Ernst Jünger on technology, language, and the end of classical war.

Stratis Mirivilis, a Greek writer who fought in WWI wrote a trilogy of books inspired by his experience of that war and arrived at the same conclusion- that, namely, the individual soldier carries out an unequal battle against the mega-machine.

He literally didn't age over the next 20 years.

This short recording of Jünger raises a question: was it the end of the classical war or the end of the FAUSTIAN war? I don’t think Spengler ever treated the quality of warmaking as per world system. - the war of the (stunningly victorious on the crusades but by 1914 barbarous my obsolete) “ich Einfühlung” - the individuality of Beowulf vs the dragon - of Barbarossa shielding the outside gate view of Jerusalem from HIS OWN eyes - and the Magian war feeling - that of doom and inevitability (the first crusaders won because the Muslims never expected individual spontaneity as it was brought) - that of the momentousness of the favor of the universe. And the classical feeling - the divine Penuma that pushed the body around and stirs up the thymos in the chest - the heroes never without a nearby patron or nemesis. We have been in the chaos of a turning - so what is the order emerging - if any? Does the prime symbol of “plane without limits” shed any light on a new pattern of war? - not that I can see yet. I’d like to ask a Russian or a Pole. Jünger was describing a feeling of war as a technocratic accident - like a horse you can’t properly manage (that’s my analogy) - he almost said like a car you can’t drive. - that’s a good metaphor but there is a deeper symbol underneath it. @costofglory @SperglerAcolyte

Bernanos says the same in: France against the robots.

@OwenRayp My German isn’t that great and the literalness of the translation here matters. The subtitles translate “man führt Krieg” as “wage war”. Should we understand his meaning to be more like “lead war”?

@bronzeagemantis I’d rather fight in a modern war than 1870-1871 type situation. What did an individual soldier really matter then when rifle fire was only effective in volleys? Today individual troops have phenomenal firepower at their fingertips. Seems like cope from Jünger.

Kriech😭

The european warriorcaste has been reduced to pawns. Scientists, merchants and politicians are those that decide war. Europe was forged by the warriorcaste, all degeneration in Europe can be traced to the taking over of the merchantcaste

He was obviously wrong, even then. It's the only real *tragic* thing that you all swallow the same old celebrity *new idea* again and again. Young men get blown apart by guns and grenades just the same in the C21 as the C19. He was selling his new book.

His point about language is perhaps only so much as truth. Convenient phrases like the "sun rises," instead of the "earth rolls round the sun," are made to avoid circumlocution. It's the use of the phrase that matters, not whether it expresses literal quality.