“objects” from the past “historically,” nor by misjudging them based on the opinions of today. We either are or are not historical only by belonging to the essence of history. This affinity is grounded in belonging that itself can only be preserved in a listening and a compliance that yields in obedience to the truth of beyng. Without historical memory, historical education is capable of nothing. Yet taking refuge in technical business and the proximity to business is likewise capable of nothing.
The human who exists in proximity to business “lives” out of the unconditional forgetfulness of having been forgotten by being.
The modern biological mode of thinking is reduced to regarding aging and age exclusively as decline. Feigning honor and reverence for age by “recognizing” the old whenever they are “young” also belongs to the pseudo-philosophical, i.e. sophistical, essence of this mode of thinking. But honoring age actually entails truly letting the old be old, so that their experience and dignity are revealed. Mislabeling the old as belonging to a youth that is completely severed from all its roots, | a “youth” that can only be measured according to its proximity to business and “data” is, in truth, a form of disdain for age. Nonetheless, the world must await the “experiences” that can be made with this “youth” once it has “aged” biologically and has irrevocably missed out on true youthfulness.
The transformation of history into mere occurrences; the transformation of occurrences into a single process, which is itself technology; the uniformity of the process and the unconditional necessity to supply new pieces of news that say nothing at all.
The inceptual only reappears in the end. The ages of the end (of completion and perishing) are closest to the inception. They alone are in the proximity out of which distancing from the inception and its inceptual distance can at all be experienced. However, in such ages ambiguity is more complete and painful than ever before.
Salvation here will not come from escape routes that go out of the way of the way [dem Weg aus dem Wege gehen]. Salvation here is “only” the path itself—that we once again emerge from the most wayward byways to find our way back onto the path.
“Values” are surely the least valuable. Nobody “lives” and “dies” for “values.”