John Dunn

Ernst Jünger’s Eumeswil is an allegory about survival under the oligarchs of liberalism, principally the Condor, a scavenger. Implicit in Jünger’s description of the proto-Google or Wikipedia called by him the luminar, is a warning about the uses and abuses of centralised sources of knowledge. This was written in 1977 (or so Wiki tells me!), way before the internet.

‘A petrified memory’, he calls it, ‘and on the other hand, the sphinx that responds’.

‘Certainly there are objections. My dear old dad generally refuses to employ this part of the luminar; it offends his sense of historical precision. But then how precise is historiography-say, Plutarch's? The great speeches of kings and generals before a battle? Was he present? He must have put the words into his heroes' mouths. And why not? Besides, I often hear better things from the luminar. And the sources of the era that introduced speaking machines are terribly meagre.’

Better things perhaps - but from the one source of knowledge... the only source?

© John Dunn.