[IndyMedia Bombay] Meditation on the Bomb: Sloterdijk
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Sloterdijk</title></head><body>
<div><b>Meditation on the Bomb</b></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>by Peter Sloterdijk</div>
<div>From<i> Critique of Cynical Reason</i>, trans. Michael Eldred,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, originally published
in German, Frankfurt, 1981.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Here we have to think ahead -- assuming further that fringe and
middle correspond more deeply to one another than seems obvious at
first glance. On the surface, the life-style of the punks and that of
the establishment seem to be irreconciliable. But at bottom they are
very close. Cynical eruptions are catapulted out of the pretending
approach to phenomena must not limit itself to subjective excesses,
but must begin with objective excesses.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Objective excess is nothing other than the excess of structural
unrest that characterizes our form of life, even in its saturated
phases and in the intervals between wars. At the end the Second World
War, the earth's weapon potential sufficed for a multiple extinction
of every citizen on earth. As we approach the Third, the extermination
factor has been multiplied has been multiplied by hundreds, even
thousands. The overkill atmosphere becomes denser by the minute. The
factor grows monthly and its growth is, in the final analysis, the
determining agent of our history. The overkill structures have become
the actual subject of current developments. In the First as well as in
the Second World, an enormous proportion of social labor flows into
these structures. At the moment preparations are being made for
renewed escalation, but this is not our theme here.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>In view of these "hard facts", the task of philosophy
is to pose child's questions like the following: Why don't people get
along with each other? What compels them to prepare for their mutual
atomization? Philosophers are those who can put aside the hardened,
habituated, and cynically versed contemporary in themselves -- who,
without further ado, can make clear to that contemporary in two or
three sentences why everything is the way it is and why it cannot be
changed with good intentions. The philsopher must give a chance to
that inner child who "does not yet understand" all this.
Those who "do not yet understand it" can perhaps pose the
right questions.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>All wars are, at root, the consequence of the principle of
self-preservation. In the competition among political groups, war has
been an age-old means of establishing and defending the existence,
identity, and form of life of a given society against the pressure of
a rival. Since time immemorial, realists assume a natural right to
self-preservation of the individual group and to military self-defense
of the group attacked. The morality that legitimates the suspension of
morality in war is that of self-preservation. Those who fight for
their own life and its social forms stand, according to the conviction
of all previous realist mentalities, beyond the ethics of peace.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>When one's own identity is threatened; the prohibition of killing
is supended. That which constitutes the basic taboo in times of peace
becomes a duty in times of war; indeed, a maximum of killing is even
honored as a particularly worthy achievement.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>All modern military ethics, however, have abolished the image of
the aggresive hero because it would interfere with the defensive
justification for war. Modern heroes all want to be mere defenders,
heroes of self-defense. One's own primarily aggresive component is
uniformly denied: All professional soldiers see themselves as<i>
protectors</i> of peace, and attack is solely a strategic alternative
to defense. The latter remains the first priority over all military
modes of behavior. Defense is nothing more than the military
counterpart of what is called self-preservation in philosophy. The
cynical self-denial of every morality is guided by the principle of
self-preservation, which anticipates "the moment of truth"
and arms itself with a free-style ethics without illusions.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>If we look at today's world from this perspective, boundless
proliferation of the principle of defense strikes us. East and West,
both armed to the teeth, confront one another as giants of
self-defense. In order to be able to "defend" itself, each
party has produced instruments of destruction that suffice for the
absolute annihilation of human, animal, and even plant life. In the
shadow of atomic weapons, even the deadly specialities of war
biologists ad chemists are usually overlooked. In the name of
self-preservation a reckless sadism disguised as defense has
flourished in the minds of the researchers of destruction; an old
oriental master of torture would have an inferiority complex by
comparison.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>However, we do not want to impute unusually evil motives to any
party or any of those in charge. Everyone probably does what he canw
ithin the realm of the possible. However, this realm itself has its
malicious peculiarities. It seems that a certain form of realism has
come close to its immanent limits, namely, that realism that adopted
war as<i> ultima ratio</i> of political self-preservation in its mode
of reckoning. This realism should not be retrospectively condemned; it
has had its time and done its work, for the good perhaps, for evil
certainly. It must be observed, however, that this<i> ultima ratio</i>
realism is bankrupt.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Today's "politics of disarmament" has only apparently
grasped this. That behind it there is no real insight is revealed by
the fact that the negotiating nations are playing a double game. While
they talk, they frantically build up stockpiles; the question, mad as
it seems, is basically whether "only" armament should be
pursued or whether armament plus talking is better. In this way, I
maintain, a solution will never be found. Following this way, the arms
race<i> can</i> only end in war. The wild proliferation of the
principle of defense precludes all other possibilities.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The ultimate war has truly become an "internal matter"
of armed humanity. In it, it is a matter of breaking through the
principle of harsh self-preservation with its archaic and modern<i>
ultima ratio</i> of war. For this unforeseen struggle on the inner
front against the deadly realism of political self-defense, the
strongest allies are truly needed. On this front, overpowering
weapons, fear-inducing strategies, and cunning maneuvers are required.
In this respect we are not without hope, the arsenals are full. Among
the weapons now being made ready for use are collected all imaginable
monstrosities: nerves gases, microbe armies, gas clouds, bacteria
squadrons, psychadelic grenades, astrocannons, and death rays. We do
not want to undervalue the accomplishments of these means. But the
philosopher is drawn again and again by an old dependency back to the
H-bomb because its nuclear mode of operation challenges contemplation
most of all. Nuclear fission is in any case a phenomenon that invites
meditation, and even the nuclear bomb gives the philosopher the
feeling of here also really touching on the nucleus of what is human.
This, the bomb basically embodies the last, most energetic
enlightener. It teaches an understanding of the essence of splitting;
it makes completely clear what it means to set up a Me against a You,
an Us against a Them to the point of a readiness to kill. At the
summit of the principle of self-preservation it teaches how to end and
conquer dualisms. The bomb carries the last hope and task of Western
philsophy, but its pedagogical procedure still seems unusual to us. It
is so cynically crass and so suprepersonally hard that one is reminded
of Eastern Zen masters who do not hesitate to punch their pupils in
the face if that helps their progress towards enlightenment.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The atomic bomb is the real Buddha of the West, a perfect,
sovereign apparatus without bonds. It rests unmovingly in its silos,
purest reality and purest possibility. It is the epitome of cosmic
energies and human participation in these, the highest achievement of
human beings and their destroyer, the triumph of technological
rationality and its sublation (<i>Aufbehung</i>) into the
para-gnostical. With it we leave the realm of practical reason where
ends are pursued through appropriate means. The bomb has long since
ceased to be a means to an end, for it is the boundless means that
exceeds every possible end. However, since it can no longer be a means
to an end, it must become a medium of self-experience. It is an
anthropological event, an extreme objectification of the spirit of
power that works behind the drive to self-preservation. Although we
build it to "defend" ourselves it has, in fact, yielded for
us a defenselessness without parallel. It is a consummation of the
human in its "evil" aspect. We cannot get any more evil,
intelligent, or defensive.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The bomb is really the only Buddha that Western reason could
understand. Its calm and its irony are infinite. It makes no
difference how it fulfills its mission, whether in mute waiting or as
firecloud; for it, the change of aggregate circumstances has no
relevance. As with Buddha, everything that could be said is said
through its mere existence. The bomb is not one bit more evil than
reality and not one bit more destructive than we are. It is merely our
unfolding, a material representation of our essence. It is already
embodied as something whole, whereas we, in relation to it, are still
split. Confronted by such a machine, strategic considerations are not
appropriate but a heightened attentiveness is. The bomb demands of us
neither struggle or resignation, but self-experience. We are it. In
it, the Western "subject" is consummated. Our most extreme
armament makes us defenseless to the point of weakness, weak to the
point of reason, reasonable to the point of fear. The only question
that remains is whether we choose the external path or the inner path
-- whether insight will come from critical reflection or from the
fireballs over the earth.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>All external paths, no matter how "well intended" they
may be, come together, as our experience shows, again and again in the
irresistable flow toward armament. All "inner paths," even
when they appear awfully unrealistic, flow together in the single
tendency that furthers real pacification. The modern world process led
to a point beyond which the most external path, politics, and the most
inner path, meditation, speak the same language; both revolve around
the principle that only a "relaxation of tensions" can help
us along. All secrets lie in the art of conceding, of not resisting.
Meditation and disarmament discover a strategic common interest. If
that's not an ironic result of modernity! Grand politics today is, in
the final analysis, meditation on the bomb and deep meditation that
seeks the urge to build bombs in us. Meditation works gently on
everything that has solidified internally as the crust of a so-called
identity. It dissolves the armor behind which an ego sits that feels
itself to be the defender of its "basic values." (The
strategists of armament say: "We have the better values!")
he bomb is a damned ironic machine that is "good" for
nothing and yet produced the most powerful effects. Even though it may
be our Buddha, it nevertheless has the sarcastic devil within itself.
One must have put oneself in its interior in order to feel what it
means to explode into the cosmos with a complete dissolution of the
self.<i> It</i> can do this at any time. A similar pandemonium and
laughter reigns at the core of the igniting explosive mass as in the
interior of suns. To know that one has such a possibility at one's
disposal gives a unique superiority. Deep down, the human spirit knows
itself to be in solidarity with its eerie and ironic sun
machine.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Those who look very carefully can observe every now and then how
the bombs seem to smile mockingly to themselves. If we were only alert
enough to perceive this smile something would have to happen that the
world has never experienced: It could become fearless and feel how
relaxation looses the archaic cramps defense. "Good morning, Miss
Neutron, how are you?" The bombs bocome the night watchmen of our
destructiveness. If we awake, then, like the entreating voices at the
end of Hermann Broch's<i> Schlafwandler</i> (Sleepwalker), the
thousand bombs will talk to us, for it is the voice of humanity and of
the people, the voice of solace and of hope and of the immediate good:
"Don't do yourself any harm, for we are all still
here!"</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>_____<br>
<br>
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