Ernst Jünger’s “The Glass Bees” & Our Dystopian Present

In our protean age of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and virtual reality, Ernst Jünger’s uncanny vision of a dystopian world dominated by the machinations of high tech seems strikingly prescient.

“The secret force behind technology appears to be the intention to make things insipid.
The flower without fragrance is its emblem.” ~Nicolás Gómez Dávila

When Ernst Jünger’s novel The Glass Bees was first published in 1957, critics were quick to dismiss the book as lacking contemporary relevance. In our protean age of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and virtual reality, however, Jünger’s uncanny vision of a dystopian world dominated by the machinations of high tech seems strikingly prescient.

Set in a post-war ‘Europe of the future,’ The Glass Bees follows two days in the life of Captain Richard, a down-and-out ex-cavalryman who has been offered a job as chief of security at Zapparoni Works, a powerful corporation that resembles a cross between Tesla and Disney. Standing at the helm of Zapparoni Works is the enigmatic Giancomo Zapparoni, an Italian tech mogul whose intricate automatons have revolutionized every aspect of modern life. Described as “one of those men who have money to burn,” at the outset of the novel Zapparoni seems more myth than flesh and blood man— a hovering omnipresence whose inimitable technical virtuosity allows him to exert an outsized influence on the world of The Glass Bees from behind the impenetrable veil of corporate technocracy. As Captain Richard tells us: “Zapparoni really could pass for the showpiece of that elated technical optimism which dominates our leading minds. With him, technology took a new turn toward downright pleasure—the age old magicians’ dream of being able to change the world by thought alone seemed almost to have come true.”

Despite Zapparoni’s overwhelming success (Richard notes that his inventions quickly became “irreplaceable”), there is one problem he has proven unable to solve: the possibility that the inventors and technical experts he employs might choose to take their talents elsewhere, thus compromising his precious trade secrets. This is where Captain Richard comes in. While Zapparoni has managed to placate most of his workers through a combination of lucrative contracts and creative license, Richard tells us there were occasional exceptions. “It’s an old truth that man cannot always be satisfied.” To contend with these outliers, Zapparoni needs a man capable of doing the dirty work, or as Richard puts it, someone with whom he can “steal horses.”

A military veteran who fancies himself “one mass of useless and antiquated prejudices,” Captain Richard does not hide his scruples about working for the technophilic Zapparoni, whose carefully curated public image is offset by rumors of factory scenes “similar to those which occur in the office of the chief physician of a lunatic asylum.” Indeed, the last man to hold the position now being offered to Richard, Caretti, turned up in just such an institution after having succumbed to manic delusions that involved his “being encircled by minute, evilly-intentioned airplanes.” In Richard’s estimation, the whole affair is likely to end in a bad way: “A position like the one offered by Zapparoni would sooner or later lead to an automobile accident. Anyone inspecting the wreckage would find twenty or thirty bullet holes in the back of the car.” At the same time, however, Richard is sorely in need of a job. His demobilization checks have long-since dried up, and he has no family heirlooms left to pawn. What’s more, Richard’s long-suffering wife, Teresa, has placed her remaining hopes in the opportunity at Zapparoni’s. “I could not bear to think of her face should I come home without any prospects,” Richard confides in the reader. “When she opened the door, she would instantly read everything in my face.”

Having reluctantly agreed to interview for the job, Richard takes a taxi to Zapparoni’s plant. Upon arrival, he is promptly escorted to Zapparoni’s private residence via an underground train that connects the various parts of the sprawling Zapparoni Works. While Zapparoni’s extensive public relations apparatus had led Richard to expect that his home would be a kind of magician’s study, the “Holy of Holies” from which, year after year, “novel and miraculous surprises flooded the world as if poured from a cornucopia,” Richard is surprised to find the tech mogul lives in a quaint, old-fashioned dwelling, suggestively constructed amid the ruins of a Cistercian abbey. In contrast to the dwellings commonly found in the cities, where according to Richard “buildings are pushed up high, and jerry-built structures rise by the thousands,” in Zapparoni’s home a kind of vanished pastoral tranquility prevails:

In the house and on the terrace a kind of temporal slow motion had prevailed. It was a sensation comparable to that of walking through old clearings in a forest. One might be living in the early nineteenth or even in the eighteenth century. The masonry, the paneling, the textiles, the pictures and books—everything gave evidence of solid craftsmanship. One sensed the old measurements: the foot, the ell, the inch, the rod. One felt that light and fire, bed and board were still managed in the old way; one sensed the luxury of human care.

Confronted with these vestiges of the past, Captain Richard begins to reflect on his youthful days as a cavalryman and the dramatic changes that took place in the intervening years. Two episodes in particular bear mentioning here. In the first, Richard describes the untimely death of Lorenz, one of his comrades from the light cavalry, in the years following the end of the First World War. In those days, Richard tells us, “almost everyone was possessed with an idea.” Lorenz’s particular idea was that the machine was the source of all evils. To combat this new menace, Lorenz intended to blow up all of the factories, after which he hoped the country would be transformed into a peasant commune “in which everyone would be peaceful, happy and healthy.” Frustrated by the lack of enthusiasm for his schemes among his former comrades, Lorenz determines upon suicide, and leaps from the top floor of his tenement after making a fiery speech to Richard and the other veterans who had gathered there. Unable to banish the memory of this terrible event from his mind’s eye, Richard concludes that persons of “strength and good will” who “draw their nourishment from the past” will inevitably destroy themselves unless they are able to find some firm foundation in the present.

The second episode involves Richard’s chance encounter with Wittgrewe, the cavalryman who first initiated him into the now-lost world of horseback riding as a cadet. Described as a man with “sauntering steps” and a “splendid singing voice,” Richard fondly remembers Wittgrewe as the mentor who taught him how to drink schnapps, smoke, and play at cards—all those pastimes which are “the ultimate tests of being a true soldier.” Some time later, Richard meets Wittgrewe again, only to find that the vivacious “all-round man” of the light cavalry has been replaced by a pallid streetcar conductor who “wore a stiff green cap” and “rang a bell every three minutes by pulling a strap.” Unlike Lorenz, who could not adapt to the dramatic changes taking place around him, Wittgrewe appears to have nothing but disdain for his riding days, and even regards his new occupation as an upgrade. “The sight upset me,” Richard confesses. “I felt distressed, as if a free-roaming animal had been imprisoned in a cage and taught a few pitiful tricks.”

More the rule than the exception, Richard tells us that a great many of the light cavalry ended up just like Wittgrewe over the years, performing mechanical “piecework” in the big cities. As a result of this general trend “toward a more colorless and shallow life,” Richard adds that joy in labor began to disappear:

That they no longer knew the old kind of happiness was obvious from the discontent which spread over their features. Soon dissatisfaction, prevailing over all other moods, became their religion. Where the sirens screamed, it was horrible. And soon there was hardly a corner left where sirens could not be heard.

Captain Richard’s reflections touch upon a question that is often overlooked in our contemporary debates over the role of technology in society: whether changes in technology prefigure changes in man. Here we might look to two of Jünger’s contemporaries for insight; namely Jünger’s younger brother, Friedrich-Georg, whose philosophical work The Perfection of Technology was first published in 1946, as well as the controversial jurist and critic of liberalism Carl Schmitt, who explored the implications of technological progress in his Glossarium. While it would be impossible to do either work justice here, suffice it to say that both works gave expression to the fears of their authors that modern man was in danger of losing his essence as a result of his infatuation with technological power. As F.G. Jünger wrote in The Perfection of Technology:

We will start from an observation which no one who has ever made it can forget. For to observe our modern civilization means to raise the question: Is there not a direct connection between the increase of knowledge concerning mechanically exact processes and the fact that modern man, in a strange manner, loses his individuality, loses his balance, his grip upon life, feels increasingly endangered and susceptible to attack in the security that is his due?

Written amid the unprecedented destruction of the Second World War, The Perfection of Technology is fundamentally concerned with the extent to which the technological-scientific worldview has come to determine every sphere of human endeavor, from the economic to the political to the interpersonal. At the end of this unnatural process of perfektion (which in German lacks the positive overtones of its English equivalent), F.G. Jünger suggests that man himself would become technified— a mere cog in a sprawling machine, much like the hapless former cavalryman Wittgrewe, whose senescence is rightly lamented by Captain Richard.

In support of his thesis, F.G. Jünger notes that our advanced stage of technological progress has been accompanied by mechanical theories of the nature of man. However useful such theories may be for describing biological processes, from a philosophical perspective they subject man to an all-embracing functionalism, and thus work to limit his freedom:

Just as we speak of the ‘machinery’ of state, of political ‘machines,’ of the legal ‘apparatus,’ of the ‘driving power’ of the economy, just so all things step by step assume the character of machinery, of a reality understood in terms of machinelike functionings. This kind of thinking, typically, has lost all respect for freedom.

Subconsciously aware of this loss of freedom, of his diminished room to maneuver, modern man abandons himself to the ever-increasing mechanical motions of technology, which create the illusion of freedom. Rather than liberating him, however, F.G. Jünger argues that this artificial form of motion only compounds the degree of man’s subjugation: “The increasing mobility of man is related to the inroads of organization and apparatus into human life; as we get mobile, we also get mobilized. And in the same proportion man becomes mentally mobile—that is wide open to the invasions of ideologies.”

Similar themes are taken up by Carl Schmitt in his Glossarium, a collection of post-war writings that touch upon various subjects, including the modern impetus toward utopian planning enabled by our belief in the limitless potential of technological progress. For Schmitt, the 20th century had vindicated the Marxist idea that technology was the true revolutionary force at work in history. “Intelligence and rationalism are not in themselves revolutionary. But technical thinking is foreign to all social traditions: the machine has no tradition.” In other words, because technology is premised on a principle of progressive change and development, the society that makes technology its raison d’etre resigns itself to a permanent state of revolution. In the post-war era, this perpetual revolution has become a thoroughly institutionalized phenomenon— the chimerical demesne of technicians, technocrats, and other master manipulators. As Schmitt notes in one of his earliest additions to the Glossarium:

We have reached the point in which this dynamical world must constantly destroy the old, and the free power of the human being totally encompasses nature, which also means the physical and psychical nature of the human being. This is the problem of totality, the compulsion to total planning, the total power of the human being, the complete eradication of natural limits.

The key word here is ‘psychical.’ According to Richard, his “evil star” had fated him to be born in times “when only the sharply demarcated and precisely calculable were in fashion.” Corresponding to this change, Richard tells us, was a change in men, who became more mechanical and calculable, to the point that “you hardly felt that you were among human beings.” The exemplar of this shift in Richard’s personal experience was Fillmor, a brilliant classmate from the riding academy who was able to learn languages as if they were mere child’s play and could solve difficult arithmetic problems in his head.

Fillmor’s undisputed genius notwithstanding, Richard tells us he was wholly lacking in passion and imagination. “He wished only to set forces in motion; he craved only the power of control.” Because of this, Fillmor proved able to not only survive, but thrive, in the chaotic succession of monarchies, republics, and dictatorships to which Richard alludes throughout his narrative. Indeed, while Richard had to leave his cavalry days behind and become a tank inspector “in order to be only just tolerated,” Fillmor became the “indispensable expert” on whose mind rested “the pure continuity, the uninterrupted functioning, of power.” Without experts like Fillmor, Richard asserts, “revolutions would come to nothing, remaining a mixture of crimes and meaningless talk.”

And what of the technologists themselves? The modern mind tends to laud the technologist as a great innovator and benefactor of humanity writ large, but Richard recognizes that each innovation and improvement serves primarily to consolidate power in the technologist’s hands:

A man like Zapparoni could say what he wanted to—it sounded well. It had authority, not only because he could buy up the press, which paid homage to him in the editorial and the advertising departments, but principally because he was an embodiment of the spirit of the age. This homage had, therefore, the advantage that it was not only paid for, but that it was, at the same time, sincerely felt.

A man who believes that the beauty and logic of nature is inadequate and should be surpassed, we might even say that Zapparoni embodies one of the central tenets of the whole modern scientific-technological project bequeathed to us by Bacon and Descartes: that is, that man should strive to conquer nature, rather than his fellow man. But are these mutually exclusive aspirations? The Glass Bees suggests that by conquering nature and turning it to their ends, technologists like Zapparoni inevitably transform the world around them, thus forcing the rest of humanity to measure up to their vision. As Schmitt and F.G. Jünger recognized, sooner or later the technologists are bound to run up against “the last limit of nature”: the human nature of the individual human being. The inevitable result will be the emergence of a Brave New World-type society in which human nature has been changed according to plan by human beings.

The ambiguity between using technology to conquer nature on the one hand and humanity on the other is illustrated as Richard gains deeper insight into the true nature of the Zapparoni Works. While Richard notes that the exterior of the plant is covered in a colorful array of posters and advertisements underscoring Zapparoni’s involvement in the entertainment industry, he quickly concludes this display is a mere cover for the Zapparoni Works’ military-industrial underbelly:

By and large, the Zapparoni Works resembled a temple of Janus with one bright and one dark portal, and when clouds were gathering on the horizon, a stream of fiendishly devised, murderous tools began to pour forth from the dark gate. At the same time this dark gate was taboo; actually it should not have existed at all. But time and again extremely disquieting rumors leaked out of the construction department, and it was with good reason that the workshop for models was located in the innermost restricted area. The job opening was very likely connected with such matters.

Richard’s suspicions are confirmed when Zapparoni, an elderly man whose eyes seem to change color, makes an entrance and, after a brief introduction, sends Richard to the mysterious garden behind his home, there to await a kind of test. Here Richard encounters the titular glass bees—a swarm of insectoid automata that busily comb the fields of flowers, sucking out their nectar and distributing it in glass hives, where it undergoes a chemical transformation into an artificial, honey-like substance.

Fascinated by the display at first, it soon occurs to Richard that the true purpose of the glass bees could not merely be to accelerate the production of artificial condiments: “That these glass bees were collecting honey was, of course, a kind of game, an absurd task for such ingeniously contrived mechanisms. . .but even for the most lucrative business they were still too expensive. Economic absurdities are produced only when power is at stake.” The more likely possibility, in Richard’s view, is that the glass bees are a kind of self-directed drone that could be used to wreck aircraft or disarm rockets. In short, Zapparoni’s seemingly idyllic garden is revealed to be an “airfield for testing micro-robots.”

Even more disturbing to Richard than the martial aspect of the glass bees is the extent to which they trespass upon nature’s design. Unlike real bees, which Richard describes as “messengers of love” on account of their mission to pollinate and fertilize, Zapparoni’s glass insects callously suck the flowers dry, so that there is not even a morsel left remaining for the real bees. If used beyond the confines of the garden, Richard predicts that bees and flowers alike would soon be faced with extinction:

Zapparoni’s glass collectives, as far as I could see, ruthlessly sucked out the flowers and ravished them. Wherever they crowded out the old colonies, a bad harvest, a failure of crops, and ultimately a desert were bound to follow. After a series of extensive raids, there would no longer be flowers or honey, and the true bees would become extinct in the way of whales and horses.

After observing the glass bees for a time, Richard’s attentions are directed to a small pond located further afield. There he is horrified to discover what appears to be a large number of severed human ears lying about. Believing the ears to be the remains of those who had tried and failed the test of Zapparoni’s garden, Richard is gripped by nausea. After regaining his composure however, Richard begins to suspect the “brutal exhibition” is in fact part of the test itself, another technical illusion that hints at the true nature of the Zapparoni Works. Indeed, although shocked by the display of the ears, Richard concludes they were “inevitable as motif,” as they symbolize “the triumph of a dissecting mentality” on which much scientific progress depends.

Taken together, Richard’s observations concerning the glass bees and the severed ears suggest that, rather than surpassing nature, Zapparoni’s supposed improvements have despoiled it, robbing it of its inimitable mystery. As Pope Benedict warned when he spoke of the dangers of a growing “technological prometheanism” in our time, should this “dissecting mentality” be applied to man, the human person would be similarly despoiled, as the individual would be reduced to the sum of his or her parts.

Further investigation on Richard’s part soon reveals that his instincts were correct: the severed ears are not human ears after all, but spare parts used in the manufacture of Zapparoni’s marionettes, which according to Richard have ushered in a “new and more beautiful era in dramatic art.” Although relieved to find that the ears are, in fact, carefully crafted imitations, Richard’s sense of relief is overshadowed by the altogether more disturbing possibility that Zapparoni’s techniques have finally effaced all distinctions between the real and the artificial, between man and automaton:

When I had examined the ear, I had done so wishing that it were a hoax, an artifice, a doll’s ear, that it had never known pain. In this place, however, a mind was at work to negate the image of a free and intact man. The same mind had devised this insult: it intended to rely on man power in the same way that it had relied on horsepower. It wanted units to be equal and divisible, and for that purpose man had to be destroyed as the horse had already been destroyed.

Enraged by his newfound insight into the true nature of Zapparoni’s garden, Richard fetches a golf club from a nearby shed and uses it to destroy one of the hovering glass bees. Before Richard can flee the garden however, Zapparoni appears on the scene for a final confrontation, and Richard must now make a choice.

Though I would refrain from spoiling the surprise ending of The Glass Bees for any reader who wishes to read this strange novel for himself, I would offer one final insight into the role that memory plays in Captain Richard’s narrative. If we accept, as Jünger suggests we must, that the technological genie cannot be put back into its bottle, the question necessarily arises: how can a person like Lorenz or Captain Richard, who “draws his nourishment from the past,” dwell meaningfully in the ahistorical present that technology has engendered? This is perhaps the principal question confronting conservatives in a world increasingly influenced by real-life Zapparonis—Yuval Harari, Klaus Schwab and the like. The Glass Bees suggests the answer is intuitively tied to memory. Although the actual events of The Glass Bees occur over the course of two days, Richard’s narrative takes the reader on a fragmented journey through the past as he tells of civil wars and childhood cowboy and indian games, of fallen monarchies and the complexities of love. This emphasis on memory in The Glass Bees suggests a commitment on Jünger’s part to what might be called a traditional anthropology, or a conception of human nature that stresses the continuity between past and present in the inner life of every man. Such an anthropology stands in direct contrast to Zapparoni’s autonomous vision of human destiny, which breaks with the past entirely in the interest of leading man into “fabulous realms.” Indeed, memory is the imaginative bastion that keeps us grounded in what Richard describes as the “boundaries of our innermost being.” Though the fleeting moments of pain and happiness stored up there may not be sufficient to resolve the “cunning question-and-answer game between overbred brains” that now constitutes the struggle for power in our decidedly complex, high-tech world, such moments nevertheless orient us toward the place where our riches may truly be found. As Captain Richard comes to realize, technical perfection, which strives toward the calculable, and human perfection, which strives toward the incalculable, are ultimately irreconcilable: “If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other: there is, in any case, a parting of the ways. Whoever realizes this will do cleaner work one way or the other.”

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay.