Just leave us in peace with your eternal processes. The resting state1 we have assumed is a position. It is placeless (utopian) and thus represents an abundance of time. We have achieved the resting state because we were able to synchronize all places and remove them from the world. Everything has become simultaneous and spaceless. All possibilities have moved to the present as all places have been reduced to one single point, to the here and now. They have become real. And we, too, as we find ourselves in a resting state, have pulled out of the flow of time and have become completely realized beings. We have achieved the goal of history—and not only of this one history, but, generally, of all kinds of histories. At this position and all around it, all kinds of possibilities are fulfilled. We can observe this fulfillment from our position. With our tranquility satisfied (befriedigt), we are pleased (zufrieden). This is perpetual peace.

We should contemplate the incisive comment by the previous speaker that peace is a condition, and wherever we find movement, there is war. He probably meant that, first, all peace movements are aggressive endeavors and, second, that pacifism and imperialism are synonymous—as suggested by the term “pax romana.” Conversely, he probably also meant that all movements (all aggressive endeavors) are to be considered pacific because they pursue a kind of peace whose motto is si vis pacem pare bellum [if you want peace, prepare for war], which pretty much summarizes all historical acts.

Peace is a manifestation of old age. Only those at rest are responsible for peace. Peace manifests when time gets old, and it manifests when society gets old. Peace is senility. When time was young, it was in flux (läufig). In fact, it was simultaneously preliminary (vorläufig) and incidental (beiläufig). It kept society up to date (auf dem laufenden). It constantly bore young. Ever since the pre-Socratics, many people have racked their brains over this. Some have suggested that time carries all things as it courses. Others have suggested that all things are born through and with time, that the course of time (war) is the father of all things (polemos pater panton). Yet others have suggested that the essence (“to on”) remains untouched by the course of time. Most everyone agrees, however, that time is running toward a goal, toward a dam, toward a “fullness of time,” in short, toward perpetual peace. People who were still up-to-date thought that perpetual peace was a state in which everything was fulfilled, in which humanity faces fulfillment tranquilly. Today we know that the fullness of time has not been achieved. It is exhausted. We do not perceive ourselves as in some kind of beyond; we perceive ourselves as in something concrete. Perpetual peace comes about when everything, exhausted, has concentrated on the here and now.

We have accomplished peace with the help of a certain technique called telematics. This technique allowed us to make all places present such that all events around the world appear to us simultaneously. The simultaneity of all events has resulted in all of them becoming meaningless. And the fact that the events appear to us on screens, for example, has resulted in all of them becoming noninteractional. The meaninglessness and abstractness of all events is exactly what has facilitated this apathy, the kind of vita contemplativa we live in this resting state. Telematics is the technique of fulfillment. It is fulfillment itself.

Telematics fulfills what was promised from the beginning, for example, the promise of the eternal peace of the Sabbath, from which humanity emerges from the flow of time to contemplate eternity. Or the platonic promise of a tranquil (theoretical) life that permits the recognition of perpetual forms. Or the promise of the stoa, that is, to ascend from the suffering of the transient into eternity, thanks to equanimity and insensitivity (ataraxia and apathy). However, telematics represents not only the fulfillment of Western promises, but also of Buddhist ones—not surprising, given its partially Japanese origins.

Telematics, of course, is not the first attempt to achieve perpetual peace by technological means. Its predecessor is film. Back then, the course of time was fed onto celluloid strips, which were cut and glued, accelerated and decelerated such that it was possible to view the beginning and end of time simultaneously. One was above the times such that they could be programmed. But this was not yet true peace. The producer was dependent on actors (troublemakers). We have only been able to speak of the factual indifference and abstractness of all events and of the end of history, since telematics stored the course of time immaterially and made it retrievable (and revocable) at the push of a button. It is therefore not enough to ascend from the flow of time and survey it in order to gain peace. One has to be able to make time as well.

As long as we were kept informed, we thought, mistakenly, that while being in the flow of time, we could make history within history. Only now that we are detached because history is indifferent and meaningless to us do we recognize that it is only possible to do anything while being in a state of dégagement, indifferent and contemplative. To produce means to pull upward—which is why producers need to be above matters, to pull them toward themselves (retrieve). Telematics permits us to retrieve history, to make it present at the push of a button, and also to make it disappear again with another push of the button. We find ourselves in a new condition that permits us to combine and generate all kinds of courses of history to create new ones, even those we invent ourselves. Quietly and deliberately we can compose ever-new histories in this condition, that is, we can make history in the true sense of the word. The resting state is the position of God.

The difference between a person who stays up-to-date and someone who faces the course of time while at rest is the difference between an actor and a player. Whoever stays up-to-date will be carried away by the course of time and cannot achieve peace. Something happens around him constantly, and by default he is a dealer, an actor, an agonist. He presents the protagonist in his own agony and the antagonist of the agonies of all other victims carried along in the course of time. A person who faces the flow of time, however, does not perceive things as objects that resist him, but as envisioned possibilities. He can play with them, move and set them just like chess pieces or Go stones in order to create new circumstances that never existed before. Things don’t slip between his fingers anymore (there is no more becoming); they are available to him at all times (stored in a memory that can be manipulated). There is no more flow of time; according to the program, everything is centered on the person who deliberates. Only in the fullness of time, and from within same fullness, does making history become possible. Only at the end of history is it possible to create res gestae, to create a historical act.

The difference between the person engaged and within the flow of time (Homo faber) and the person at rest, contemplating (Homo ludens), is the difference between the dealer and the artist. It is evident that the dealer acts in accordance with the program of the artist. The artist proves to be the dramaturge of the drama History, and the dealer proves to be his chess piece, his puppet. We total artists at rest, we, the programmers of all dramas and agonies, paradoxically represent the source of all acts. We are the unmoved movers, the motors behind all motives.

This, then, is perpetual peace: to program all action and, along with it, all suffering—indifferently and with sovereign apathy to contemplate it with satisfaction. Perpetual peace is not human, it is superhuman. And that is why those who are still up-to-date, those who are still human, call up to us to say: “requiescant in pacem”—rest in peace.