DIE SCHERE #13: Notes Again EJ characterizes, with fresh images (the rings spreading round a stone dropped in water, traffic signal, uneasiness of someone just falling ill), the ambiguity and the disquieting effects of the spreading preference for the idea of the environment. This idea is not like a signpost indicating clearly which way to go. It is rather like a signal emitting in all directions premonitions of danger, vague and potentially fatal. It should be noted here that EJ, like in the preceding aphorism, is not out here for debunking the idea of protecting the environment. Like with astrology in the first part of AN DER ZEITMAUER, he avoids an evaluation of the term at hand itself. Rather, he asks what the current inflation of the term signifies. When more and more people are convinced that the environment (or astrology, for that matter) is paramount, the augur feels this is a challenge to read it as a sign of the times, as indicating a sea change deep below the surface. And again, as with that ideal being a new golden apple of Eris that will cause new conflicts, it can portend anything, as he says here, preferably fatal developments. In the second and third paragraphs EJ presents a generalized justification of his auguring in matters of the environment. But here as ever so often he offers images again: before the avalanche comes down single rocks come rolling, someone susceptible to imminent weather changes feels the disaster coming before anything unusual is visible or audible. Granted, you might be able to see and hear further on such a fateful day, but such abnormalities are merely concomitant with or consequences of the climatic change. These are images taken from nature but designed to characterize the signals preceding an epochal change in history. Reading such signals, as the last paragraph defines, may be either a prediction or a prophecy. The former, remaining within the confines of measurable calendar time, can be corroborated or refuted by measuring and comparing. The prophecy, however, creates new data, the prophet being merely a tool or mouthpiece of a higher power. It seems to me that EJ is neither predicting nor prophesying here though assuming the posture of the augur. He is meditating on historical phenomena which, as he senses, indicate a change in the course of history. However, his general theory of the history of man, the planet and the universe, which he has more explicitly developed elsewhere, e.g. in the texts selected and commented upon by Bertil, influences perceptibly his reading of those signals. But like Bertil I prefer to proceed cautiously, to collect a lot more data doing a lot more of close reading before I would venture to expound that theory.
Günter Rebing
