Climate change, microclimates, and the individual.

“Incidentally, prior to setting up my bunker on the Sus, I studied construction plans that Captain Ross had found among the Eskimos of New North Wales. A basic theme for the anarch is how man, left to his own devices, can defy superior forces – whether state, society, or the elements – by making use of their rules without submitting to them. ‘It is strange,’ Sir William Parry wrote when describing the igloos on Winter Island, ‘ it is strange to think that all these measure are taken against the cold – and in houses of ice.’ " Eumeswil, Page 241

COMMENTARY
Our world is obsessed with thereal and imagined consequences of global climate change. If we accept its reality, how do we react?

Firstly, we should make clear that we can understand climate change both materially and spiritually. And secondly, we must distinguish between our strategy as individuals and as humanity, as a collective. All considerations of man's strategy as a collective - whether we are to blame; whether we can change our ways; what the actual consequences will be, and so on - will be left aside here. Interesting though they may be, we are concerned here with the individual, and his personal strategy is in a different realm from mankind's.

Like the Inuit in Jünger's quote above, and unlike the collective or zoological man, the individual lives first and foremost in his own microclimate. The Inuit lives in an extreme climate, which he cannot hope to improve or control, but he survives because he acts where he can - on his microscopic world. There he builds himself a more temperate microclimate, his igloo, using the materials his environment provides, however unsuitable or paradoxical their nature may seem.

Like the Inuit, the anarch will also usually find himself in a social and spiritual climate hostile to the expression and fulfillment of his individual nature. Today, to the hostility of the external environment, must be added its uncertainty and changeability. If the demands of society, of Leviathan, are already a threat to individual freedom and fulfillment today, its future demands and conditions are even less known.

This makes the creation of a stable and favorable microclimate all the more urgent for the anarch and for every individual who wishes to preserve their individuality and freedom in our world. If we are able to create a favorable spiritual and material microclimate around us, it becomes less important what happens in the macroclimate around us.

Naturally, our microclimate is in contact with the global climate and thus not unaffected by its macroscopic changes. Thus we need to observe our world and sometimes take extra precautions when particularly bad conditions threaten our stable microclimate.

From these warm, secure inner fortresses, we can then radiate forth a warmth and optimism into the world which has direct positive effects on those around us. Here - and not in desperate and futile attempts to change or stabilize a spiritual global climate - is where we really can help our world in need.

The anarch’s relationship to authority

“Although I am an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite: I need authority, although I do not believe in it. My critical faculties are sharpened by the absence of the credibility that I ask for. As a historian, I know what can be offered". Eumeswil, Page 67

COMMENTARY
The anarch in Ernst Jünger´s conception is not against authority, as the anarchist is. Certainly, he does not ascribe any higher truth or sense of obligation to authorities within whose domain he randomly happens to fall. But neither does he demand or even inwardly desire to be rid of external authority. Rather, he sees it as as useful structuring factor, which he needs for his own development and personal aims: external authority creates a more or less law-conforming and predictable social structure within which and against which he can test and hone his own powers and freedom. The presence of authority gives the game he plays its rules and boundaries.

The anarch understands that the particular identity of the authorities over him has come about randomly, with no inner connection with his true inner nature - he merely happens to be born or live in their domain, for the time being. Whether a Greek or an American, within a communist, capitalist or fascist structure - how could such a random association with his own nature expect special deference or respect from him? But he knows that he needs the authority for his own purposes and as a practical man, he therefore learns about its particularities and adjusts his behaviour accordingly.

Consciously recognizing the absence of any credible superior virtues or mandates in the authorities requires him to be more reliant on his own judgements and critical faculties. His understanding of history gives him a basis on which to critically judge the offers and boasts of authorities - he does not naively buy whatever is sold to him.

Human freedom and the welfare of the state

As an exceptional excursion from the bounds of Eumeswil, I came across this passage in Ernst Jünger´s "An der Zeitmauer" (At the wall of time) and thought it fitted nicely into our continuing discussion of the metaphysical figure of the anarch.

(Personal translation from "An der Zeitmauer", Chapter 163)

"Freedom as a species identifier - this is to be understood as a mark of prestige. It is the mark of the chieftain, it belongs to those dignities that the few carry for the many, for all. Just as the few carry sexuality for all in state-building insects, so the few have freedom for the many in the human category. Socrates was not free for himself alone; his freedom functioned for the many, and functions until today.

Man as a species moves within the invisible mass of the iceberg, determined and instinctive; in this context of determination, intelligence, even in its sharpest expressions, can also be counted as an instinct. To bring this paradox to expression, Dostoevsky chose the "Idiot" to portray the higher type of person. Intelligence cannot create freedom, which inhabits a deeper and a higher strata; it can however fill its arsenal.

Spiritual freedom distinguishes the human species. It is found only there. Political being and state-building in contrast are not reserved to Man alone. Man lived long without states and will perhaps be capable thereof again. The state-building capacity was given to man at a certain point in his development as a formative principle, as happened also to other species.

Once connected with life, the formative principles repeat themselves. They float as germs, as possibilities in life's undifferentiated stream. This explains the constantly repeated attempts at state-building in the coelenterates, all the way from the primeval animals. Freedom in the spiritual sense first entered into the stream of life with man. From now on freedom also cannot be lost. In this respect we can concur with Hegel.

The preservation of freedom on the other hand is man's task. Since freedom distinguishes the human more distinctly than state-building, it must take precedence over the preservation of the state. The state cannot therefore guarantee freedom, but only man himself. This does not exclude that he might need the state for this goal."

COMMENTARY
Freedom is the anarch's highest prerogative, even above fraternity and equality when need be; the passage below indicates why freedom - and not the state - represents the highest goal man can aim for our in current era of global transformation, but indeed in any era. This passage can help answer the ongoing question of the right balance between state security and personal privacy/freedom.

Since however the state will for the foreseeable future have its way, we must try to act as anarchs to preserve our freedom, nay, to preserve freedom for the human species per se. Leviathan may eventually run himself up on the beach and suffocate, but in the meantime we must remember what is more important, his welfare or our unique human freedom.

Reality and ideals

"Playing the gentleman here would be possible only for actors; nor would anyone consider doing it anymore. Rather, people, such as my genitor and my brother, feel like martyrs. Half of Eumeswil is inhabited by types who have suffered for an idea or at least claim to have done so. They stood true to the flag, offered heroic resistance – in short, the worn-out military claptrap has reawakened. Upon taking a closer look, one sees that, with rare exceptions, they tried to save their hides just like anybody else. But one turns a blind eye to all that, as long as they do not over-do it.

The anarch sticks to facts, not ideas. He suffers not for facts but because of them, and usually through his own fault, as in a traffic accident. Certainly, there are unforeseeable things – maltreatments. However, I believe I have attained a certain degree of self-distancing that allows me to regard this as an accident.” Eumeswil, Page 113

COMMENTARY

The anarch, as Ernst Jünger envisions him, is not an idealist but a realist, a student of the world and not a world improver. He does not bemoan reality but attempts to deal with it “as a man”. Thus he concerns himself not with what should be, not with“it would be nice if”, but simply with what is and how to best move within those given constraints. The anarch has definitively renounced social progress and thus does not martyr himself attempting to “create better facts”, which according to his view is pure vanity on the social level - rather he suffers because of the unchangeable reality of what is.

Naturally, he prefers not to suffer because of these facts – there is no virtue in unproductive mechanical suffering - but he accepts that it may happen from his own inadequacy, through his own mistakes. From this he tries to learn.

Finally, he accepts that certain things are not predictable and thus not avoidable – injustice, pure chance exists, like it or not. When the anarch is unjustly treated, when something happens to him that he simply could never have anticipated under any circumstances, he regards and accepts it as an accident. He is able to see himself from a distance, as a character of history, and thus does not take it personally.

(In the first paragraph of the quote, Jünger describes others who, in contrast to the anarch, do see themselves as martyrs, even when this stance is not self-sincere. He equates this to a revival of the “old military claptrap”, which derogatory phrase should indicate to any lingering admirers or critics of the militaristic, war-glorifying Jünger before WWII how superficial their outdated conceptions of him are.)

Human equality

“When in the course of my work at the Luminar, I was reviewing public law, from Aristotle to Hegel and beyond, I thought of an Anglo Saxon's axiom about human equality. He seeks it not in the ever-changing distribution of power and means, but in a constant: the fact that anyone can kill anyone else.

This is a platitude, albeit reduced to a striking formula. The possibility of killing someone else is part of the potential of the anarch whom everyone carries around inside himself, even though he is seldom aware of that possibility. It always slumbers in the underground, even when two people exchange greetings in the street or avoid each other. When one stands atop a tower or in front of an oncoming train, that possibility is already drawing closer. Aside from the technological dangers, we also register the nearness of the Other. He can even be my brother. An old poet, Edgar Allen Poe, grasped this possibility in “Descent into the Maelstrom”. In any case, we watch our backs. Then comes the thronging in the catastrophe, the raft of the Méduse, the starving in the lifeboat….

I want to indicate this only insofar as it concerns my service. In any event, I brought this knowledge into the Condor’s range, into the inner sanctum that Monseigneur described as his “Parvulo.” I can kill him, dramatically or discreetly. His beverages – he especially likes a light red wine – ultimately pass through my hands.

Now granted, it is unlikely that I would kill him, albeit not impossible. Who can tell what astrological conjunctions one may get involved in? So, for now, my knowledge is merely theoretical, though important insofar as it puts me in his level. Not only can I kill him; I can also grant him amnesty. This is in my hands.

Naturally, I would not try to strike him just because he is tyrant – I am too well versed in history, especially the model that we have attained in Eumeswil. An immoderate tyrant settles his own hash. The execution can be left to the anarchists; that is all they think about. Hence, tyranny is seldom bequeathed; unlike the monarchies, it barely endures beyond the grandson. Parmenides inherited tyranny from his father “like a disease.” According to Thales, the rarest thing he encountered in his travels was an old tyrant.

That is my basic attitude in performing my job, and perhaps I do so better than any number of others. I am his equal; the difference lies in the clothing and the ceremonies, which only blockheads despise; you doff your clothes only when things start getting serious.

My awareness of my equality is actually good for my work; I am free enough to perform it lightly and agreeably – as if dancing. Often it gets late, and if things have gone well, I pat myself on the back before closing the bar, like a performer whose act has succeeded. "
Eumeswil, Page 44-45

COMMENTARY:

I am unaware of where Ernst Jünger found the “Anglo Saxon’s axiom about human equality” to which he refers in this quote, yet I find it a remarkably powerful concept. We are fundamentally equal because we are all equally mortal; we are thus equally vulnerable to the reciprocal power we hold over each others’ life and death, however unequal our lives may be in the things of this world. Our equality is based on this equally tenuous relationship to existence itself and on the fact that we can potentially end this relationship for another – as they can for us. In the end, no-one can do no more to you than take your life, and since the same is true in reverse, an equality exists.

In the absolute last resort, when the pretensions of one mortal over another become intolerable, equality can be restored, psychologically by remembering that the other’s life is potentially in one’s hands, practically by taking their lives – as Jünger says, one may grant them amnesty, or not.

Naturally, in almost all cases we reciprocally grant each other amnesty, and the possibility remains in the realm of the theoretical. Nevertheless, to be psychologically effective, the individual must understand the reality of this possibility, it must be an actual possibility which he has consciously thought about and understands to possess. It is unlikely that most people have realized this consciously, we are mostly too frightened, too moral, to look at these hard, nasty truths. Yet they can free us within – not least from egalitarian illusions that men are, or can be made equal in the things of this world and even of the spirit.

The anarch and the rules of society

“ The anarch differs from the anarchist in that he has a very pronounced sense of the rules. Insofar as and to the extent that he observes them, he feels exempt from thinking.

This is consistent with normal behavior: everyone who boards a train rolls over bridges and through tunnels that engineers have devised for him and on which a hundred thousand hands have labored. This does not darken the passenger’s mood; settling in comfortably, he buries himself in his newspaper, has breakfast, or thinks about his business.

Likewise, the anarch – except that he always remains aware of that relationship, never losing sight of his main theme, freedom, that which also flies outside, past hill and dale. He can get away at any time, not just from the train, but also from any demand made on him by state, society, or church, and also from existence. He is free to donate existence to Being, not for any pressing reason but just as he likes, whether out of exuberance or out of boredom.

Why do so many people strive for the career of petty functionary? No doubt because they have a sensible notion of happiness. They know the rules and their taboos. Time flows by nonchalantly. You are already half-way to Tibet. Plus the security. No state can do without minor officials, no matter how high the waves may surge. Of course, you have to keep a low profile.” Eumeswil, Pages 154 - 155

COMMENTARY

A fundamental operating principle for the anarch is his preference for operating within society, albeit inconspicuously. By harmonizing with and apparently “believing in” society, but at the same time preserving his essential, that is, his inner freedom, he is able to draw more personal profit from his existence. Were he outside of society, either by choice or from being driven out, he would retain his freedom but would lose the personal advantages he gets by being integrated.

To maintain this equilibrium between freedom and personal utility, he must retain constant awareness of two points: his essential freedom and the rules of the society. Were he to lose sight of his freedom, the game would be lost before it began. Since he understands that his freedom can manifest in different dimensions, depending on the external situation, he is not bothered when he must hide his freedom from the world – he is aware of it, possesses it and is ready to exercise it when needed, and that is all he requires. (He does not need to show off or boast of his freedom to others – this would attract undesirable, potentially dangerous attention.) Nor does he need to reject the social structure per se, as the anarchist does, for within himself he has already rejected it in its essence – his freedom is based on the practicalities of actually being free and not on ideals.

Instead, the anarch finds a modest, unassuming position within society and uses society's tried and tested infrastructure for his own purposes, settling in for the journey while quietly and secretly pursuing his own agenda. This requires that he have an intimate, even instinctive understanding of the rules of the society. In as much then as he chooses and is able to obey these rules, he need not waste energy on thinking about them. Rather, he lets the captain and crew run the ship, while he concentrates on his own affairs. If he senses the limits of his freedom threatened beyond what he is prepared to accept, he is ready and able to abandon the ship at a moment’s notice and survive outside society. But he reserves this contingency for an emergency, since it is the weaker, less personally profitable path. Indeed, in the extreme case that he irretrievably loses control or becomes estranged from the personal purpose of his life, he is even ready to sacrifice his life for his freedom, that is, to give up his existence and return to pure Being.

The anarch on May Day

Today, May Day 2008, we came across a relevant passage in Eumeswil, which happily also deals with the anarch/anarchist contrast we need to clarify at this early stage in our blog. Martin Venator, Jünger´s model anarch in this book, is discussing political changes in a prelude to the following quotation, in particular the overthrows of governments that happen periodically in the state of Eumeswil, indeed in any society.

“For the anarch, little has changed; flags have meaning for him, but not sense. I have seen them in the air and on the ground like leaves in May and November; and I have done so as a contemporary and not just as a historian. The May Day celebration will survive, but with a different meaning. New portraits will head up the processions. A date devoted to the Great Mother is re-profaned. A pair of lovers in the wood pays more homage to it. I mean the forest as something undivided, where every tree is still a liberty tree.

For the anarch, little is changed when he strips off a uniform that he wore partly as fool’s motley, partly as camouflage. It covers his spiritual freedom, which he will objectivate during such transitions. This distinguishes him from the anarchist, who, objectively unfree, starts raging until he is thrust into a more rigorous straitjacket.” Eumeswil, Page 114

COMMENTARY
As Jünger makes clear here, seasonal political changes have no essential meaning for the anarch, other than their practical implications for his survival. Regimes change like the seasons, flags are like leaves on a tree, with practical meaning but no higher sense in and of themselves. New leaves grow on the ancient tree of civilization and at the end of their natural season their life blood is cut off, they dry up, fall, and become no more than compost for the new leaves of the next season. In this earthly progression, there is no human progress, no net spiritual gain, only external cycling in time. This can be observed by the historian in his objective studies of the past and by the anarch in his neutral observation of the changes of his present world. As the historian does not identify with particular moments in the continuous flux of history, so the anarch does not identify with (or against) the personally-random political situation he finds himself in at any one moment.

But seasonal change is real, with causes that lie deeper than any social expression of it. May Day, once a pagan feast day dedicated to the Great Mother, is usurped by the state, which subverts the natural revitalizing energy of the spring season for its own propaganda purposes. The holy-day has been profaned, and now each new regime merely provides new faces, new ideals, for its self-celebratory feast. As Jünger says, a pair of lovers in the forest celebrates seasonal renewal far more profoundly than any great processions. Moreover, in the forest, every individual tree still stands as a freedom tree.

In the midst of the seasonal change of the flags, the anarch is essentially unaffected. While the flag was blue, he wore a blue uniform, partly to blend in and maintain anonymity, partly as the costume his role in the world comedy required. The uniform was in any case unessential, he never identified with it, never confused it with his own skin. He can thus throw it off and assume a different colored one, one that will best aid, or camouflage, his personal cause in the social reality .

Underneath the unessential covering lies his essential spiritual freedom, which, in the moment between the fall of the old system and the implementation of the new one, between his ditching the old and putting on the new uniform, he can bring into the objective world and live out. In the anarchic interim, the anarch can momentarily express what was already his objective inner state. His inner freedom can manifest in the world for a time. On the other hand, when anarchy becomes the order of the day, the anarchist is no freer than he was before. For he is unfree in himself, he has no free self-identity and thus needs the uniform he defines only in negative relation to the normal one imposed by the hated state. During anarchy, he loses his defining cause, the hated state, the hateful external rules and restraints, and in this vacuum he loses all control. This quickly leads to his confinement or elimination by the new powers.

Personal happiness and the anarch

"It is no coincidence that precisely when things started going downhill with the gods, politics gained its bliss-making character. There would be no reason for objecting to this, since the gods, too were not exactly fair. But at least people saw temples instead of termite architecture. Bliss is drawing closer; it is no longer in the afterlife, it will come, though not momentarily, sooner or later in the here and now - in time.

The anarch thinks more primitively; he refuses to give up any of his happiness. "Make thyself happy" is his basic law. It is his response to the "Know thyself" at the temple of Apollo in Delphi. These two maxims complement each other; we must know our happiness and our measure.” Eumeswil, page 192.

COMMENTARY

In this quote, Jünger discusses one of the anarch’s basic goals in life, personal happiness. He begins with an observation that illustrates where most people, in contrast to the anarch, look for happiness. When religions still breathed real life, when gods still had credible forms, man looked for his final happiness through their means and methods. As belief in the gods declined, so man began to look for happiness in the mundane world, through the non-transcendent means of politics. Politics, with the aid of technological progress, began promising personal happiness in the material here and now. In a similar manner to his ineradicable illusion that social progress is about to outlaw war forever, so is man reassured and continues to believe, despite ever-repeating disappointment, that his personal happiness is also around, if not this, then the next corner. Politics thus capitalises on one of man’s chronic ailments, the all-pervasive disease of “tomorrow”.

But on this point, we should not conclude that the anarch is necessarily on the side of the gods, for as Jünger says, they, or at least their cultic representatives in religions, also promised man happiness in the hereafter, while treating him unfairly in the present. The anarch is not automatically on anyone’s side, but decides for himself when and to whom he gives his allegiance. “No god above me”, as Manuel states elsewhere in Eumeswil. (Touching on the anarch’s relationship to art, Jünger comments that at least the gods brought more attractive forms along with them, art instead of machines, temples instead of termite mounds.)

The anarch, in contrast, keeps thing simple – he looks to no external providers or guarantors of happiness but makes himself responsible for it. He is thus untouched by the promises and failures of religions and regimes; he neither hopes in nor is disappointed by what worldly powers or gods offer him. “Make thyself happy” - and to the degree that he also knows himself, understands his own measure, he knows how to make that happen.

Again, the self-reliance of the anarch is emphasised. He does not look outside himself - to religions, regimes, or insurance companies - for his happiness and security, but finds them within and creates them for himself without.

The anarch: own ideas vs popular ideas

Martin Venator, or Manuel, the protagonist and exemplary anarch of Ernst Jünger’s novel Eumeswil often compares his own attitude and conduct with that of his father and brother. Both relatives are historians like Martin, but neither are anarchs. In the following passage, Jünger contrasts Martin’s attitude to public and personal opinion with his father’s, in order to illustrate the intellectual independence of the anarch.

“I can count my dear old dad among the eunuchs, the speechifiers. It is impossible for us to have a conversation about facts without his puffing it up with social and economic platitudes and spicing it up with moralisms he derives from them. Saying what everyone else says is a delight for him. He comes out with things like, ‘ I am simply expressing the public opinion.’ And he actually plumes himself on such things. A journalist, even though he disagrees with the current editorials. ‘ He is controversial’ – for him, as for all eunuchs, that is a put-down. The exact opposite of an anarch; God bless him – but why is he a historian?” (Eumeswil, page 246)

COMMENTARY
As opposed to a “speechifier” like Martin’s father, an anarch does not judge himself morally in relation to society, in relation to what “they” think and say. An anarch stands on his own two feet practically, intellectually and, as far as possible, spiritually. He creates and lives by his own understanding of the world, which may or may not coincide with public or popular opinion. Unlike spiritually and intellectually impotent eunuchs like his father and brother, it is perfectly irrelevent to anarchs like Martin whether his views are controversial or unpopular – except in as much as their public expression may jeopardize his physical safety or interfere with personal goals, in which case he may need to disguise them or express them selectively. Above all, he is concerned that his views are truly his own, even if this means he stands alone and unknown in this position. As quoted earlier, the anarch can live alone, as opposed to the anarchist who needs society - and of course the normal citizen who has no independent own-view and thus automatically shares the common view. Being popular is of no concern, being true to himself is everything to the anarch.

Although he is not opposed in principle to popular views, his own independently and organically evolved world view will often be in opposition to them, partly by the simple logic that what is popular reflects the lowest common denominator, and partly by the fact that any truly individual understanding of the world will naturally have its own unique life and form and thus at least partially be in opposition to other views, especially popular ones. Indeed, when the anarch perceives that one of his own ideas closely mirrors a popular perception, he will doubt the authenticity of his own view, will suspect that it may derive from foreign contamination of his being, and he will thus subject it to a rigorous examination.

As far as possible, the anarch deals in facts, he attempts to live in a real and not an imagined world, however unanimously believed those common illusions may be. Although for reasons of personal security and intellectual growth he attempts to understand and stay abreast of the particular world view by which his society lives, he does not believe in that view and, practically speaking, goes along with it only as far is that essentially foreign line of behaviour benefits him.

The anarch's relationship to society and authority

Here is a particularly rich quotation from Ernst Jünger´s novel Eumeswil to continue the exposition of the anarch which we began here and continued here. In this quote, Jünger further explains the anarch’s role within society, his relationship to other individuals, to personal freedom, and to authority and external causes.

“I tend to distinguish between other people’s opinions of me and my own self-assessment. Others determine my social status, which I take seriously, albeit within certain limits. Nor am I dissatisfied with it. In this respect, I differ from most Eumeswilers, who are dissatisfied with their positions or their standings.

I could just as easily say that I neither am satisfied with my position nor take it seriously. That would obtain for the overall situation of the city, the absence of any center, which puts every office under obligation and gives meaning to every action. Here, neither oath nor sacrifice counts any longer.

Nevertheless, when anything is possible, one can also take any liberty. I am an anarch – not because I despise authority, but because I need it. Likewise, I am not a nonbeliever, but a man who demands something worth believing in. On this point, I am like a bride in her chamber: she listens for the softest step.” (Eumeswil , page 97

COMMENTARY

In the first sentence, we see that the anarch consciously distinguishes between others’ judgments of him and his own judgments on himself. He does not altogether reject others’ opinions of him, but relegates them to their correct place, as practical indicators of how society sees him. As an anarch, it is important to remain socially integrated and to keep one´s essential outsider status a secret; hence an anarch needs to know what society thinks of him, where it currently slots him into its mechanism. This may have practical implications for his security or the success of his private projects: if he perceives that society is becoming aware of his outsider status and may begin imposing limits or paying dangerous attention to him, perhaps he will need to adjust the external impressions he makes, alter the role he is playing. As a last resort, he may have to abandon society and become a forest-fleer. (But this is a weaker position, one ideally avoided but not outright rejected by the anarch. If the reader is interested, this figure is extensively and explicitly developed in an earlier Jünger book, “Der Waldgänger“ or “Forest Fleer”.)

Since the anarch views his social role as unrelated to his essence but personally useful, he is unlike the average citizen who judges his self-worth on the basis of his social position. An anarch could never be satisfied with the position, in the literal sense of ful-fill-ment, of filling all his needs. Necessary perhaps, but not sufficient. And since it is unessential, he does not take it overly seriously; it is a role in the Shakespearean sense: “all the world’s a stage and all the people players”.

Moreover, in the post-historic state of Eumeswil, social positions have only relative value and no absolute value, as may have been true, or imagined to be true, in earlier societies. Every position is as good as any other, there is no higher central position such as a king or the church, around which, or below which all other social positions are arranged. One no longer sacrifices oneself for or swears an absolute allegiance to state or king. In this sense, the state of society in Eumeswil is actually advantageous to the anarch, for it has become easier not to believe in ephemeral external causes, such as political changes.

On the other hand, in a world where anything is possible, there is also the possibility to act in full liberty, assuming the prerequisite internal freedom. Unlike the anarchist, the anarch is already conscious of this latter freedom and does not need to struggle with authorities to repossess something he already possesses. On the contrary, as an anarch, he requires authority. Firstly, in the higher sense of self-rule, of ruling over his own inner state of nature, the anarchic wilderness within himself - which is to say, authority as forms of self-mastery and self-regulation.

Secondly, in a social sense, he requires the external regulatory forces that give the world consistency and structure, within whose predictability and around whose obstacles and difficulties a free man can chart and navigate a personally meaningful and enriching course. In a state of pure anarchy, this would be more difficult and probably less rewarding.

As Jünger says explicitly at the end of the quote, the anarch is not a nonbeliever per se, not a nihilist, but rather someone who understands the value of his own freedom and thus demands something worth the sacrifice of any of that supreme capital of his.