I highly recommend the short story, "The Ugly Chickens" by Howard Waldrop if you want a Crying of Lot 49-type story about a self-destructive quest for knowledge that revolves around Dodos. Just a fun little story, but this section definitely brought it to mind.

As for my other thoughts, I feel there's a good line here between GR and Mason & Dixon with this reckless and impersonal cruelty of the West on the world, as in Blicero and the Hereros, Frans and the Dodos, and the machines of capitalism cutting across the American continent:

"I discover’d the Rulers who do not live in Castles but in housing less distinct, often unable to remain past Earshot of the Engines they own and draw their Power from" (M&D 313) and "‘Tis a Construction, … a great single Engine, the size of a Continent… Not all the Connexions are made yet, that’s why some of it is still invisible" (M&D 772). And definitely thinking about a quote from later on in GR:

"Colonies are the outhouses of the European soul, where a fellow can let his pants down and relax, enjoy the smell of his own shit."

I really think Pynchon is not just looking back and simply pointing to colonialism-era horrors inflicted upon the world by the predominantly white western civilization, but trying to show that the nature of these slaughters continue within our society to this day. I'm less informed about what was going on in his time of writing, but a quick look around these days points to numerous US-funded slaughters going on in the current year. Just look at the ongoing mass-murder of Ethiopian refugees by the hand of Saudi border guards, funded and trained by yours truly.

The world becomes a play thing to achieve our wildest sexual-violent fantasies, violence becomes abstracted, from being enacted by our own hand to sublimating it through our dominion. It's filled with lies and inversions, fake vaginas. The slaughter has no rhyme or reason, the Dutch in Mauritius were no longer hunting for food or even sport, but for the sake of the hunt. The final point that dopamine is guiding them towards is ignored, it's now just about the seeking, beyond the climax and reaction.