Steven Schroeder | what is philosophy? notes on Deleuze and Guattari

1. Ordinary thought is a matter of opinion.

2. Chaos goes without saying.

3. We say we feel ourselves drowning in chaos, because it fills our lungs and we do not have organs with which to breathe it.

4. Matter, no idea.

5. Thoughts do not collide with things. Things collide with things.

6. Thoughts are wreckage left floating like us in chaos.

7. We tread water until we can grab onto a passing thought, then cling to it as though our lives depended on it.

8. Someone surveying the wreckage always chants only a god can save us now.

9. Others take up the chant.

10. We are the others, and we wait.

11. Someone traces a pattern on the surface of chaos and we see through it for a moment.

12. Someone traces another and we see a way to piece fragments into rafts we hope will take us away from here.

13. Someone traces another and it dawns on us that we can make something of it. We learn to put this and that together and climb aboard to catch our breath now and then.

11 December 2019