itself a system. An apophatic theology remains a theology. A negative "definition" of God remains a definition (finition). The systems and maps suffer finity yet continue their quest to encompass the infinite. These seers, vatic seculars are all-too-quick to forget their principles, their maxims and aphorisms. In service of their selves they build their systems, intoxicated by an ornamentation of themselves. I can't seem to avoid the moralizing of my younger long-form work, the melodrama and supposed grandeur of its conclusions. I know nothing; I know nothing; I must remember! All these words finish the nothing of my self, obscure my base continuity, the personal irrationality of being, etc.