Those that are able to die are first of all the mortals in the weighty sense of this word. Massive distresses innumerable, horrific undying death all about—and nevertheless the essence of death is disguised from the human. The human is not yet the mortal.

Immeasurable suffering creeps and rages over the earth. The flood of suffering rises ever higher. But the essence of pain is concealed. Pain is the rift in which the basic sketch of the fourfold of the world is inscribed. From this basic sketch, that magnitude that is too great for humans receives its greatness. In the rift of pain, what is granted on high guards its perseverance. The rift of pain rends the veiled procession of grace into an unneeded arrival of favor. Everywhere we are assailed by innumerable and measureless suffering. We however are unpained, not brought into the ownership of the essence of pain.

A grizzly abjection makes the rounds. The army of the poor grows and grows. But the essence of poverty is concealed. What takes place in poverty is that what is simple and ameliorating of everything essential, this inconspicuously becomes a propriety [Eigentum] wherein the things enjoy dwelling in a granted world.

Death, the refuge of beyng, pain, the basic sketch of beyng, poverty, the release into the propriety of beyng, are all indications by which the danger lets it be noted that the distress remains outstanding in the midst of the tremendous distresses, that the danger does not exist as the danger. The danger is concealed in that it is disguised by positionality. This itself is veiled once again in what it lets essence, technology. This is also why our relationship to the essence of technology is so strange. To what extent is it strange? Because the essence of technology comes to light as nothing other than positionality, and the essence of this as nothing other than the danger, and this as nothing other than beyng itself. For this reason, precisely now, where everything indeed is more and more permeated by technological manifestations and the effects of technology, we every where still misinterpret technology. We think about it either too briefly or too hastily.

Specifically, we could now be tempted to summarily refute what has been discussed regarding technology, regarding positionality and the danger, in the following way: that technology would be a danger; nowadays this is proclaimed everywhere