We have looked both individually and together at the twenty-first scenario (which examines blackness) and the seventeenth (which looks at peace). We then asked the programmer of the imagination1 to incorporate our viewpoints into the series. We differ with regard to the Blackness of peace, but we are seeking a congruence of both views. Our names, that of my colleague, Job, and my own, Ulysses, are, we think, not entirely unknown to you. This knowledge will facilitate the decipherment of the image projected here.

From my point of view, the resting state, this all-devouring black hole, is to be considered a deep, but not abysmal, wave trough within the web of phenomena. We all are swimming in the surges of events that lift us up and push us down. We must part the wave surges with our arms to get anywhere. We are not aware of where we wish to go, but we are driven by an inner urge to be homeward bound. This urge we call the love of wisdom or, in short, philosophy. However, this urge is not all that propels us forward; the surges themselves seem to move in a certain direction. We want to go where the surges take us. When we love wisdom, we love fate. That is the real difference between a philosopher and a hero, that is, between the futurologist and the terrorist presented in the first scenario. The hero fights against fate and is devoured by the surge. The philosopher desires fate, and will therefore advance up to the black hole, achieve a state of rest, and with it, peace.

There is a net in the black hole, I call it topos uranikos (heaven, paradise). All surges of phenomena, everything that has ever happened, are captured in its loops and held for all times. We call these loops eideiai (forms). But the net is not apparent to those swimming in the surges because it is black. It does not appear. Nonetheless, there is one perspective from which it becomes visible. We call it theoria. The net comes into view through this theoretical perspective as an orderly network or web. We call this order logic. Therefore, the black hole emerges as an ordered network, invisible from the perspective of the swimmers, but that captures the disorderly surges of the visible, apparent web in its forms. Everything that happens is formalized in the black hole, reduced to its forms. Apparent and seeming phenomena are unveiled therein, that is, preserved: they become truth. Whoever has advanced into the black hole ceases to get lost in the surges of waves, and emerges from error into truth. He may contemplate the eternal, true forms forever. He lives in the eternal peace of truth, of the beautiful and the good.

My colleague has a different view of the black hole, or, rather, he does not see it, he hears it. To him, the black hole is a voice that quietly invites him to break out of the absurd racket, this noisy pile of shards upon which he sits and scrapes himself, and to dust himself off. The voice is barely audible for all the clatter of shards. Only those with excellent hearing—my colleague calls it “faith”—can detect it. This voice will become a profession and calling, and he will try to follow it. According to my colleague, it will lead him “onto the path of righteousness,” and to the black hole. In his language, the hole is called the “Sabbath.” During the Sabbath there is eternal silence, all singing and recitation have been quieted. That’s why we don’t speak of the black hole. My colleague thinks that the Greek word theologia (in German approximately: “speaking of the black hole”) is a self-contradiction.

Although one must remain silent about the black hole and not even speak its name, we must nonetheless speak of the journey to it. My colleague agrees with me when I think of this journey as love. But he does not understand it in the sense of the love of wisdom. He thinks of it as the love of the other. When he says “the other,” he has in mind all other human beings, and especially those who are neighbors, but apart from that he thinks of those who are Very Other. One can only achieve the peace of the Sabbath if one loves one’s neighbor more than anything else and, through him, the Very Other. His interpretation is as follows: as long as we love things—I would say, as long as we are lost in appearance—we must suffer because these things are not palatable, they do not speak to us. A neighbor, however, says “you” to us and we become an “I.” When we, in turn, say “you” to our neighbor, when we recognize him, then we have begun to love the other in the neighbor. In the neighbor’s voice that says “you” to us we detect the quiet call of the Very Other. If we follow this appeal to love we arrive at this ineffable black hole, about which and within which we can say nothing more because we identify in it and with it completely. No voice is necessary (or possible) there because everything is in harmony. My colleague views this as perpetual peace.

We have compared both points of view and, surprisingly, they have converged. I arrive looking; he arrives hearing. I arrive out of space; he arrives out of time. But we both arrive at the same black hole, that is, at a resting state that is spaceless (utopian) for me and timeless (messianic) for him. We are delivered from fallacy, as I say, and from sin, as he would say. We concur that theory and faith are two labels for the same journey, and that when I speak of the true, the good, and the beautiful, I have in mind the same thing as he when he refuses to articulate these by name. This is what we sought to visualize. Whether we were successful remains to be seen. As we must somewhat abashedly admit, we are both mere myths.