On Potential and Facts

1 It is important to distinguish them, to bring them out, if one wants to avoid (and one may not want to; that is for one to know) confusion. No artist works (potential), not even the richest one (facts).

2 Lenses, microscopes, telescopes, an interest in them—for instance, the person who prefers to be an experimental scientist—show little inner sense, or its inhibition; hence, in general, their religiosity is crudely childish and exoteric.

Now, wasn’t it always like that?, hence the lack of originality—though originality is always present, «but rarely do we have the courage for what we truly know».

3 The general is one of the particularities; algebra may be more general than arithmetic, but that does not mean the whole is not arithmetic. Perhaps what we lack—this is what Saint Paul is pointing toward (he being a particular case of hard-line exotericism and the semi-overcoming of that exotericism)—is an arithmetic more comprehensive than the algebra reached so far.

The problem with that leap from the particular to the general lies in «blowing one’s powder too soon», in the fact pointed out by that diplomat Nietzsche mentions: «let us beware of our first impulses; they are almost always good».

4 From the standpoint of potential, speed turns into facts; that same thing, slow, is apologetic. We could see it as two places apologia can occupy, at the beginning or at the end; in this regard Goethe, speaking of Shakespeare and of the genius of duty:

5 Do it and apologize afterward: perhaps this is natural to every genesis, every principle, every prince; the principle belongs to the people—it acts and speaks accordingly.

6 People see things from wherever they can, that is: always from their talent, from a «position»; talent as potential may well be an imbrication, it makes one think of a meta-talent, something Nietzsche would call us out on, but not to destroy us—rather to put us in our place.

This putting each person in their place was part of his talent; long before Paul Rée’s suicide he had already put him in his place, and Lou Andreas-Salomé, one of the women he was most taken with, later married a Nietzsche expert who resembled Nietzsche and whom she called Fritz.

The apple tree has the talent for bearing apples; we do not have that talent. It is true that we cannot forget «mutations; they are possible at every moment, as death is»¹, but that does not change the fact that the orange tree bears oranges, and we do not have that talent. But we can cultivate trees.

7 That blowing of one’s powder too soon perhaps occurs in politics, in our relationship with others, especially with other people; but this says nothing against the fact that such expenditure creates facts.

Is there a relation between not blowing one’s powder too soon and telling a story, or the ability to tell a story? Through the development of that talent, one achieves the ability to create facts and, at the same time, to do so politically, at a rhythm that lets others understand those new facts and images.

8 Orthography demands no small amount of social approval; just being understood already imposes that. Maybe images, painting, have an advantage in this respect; cinema may be an even better medium in this respect, despite the work it takes. This brings the script to mind.

9 It is a good observation, fundamental for our time, and therefore it has to be treated relatively: what Goethe says is preserved even with respect to cinema insofar as the image is still similar to the result of a potential; the problem, even in cinema, which undoubtedly offers a better medium, is still present in the process, in the morphology that relates the artist—in the work of art.

10 Anxiety: this means humanity is making facts, hence the image dominates, hence the inexplicable interests produced by abbreviation and time savings: they yield far more interest than expected, much as «the bourgeois scientists of the nineteenth century produced many more results than they expected»²: «their position did not allow them to see the full extent of what they were doing; the same happened to Spengler, the great historian»:

11 «An error that can no longer be corrected,» Jünger says this with respect to prime numbers as the base on which numbers rest; of course it can be corrected, 0 is more of an integer than one, it always was, the dimensions of the cosmos keep expanding, maybe later on things will be different, then we would be much closer to the gods than we are today. Yes, it is a matter of perspective, but again, hasn’t it always been that way for us?: this does not mean that «everything» is a matter of perspective.

12 It is hard to ask someone to accept something that will lead them to ruin—since that person has this error: what is carrying you «is a train you can get off. This is well expressed in Genesis:

13 What does it say about someone who doesn’t want to get off a train that is going to crash?, are they deceived by speed, by wanting to be a fact, by not distinguishing between potential and having done?

14 What destroys giants, even titans—though these only relatively, like everything fundamental: height; those who can resolve things on a higher plane are the ones who overcome Gaia’s envoys—and the ones who show them their place

15 Since ability «can»—(potential) be more valuable than knowledge—(fact), guidance can be very valuable: it is not so much that we lack the example of the best human beings who appeared in history; what we lack when we are young is someone to point them out, someone to point us toward them.

On this rests, if you like, the sacredness of a good teacher and the value for a person being educated by someone, which is not so much a matter of ability (what do we know, to say someone has no potential?) nor is it a matter of fact either; perhaps a great teacher has to be, in this respect, gifted at the «recognition» of the best.

16 A weasel has no idea why it is not wanted in the living room. But it does know it is not wanted, that it is better off living hidden. This judgment, although it is a relative judgment, does not change the fact that you don’t want it in the living room. The weasel is superficial, it wants to adapt to the environment, it is pure exposure.

In exposure, things are discovered that we should have known beforehand; this comes about because in exposure one experiences what must adapt to the environment. The exoteric, if crude, is problematic. The satisfaction obtained this way has something of the labors of Sisyphus about it, as can be seen in dependence on fame.

17 This hypothesis is valuable; it forces esoterics to confront the fact that there is value also in statistics, in Saint Paul. As we said above, algebra manages to be more comprehensive than arithmetic, but only within the framework of a given arithmetic; there are arithmetics much more comprehensive than those we have discovered so far, as shown by the fact that the imaginary number loses its contradiction as soon as we accept that in the unknown there is much more than we have discovered so far, much more than we have so far understood in the 1, which is only a historical accident, part of a stage in our development.

18 What is hard for people in this respect is understanding that the fundamental is criticizable, but relatively, and that its being relative says nothing against, on the contrary, the existence of hierarchies—these are demanded even by equality, and perhaps by equality more than by anything else.

19 It is not so much nature, but what a person does with their nature; this has limits, and so does what we can do with our nature, something already influenced by context, family, and what the society in which that person lives has managed to do with its own nature.