On Roads Of Silk

In his Contributions to Philosophy, Martin Heidegger shows how Euro-American civilization, forgetful of philosophy’s foundational question (“Why is there something rather than nothing?”) and incapable of countenancing the mystic’s refusal of philosophy (“What is, is the Abyss”) is beside itself, flailing about like a wounded animal.

The Reality TV Presidency is not an aberration but the fulfillment of what Heidegger named "the age of the complete absence of questioning" (pp. 86-87). Like it or not, Donald Trump is the culmination of Western civilization.

Under these conditions, the Cheerful Nihilist embraces the ever-present absence of the divine and attempts to counter the present age with "an age of that simple solitude" that watches and waits while those caught up in the throes of "machination"--the capitalistic reduction of all value to quantity and commodity--devour one another and then themselves in the fury of their impotence to make something out of nothing.

And then he sets out on Roads of Silk...