Dear Jüngerites: If someone translated #21 into English, I missed it. So here is my attempt. Natives correct me if I err. #21 When the way is very long, like from Mars to Earth, then it is bearable in every moment--it allows itself to be pictured as if shown on a TV screen. With this, one of its possibilities, namely that of its length, would be fulfilled. That would be one possibility, perhaps overrated in significance, among countless others. Only some of them can be seized (realized). That many have failed is a pedagogical judgement--the way, whether short or long, will be paced off, the task completed. *********************** The beauty of this meditation and the consolation it seems to offer can blind our eyes to its severe and implacable premise: that all goals are the same. Every path has many possibilities; some are realized, others not. Some, however, unfailingly will be realized, and so the goal is always attained. That is what Jünger seems to say. The problem is, one possibility may be to reach the store, another may be to run over a slow-moving old woman and spend the rest of your life in remorse and legalities; one possibility may be to raise your child into a healthy adult, another may be to learn that she has been raped and murdered by a psychopath. My point: a path contains desirable and undesirable possibilities, possible success and possible horror, and it brings no consolation to think that undesired horror is as much a path realized as desired fulfillment. Perhaps Jünger, having seen much horror, can attain this degree of removal from the tragedy of lives cut off, but I can't. GK
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