This is a rare departure from the anarch theme - but I saw a newspaper article today relating that the Concorde disaster of a few years ago was probably caused by panels of titanium lying on the runway and I simply can't resist!
In various places in his work, Ernst Jünger speaks of the prophetic message in the Titanic's fate. In his words, Cassandra has hardly ever spoken as unambiguously: in the name of the ship; in the overweening technical pride associated with it; in its sinking on a maiden voyage between the Old World and New World.
The symbolic context is of course the Titans of Greek mythology, whose return to power the world is now experiencing. "Titan" literally means "overstretchers of power", and it is as a result of an imbalance between their power and their wisdom that the Titans drive themselves, after only a brief reign, to a catastrophic end. In Ernst Jünger's conception, we have been living in a developing Titanic phase ever since the Enlightenment. During the 21st century we will see the absolute mastery of the Titans - and the beginning of their fall. This is unavoidable, part of the life-cycle of the earth.*
In the current return of Titan forces, technology is the key to their worldly powers - and they use it without restraint, to its absolute limits, without concerns for balance and "sustainability", to resort to a popular word. Humans living in this Titanic phase become intoxicated by their seeming mastery over all things as a result of technology. Their pride swells, nothing seems impossible. They have become like the gods, masters over nature.
And so they build ships like the Titanic and airplanes like the Concorde - unsinkable, masters of vast spaces, luxurious even as they break the speed of sound at 10,000 meters or cross the icy Atlantic to the accompaniment of lobsters, champagne and Dixie music.
Titanic humanity takes great pride in such achievements - but then disaster strikes! The unsinkable Titanic, the pride of humanity, is destroyed by a simple iceberg on its maiden voyage. And now the Concorde, its equivalent of the air, is brought down in a flaming inferno by random bits of technical junk, made by its parents' and baptized with their name.
With the Titanic, Cassandra spoke loudly to the whole world - with the Concorde's felling by titanium it is more of a whisper to the initiated, to those who listen for her signs.
(* As an anarch, it is a matter of understanding and adapting to this reality, this higher necessity - ideally even extracting advantage from it. Where possible, an anarch may also try to contribute to an equivalent understanding among others "with ears to hear". But he understands that the basic course of this process from birth to catastrophe cannot be avoided.)
Posts
5 Comments:
There is much of prophetic about the disaster of the Titanic, just think to the book by Robertson, written in 1898, which told about the wreck of a great oceanic liner called Titan against an iceberg.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futility,_or_the_Wreck_of_the_Titan
Interesting post. Have you read Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology?
Hi Andrea,
Thanks for the link - I did not know about the Robertson novel.
And I still need to read Heidegger's book - on my list, thanks!
Nomen est Omen!
Good post. A Roman poet said something like "The giants fall by their own mass". Corresponding to the Titans, the Indian have the Asuras. Their saying goes: "The Asuras are too heavy for the earth to bear."
As you have written, the Titans can't keep the balance. There is a LAW that demands balance, which then strikes.
What an enormous giant machinery we are living in at present! And then a tiny grain of sand in this whole gear can cause such havoc. Like this little piece of titanium-crap on a runway, which led to this catastrophe. After the accident the whole Concorde fleet was grounded and put out of service. The whole pride of a nation - gone...
Hi Richard,
When the Greeks and the Indians independently come up with two equivalents myths, there has to be some truth to them. I don't know the Icelandic Sagas, but I can only imagine they have their equivalent of the Titans/Ausuras.
I watched an Arte special last night on Hiroshima - made me remember what a demon the Titans have unleashed with the atomic bomb! So far, they have been fortunate in keeping a fragile balance with this ultimate power - let us pray they fall before losing balance with this bomb in their hands!
Post a Comment