8b. Pathways to the understanding of reality

“…pathways to the understanding of reality must be restricted.”

The final and deepest precondition for the limitless fecundity of debt money is that the pathways to the understanding of reality must be barred, not because they are threatening but because they are useless. Thus, for example, Sufism is anathema to moderns not because of their allegation that it is an innovation but because it is useless and gets in the way of building a ‘state’ and making money, which are their only goals.

The criterion of ‘usefulness’ is the very essence of the thinking of technique. Things, and people, must have a use, must be forced into service to an end, must justify their existence and must be at hand as standing reserves.

We have lost the subtle distinction between being useful and being beneficial. Not all that is beneficial is useful and not everything that is useful is beneficial. Beauty and majesty must go, since they have no use and since by their very existence they threaten to overwhelm, and technical people don’t like that because they are here to overwhelm, not to be overwhelmed.

But a road is useful, and whereas a road must go straight from city to city and will, in the main, carry the traffic of commerce, the endless citizens hurtling to get somewhere, anywhere, and sometimes – more often of late – troops and weapons, a pathway may take its way through the forest and over the hills. Travelling it fully and doing justice to each moment and stopping place is as important as getting to its end.

And yet, how many men and women have taken pathways and have come back on to the main roads, reviving them and bringing life and knowledge that is really useful to the cities of men.

Nihilism and nothingness

1. Nihilism
2. Dostoyevsky's tormented characters
3. Bohr and Heisenberg
4. Ancient and terrible spell
5. Technique
6. Annihilation of the world
7. Exponential fecundity of intangible wealth
8. Pathways to the understanding of reality
   a.
   b.
9. Technical 'ecosystem'
10. What is it that the Muslims know...?