Oh, horror

I was reading Althusser's 'Ideology and Ideological Apparatuses', wondering, how was it not just a more specific (Marxist) reiteration of what 40 years earlier Heidegger called Das Man. Or how it is not a reiteration of what Foucault was writing roughly at the same time.. And if so how come he's become so influential? And how most of the second half of the 20th century philosophy is a variation on the same theme..  It is true, of course, that these people might have not been reading each other very carefully. But the horror part is that it had dawned on me how I am still very much at the very beginning of my (speculative-philosophical) journey. How I have finally learned to discern very broad brush strokes of thought and how I still am not able to see the nuances. I can only compare it to my knowledge in music. I can easily discern between big genres, but there is only a couple in which  I can claim some proficiency. I don't know much about the classical or jazz, but I can name them when I hear it. Some genres of rock, however, I can hair-split until all of us faint (and, not to be surprised, those sound the same to most of the people I know). But philosophy is so much more demanding in this respect, especially for an alcohol-impaired mind which had never been very effective about remembering things in the first place... When I'm done with philosophy I will focus on wine, coffee and cheeses.