Attempt at the necessary
The need
When is it need? When is the necessary needed? Need is when we lack what we require; when what we need does not come. And it is necessary to satisfy our needs – otherwise they become coercion, robbing us of our freedom. Therefore, anyone who suffers from a lack of what they require is in need. The existence of those who lack what they need is meagre. They have only the hope that their need could still be turned around. They have only the hope of the necessary rescue.
The time in which we live suffers hardship. It is a meagre time, to quote a line from the poet Friedrich Hölderlin. Its hardship is all the greater because we hardly suspect it. It is unfelt and unnamed because we do not know what we need – because the need proliferates hidden and because we no longer feel the lack. We are accustomed to it because it has been with us for so long; so long that we no longer perceive what we lack and what is necessary for us as human beings, indeed, a rescue.
What need permeates our living in the world of the present? Superficially, it is the century’s manifold dangers, above all climate change and the destruction of the natural environment, not to mention the imponderables of digital change and the instability of a global economy that distributes its profits highly unevenly. The aggression of the superpower in the Far East and the growth of militant religious fundamentalism are also threatening. However, these dangers themselves are not the real crisis that is sweeping through our world. The real crisis is our inability to deal with the dangers of this century in an appropriate way. We either ignore them or fixate on them completely – so much so that the real crisis remains hidden; so much so that it disappears behind a blind spot in the collective trance. This real crisis is a crisis of thinking.
We fail to consider thinking. Yet the way we think is extremely questionable. Our way of thinking tempts us to settle comfortably and cosily into the meagreness of the present. In doing so, we follow the human image of a psychology that explains to us that we are beings of neediness who draw their life energy from constantly striving to satisfy all possible needs. That is why we have created the great, global machine of economics, which reliably produces all the goods, merchandise or services that we need. Without realising it, we are transformed by the machine and the thinking that underlies it: It turns us into consumers, need-satisfiers or users, whose ‘meaning of life’ is reduced to mindlessly and callously consuming the resources of this world.
The real need is the lack of thought. It forces us to assimilate to the machine. But the more we obey this compulsion, the more we distance ourselves from what the need could still turn: from the necessary. What is the necessary? It is not the need. It is not something we need. Rather, it is what our need. It is that which awakens in us all that which we do not need, but which makes us human without need: that which makes us flourish, that which fulfils us with meaning, that which makes us affirm life and the world. It is that which inspires and animates us – precisely because we do not need or consume it. But what do we call this necessity that is hidden behind the blind spot of our thought patterns? Since it reveals itself through its effectiveness, and this effectiveness is nothing other than enthusiasm, we call it spirit.
The need of the time is its lack of spirit. Only very few are aware of this need. Since we only consider valuable what satisfies our needs, the mind usually remains unconsidered. That is why thoughtlessness prevails. That is why we content ourselves with eking out our time as consumers. That is why we do not suffer hardship from the lack of enthusiasm. That is why we resemble the frog in its pot, which gets used to the rising temperature of the water until, without realising it, it is cooked. Our garden pot is the ever-expanding machine of the global economy. And the water that is killing us is the mindset that is powerful in it: it denies the reality of the mind, replaces enthusiasm with functionality and reduces humanity to functioning as a consumer. The fact that we no longer consider this is alarming. The fact that we have weaned ourselves off thinking and become accustomed to the absence of the spirit is the plight of the present.
But let’s take a moment to realise what is happening in the world: how disheartened and uninspired we are in the Covid pandemic, how little we consider this crisis an opportunity, how trapped we are in conventional lines of thought even when they lead us to a dead end. If only we could just realise for once, we would see that we are completely bewildered and feel abandoned by all good spirits.
Earlier generations called their good spirits gods. In view of this, we now suspect why Novalis was able to say in an essay from 1797: ‘Where there are no gods, ghosts prevail.’
The ghosts
Our habits are haunted by ghosts. The more accustomed we are to them, the more we disaccustom ourselves from the spirit. The more they indulge us with what we believe we need, the more we become blind to what could fulfil us. The more we get used to them, the more power we give them. The ghostly reign is the adversity of the present, which is all the greater because we are unaware of it.
Who are the ghosts that live in our heads? Their names sound harmless: Wanting, Knowing, Doing, Using. The oldest and most powerful of these demons is Wanting. It dominates the thinking of the modern man. We constantly pay homage to it, because we are firmly convinced that our will must be decisive for our thinking, doing and leaving. Just as religious people once believed that the existence of the world was due to the will of a god, we believe that we can shape our own existence by virtue of our will.
The fact that the will within us determines our identity was already asserted by church father Augustine. That the will depends on knowledge, because otherwise it would be aiming at nothing, is a modern insight. It was made possible by rational science, which promises us subjects the prospect of providing the knowledge we need to rule over the world and subjugate it to our will. For the philosopher René Descartes, using knowledge to become the maître et possesseur de la nature was man’s mission and nobility. In doing so, he also conjured up two other spectres that have been powerful in Europe since the 17th century: making and using – or to use two other names for them: homo faber and homo economicus.
Homo faber is the man of action: the technician and engineer. We owe the tremendous progress of the last 300 years to him. But at the same time, we also have him to thank for the ecological crisis of the present. His masterpiece is to fundamentally transform the world. In his realm, living nature becomes a resource to be exploited. He puts his skills to the test with it. He gives will and knowledge two arms and two hands with which they demonstrate their power in and over the world. Homo Faber creates his world according to his will and based on knowledge.
His brother, Homo Oeconomicus, exploits the world as a resource. He, too, is a master of transformation, for in his realm everything becomes an instrument in the service of his interests. He seeks an advantage in order to succeed in the marketplace of life. He seeks power to prevail against his competitors. He seeks knowledge and information to continually maximise his benefit.
Will, knowledge, action and use have constructed the global machine in which we live without realising it. We have become so accustomed to it that we no longer mind being without good minds. They pamper us so well in satisfying our needs that we no longer feel the hardship of mindlessness and fail to recognise what is necessary. They have weaned us so completely from fulfilment that we consider our disbelief to be quite normal. And so it should come as no surprise to us when they come together these days to construct another spectre. The merit of revealing its name goes to the bestselling author Juval Noah Harari. He has made it the title of a book: Homo Deus.
Homo Deus combines will, knowledge, action and use to persist or endure. Homo Deus makes everything subservient to this: his own continued existence, or more precisely, his immortality. According to Harari, this is the ultimate, highest goal of Homo Deus. It is, according to the promise of those who pay homage to Homo Deus, what will finally save humanity from all adversity. After all, what could endanger him if death is conquered? But this will only be possible if Homo Deus takes will, knowledge, action and utility into his service. His will must be focused not only on knowing, but on becoming omniscient with the help of big data and artificial intelligence. His actions must be directed towards becoming all-powerful with the help of advanced technologies such as genetic engineering, biotech or robotics. Its purpose must be to generate the financial resources needed to fight against death. If it succeeds, Homo Deus will have replaced all the good spirits of the past. Man will no longer need any gods, because he himself has become necessary: a god-man and saviour.
But in truth, Homo Deus is just a mighty spectre that lacks any power to save. He is just the optimised machine ghost that uses human ignorance to heat up the garden pot to lethal levels. If he prevails, we face complete loss of spirit. Manipulation, conditioning and fanaticism will then take the place of real enthusiasm. Everything will become artificial, a product. That is when the need will be greatest. Only one thing will help. Martin Heidegger said it in 1966: ‘Only a god can save us.’
The growing
Who is the god that can still save us? Certainly not the god that Homo Deus presents itself as the successor to. Certainly not the almighty, omniscient, immortal. This god is dead, as Friedrich Nietzsche aptly said. No, it is a different god, a different spirit of. He is the opposite of today’s ghosts: not will, but being; not knowledge, but understanding; not making, but creating; not using, but cultivating; not the ghost of the machine, but the Spirit of the living world – the inspiring Spirit, which we do not need and which, precisely for that reason, can fill us like nothing else.
No one can create the spirit that inspires us. The spirit blows where it wills. It cannot be forced, but it grows. It grows and blows where we allow it to grow and blow. It does not reside in our will, but in the middle of the world – or, more precisely, between us and the world, as Martin Buber said. When we turn to the things of this world in a spirit of understanding – when we allow ourselves to be touched by them and pay attention to what they have to say to us, then the dimension of the spirit opens up to us and we can draw from it. This drawing is not a making, in which a will powerfully manifests itself. It is a response to what people, things and phenomena in this world have to say to us. It is a responsible creation that remains bound to what it responds to. It is not a use, but a cultivation that turns to what is: it nurtures and cares for it so that it can unfold its potential and flourish. That is the cultural achievement of the mind. Wherever it blows, it bears witness to its creative power. What it creates is not something that is willed and made, but a growth that has come into being – nourished by enthusiasm and devotion to the being of the world. It is not useful, but meaningful. It is beautiful. ‘Beauty will save the world,’ said Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
The saving
Beauty saves because it inspires us. Those who are addressed by the beautiful answer with an unconditional yes: yes, it is good. Yes, it is meaningful. This yes is an expression of enthusiasm. It is not made, but grown: in the encounter with the beautiful, which bears witness to the spirit of life and which has arisen in a creative encounter with the being of the world. Hölderlin knew this. Wherever enthusiasm takes hold of a person, as he writes in his elegy ‘Bread and Wine’, ‘words must arise like flowers’. This is the poet speaking, but all artists know that wherever the spirit of life takes hold of them and inspires them, a beautiful work matures within them. Art is not made, but grows. And so does that which saves.
But is it really growing? Is it growing in the machine that holds us all in its grip – so tight that we no longer perceive the danger that threatens us and fail to recognise the need to turn to the spirit? Are we not blind to the existence of the living world? And does this blindness not culminate in our will to break the oldest law of nature: the law of finiteness and mortality? Even a global pandemic does not seem to awaken us from the trance into which the quiet whirring of the machine has long since plunged us. We hear about death and mortality, but we do not allow them to tell us anything. We place our hope in economics and technology and do not hear the call of life, which, in the face of mass dying, tells us what the god Apollo once told those seeking advice in the sanctuary of Delphi: ‘Know thyself!’ We do not understand that through death – the ultimate danger – the spirit of life throws us the sheet anchor: ‘You are mortal, human’, he calls to us his friendly memento mori: ‘You are part of the great, eternal nature. Stick to it and not to your will! Seek fulfilment not in the satisfaction of your needs, but in the meaning and beauty of this world! Do not strive to live forever, but to be free and alive during your lifetime! It is not your will that will save you, nor your technique, nor Homo Deus. Only what grows will save you: the God, the Spirit of Life. This barely heard encouragement from the global pandemic allows us to understand what Friedrich Hölderlin promised: ‘God is near and hard to grasp. But where there is danger, the saving also grows.’