The Mask of The Worker

[Anonymous No.17268778]

"It is in this last respect that The Worker takes on a disturbing relevance for our own times. For the uniformity of the new age is symbolised, Jünger suggests, by the sudden proliferation of the mask in contemporary society. “It is no coincidence”, he writes, “that the mask is again beginning to play a decisive role in public life. It is appearing in many different ways … be it as a gas mask, with which they are trying to equip entire populations; be it as a face mask for sport and high speeds, seen on every racing driver; be it as a safety mask for workplaces exposed to radiation, explosions, or narcotic substances. We can assume”, he continues, with an eerie prescience, “that the mask will come to take on functions that we can today hardly imagine”.

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-dystopian-age-of-the-mask/

[Anonymous No.17268791]

Full quote from the book:
"This clarity is also expressed in the typus, in whom this transformation begins to be foreshadowed, and which evokes an initial impression of a certain emptiness and uniformity. This is the very same uniformity that makes any individual differentiation in a class of relatively unknown animals or races of men very difficult.

What is immediately conspicuous from pure physiognomy is the mask-like rigidity of the face, which is just as much acquired, as it is enhanced through external means such as beardlessness, hairstyle and close-fitting headgear. We conclude from this maskedness – inducing a metallic impression in men, a cosmetic one in women – that an even more radical process is being revealed, such that the very forms through which gender is made visible in the face might be eroding. In passing, we should say that the role the mask has begun to play, even in everyday life, is no accident. It makes an appearance in all sorts of ways in places in which the special work-character breaks through, be it as gas-mask (which we are looking to issue to whole populations), as face-mask for sport and for high speeds (as worn by every motorist), as protection mask (in places with dangerous processes involving radiation, explosives or narcotics). We suspect that the mask could be given entirely different tasks to those of the present – for instance through a development in which photography becomes important as a political assault-weapon."
- The Worker

[Anonymous No.17268799]

Another garbage written by mutt hands.

[Anonymous No.17268812]

ah yes the mask as an inhibitor of viral spread, surely unimaginable, especially by the plethora of Asian countries in which wearing a mask while sick was ingrained into society. truly a revolutionary and scathing take

[Anonymous No.17268825]

Given the recurring questions concerning the relevance of The Worker, especially today, I thought this would serve as a useful entry point. General questions of Form, shifts in time, and wealth are perhaps the most significant before getting into the writing itself.

Previous thread:
>>/lit/thread/S17138742#p17138742

Blog where I will collect and attempt to organise quotes, notes, discussions, and links to these threads.
https://derarbeiternotes.blogspot.com/

[Anonymous No.17268841]

>>17268812
It's from the 1930s.

[Anonymous No.17268855]

>>17268812
His analysis of physiognomy also explains the 'soi' aesthetic and various other contemporary issues. Although this will never be relevant to /lit/'s non-readers.

[Anonymous No.17268873]

The mask is for a people that fear death more than dishonor.

[Anonymous No.17268921]

Says the fellow masking his schizoid tendencies to the world.
It's a weak interpretation of an interesting concept. Drawing upon Levinas' concept of the Face would make for an interesting discussion, but this...

[Anonymous No.17268975]

>>17268855
Not sure about that, differences in sexes are eroding but facial looks are getting more byzantine and bizarre (we're certainly not in the age of beardlessness). This is only partially convincing.

[Anonymous No.17269005]

>>17268921
>Levinas' concept of the Face
Cringe.

[Anonymous No.17269017]

>>17269005
How? He's amazing

[Anonymous No.17269032]

>>17268975
How does his thinking not cover this? (For instance, in the comment on the fashion of Babel which goes beyond what you're arguing.) And what is the reasoning if it is not technological man and a being setting himself apart from history?

[Anonymous No.17269077]

>>17269017
Not him but: Form and characterology rather than psychology and reductionist physical characteristics. It should be obvious which thinking sees more, Junger's idea already includes what Levinas is saying while Levinas' concept is a weakened understanding only applicable within the modern type itself.
I think people also underestimate the extent that the left reacted to and even copied Junger.

[Anonymous No.17269147]

>>17268873
While mostly true, there is also an aspect in which the mask elevates a man beyond death. We cannot assume only weakness and the Last Man, there is also an element in which man continues to struggle against life. Or this returns at a certain point once death has been forgotten.
At some point that man as man to man (homo homini homo) must end. This can be seen as man being man to technology, or even making and being (homo homini faber). This is at the center of the divide created in the battle over masks and centralization of tyrannical security measures. At some point one may also say that man becomes man towards life and returns to an embrace of death.

[Anonymous No.17269169]

>>17269147
A useful Schmitt quote to keep in mind:

"Today we even recognize the secret law of this vocabulary and know that the most terrible war is pursued only in the name of peace, the most terrible oppression only in the name of freedom, the most terrible inhumanity only in the name of humanity. Finally, we also see through the mood of that generation which saw only spiritual death or a soulless mechanism in the age of technicity. We recognize the pluralism of spiritual life and know that the central domain of spiritual existence cannot be a neutral domain and that it is wrong to solve a political problem with the antithesis of organic and mechanistic, life and death. A life which has only death as its antithesis is no longer life but powerlessness and helplessness. Whoever knows no other enemy than death and recognizes in his enemy nothing more than an empty mechanism is nearer to death than life. The comfortable antithesis of the organic and the mechanistic is itself something crudely mechanistic. A grouping which sees on the one side only spirit and life and on the other only death and mechanism signifies nothing more than a renunciation of the struggle and amounts to nothing more than a romantic lament. For life struggles not with death, spirit not with spiritlessness; spirit struggles with spirit, life with life, and out of the power of an integral understanding of this arises the order of human things. Ab integro nascitur ordo."

[Anonymous No.17269428]

A question from the last thread:

>>The historical necessity of the First World War was that it did away with monarchy. The monarchies vanished among both the winners and the losers. The inherent necessity of the Second World War was the elimination of national states. Now, there are only huge empires, such as Russia, America, China; such is the form that power assumes today. This is a necessity - as bitter as it may appear to some people.
>What should I read to get more on this, and more specifically, learn about what form power assumes now in 2021?

Your question is part of the reason for this thread's focus on the present, and perhaps the shifts about to occur in the 21st century.
Much of your question is answered in The Worker, as well as Junger's writings on war. To answer further it would help to know what you have read. In the meantime I'll try to keep it simple and focus on generalities.
The monarchy, and the ancien regime as a whole, would reveal a continued present of the nations, and the old states. In this there would be a potential for totality in European law and also the continued risk of contested boundaries and war. From this perspective England would not have seen itself as an instigator of the war, nor an enemy of the monarchistic form, but a defender of the European order, its laws of peace set out in the founding of the modern world (this may sound absurd to us, but so does the idea of a war to end all wars).

This is why WWI is not only a final push against the monarchies, but also the laws of traditionally order societies, and the type of man formed of such an order. The volunteer against the professional soldier is important in this, we continue to revere the simple farmer soldier who sacrificed for the good of Europe and the New World. This is to such an extent that we often do not even see these men as soldiers. It is fitting that the image is a dual one, the Pal's Battalion farmboy but also the faceless and even spectral Unknown Soldier.

[Anonymous No.17269434]

>>17269428
The elimination of national states is in some way a more difficult topic, but also related to the same process of destruction. Junger even mentions how the absolutist monarchies and conservative forces laid the installations which allowed for and were a part of the liberal positions, revolutionaries, and post-national states. This is linked to the idea that democracy is not a form of governance but a type of authority and way of being, a nomos for the revolutionary and transitional order in which boundaries no longer exist - a force of the elements and unseen laws. (I cannot remember if it is Tocqueville or Schmitt who discusses this idea of democracy as nomos and a process of levelling which can be centralised.)

Schmitt and Tocqueville are likely the most significant to read along with Junger, at least for this question. I have a quote on war predictions for the 21st century, and hope to discuss Junger's Prognoses for the 21st century. Hopefully I can get to it tonight but have to go now.

Answering this question sufficiently would take a lot more research (part of my plan for this year.) But as a general question to begin, one must ask what may form from within the Grossraume and the end of the modern order of the nomos. And also, if there is a shift in laws, or even the order of time as Junger and Schmitt allude to, then we have to consider a shift in being and the figure of man who will begin to take shape and be capable of measuring up to this period.

Hopefully that's not too rough, I'm in a bit of a hurry.

[Anonymous No.17269492]

>>17269428
This is likely too historical a reading and does not get into the theological aspects of Junger's thinking. But it may at least serve as an introduction to why the old order had to be destroyed.
From Junger's perspective it is more to the effect of shedding the old skin, removing the husk as the new formation of man is revealed. The state undergoes a morphology, not so much against the monarchy as it is that power extends beyond its capabilities.
The monarchy can even be seen as something to be preserved, something to weak for the age and which must be preserved in the background. The paradox is that a monarchy is not capable of the level of centralisation and power necessary, thus the simultaneous perfection of absolutism and the enlightened monarchies. Such power is beyond the capabilities and reach of the court, as we see in the idea that slaves must be elevated and even master the society - both for and against levelling.
"Slaves to the guns but masters of kings."

[Anonymous No.17269501]

just wear a mask you retarded redneck

[Anonymous No.17269613]

>>17269501
based

[Anonymous No.17270044]

>>17269501
Powerful

[Anonymous No.17270415]

>>17268799
Retard.

[Anonymous No.17270698]

>>17269501
Y-yes, I will wear the mask. And eat the bugs. And give up my entire culture, identity, and personal property.

[Anonymous No.17270701]

>>17268791
>the very forms through which gender is made visible in the face might be eroding.
How?

[Anonymous No.17270712]

>>17270698
what does wearing a mask have to do with any of these other things? Just wear a fucking mask. Or dont actually, one less fag wearing a mask means more death in America means a higher chance China will wipe your shit stain country off the map.

[Anonymous No.17270716]

>>17270698
what culture do you have, lol?

[Anonymous No.17270726]

>>17270698
meds

[Anonymous No.17270728]

>>17268778
>.co.uk
thrown in the trash

[Anonymous No.17270730]

>>17268855
>people that look beta are beta
truly ahead of his time

[Anonymous No.17270771]

Why so many tankies shitting up the thread?

[Anonymous No.17270892]

>>17270712
>Just wear a fucking mask.
reddit

[Anonymous No.17271453]

>>17270730
Weak bait

[Anonymous No.17272514]

"The lack of uniqueness in the individual sense which characterises the form given to landscape is repeated in the individual. The faces of Greek statues escape physiognomy, just like ancient drama escapes psychological motivation; a comparison, for instance, with Gothic sculpture highlights the difference between soul and form. It is a different world that in which actors appear with masks, gods with animal heads, and in which it is the hallmark of the force of education [239] to petrify symbols in an infinite repetition reminiscent of natural processes, as it happens with the acanthus leaf, the phallus, the lingam, the scarab, the cobra, the sun disk, the silent Buddha. In such a world the stranger feels not admiration, but fear,and even today one cannot face the nocturnal sight of the great pyramid or that of the lonely temple of Segesta in the glowing sun of Sicily without fear.

Such a world, hermetically closed like a magic ring, is also visibly close to that of the typus representing the form of the worker visibly, and it is closer, the clearer iti s that the individual appears as typus. Certainly, the cultures for which the typus arises as representative have nothing in common with the traditional concept of culture; but what is probably inherent in them is that incomparable unity which reveals that something more than consciousness is at work here. This unity implies that movements occur ever more inevitably, under the influences of a cruel logic. It is a further sign that precisely the essential changes are hardest to determine, indeed because they take place in the most self-explanatory way. Yet the great battle takes place nevertheless for, and in every, individual; it is reflected in every question which moves him.

The typus may thus very well be the bearer of a creative activity. The absolutely different kind of rank of this activity consists in the fact that it has nothing to do with individual values. The renunciation of individuality is the key to spaces, the knowledge of which was lost for a long time."

[Anonymous No.17272525]

Very convenient that people wear things that mitigate risks to their own safety and survival

[Anonymous No.17272803]

>>17270771
Someone like Junger is far more dangerous to the Left than conservatives or reactionaries. He reveals an order that can form upon their ground which would render their organisations useless.
The shortcomings of their thought also become obvious. Any authority or patriarchal law is the greatest enemy for them as it goes against their very being, hence the denial of anything but materialist forces, the lowest laws.
It is similar to why fascism is seen as the greater threat to liberalism than communism, but people like Junger are beyond even that. The divided body will react more violently than any united body because it knows everything is at risk. It will fight on two fronts, and even destroy itself to maintain the divided body because it knows it can regrow.
Socialism is a product of total organisation, one of its necessary components which, paradoxically, grows to the same extent that society is reduced to its skeletal structure.

[Anonymous No.17272849]

>>17272803
Much of the corruption of Schmitt's thought exists for this very reason. His thought is still very significant in international and national law, which is obviously a danger for leftists, and socialists in particular. One can see an alliance form where communists participate in the recuperation efforts of liberalism. It is not so much a question of corruption as they want the power for themselves.
Junger is to a large degree forgotten by the mass, yet he remains no less dangerous. In Germany they staged queer performances of Storm of Steel when he was being given awards. What he threatens is something beyond nationalism and the divided body of politics, the primeval elements which threaten from within man - their defenses are a countermeasure in equal force.

[Anonymous No.17272868]

>>17268778
Where can I find more information about this bubble helmet thing?

[Anonymous No.17273315]

>>17272868
I think these are non-military gas masks. Civilian/administrative use to maximize security without any training, and without requiring the regimen necessary for a proper fit.

[Anonymous No.17273749]

>>17269428
Some notes on state morphology, war, and the post-monarchist figure of man. Full version here:
https://derarbeiternotes.blogspot.com/2021/01/state-morphology-and-revolutionary-era.html

The truth - the deplorable truth - is that eagerness to hold public office and to live off tax receipts is not a malady peculiar to one party; it is a serious and permanent infirmity of the nation itself. It is the joint product of a democratically constituted civil society and an excessively centralized government. It is the hidden ill that gnawed away at all past governments and will continue to gnaw at all future ones."

"When a revolution is the result of popular emotion, it is generally desired but not premeditated. Those who boast of conspiring to bring it about actually just take advantage of it. Revolutions are the spontaneous result of a general malady of men's minds brought suddenly to a crisis by a fortuitous circumstance no one foresaw. The alleged instigators and leaders of these revolutions instigate and lead nothing. Their merit is like that of an explorer who discovers a previously unknown land: they have the courage to press on when the wind is favorable."
- Tocqueville

Before The Great War there were worldwide uprisings, not only in nihilist and anarchist insurrections, but the police forces as well. Violent conflicts of order and disorder. This is not entirely separate from the bourgeois and aristocratic desire for adventure that Jünger spoke of.

In the war itself one sees a continuation of this, especially with the new world volunteers. On the one hand there was a struggle against the rigid and dogmatic structure of command. Many of the Canadian soldiers in particular took it as a contest, not simply to prove oneself but as a very unnatural and enslaved sense of being. At the same time one was more concerned with the night's meal than death - infiltration of the enemy lines developed as a type of adventure perhaps even more than any strategy. What one sees in this is a natural development of war character, an elemental order necessitated by the conditions of the war. The new world soldiers were freed into the new form of warfare, but also a revolution against the very structure of military command and the old methods of war. The Germans only approached something similar for a short period in 1917.

[Anonymous No.17273806]

>>17268812
It's from the 1930s.

[Anonymous No.17273813]

>>17270712
Reddit ahahahahaha

[Anonymous No.17273864]

Junger's prognoses for our century:

"Regarding the fate of man in particular, as a state-forming creature, a political being, various prognoses are possible, including the following:

1. there will be great destruction. The machine is smashed or comes to a standstill, be it by wars or in other ways. There is a lack of means, perhaps even a tendency to rebuild it. The veil of Maja has moved. Strongly reduced populations with new ideas and a different economy appear as post-catastrophe beings. They are more powerful, more natural, because the eradication has affected precisely those areas that homo faber settled in its sharpest forms. He has, as it is often repeated in natural history, led himself ad absurdum by hypertrophic armament. This prospect is most improbable.

2) World unity is constituted by treaties, whether by peaceful agreement, under coercion, or by both at the same time. This requires a supreme body. It could be achieved:

a) By rationalization in the form of consolidation: The states renounce parts of their sovereignty. These are dismantled in favor of society, the societas humana. The armies will become police forces, and the major warfare units will order world divisions. Like gold, they are stored in depots without appearing de facto, and guarantee order existentially. Competition is extinguished both in the field of war and in that of economics. Forms and means become perfect, state plans are replaced by earth and cosmic plans.

[Anonymous No.17273874]

>>17273864
b) By a third world war without comprehensive consequences, as mentioned above. A power remains in possession of sovereignty and the appropriate equipment. It gives away parts of it at its own discretion. It would have to remain a state. In World War I, the monarchies were eliminated, in World War II, the nation states were eliminated, and in World War III, one of the continental metropolitan areas would remain intact. The order thus won would be weaker than that achieved by evolution, the risk enormous.

c) Through overexertion. Increased rotation and internal weakening interact in such a way that parts of the machinery wear out or blow up. Pressures, suppression, propaganda, armament at the expense of living standards, threats, panic, unrest, kill one or more partners by cold means and make them drop out of the competition. The big slogans lose traction. The result is a more or less emphatic pénétration pacifique. Basically, the same thing was wanted and formed. The force works from the forward pressure, from the future result. There lies the unity of the process, not in understanding. The wisest ideology is not the best, but that which follows the earth's current most easily, harmonizes with it.

d) By gaining position. Here war, like chess, approaches the pure acts of intelligence. The commander recognizes strategic superiority and draws the consequences, as in certain Renaissance trades. The best positions are tangential, flanking - in principle: falling out of the system. They lie outside the contested object."

[Anonymous No.17273878]

>>17269428
Does any of Bowden's work interest you, Jungerposter?

[Anonymous No.17273890]

>>17269501
Post body

[Anonymous No.17273901]

>>17268812
>implying that Asian societies are not dystopian already

[Anonymous No.17273941]

>>17273874
This may be contrasted with the prognoses of someone like Camatte, respectable in its own right but when divided from the greater concerns (gemeinwesen) becomes an impoverished understanding of the world. Blind wealth becomes the whole of moral thinking, even to the point of subjecting creation to the ephemeral limits (which we see, as one example, in the rewriting of all history as an economic law).
It should be clear how much further Jünger sees just by applying a militaristic method. Camatte's prediction is the best possible from an economic form of thinking (even one that escapes such thinking but is nonetheless constrained by its power), but one can see its limitations, how it creates its own impossibility and even gnaws at its own understanding of the world. Jünger's vision illuminates all other laws from the state, law, and military formation, which alludes to the superiority in situating oneself towards the world in this manner.

[Anonymous No.17273945]

Has anyone else that has posted in this thread actually read Junger? I've seen it before in threads I have made, retards and commies pour into the thread and turn it to shit

Jungerposter, have you read copse 125?

[Anonymous No.17273948]

"In the era of its real domination, capital has run away (as the cyberneticians put it), it has escaped. [7] It is no longer controlled by human beings. (Human beings in the form of proletarians might, at least passively, represent a barrier to capital.) It is no longer limited by nature. Some production processes carried out over periods of time lead to clashes with natural barriers: increase in the number of human beings, destruction of nature, pollution. But these barriers cannot be theoretically regarded as barriers which capital cannot supersede. At present there are three possible courses for the capitalist mode of production (in addition to the destruction of humanity - a hypothesis that cannot be ignored):
complete autonomy of capital: a mechanistic utopia where human beings become simple accessories of an automated system, though still retaining an executive role;
mutation of the human being, or rather a change of the species: production of a perfectly programmable being which has lost all the characteristics of the species Homo sapiens. This would not require an automatized system, since this perfect human being would be made to do whatever is required;
generalized lunacy: in the place of human beings, and on the basis of their present limitations, capital realizes everything they desire (normal or abnormal), but human beings cannot find themselves and enjoyment continually lies in the future. The human being is carried off in the run-away of capital, and keeps it going. [8]
The result is ultimately the same: the evolution of the human being is frozen, sooner in one case than in another. These possibilities are abstract limits; in reality they tend to unfold simultaneously and in a contradictory manner. To continue on its indefinite course, capital is forced to call on the activity of human beings, to exalt their creativity. And to secure its permanence, capital has to act quickly. It runs into barriers of time and space which are linked to the decrease of natural resources (which cannot all be replaced by synthetic substitutes) and the mad increase of human population (which causes the disappearance of numerous forms of life)."

[Anonymous No.17273961]

I'm not really familiar with him. Listened to some of his speeches when I was younger.
Is there anything you would suggest? Or any writing that you think would be related to The Worker (or the side discussion of nations and their dissolution)?

[Anonymous No.17273966]

>>17273961
re: Bowden

[Anonymous No.17273979]

>>17273941
Had to reformat:

"In the era of its real domination, capital has run away (as the cyberneticians put it), it has escaped. It is no longer controlled by human beings. (Human beings in the form of proletarians might, at least passively, represent a barrier to capital.) It is no longer limited by nature. Some production processes carried out over periods of time lead to clashes with natural barriers: increase in the number of human beings, destruction of nature, pollution. But these barriers cannot be theoretically regarded as barriers which capital cannot supersede. At present there are three possible courses for the capitalist mode of production (in addition to the destruction of humanity - a hypothesis that cannot be ignored):

- complete autonomy of capital: a mechanistic utopia where human beings become simple accessories of an automated system, though still retaining an executive role;

-mutation of the human being, or rather a change of the species: production of a perfectly programmable being which has lost all the characteristics of the species Homo sapiens. This would not require an automatized system, since this perfect human being would be made to do whatever is required;

- generalized lunacy: in the place of human beings, and on the basis of their present limitations, capital realizes everything they desire (normal or abnormal), but human beings cannot find themselves and enjoyment continually lies in the future. The human being is carried off in the run-away of capital, and keeps it going.

The result is ultimately the same: the evolution of the human being is frozen, sooner in one case than in another. These possibilities are abstract limits; in reality they tend to unfold simultaneously and in a contradictory manner. To continue on its indefinite course, capital is forced to call on the activity of human beings, to exalt their creativity. And to secure its permanence, capital has to act quickly. It runs into barriers of time and space which are linked to the decrease of natural resources (which cannot all be replaced by synthetic substitutes) and the mad increase of human population (which causes the disappearance of numerous forms of life)."

[Anonymous No.17274010]

>>17273945
The last thread went quite well, I think. Not a lot of posters but basically no shitposting. I sort of jumped on Levinasposter because of the suspicion of what he was doing, but would be interested in further thoughts on Levinas if he actually wants a discussion.

I'm reading Copse 125 now. I think I posted something in the last thread about it, the machine gun nests as a sort of dragon rising out of the earth.
Any thoughts on it? In some way it is even more interesting to me because of the philosophical aspects and it being situated in an isolated area and time of the war. I would have to read Storm of Steel again though to say which I really prefer.

[Anonymous No.17274014]

Probably can't do much more tonight, but if there's interest there is a fair bit more on Junger's prognoses for the 21st century.

[Anonymous No.17274035]

Also want to draw attention to this
>Staat, Großraum, Nomos
Schmitt's book. I'd really appreciate if anyone knows where to find this relatively cheap, don't really want to spend 200 if i don't have to. Even if someone can find it at their library and just copy the essay response to Junger.

[Anonymous No.17274049]

>>17273878
That Bowden thread is such a mess.

[Anonymous No.17274090]

>>17273966
Nothing specifically that I would recommend, it's more that his analysis or critique is politically incorrect and (explicitly anti-liberao) and therefore you may find something of use.

[Anonymous No.17274373]

>>17274049
Indeed, I get stronf feeling a lot of r3dditors have migrated recently

[Anonymous No.17274419]

>>17274010
Do you have any more recommended reading on the topics you have discussed? Works by schmitt for example?

[Anonymous No.17274830]

>>17273945
>copse 125
Good book.

[Anonymous No.17274874]

To anyone who sincerely cares and has read Junger, I think should set up a reading group or something similar on another site. This board is worthless for genuine discussion and there seems to be an active effort to subvert decent discussion that isn't liberal or reddit-esque.

Anyone have any suggestions? Jungerposter who runs the WordPress, can a chat forum be created on WordPress sites?

[Anonymous No.17275899]

Bump

[Anonymous No.17276382]

>>17275899
Bump also.

Jungerposter, thanks for uploading the letters to Schmitt on your site, it reveals some details about Junger's son I did not know.

Apparently he died, or was killed, in the Italian Alps whilst on training. It is suspected it was for his anti-hitler views which Junger himself had influenced.

[Anonymous No.17276398]

>>17268778
>sophism

[Anonymous No.17276569]

>>17274874
I have considered a forum before, but unfortunately I've been having computer problems so don't know how reliable I'd be until I get a new computer.
The other issue is free speech and moderation. It's certainly not ideal but at least /lit/ maintains some level of free speech and moderation. The latter is not something I really want to spend time on.
Blogger seems to have an option for a forum page, although people may not want to use that since it's google. But I'm open to ideas and further discussion of how to set up a good discussion forum.

[Anonymous No.17276594]

>>17276382
No problem. Going to try to post a few more of them. Solemn letters which reveal the incredible weight they had to bear.

[Anonymous No.17276600]

>>17276569
Fair enough. If there is a specific Junger work e.g. copse 125 that you or others would like to go over then we could produce a thread here every few weeks

I could produce a table or something with dates and chapters

[Anonymous No.17276632]

>>17276594
Junger's thoughts and writings over the course of the second world war appear strange to me. I know he never really took a liking to democracy, but he seems to have been slightly scarred by the national socialist experience and has none of the youthful vigour of the interwar period. I haven't read enough into his post WW2 work to know.

I don't think he ever recognised West Germany or the Germany that we now know for example. That's why it is confusing

[Anonymous No.17276659]

>>17274419
I have most of a reading list ready, will try to post it in a bit. Unfortunately I still haven't found anything that is like The Worker, it is a unique book.
As for Schmitt, I really like Political Romanticism, Nomos of the Earth, Political Theology II, and Ex Captivitate Salus. Not what people generally recommend, but I think that Political Romanticism in particular reveals a type of thought, and a great shift, without which it is nearly impossible to understand our era and where things are headed. That may partly be my own bias towards old thought, however postmodernism and more recent developments in philosophy are almost entirely explained by that work. So many failures could have been avoided through its method of thought.

[Anonymous No.17276748]

>>17276632
At some point I would like to discuss one of the best sections of Copse. His understanding of nationalism was not quite how most would see it, very Nietzschean. Even in later years he would discuss the great potential and energy of that period. I think mostly that the shift occurred through disappointment of Germany not measuring up to the situation, but also in understanding the overwhelming force of the world state forming against it. In a way it was a fated defeat, partly due to Germany never quite reconciling its internal conflicts and the divided political body. Schmitt says something similar in that the tragic deaths of the romanticists, in a way, prefigured the suicide epidemic at the end of The Wars. A wonderful piece of writing. Junger's image in The Glass Bees is also strong, it has stuck with me.
It may be best to think of Junger's step away from the National Socialist current in the same sense that Achilles stepped away from Greece. Most significant is the shift of time, having to metamorphose before new laws of statehood and the figure of man/heroism.

[Anonymous No.17276835]

>>17276600
That's basically the schedule I was thinking of as well. Something like a week in between threads. Some of the people here interested in Junger don't seem to post a lot, in the last thread it seemed that some were coming in around day 4 or 5.
I was looking at The Worker because there has been some interest in it recently, and I've been planning to reread it anyway. It may be his most important work if one wants to understand his philosophy, although it likely won't generate a lot of discussion. Copse 125 would be interesting as well, and invite more discussion, although possibly more trolls given the pacifist and antiwar posters.

[Anonymous No.17277201]

>just wear some clothes dude
How do you react?

[Anonymous No.17277431]

>>17277201
Reddit.com

[Anonymous No.17277815]

This is a wide-ranging reading list and will have to be cleaned up but I'll post it anyway:
https://derarbeiternotes.blogspot.com/2021/01/reading-list-for-worker.html

Given the unique quality of Jünger's work it is quite difficult to come up with similar works. I have included important works that are related to his thinking as well as anything I am likely to reference. The main question is not work alone, but the law of modernity, technology, and the transitional period as it relates to time. Some titles may not make a lot of sense, Hamann for example, however works like this are useful in understanding Jünger's methods, which may seem confusing and anachronistic.
I will also repeat what I said in the last thread, I don't think comprehensive reading, or strictly following lists, is necessary. Generally it is best to read what you are most drawn towards, along with the major works which keep you grounded. I have included these readings mainly for interest and research purposes, although familiarity with them will certainly help in understanding the more difficult ideas to be discussed.

There are a few works I have not yet read but am assuming their quality/significance: Marx's Prussia, Orwell's Wigan Pier, and Heidegger's lectures on Jünger. There may also be works I have forgotten or missed, point them out and I will edit the list.

The film list is incomplete and will require more thought. However, simple short films like the Artisans of Australia or the Emerson Stevens Forge are quite helpful, showing the beautiful side of work even in the industrial age. I am not sure how well people today are acquainted with this style of work given the economic shift as well as the NEET meme.

I'm very interested in the art of work if you have anything to share. Particularly paintings and work songs.

https://youtu.be/Qr4VTCwEfko

[Anonymous No.17277859]

>>17277815
Ernst Niekisch should also be included here, although his works seem hard to come by. Would be very interested if anyone has anything.

https://youtu.be/dcoTnER4Efg

[Anonymous No.17278625]

I'm quite sure there's a concentrated effort by those of left wing association on this board

[Anonymous No.17278944]

>>17277859
Why the link to artisans of Australia?

[Anonymous No.17278966]

>>17268778
The anti-mask people have always struck me as bizarre. From a cost/risk analysis, or however you term that, it just makes sense, it costs nothing.

[Anonymous No.17279037]

>>17278966
Further evidence of low iq retards shitting up threads containing decent discussion. Develop some reading comprehension you ape

[Anonymous No.17279207]

>>17278944
Just an example of what work can be. In marxism and much of discussion today there is an antiwork position.

[Anonymous No.17279231]

>>17279037
I don't care about your OP

[Anonymous No.17279510]

>>17269169
What book is this from? I love this prose and its a great point

[Anonymous No.17279702]

>>17276569
nice blog anon

[Anonymous No.17280646]

>>17279510
I think it's Concept of the Political

[Anonymous No.17280930]

A great quote pointing to the limits of class, and how the form metamorphoses:

"There is also kinship between the clown and the dictator, a system of mutual bonds. Where the ruler separates himself from the fool, even kills him, his grotesque traits penetrate him. The tyrant liquidates people and classes, the clown possibly an age. Where the anarchist attack reaches anonymous strata, it provokes a suicidal laughter. "Chaplin bakes with dynamite.""

One may also sense this in identity politics, where class became a limit for marxism it took on elements of the mechanical and anonymous. In the sense that Kierkegaard discusses the nihilism of anonymous interactions, the being free of identity, even freed of gender limitations, faces the void of the era - the revolutionary age begins to go against even its own values, its own limitations, just so that a face may be seen. To render the entire era anonymous is the only victory for the individual.

[Anonymous No.17280952]

>>17268873
This is deranged. What is the cause behind mask derangement syndrome anons?

[Anonymous No.17280956]

Based on what little I know of Niekisch there is certainly a connection to what Junger says of Hegelianized Marxism. Class is rather a question of the whole of humanity, the complete human being, and approached much as in state or military formations.

“Only the state is original, imperial, absolute, implacable, because it is a unity across the changing times, because it does not represent a single generation, but all the following generations, it is this precisely pure characterization of politics that the character of bourgeois liberal politics is incapable of comprehending.” In parallel, the notion of the “working class” was more Lassallian than Marxist: it tended to designate “all of those who work” and not only the proletariat. It was the immense majority of the nation, excluding the “thin layer” of bourgeois exploiters.Therefore, Niekisch could proclaim the quasi-identity of the people with the state. The working class “presents a natural disposition to support the state,” he will explain beforehand, “because they have always submitted to collective necessity and never possessed much, they escape egoistic motivations.” And yet: “It’s just because the working class doesn’t possess private property for their diversion that they are more suitable than the propertied classes to become a purer organ for the reasons of the state.”

[Anonymous No.17280979]

>>17280956
Camatte on the common interests of left and right in regards to gemeinwesen:
"It seems that every current or group which opposes capital is nonetheless obliged to focus always on the human as the basis of everything. It takes diverse forms, but it has a profoundly consistent basis and is surprisingly uniform wherever human populations are found. Thus by seeking to restore (and install) the volksgemeinschaft, even the Nazis represent an attempt to create such a community (cf. also their ideology of the Urmensh, the "original man"). We believe that the phenomenon of Nazism is widely misunderstood: it is seen by many people only as a demonic expression of totalitarianism. But the Nazis in Germany had reintroduced an old theme originally theorized by German sociologists like Tonnies and Max Weber. And so in response, we find the Frankfurt school, and most notably Adorno, dealing in empty and sterile concepts of "democracy", due to their incapacity to understand the phenomenon of Nazism. They have been unable to grasp Marx's great insight, which was that he posed the necessity of reforming the community, and that he recognised that this reformation must involve the whole of humanity. The problems are there for everybody; they are serious, and they urgently require solutions. People try to work them out from diverse political angles. However, it is not these problems which determine what is revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, but the solutions put forward - i.e. are they effective or not? And here the racketeer's mentality descends upon us once again: each gang of the left or the right carves out its own intellectual territory; anyone straying into one or the other of these territories is automatically branded as a member of the relevant controlling gang. Thus we have reification: the object is determinant, the subject passive."

[Anonymous No.17281098]

>>17280979
One may see in this the significance of the relation to form, how we orient ourselves towards it. In Marxism, even though at its highest there remains a sense of human community and the struggle towards freedom, there is a tendency towards the substratum, the limits of causality and its effects. One becomes mechanised by the very needs of organisation, the will of technology - the spirit of the human and its community becomes lost.

In the alternative proposed by Niekisch and Junger there is a strength of order, a Hegelian power of dominion and the spirit from which questions of class can only be subordinate to the totality. Niekisch also seems to be attempting to reconcile the Left and Right, to not fall into the complete racket, to use Camatte's terminology, that is characterised by the divided political body - and later, the opposition of bourgeoisie and proletariat.

What we are witnessing today is the opposite of such an effort. The Worker continues on, as a political factor, but in a completely diminished form. Not only was Germany destroyed in 1945 but the very possibility of reconciliation of the divided political body, and class. Being is completely diminished, and work can only proceed as the efforts of technicians who wish to further this diminishment, in perfecting the organisations which maintain the complete division of class. One sees this in the levelling of the highest structures, the reduction of even finance and technical projects to proletarianisation and the work process. The economy even gives way, bends the knee, to questions of political work. Total impoverishment.

Yet in other regions humanity and the state marches on, is even refined and begins to release its power into other projects. One sees this in migration, not only that which threatens us and begins to dismantle what remains of the liberal state, but also in the abandonment of cities, urban regions, and even nations themselves. This suggests the abandonment of questions of economy and technology for state and grossraum efforts. Humanity, as it relates to class and race, begins to shift its efforts, morph into a new being. There is catastrophe in this but also the possible rebirth of questions of human community.

[Anonymous No.17281160]

>>17280952
From Junger's point of view, exhaustion and the complete loss of dignity. Where the cost of becoming approaches austerity due to the demands of technical thinking.
This is everywhere today. One may even see the failure of technical thinking in the control measures taken. We are getting the worst of both possibilities in that most states are indecisive, an abstract technique governs in which we have to accept complete control over the virus while maintaining a human appearance, as if no governmental controls were in place at all - hence the derangement of those who see the masks as almost freeing, part of their identity which can easily be willed.
A comparison to a totalitarian effort or the completely open strategy of Sweden should clarify this. Complete controls would demand shutting down entirely for a month or so, with an end to travel outside of the state, migration, migrant workers, etc. This would be a short term measure, harsh but effective (not that I necessarily agree with it). What we are experiencing with the constant soft lockdowns is the worst of all possibilities: wasteful, ineffective, increases apathy, nihilism, and opposition to technical order.
A great opportunity for us.

[Anonymous No.17282591]

>>17279702
What's the painting from?

[Anonymous No.17282648]

>>17281160
>A great opportunity for us
What do you mean by this?

[Anonymous No.17283267]

>>17279231
Why not?