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Older Man: The process of devastation will thus not be warded off, much less ended, with the setting up of a morally grounded world order. [215]

Younger Man: Because here the “measures” [»Maßnahmen«] that humans take—however massive their “extent” [»Ausmaß«] may be—are capable of nothing. For malice, as which the devastation occurs, may very well remain a basic trait of being itself.

Older Man: If in fact the devastation rests in the abandonment of beings by being, and if this abandonment comes forth from being itself. But don’t you also find that this thought—that being is in the ground of its essence malicious—is an awful demand on human thinking?

Younger Man: Certainly, and especially when thinking should also refrain from regarding this thought, that evil would dwell in the essence of being, as “pessimistic” or in any way evaluating it.

Older Man: All this is of course not easy.

Younger Man: That this, namely thinking what is essential, is supposed to be easy is also a demand that comes only from the spirit of the devastation.

Older Man: Because the devastation, insofar as it comes forth from being, is a world-event that beleaguers the earth, humans may never presume to pass judgment on it. For not only is the purview of everyday opining among individuals and groups always too narrow, but also the person who passes judgment too easily falls prey here to a quarreling and an annoyance that gnaw at him; or he becomes a slave to self-righteousness who no longer sees out beyond the façade that he has hurriedly built around himself.

Younger Man: And since enough of the misfortune has been given to us to bear, we ourselves would now like to keep mind and heart free from the disturbing aura exuded by all ill-humored thinking. The more essential an insight is, the greater must also be the tact with which it awakens in fellow humans the knowledge that grows from it. [216]

Older Man: I do not entirely understand why you now stress precisely this.

Younger Man: Because one day, from a more clarified insight into the essence of the devastation, we will recognize that the devastation reigns also and indeed precisely there, where country and people have not been affected by the destruction of the war.

Older Man: And so there, where the world shines with the gleam of advancement, advantages, and fortune; where human rights are respected, where civil order is maintained; and above all where the supply for the continual repletion of an undisturbed contentment is secured, so that everything remains overseeable and arranged and accounted for so as to be useful.