Ernst Jünger, On the Marble Cliffs (1939):
Only deep within, as if I myself were engulfed in flames, did I hear the crackling of this burning world.
-
Hannah Arendt, ‘From an Interview’ (1978):
The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don’t you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good. The good is no longer even being measured.
-
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (1964):
Today, the mystifying elements are mastered and employed in productive publicity, propaganda, and politics. Magic, witchcraft, and ecstatic surrender are practiced in the daily routine of the home, the shop, and the office, and the rational accomplishments conceal the irrationality of the whole. For example, the scientific approach to the vexing problem of mutual annihilation – the mathematics and calculations of kill and over-kill, the measurement of spreading or not-quite-so-spreading fallout, the experiments of endurance in abnormal situations – is mystifying to the extent to which it promotes (and even demands) behaviour which accepts the insanity. It thus counteracts a truly rational behavior – namely, the refusal to go along, and the effort to do away with the conditions which produce the insanity.
-
Arundhati Roy, ‘Intimations of an Ending’ (2019):
…a shadow world is creeping up on us in broad daylight. It is becoming more and more difficult to communicate the scale of the crisis even to ourselves—its size and changing shape, its depth and diversity. An accurate description runs the risk of sounding like hyperbole. And so, for the sake of credibility and good manners, we groom the creature that has sunk its teeth into us—we comb out its hair and wipe its dripping jaw to make it more personable in polite company.
-
Karl Jaspers, Tragedy is Not Enough (1952):
Breakdown and failure reveal the true nature of things. In failure, life’s reality is not lost; on the contrary, here it makes itself wholly and decisively felt.
-
Albert Camus, ‘Are We Pessimists?’ (1946):
We know the kind of civilization that we want and the horror of what we do not want. But what can we expect? For a time, we can expect the world to continue in the grip of those who have no imagination; those who wish to preserve what can no longer be preserved, who wish to destroy what can never be destroyed.
-
Pankaj Mishra, ‘Welcome to the age of anger’ (2016):
With so many of our landmarks in ruins, we can barely see where we are headed, let alone chart a path. But even to get our basic bearings we need, above all, greater precision in matters of the soul. The stunning events of our age of anger, and our perplexity before them, make it imperative that we anchor thought in the sphere of emotions; these upheavals demand nothing less than a radically enlarged understanding of what it means for human beings to pursue the contradictory ideals of freedom, equality and prosperity.
Otherwise, in our sterile infatuation with rational motivations and outcomes, we risk resembling those helpless navigators who, De Tocqueville wrote, “stare obstinately at some ruins that can still be seen on the shore we have left, even as the current pulls us along and drags us backward toward the abyss”.