Dasein is King Kong or the Being There of Imperial Citizenship

Teutonic precision is always admirable, especially considering how easily it can derail and drift to pure non-sense and absurdity. Heidegger was one of the sharpest mind of his generation (a bit like Chairman of Philosophical Politburo); he acutely described the relation of consciousness and technology. 

And he got it tremendously wrong. 

Like a good German, he did his own homework, he was careful with accounting, so if philosophy was born in Greece and Germany was the heir of that tradition, then Being There, the Dasein had to be in that liminal position because of technology. Wrong Marty, wrong. So interested in the line that you forgot about the pencil drawing that line, which was European imperialism.

One of the easiest objections to Christianity is: if Jesus is the universal Savior of humankind, what about those who live before him, what about those who for accidental, contingent historical reason didn’t know him? What about the Chinese??? 

Can someone theologically catholic think to the Chinese??? 

Now Marty, if the history of Dasein is so in tune with the sentiment of an imperialist German, son of a Christian preacher, with an ambiguous, unresolved relation with technology and mass production, either being there is King Kong, or simply you are not stating the universal trajectory of being and its consciousness, but simply describing the narrative of Prussian-European domination, its uncertainties and its lack of doubts.

In fact the tribulations of Dasein seem quite correlated with the declining aspirations of European imperial citizenship. The crepuscular relation with the power of technology is sinister only because the shadow grows, which means the power declines. 

Heidegger was a very intelligent man and he grasped quite clearly that the ascendant domination of European identities was somehow ungrounded. He was obtuse enough not to have the slightly idea that actually all the Greek tradition turned Christian turned Holy Roman Empire turned Europe Colonial Empire turned Prussian was just an imperialist propaganda. That other cultures weren’t so shaken by the trajectory of being, not because inferior, or not sensitive enough to listen to the story of being, but because on the different side of domination.

It was impossible for the European, Christian Heidegger to really consider equal human beings all the other people from different traditions and cultures. It is true that any human being experience the disempowering fate of being mortal. It is true that technology empower the human primate with consciousness. It is bullshit that technology and the trajectory of being have any “special relation” with the European, Christian, Teutonic  team.

A domineering consciousness is the representative of a domineering caste, which can be described as the Empire. Before, after or under the Empire, you won’t experience any of the crepuscular spleen of the Dasein; you won’t have any qualm for technology that pinched Heidegger: you are too deeply in the shit because of the Empire, to really worry about turn and pirouette of being. 

Nonsense is the other side of imperial citizenship: all the advantages can stand because oppression and exploitation of others under or outside the Empire. But of course, apart from shallow, natural enjoyment of being at the top, there is no other reason than brutal domination for being at the top. 

No matter the sophisticated propaganda, domination is always ungrounded, why-less. A bit like the rose of Meister Eckhart. Any civilization in a dominant position needs to elaborate the non-sense of its arbitrary ruling; the tricky part of course is not during the ascendant part, but when things get tough, when the rule becomes disputed, then your Angst needs a fucking good answer. Of course

becoming a true Nazi didn’t help Heidegger in finding the appropriate compassion to look beyond European Imperialism…

Anyway, very glad that Germany finally learned the lesson and found her way out of brutal application of her own self-referential domineering propaganda.