War as Inner Experience: Part 8

by Ernst Jünger

This is part 8 of a new translation of Ernst Jünger’s profound treatise War as Inner Experience, which is published here in installments.

Also read parts one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven.

Servants of the Land

We have grown old and comfortable like the elderly. It became a crime to be or have more than others. Weaned from strong intoxications, power and men have become abhorrent to us; mass and equality are our new gods. If the masses cannot become like the few, then the few must become like the masses. Politics, drama, artists, cafes, patent leather shoes, posters, newspapers, morals, tomorrow’s Europe, the day after tomorrow’s world: thunderous mass. As a thousand-headed beast, it lies on the path, crushing what it cannot swallow, envious, parvenu-like, vulgar. Once again, the individual succumbed; were not his born representatives the ones who betrayed him the most? We sit too closely together; our great cities are grinding millstones, torrents that wear us down against each other like pebbles. Life is too hard; do we not have our flickering life? Heroes are too hard; do we not have our flickering screen heroes? How beautifully noiseless everything glides. One sits in cushioned comfort, and all countries, all adventures, float through the mind, light and substantial like an opium dream.