Friedrich Georg Jünger Quotes

But all technology is of titanic mold, and man the maker, is always of the race of the Titans. And so we meet him first of all in volcanic landscapes. From his titanic kinship stems his love for the enormous, the gigantic, the colossal; his delight in towering works that impress by their quantity and mass, the vastness of their piled-up matter. That trait, incidentally, explains why man the technician so often lacks a sense of beauty and proportion; he is not an artist.

The tale becomes utopian only when the writer leaves the sphere of technical organization – when, for instance, he tries to make us believe that these cities are inhabited by better and more perfect human beings; that envy, murder, and adultery are unknown; that neither law nor a police force is needed. For in so doing he steps outside the technical scheme within which he is spinning his fantasies, and combines it in a utopian manner with something different and alien which can never be developed out of the scheme itself.

The natural scientist will always exhibit a tendency to delimit his science as sharply and as narrowly as possible, to make it completely methodical, to systematize it. Natural science thus limits itself to what can be proved mathematically, or to that to which the law of causality applies, or to the purely functional.

When we study the apparatus and the human organization that have been created by our technology in step with its evolution, it becomes clear that they too depend on the mechanical concept of time, the only concept which can guarantee technical progress. How clockwork-like is not the whole order of modern civilization, how relentlessly does not technical progress strive to subject everything to this clocklike precision: man's sleep, his work, his rest, and his pleasures!

Kant believed that there was a science only in so far as there was mathematics. The same error can be encountered among many mathematicians and physicists who believe that they alone possess exactness. However, they possess it only within their field. There is exactness also in the movements of animals and in the emotions and passions of man. Homeric hexameter or a Pindaric ode has as much exactness as any causal relation or mathematical formula. But this rhythmic, metrical exactness is of another, higher order. That it cannot be calculated is no reason to call it less exact than the results of this or that quantitative measurement.

It is not difficult to understand the shortcomings of such methods—but it is exceedingly difficult to evade them. We can reasonably assume, for example, that an apple contains a number of substances tha so far have eluded the chemist and the biologist. It is likewise quite certain that even if all these substances could be synthetically reproduced in a pill they could not replace the apple. For the apple embodies a principle that is higher than the sum of its parts. It is not a lifeless preparation, like substances that have been, or could be, extracted from it, but an expression of life that grows and smells and ripens and has fragrance. No doubt the wise thing to do is to eat the apple itself rather than swallow the vitamins which may be extracted from it. And I shall also show wisdom by eating the apple not for the sake of all the vitamins it contains, but because it is an apple. The difference is fundamental, for in the first instance I am acting like a sick person, in the second like a healthy one. In matters of food we act wisely if we avoid the technician wherever we can.

The impression we gain as we observe technical processes of any sort is not at all one of abundance. The sight of abundance and plenty give us joy: they are the signs of a fruitfulness which we revere as a life-giving force. Rooting, sprouting, budding, blooming, ripening, and fruition–the exuberance of the motions and forms of life–strengthen and refresh us. The human body and the human mind possess this power of bestowing strength. Both man and woman have it. But the machine organization gives nothing–it organizes need. The prospect of vineyard, orchard, or a blossoming landscape cheers us, not because these things yield profits, but because of the sensation of fertility, abundance, and gratuitous riches. The industrial scene, however, has lost its fruitfulness; it has become the scene of mechanical production. It conveys, above all, a sense of hungriness, particularly in the industrial cities which, in the metaphorical language of technological progress, are the homes of a flourishing industry. The machine gives a hungry impression. And this sensation of a growing, gnawing hunger, a hunger that becomes unbearable, emanates from everything in our entire technical arsenal.

As mechanisms gain ground, springing up wherever lifeless time is waiting for them, we can observe how lifeless time has invaded life time. Just as technology has changed our idea of space by making us believe that space has become scarcer, that the earth has shrunk, just so has it has changed our idea of time. It has brought about a situation where man no longer has time, where he is destitute of time, where he is hungry for time. I have time when I am not conscious of time which presses in on me in its empty quality, as lifeless time. He who has leisure thereby disposes of boundless time; he lives in the fullness of time, be he active or at rest. This is what distinguishes him from the man who is merely on leave or on vacation and who, therefore, can dispose of a limited time only. The technological organization of work no longer permits leisure; it grants to the tired laborer only the meager measure of vacation and spare time that is absolutely necessary to maintain his efficiency.

Technology can be expected to solve all problems which can be mastered by technical means, but we must expect nothing from it which lies beyond technical possibilities.

From prophecies and visions we expect infallibility; that they come true with absolute certainty. But of a utopian tale we demand no more than a certain appearance of credibility [...] For what is entirely incredible and unlikely produces only boredom and discomfort; it is not worth bothering with.

Why is it that the very thought of organizing pedestrians (really not a far-fetched thought), is somehow ludicrous? Because of the discrepancy which exists here, because an activity such as walking is entirely opposed to the forces that would want to organize it. The automobile, a mechanical vehicle, can be organized immediately, and the automobile driver likewise. Even bicycle riders can be organized, although not with the same ease, since the bicycle is not an automaton. Man becomes organizable to the extent to which he practices mechanical activities.

Universities decline in the degree that technical progress spreads into them from the secondary schools. The university becomes a technical training center and servant of technical progress.

If the universe were to be conceived as a big clock and every movement in it as mechanically measurable and predictable, then the high goal of scientific-technical thinking would be the comprehension of this central mechanism. And the application of that knowledge would mean the complete mechanization of man.

Natural science is not conceivable without a recognition of the mechanical element in nature. [...] Why can there be no natural science without this mechanism? The answer is, that without mechanics there can be no standards which are constantly valid and calculable. Without mechanical laws, that exactitude could not be achieved which in itself is nothing but the mechanical certainty that identical causes always produce identical effects. Thus we are justified in calling the natural scientist a mechanic who deserves scientific respect only in so far as in his thinking he retraces the mechanism of nature.

The machine invades the landscape with destruction and transformation; it grows factories and whole manufacturing cities overnight, cities grotesquely hideous, where human misery is glaringly revealed; cities which, like Manchester, represent an entire stage of technology and which have become synonymous with hopeless dreariness. Technology darkens the air with smoke, poisons the water, destroys the plants and animals. It brings about a state in which nature has to be "preserved" from rationalized thinking, in which large tracts of land have to be set apart, fenced off, and placed under a taboo, like museum pieces. What all museum-like institutions make evident is that preservation is needed. The extension of protected areas, therefore, is an indication that destructive processes are at work.