The main goal of Operative Traditions III - Albedo is to present new alternatives for revolutionizing a more harmonic relation to the earth.
The recovery of the ancient spirit of craft presented in this book allows human senses to progressively regain access to novel domains where mystery, uncertainty and chaos can be configured in parallel to a profoundly liberating practice.
In this book, the realm of science also recovers the playful, alchemical, colorful and interactive attributes it lost for several centuries, thus serving as the foundation for gaining a symbolic perception of the cosmos which not only heightens the relation with reality, but even produces its own reality in parallel to the creation of new values.
Like in the former volumes, Operative Traditions III – Albedo also aims to introduce to the general public the heroic ideas of Ernst Jünger, Julius Evola and many others relatively unknown authors. Building upon the ideas of these extraordinary thinkers does not aim to reinforce the senility of a dying past that is not completely dead, but rather such ideas are incorporated in order to provide the seeds of a new future which has not yet been delivered.
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We live in times when there is a progressively greater concern about the future of planet earth, and about the challenges that future generations shall have to cope with in order to live in a biosphere that is changing very quickly, radically, mostly in terms of pollution, demographics, industrialization, resource depletion and more recently in terms of the massive development of cyberspace.
This type of ecological awareness on the part of the public is above all mediated by T.V. press, radio and the Internet, which have provided in the last decades progressively more information on the critical situation of the Arctic ice, the growth of wildfires worldwide and the disasters caused by industrial pollution in general.
But as some have already suspected in recent times, feelings of concern on their own have not succeeded whatsoever in affecting the core fundamentals of modern urban-industrial societies. Basic common sense infers us to consider that a greater awareness of the problem by the public and politicians ought to mitigate the effects of the problem, but all the latest evidences expose that such public, political and institutional awareness have no effect in the fundamental drives of techno-industrial architectures, and some might even boldly consider that in some cases such concern is even counterproductive, when recalling the fact that global summits or conferences on climate change rely on the use of means of transport and production that are part of the fundamental problem… So as if validating once again the perversity principle[1] that ghostly impregnates organizational processes at all levels, in the public opinion of highly-industrialized countries the growth of “green” environmental and ecological movements has run parallel to the growth and greater complexity of the selfsame environmental problems at a planetary scale.
Not only the levels of planetary vegetation, and flora/fauna diversity have reached historically low figures, but also every day that passes by worldwide greenhouse gas emissions attain unprecedented record levels therefore causing extremely risky situations in terms of the disastrous consequences of global warming, and also in terms of the dire economic consequences derived from the depletion of the basic material and energetic resources required in order to sustain urban-industrial life in the decades ahead.
So the first impression that we might gain is that the will of individuals, societies and governments is “decoupled” from the global processes at work, and that human organizations are constantly overwhelmed by the extreme complexity and interconnectivity of countless global factors that leave extremely little margin of human maneuver. A relatively recent example of such shocking realization consists in the futile attempts overtaken by many political groups, ecological initiatives and international institutions to halt industrial emission of CO2 since the Kioto protocol agreement in the 90s, an example where it becomes patent that techno-industrial development and its correlated pollution appear to be more powerful than the capacity of economic laws and regulations to subordinate its intrinsic drives. Also, as more recently shown in the case of the implementing of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in the U.S. -which is mainly aimed to extract unconventional oil- such techno-industrial exploitation of the earth´s resources takes place independently of the low profitability, low long-term guarantees, and also independently of the extremely indebted financial schemes that characterize such projects[2]. Obviously there is a tiny sector of industrialists, lobbies and financial groups that profit greatly from the implementing of these exploiting projects, but it would be naïve to think that capitalism or the urge for profit are the main causes of such state of affairs... For instance, the ideology of capitalism can only feasibly operate upon a territory that is already characterized by specific configurations of power that succeed in exploiting the natural resources, a necessary condition that entails –as already shown in Operative Traditions II – Nigredo- that the “spell” caused by any ideological interpretation of the human-earth relations impedes perceiving that there are forces that act well beyond such ideological constructions of the human mind.
And when referring here to configurations of power we ought to also necessarily address those elements that mediate such power, this is, the means of power. Hence it is mandatory to address the power provided by any type of tool, instrument, apparatus or machine that allows the exploitation of nature to be feasible in the first place. Without the aid of these technical means, human action, ideologies, corporate/academic scientific research, money and economic laws themselves lack a ground in which they can be applied… Such is the core issue… In this regard, the thinker who first proposed the idea of “think global, act local”, Jacques Ellul, already wrote in 1972 that “to be interested in the protection of the environment and ecology without calling into question technical progress, the technical society and the passion for efficiency is to engage in an operation that is not only useless, but fundamentally harmful. Ultimately, it will finally lead to nothing, but we will have gained the impression of having done something, it will falsely calm legitimate concerns by throwing a new veil of propaganda upon the real threats”[3].
And yet as German essayist Günter Anders also remarks, to intellectually address the cultural effects derived from the use of technical means of power has become today a matter of civil courage[4] and such intellectual dilemma pointed out by Anders already demonstrates that modern culture not only is totally alien to the effective technical processes operating upon the world, but also alien to the selfsame technical means of power which allow such modern culture to apparently defeat the values implicit in more traditional, harmonic, archaic and aboriginal modes of human-earth relationships. The term apparently can´t be here stressed enough, as we shall progressively expose in this 3rd volume of Operative Traditions and in the 4th…
Hence, today the alternatives proposed by most leaders and institutional think-tanks is to encounter a political solution that can eventually make compatible the values of modern culture with the delicate biosphere dynamics, expecting that the technical means of power available can be humanly “employed” in order to satisfy the demands of such solution, especially by resorting to agreements, negotiations, scientific research, sanctions and international diplomacy… But as we´ve been constantly exposing in the former volumes of Operative Traditions, the cosmos never surrenders to any “agreement”, in the similar way as how –as pointed out in Volume I- German philosopher Eugen Herrigel could not modify his relation to the handled weapons by merely making it an act of individual will...
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Among several other subjects, in the former volumes of Operative Traditions was exposed the powerlessness of modern cultural frameworks when aiming to grasp phenomena that relate human senses to the techniques operating on the world. Some might consider that boldly assuming this powerlessness is extremely inappropriate due to the fact that today it is very obvious that techno-scientific language is efficiently employed by engineers, scientists and technicians whenever aiming to optimally design or control a given technology. And yet, as shown in Operative Traditions I when approaching the experience of German philosopher Eugen Herrigel (1884–1955) during his practice of the art of archery under a Japanese traditional Zen context in the 1920s, it becomes very clear in this specific environment of work that the direct relations that exist between men and tools are much more profound than we can imagine at first...
However, Herrigel was luckily immersed in a specific cultural atmosphere that effectively defined a discipline that allowed such object-subject relation to serve as a framework that successfully bridged Herrigel´s consciousness to a domain of extremely subtle yet powerful dynamics. One of the shocking experiences in Herrigel´s account refers to the fact that no matter how much the German philosopher tried and tried, he could not explain with words the phenomena he could verify first-hand, and that such phenomena were much “quicker” –so to speak- than any language based on rational or analytical foundations. But what was even much more shocking for Herrigel is that his Master, Kenzo Awa, was absolutely careless about devoting his time to “explain” the miraculous phenomena that emerged once the discipline eventually flourished as an awakening of specific powers in the human perceptive faculties.
And the latter is in essence the core principle of an Operative Tradition; it does not aim to explain the dynamics of the world, but rather to first gain an experience of its true dynamics. And this type of operative experience opens the student´s consciousness to a mind-boggling realm where it becomes intellectually impossible to separate the student´s effective actions from the creative power that also succeeds in generating beautiful technical objects (like the arc, bow and many other elements ritually involved in the discipline…) where every single element has a form and function that is never artificial nor arbitrary, but are all rather perfectly integrated in an architecture that symbolically expresses such subtle correlations between all elements; or in other words, such architectures are materializations of a cosmology, in the strict sense of the word.
It was a cosmology or a symbolic arrangement of the creative dynamics of the cosmos what served Eugen Herrigel to intuitively comprehend the phenomena that he first-hand related to, and to be deeply modified by the experience… And this brings us to the core thesis of Operative Traditions, which is that the highest human intellectual potentials are symbolical, or in other words, that humans are not necessarily defined by rationality (animale rationale), neither defined by intelligence (animale sapiens), but rather that what characterizes humans highest potentials is the capacity to relate directly to symbols that link means and meanings; in other words, all Operative Traditions assume that men are animal symbolicum[5] or homo symbolicum.
As exposed in the former volume (Operative Traditions II – Nigredo), modern science has vastly eroded this symbolic potential and substituted it with very sophisticate technical mediations and instruments that secure the grasping and manipulation of physical phenomena, but this kind of interaction necessarily puts the scientists and technicians in a passive position where they can only register effects or “shadows” of a much vaster creative and architectural phenomenon that was capable of feasibly producing such instruments and tools in the first place at a given time. And this impoverished, “black and white” perception of a much deeper colorful background occurred because modern science has also deprived time of all its creative power and rendered it a mere quantitative magnitude, which like all other quantitative magnitude, is also supposed to surrender to laws that neither vary on time... Or to explain it simply, modern science assumes that the laws that govern today´s natural dynamics are the same as during the Middle-Ages... When it comes to the laws that govern inert bodies, there is some relative truth to such statement, but as we shall show in Operative Traditions III – Albedo, such statement is absolutely powerless to control or predict phenomena that imply the rather spontaneous arrangement of a given set of means towards an architectural meaning, such as occurs extremely often in the case of inventions.
Also, in the former volume (Operative Traditions II – Nigredo) we have resorted to the accounts of German author, Ernst Jünger (1895-1998), who due to his heroic efforts in World War I was awarded with the Iron Cross 1st Class and Pour le Mérit medals... The whole point of such exposition was to validate the fact that, when it comes to returning to a first-hand contact with the deathly mechanistic and industrial forces that operate effectively in the world, it becomes extremely evident that most intellectual notions derived from modern times are as powerless to determine such dynamism as spraying a powerful rotating cog with blue paint. Ernst Jünger´s realization can be intensively experienced during war conflicts where, as Marshall McLuhan writes, the fight is ultimately, and beyond all human morals or interests, a clash of techniques[6]… Hence we can “spray” a machine with religious, ideological, political, economic, scientific or sociological colorings, but such actions don´t affect a iota the dynamism of the machine itself. Although such act of “spraying” might comfort our dearest worldviews, such consoling action only exposes the gap that exists between our language and the symbols that operate technical processes, symbols that ultimately move the world around, as we shall have the chance of gradually exposing in this volume III, and in volume IV...
And as shown in the former volume, the notion of the “individual” inherited from the times of the Enlightenment is precisely the greatest intellectual barrier of the modern mind in order to grasp these processes, and already during the 1930s, Ernst Jünger proposed us to perceive human nature in a radically new way, and outlined the idea of the “type”, as a human being who not only is not alienated from the powers that operate effectively upon the world, but who discovers progressively their subtle modes of language and technique, in order to master such processes. Good intentions, political discourse, activism and institutional scientific research are light-years away from the revolutionary idea that Ernst Jünger proposed almost a century ago, an idea that was silenced and marginalized by modern culture in general, and even silenced from many admirers of the German author, who not being much interested about his ideas merely project on the prestige of his figure their own ideological ideals… So when we see young climate activists such as Greta Thunberg aggressively complain about the impotency of modern politicians when facing the extremely dangerous menaces of global warming, her activism is the mere outcry expression of the reductio ad absurdum of the values of modern culture when failing to relate to the meaning of the earth… However, during what modern culture refers to as the so-called “dark times” -this is, during the Middle-Ages- existed cosmological modes of knowledge that allowed human senses to master the dynamics of nature to the extent nature was affirmed architectonically towards her maximum symbols. Such is the key operative principle of the Gothic cathedrals... And not only Greta Thunberg but also several generations were already born under the spell of a bastardized culture that assumes that the individual will has “rights” upon nature. Hence it ought to be hypothesized at this point that global warming is a relative danger in comparison to the danger that derives from the human species cutting its own cultural roots, or as Nietzsche´s Zarathustra states: “this, however, is the other danger and my other pity: he who is of the mob remembers back to his grandfather – with his grandfather, however, time stops. Thus all that is past is handed over: for the mob could one day become master, and all time be drowned in shallow waters. Therefore, O my brothers, is a new nobility needed: to oppose all mob-rule and all despotism and to write anew upon new law-tables the word: ‘Noble’”[7].
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It was precisely in the Middle-Ages when the alchemical tradition reached its last highest accomplishments prior to modernity, and in such tradition the process of realization of the deathly and inoperative character of most intellectual notions is referred to as putrefaction, blackening, nigredo or melanosis, which has its counterpart in the particular development of external artistic production, often allegorized in chemical and metallurgical processes. Such “destructive” stage is the necessary precondition for a spiritual re-birth, that is to say, it is a stage required for the arrival to the leucosis or albedo phase, which is expressed by white color, linked symbolically to the aspiration towards light and towards the origins.
Any individual who boldly realizes the burden and perverse “spell” caused by a vast complex of worldviews and ideologies that are implicit in modern culture, shall eventually come to terms with the fact that in such culture, as Ernst Jünger writes: “a complete necrosis is hidden. What is done here is to play with the shadows of things, advertising a concept of culture that has been alienated from all primordial force”[8]. The latter is an extremely tough pill to swallow, especially for those individuals, groups and institutions that make a living and reinforce their prestigious public status by advertising a set of cultural standards which, as an effect, only widen the alienating gap that already exists between humans and the “vibes” of the earth´s dynamics. But if such individual internally overcomes the former nigredo realizations, then he or she shall necessarily have to survive in a world in ruins which no longer develops according to a vast set of cultural, ideological, political and scientific presumptions. And yet by resorting again to Zarathustra´s thundering words: “That which is falling should also be pushed! Everything of today – it is falling, it is decaying: who would support it? But I – want to push it too!”[9].
As presented in the former volume, Operative Tradition II - Nigredo, Ernst Jünger constantly encourages us to attain such “zero point of values” and to initiate a novel constructive phase, which can be referred to as a personal standpoint of active nihilism where Jünger himself recalls in Over the Line that: “if the Leviathan could be knocked down, the free space would have to be filled. But neither the inner emptiness nor character of the unfaithful are capable of this”[10]. Amidst such cultural wasteland in which human society is progressively dominated by mechanistic and predictable modes of behavior, emerges nonetheless with even greater power that domain which Ernst Jünger referred to as the “elementary”, this is, those irrational cosmic potencies that do not surrender to any conceptual or dialectical classification, thus even transcending the selfsame categories of space and time. These forces appear only in the fringes of society, this is, in those apparently “criminal” places where is still alive the primordial and wild instincts of human nature, places where actions never fulfill any moralistic, religious, social or ideological justification; rather, here human action is based on raw spontaneity, inebriation, and a Dionysus preference towards the language of the body in all its most diverse modes of expression... In these fringes where the faculties of human perception become widely open, the cosmos speaks differently, thus providing a completely novel language that rather seems of a musical nature. And the self-contradictory, seductive, persuasive and dangerous aspects of such omnipresent powers are felt as of a purely feminine nature, transporting human consciousness along a very delicate thread towards the most primordial realms, towards the hellish “soil” that allows all things to grow by defeating the forces of gravity. Such is the thread of Ariadne which exists today as it has always existed, and as shall always exist, since such thread is not constricted by time-space boundaries... Often this thread or “eternal feminine” –as Goethe wrote- is rolled up in the hands of many women, and in very exceptional cases it is grabbed by one single woman. This thread leads to kingdoms that have remained in the mists of time, only seldom accessible to the highest modes of imagination. And one of those eternal kingdoms is the Gothic period in the West, which today is often veiled as “gloomy”, “dark” or “satanic” in modern culture, music, literature and cinema, and yet such period was very likely the last in the West when the dialogue between humans and the cosmic forces had reached its most magical and highest symbolizations, in correspondence with the production of hierarchies based on pure regal and aristocratic standards of behavior.
So in order to fulfill the nihilist vacuum of modern culture that was pointed out formerly by Ernst Jünger, it is crucial to recover the principles that are subtly embedded in all those grandiose cultural constructions –such as the Gothic- where nihilism was absolutely inexistent, since during such times men had not only succeeded in discovering such meaning, but also participated in the production of such meaning... And this active or constructive phase begins, first of all, by understanding the true nature of power, which in all times and places has necessarily been coupled with understanding the nature of the State as an idea. So by briefly exposing the rapid mutation of this idea through modern History, in this book shall be presented for the first time an architectural conception of the State. This idea, the State, is where power ultimately resides, and all individual under its jurisdiction works for the fulfillment of such idea, even if such individual is aware or not of this core metaphysical motivation.
So in essence, by means of a new language based on energetic notions, Operative Traditions III - Albedo aims to present the intellectual foundations that allow understanding the classical problem of individuation, that is to say, of how a set of cosmological values can succeed in developing forms out of what is formless. This demands recovering the principles that allow action to be the most honest expression of such spirit. As occurs in the strict Hindu concept of “karma”, action in this book is also liberated from moralistic and religious constrictions (i.e. “reincarnation”), and is approached from a purely technical perspective that becomes even more insightful when connected to the powers that effectively modify the worldly configurations, or in other words, when action is rendered into a work that transforms the biosphere into novel architectural configurations. Hence, in Operative Traditions, the term “operative” provides technique and work with a much deeper dimension, as it gives the individual a chance to not only release from the determinisms of work, technique, economy and mechanistic routines, but rather grants the chance to employ such means as an artistic expression of metaphysical forces that act both in the individual as in the cosmos.
Consequently, the latter standpoint provides a very different view on the dynamism of work, which is then no longer restricted to an economic function or a physical magnitude, but is rather an organized form of action that aims to store the energies liberated by the biosphere into architectural forms. This process not only allows an economy to be feasible, but whenever any architectural development fulfills this goal, it symbolizes the powers effectively operating in a given time. Hence, if we eliminate from the term work all its economic and productivistic associations, not only shall we overcome the limits of Marxist and liberal/capitalist thinking on work, but we can then approach work as opus (opus magicum) which sets the standards to discover in work a type of dynamics that Ernst Jünger referred in the 1930s as an “element of plenitude and freedom which is still to come”[11].
Due to the latter, in Operative Traditions is rather chosen the term “Operator” instead of “Worker” in order to approach the human type that Ernst Jünger points to… In effect, the process of co-participating in the genesis of an idea through production and technical activity is much accurately defined by the term Opus, which not only has an external artistic expression, but such external expression also correlates exactly to the state of being of the artist who develops it, confirming the aphorism on magic that goes as follows: “Man perpetuates himself in the cosmos, and the cosmos in man. It is not possible to really feel oneself unless one feels extended outside. It is not possible to spiritually penetrate the world without starting from the center of our being and continuing from there toward the world”[12]. When relating this operative idea to some operative Christian doctrines, the great traditionalist, Seyyed Hossein Nasr excellently writes that: “the outward and material aspect of things acts as a vehicle for the inward, spiritual grace indwelling in all things, by virtue of their being created by God”[13].
Let´s briefly recall that a purely operative discipline was already outlined in the first volume of Operative Traditions[14] in order to establish a dialogue between the Western and Eastern traditions, and along this endeavor Julius Evola´s Theory and Phenomenology of the Absolute Individual[15] was deemed as the most adequate philosophical framework in order to address relations between subject and object that transcend all individual idealisms, identifications, subjectivisms and cultural relativisms[16].
So by following the former philosophical premises, in Operative Traditions III - Albedo stage it is therefore necessary to profoundly modify our optics on the cosmos, or in other words, to deeply understand that the way we perceive the world is created by ourselves, not in our minds, but in the spirit of our works and deeds. Such is the Operative “I” already addressed in Volume I... This principle had its last enactments during the Gothic period, and is at the core source of the term opus/opera, conceived primordially as a type of work that expresses cosmological values which transcend all egotistic jurisdiction. Hence in Operative Traditions III - Albedo shall be recovered from the deep recesses of time a purely alchemical view on science. And as a starting point, this alchemical requirement demands restoring the power of time as a creative factor, realizing that during creative processes nature very seldom obeys timeless laws.
Ultimately, we can only liberate ourselves from the constrictions of our minds to the extent we liberate nature from the constrictions and rigid abstractions we have projected upon her. And as in all Operative Tradition, also in the Alchemical Tradition is taken for granted the strong links that exist between men´s “optics” and the character of external production. In this regard Julius Evola writes in his Magical Idealism: “From a gnoseological viewpoint nothing exists that is not created by the “I”; in the same way King Midas could not touch anything without rendering it immediately in gold, also knowledge cannot be affirmed on anything, without thereby reducing it to something conditioned by it and created by it”[17]. It is precisely in situations when the human senses are challenged by chaotic circumstances which demand a projection of values where the truthfulness of Evola´s words emerges with all their power, and this realization obliges us to penetrate into a realm of the natural domain that allows this crucial experience...
Therefore, in Operative Traditions III - Albedo we shall progressively delve into a type of natural dynamics that has been extremely narrowly approached by modern science… We are referring here to out-of-balance dynamics. In physics, chemistry and biology these dynamics are often referred to as metastable or far-from-equilibrium dynamics… When Ernst Jünger refers to the domain of the “elementary” he is referring exactly to these dynamics and order of ideas, although the German author proposed the term “elementary” during a time –the 1920s-1930s- when modern science could only address such forces through a statistical or probabilistic approach, and to a large extent, such is the most common methodology effectuated still today in scientific research. Nonetheless, Ernst Jünger was well aware that modern techniques facilitate in general a “prophylactic” type of defense against the elementary powers, and suggests that these means ought to be boldly stripped away, and that the potentials of human senses ought to experience a first-hand contact with these forces in order to have a first chance to relate to their powerful voice... And one of the first realizations that take place by developing in time such experience is that these forces have implicit creative potentials, or in other words, they aim to develop material configurations that express the purely symbolic power that they surrender to. This experience allows a first-hand realization of the classical problem of individuation of forms, or that which has more recently referred to as morphogenesis, especially in biological sciences. Understanding individuation this way allows to gain the operative foundations of how and why things are built, and why such construction expresses a state of being produced by the power of time; this experience reconnects human senses to the powers operating effectively in the world, thus allowing to progressively bridge the alienating gap that exists between humans and the earth.
Presenting these latter ideas in a literary format as in Operative Traditions III – Albedo is a rather challenging endeavor, since the letter kills the spirit, in the same way that when learning a foreign language it is always much more effective to practice conversation than rely on studying its grammar and syntax. Consequently, the ideal approach of this book would be similar to that of the way a baby learns to interact with a novel world by learning a language that does not rely initially on the phonetic alphabet, but more on sensations, feelings, intuitions, playfulness and gestures. However, an alternative to the latter difficulty exists, which is that of providing the reader with a series of experiential grassroots frameworks that can be developed at home, and that allow above all to gain intellectual access to the mystery of individuation, as a way of encouraging progressively co-participation in such mystery, a task that is more thoroughly presented in Operative Traditions IV – Rubedo.
Whereas Operative Traditions II - Nigredo can be framed as philosophical, very likely this volume is the most scientific, in the sense that the reader shall have to be necessarily introduced to the magic of out-of-balance dynamics, as a doorway to cosmic mystery and creativity. By resorting to a set of “scientific toys”, bells, clocks, experiments on cymatics and basic notions on thermodynamics, the reader shall progressively gain a playful perspective on the dynamics of nature… Like a child that progressively opens the eyes towards a world of unknown extraordinary phenomena, the reader shall be eventually capable of understanding where freedom resides and where creativity blooms. Also a progressive transition shall be developed from the concept of energy that is employed in modern science and engineering towards a more “intelligent” and creative form of energy that in the East is traditionally referred to as Ch´i… The whole point of this section is to show that although nature is characterized by inner drives that admit no rationalization, this factor does not impede human action to co-participate in such powers, and in essence this is the principle of the operative architectures that shall be exposed more thoroughly in Operative Traditions IV - Rubedo
Hence, by relying in a traditional approach that pursues universality, Operative Traditions III - Albedo presents a magisterium that along all its sections aims towards exposing the foundations of Operative Architecture and the stimulus of operative practice, as an alternative that allows balancing human activity with the planetary dynamics. This pursuit is the quest of a human type who has awakened from the modern dream of individual power over the cosmos, and who realizes that power only exists when communing with such developing forces, to the point that human evolution is expressed through cosmic evolution and cosmic evolution through human evolution. Both in perfect convergence.
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[1] Myron T. Tribus (1921–2016), coined the expression Perversity Principle, which refers to the well-corroborated fact that: “if you try to improve the performance of a system of people, machines, and procedures by setting numerical goals for the improvement of individual parts of the system, the system will defeat your efforts and you will pay a price where you least expect it” Myron Tribus, Quality First, Washington, D.C.: National Society of Professional Engineers, 1992 [2] See chapter “The Economics of Fracking: Who Benefits?” From Richard Heinberg´s Snake Oil. How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future, © 2013 Richard Heinberg. Post Carbon Institute [3] « S'intéresser à la protection de l'environnement et à l'écologie sans mettre en question le progrès technique, la société technicienne, la passion de l'efficacité, c'est engager une opération non seulement inutile, mais fondamentalement nocive. Car elle n'aboutira finalement à rien, mais on aura eu l'impression d'avoir fait quelque chose, elle permettra de calmer faussement des inquiétudes légitimes en jetant un nouveau voile de propagande sur le réel menaçant » France Catholique n°1309 janvier 1972 [4] “Today, nothing is more precarious, nothing makes a man as immediately unacceptable as the suspicion that he is a critic of machines. And in our globe there is no place where the danger of suffering that suspicion is lower than any other (...) When one accepts the freedom to argument about the "degrading effects" of this or that device, one automatically gains the reputation of a ridiculous saboteur of the machines and automatically condemns himself to an intellectual, social and advertising death. It is not surprising, then, that the fear of this automatic discredit paralyzes the language of most critics and that a criticism of technique has now become a matter of civil courage” Günther Anders. The Outdatedness of Human Beings, 1956 [5] Bernard Kaplan stated in 1961: “During the last fifty years it has been progressively recognized that the symbolic activity is one of the most characteristic traits of human existence, and that all the development of human culture is based in the capacity of men to transform the most simple sensible material into a portray of symbols, into a portray of the highest intellectual and emotional distinctions” (An approach to the problem of symbolic representation: nonverbal and verbal “Journal of communications” 11, 52-62,1961) In addition to the latter, Ernst Cassirer wrote: “Instead of defining man as an animal rationale we should define men as animal symbolicum. By doing this we can designate his specific difference” Ernst Cassirer. The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy. Univ of Pennsylvania Pr (1972) [6] When referring to the implications of information technology in the Cold War, McLuhan writes: “all wars have been fought by the latest technology available in any culture”, McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. The Extensions of Man. MIT Press edition, 1994. 339 [7] Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Penguin Books. Copyright © R. J. Hollingdale, 1969, Of Old and New Law – Tables, 11 [8] “Viel bedenklicher ist es, daß sich aus dieser Geschäftigkeit ein Zusammenhang von schablonenartigen Wertungen ergeben hat, hinter dem sich die völlige Abgestorbenheit verbirgt. Es wird hier mit den Schatten der Dinge gespielt und für den Begriff einer Kultur Reklame gemacht, der jeder Urkraft entfremdet ist“ Jünger, Ernst. Der Arbeiter. Klett-Cotta. 1981, 102-103 [9] Ibíd, Of Old and New Law – Tables, 20 [10] “Se si riuscisse ad abbattere il Leviatano, lo spazio reso libero dovrebbe essere riempito. Ma di ciò è incapace il vuoto interiore, la disposizione di colui che non crede” Jünger, Ernst - Martin Heidegger – Oltre La Linea. Franco Volpi. Adelphi Edizione, 1989, 95 [11] Jünger, Ernst. The Worker. Collected Works. Second Edition. Klett-Cotta. 1981, 210 [12] Evola, Julius & UR Group. Introduction to Magic. Inner Traditions, 2001, 357 [13] Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Man and Nature. The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man. George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 1990, 34 [14] Fernández, Miguel A. Operative Traditions. Manticore Press. 2017 [15] The Theory of the Absolute Individual was firstly published in 1927 [Bocca, Torino] and the Phenomenology of the Absolute Individual was firstly published in 1930 [Bocca, Torino]. Recent editions of both volumes have been published by Edizione Mediterranee. Italy. [16] This required presenting an “I” that is potentially absolute, capable of extracting the essences and virtues of all beings, and what´s more, capable of configuring them based on a long-range harmony. [17] Evola, Julius. Saggi Sull´Idealismo Magico. Edizione Mediterranee, 2006, 50
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