Not P but DFW: by way of sheer ontology

[Mark Kohut]

"by way of one's sheer "being"", one's very existence as a tourist in the
unspoiled places

......[ontology is the study of being

On Sun, Jul 13, 2025 at 6:59 AM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The following excerpt is from David Foster Wallace's essay *Consider the
> Lobster*:
>
> To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American:
> alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in
> a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the
> very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on
> places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you.
> It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront
> a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a
> tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome,
> an insect on a dead thing.
>
> What does "by way of sheer ontology" mean here?
> --
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>