Thoughts of Max Picard

Only in a world of total discontinuity could a nullity such as Hitler become Führer, because only where everything is disjointed has comparison fallen into disuse. There was only Hitler, the nullity, before everybody’s eyes, and in this instable world wherein everything was changing at every moment one was glad that at least the one nullity, Hitler, remained stable before one’s eyes. An orderly world, a hierarchy, would automatically have placed the nullity, Hitler, into nothingness; he could not have been noticed. Hitler was the excrement of a diabolical world; a world of truth in its order would have pushed him aside. . . .

There is no permanence in this world of discontinuity. The ego exists only in the moment and for the moment. The individual, therefore, can have no evolution in the dimension of time. Everything has to be done in far too little time; hence, the individual gets restless and nervous. In discontinuity the individual also lacks context with his own personal history; he is lacking in the possibility of joining an experience with the context of previous experiences. Since life is lived solely in the moment and for the moment, the moment must carry all the burden; if the experience of a moment is grave, the individual is hit all the harder because the burden cannot be distributed through context with other things. That is what aggravates, exhausts, and unnerves the individual. The ego cries out loud; unable to expand in the dimension of time, the ego in its crying need explodes itself into the dimension of space. Then Hitler came and took over the job of crying into space for all the others, and because his was the loudest cry, he was accepted by all.

Western capitalism doesn’t have any humor either, today, and that comes from the fact that the West has lost its faith. A sense of humor can exist only in a world of faith. For in humor is a trace of the smile with which God observes the mistakes of man. That trace of God’s smile, in man, is our sense of humor.

Source: “Max Picard: A Man of Vision in Our Time.” The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays (2006) by George A. Panichas [editor].