and, needless to say, it overpowers me, does not tolerate me outside itself, I merely belong inside it, belong to it, in any case: after all, the superreality is the totality of all current events, the magazines draw a weekly interim balance from it, a rough estimate, as it were, with the praiseworthy goal of telling me about everything as far as possible, letting me participate in the whole . . . On the whole, however, everything (including me) is one and the same, no matter how one thing or the other may behave (however I may behave); everything exists quite simply by dint of its existence, no matter how active or passive—hence I too am in it simply by dint of my existence, whether I intervene “actively” in reality or stay lounging here inactively on my chaise longue, experiencing the events at second hand. I realize I must not confuse the totality of current events with so-called current history. The latter, of course, requires my active participation. I must not be passive with it. Otherwise I might drop out of reality, be given the go-by, remain forever invisible, eradicated.

To exist at all, then, I must act, I must become a member of the German parliament or detonate a bomb that shreds at least three members of parliament (if not a chancellor), I must fly to the moon or poison someone. The more effectively my action interferes with current history, the more defined is my existence. But superreality is simply not current history, it is the totality of current events in its fullness, and in this totality, current history dissolves, whereby all my efforts to intervene actively dissolve as well. There are, as one can clearly see, many different kinds of current history at the same time: that of the United States of America looks different from that of the Congo (hence, Frank Sinatra’s looks different from Lumumba’s, and mine looks different from Wernher von Braun’s). And yet all of us, with our various current histories, are contained in the entirety of current events—all present, whether as oil sheikhs or big bankers, lunar-rocket passengers or record-breaking athletes, movie stars or duchesses, popular singers, politicians, or gangsters, poisoners, bomb-throwers, or other foul-players—or else as amateur gardeners, animal protectors, good Samaritans, quiet book readers, anchorites, blissful navel contemplators, marijuana smokers. Everything exists in the superreality. Thus, it is not reality in motion, like history, but rather the unchanging state of Being in and of itself, of which sometimes this and sometimes that becomes visible. And, visible or invisible, everything exists in it; hence I do as well: whether as someone experiencing a collective destiny or someone shaping a collective destiny, whether as a head of state or as a Trappist monk, an anonymous nobody or a wanton seeker of fame and glory. Whatever occurs in the superreality occurs only as something extant, thus entirely without indication of value, the bomb-thrower peacefully next to the navel contemplator, the poisoner fraternally next to the Samaritan . . .