Standing on one's own two feet

"Here in Eumeswil, it seems as if the system occasionally falls asleep and the city begins to dream. The ship founders on a sandbank and then gets back afloat. Electric power stops; after a while, the machines start up again. During such recessions, the anarch measures his own strength and autonomy." Eumeswil, Page 195

COMMENTARY
Noticing that I am finding a peculiarly positive prospect in all the current prognoses of economic catastrophe, I found the above quote from Ernst Jünger's Eumeswil, which in part explains my attitude. Perhaps others can relate....

Setbacks in society's structures and supports provide an opportunity for the anarchic individual to test just how independent of the infrastructure he is. Unlike the anarchist, he takes no special pleasure in the demise of society's structures per se - he does not believe in the possibility of reforming society, therefore a temporary demise would mean as little to him as an equally ephemeral flourishing. Rather he sees in the moment of weakened external authority and support an opportunity to learn about himself, always his primary objective. As Jünger states elsewhere, "Know thyself" is the anarch's first commandant. His second commandment, "Know the rules" is perhaps temporarily less important in moments when the system itself slids into relative anarchy. The rules apply less strictly, he can afford to concentrate more exclusively on his own ability to self-rule.

As much as I would hope this anarchic attitude to self-knowledge explains my current optimism in the face of economic catastrophe, I have to also admit a certain schadenfreude, which takes a positive delight in these hopeful first signs of the inevitable Fall of the Titans. Manuel was more aloof than I am able to be - he judges what he can learn from the titanically-oriented teacher Bruno as highly as what Vigo, his gods-oriented teacher can offer him. He is able to remain independent of both to an extent I am unable to.... I cannot help cheering for a return of the gods.

Incidental rewards

“Above all, I could confirm that this fowl was in fact a new breed. Rosner was enraptured; he absolutely insisted on naming it after me: Alectura venatoris. I had a hard time dissuading him. After all, despite everything, I had tricked the good man. However, one of the anarch’s emoluments is that he is distinguished for things that he has done on the side or that go against his grain." Eumeswil, Page 135

COMMENTARY

In this short passage, Ernst Jünger has his protagonist Manuel relating of research work he volunteered to do for one of his mentors, the zoology professor Rosner. Manuel volunteers for this work in order to provide a valid and believable motive for being in the swamps where he is setting up a secret hideout to be used in case of a coup or other threats in the city. Despite his entirely self-interested hidden motive for this work, he gains special recognition from Rosner, who even names the new species after him.

Jünger comments that such unintended recognition or reward often comes the anarch's way. The anarch conceals his ongoing private battle to maintain personal freedom; in consequence he is often required to do things in the world which he is either uninterested in or that are even contrary to his inclinations. He cannot reveal his true motives, and so when he receives praise or reward for these activities it is quite incidental for him. These incidental effects can even indirectly benefit him, in that they reinforce his apparently normal status in the society.

Living in no man's land

“Bruno withdrew from the field of history more resolutely than Vigo; that is why I prefer the former’s retrospect but the latter’s prospect. As an anarch, I am determined to go along with nothing, ultimately take nothing seriously – at least not nihilistically, but rather as a border guard in no man’s land, who sharpens his eyes and ears between the tides." Eumeswil, Page 87-88

COMMENTARY

Manuel, the protagonist of Ernst Jünger´s novel Eumeswil, has two important mentors or teachers: Bruno, a future-oriented metaphysician, who experiments with the Titanic possibilities of technology for Man’s evolution, and who works, in Jünger’s own words, on the Tree of Life; and Vigo, a past-oriented historian, who is skeptical of technology’s promises and who works rather on the Tree of Knowledge.

Manuel’s attitude to their respective opinions indicates a paradoxical aspect of the anarch’s general attitude to external opinion. That is, he prefers those ideas of each respective teacher regarding the realm they have most distanced themselves from, the realm they can thus view more critically and objectively. From his future-biased vantage point, in the light of new possibilities, Bruno is able to view past events more neutrally; but he is less capable of this neutrality regarding the period with which he identifies or believes in, the future. The opposite is true of Vigo, who as a historian is too nostalgic and identified with past events to be an objective judge. On the other hand, he can more skeptically view future promises, say of technology, since he has a framework of past human experience by which to judge them.

In contrast to both, the anarch is neither future nor past-oriented, but rather “timelessly self-oriented”. He observes and studies both temporal realms, but identifies with neither, just as he takes no external opinion or authority as necessarily worthy of respect or belief. Changes in beliefs and affliliations over time are ultimately as neutral and abstract to him as they are over space.

If he temporarily finds nothing worth believing in past beliefs or future promises, this does not make him a nihilist, who actively believes in Nothing. Instead, he stands guard, by himself and over himself, in a emptied zone, a no-man’s land between past and future tides, listening keenly for what may come, from past experience or future possibility.

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.