Subject: RE: Comment to 1 of the 2 quotes without comment Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 16:10:03 +0200 From: "Bakker, R.B.M. de" <R.B.M.deBakker-AT-uva.nl> Spengler on the machine: "As long as it [the destiny of the machine] dominates the earth, every non-European strives to fathom the secret of this formidable weapon. Inwardly, however, they dismiss it, the Japanese and Indian, The Russian and Arab. It is deeply founded in the essence of the magical soul, that the Jew as entrepreneur and engineer gives the actual creation of machines a wide berth, and takes on the business aspect of its production. But similarly the Russian lowers, fear- and hatefully, this tyranny of wheels, wires and rails, and although today and tomorrow he conforms to necessity, he will one day efface all that from his memory and his environment, and erect a wholly other world around him, in which nothing of this devilish technique is left." When Juenger introduced "The worker", Spengler was eager to abdicate a future to what he conceived to be the meanest representative of the declining Abendland. But Juenger did not mean the class notion, he meant that within technology we all, everywhere and all the time, become workers. Like we are now amidst planetary technology. Because of the 'metaphysical' character of this notion - it regards beings, men and not-men, in their entirety - technique or technology is nothing devilish, it is only in the eyes of the non-European world. They experience the overpowering of technology, coming from outside, while with us it is Leidenschaft. Only technology, as Gestell, as "Americanism", its most dangerous form, grants the prospect to float in the snake circle and not merely to be carried along in it. --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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