Acoustic Metric in Relativistic Spherical Accretion
The acoustic metric is an effective tensor structure derived from linearised relativistic hydrodynamics, governing the propagation of small-amplitude sound perturbations on a stationary background flow in Schwarzschild spacetime. It defines an emergent geometry in which acoustic modes follow null geodesics, enabling analysis of wave scattering, energy flux conservation, and spatial stability without direct reference to the full fluid equations.
Here, and really only here, I was to observe that there is a quality of dread that feels as unfamiliar as a foreign country. In moments when I felt it, I experienced no fear as such but a kind of exalted, almost demoniacal lightness; often attended by fits of laughter I was unable to repress.
E. Jünger’s «Storm of Steel»
Я сделал здесь одно наблюдение, и за всю войну, пожалуй, только в этой битве: бывает такая разновидность страха, который завораживает, как неисследованная земля. Так, в эти мгновения я испытывал не боязнь, а возвышающую и почти демоническую легкость; нападали на меня и неожиданные приступы смеха, который ничем было не унять.
Э. Юнгер «В стальных грозах»
Vilém Flusser defines gesture as «a movement of the body expressing a certain intention», immediately situating it within the field of interpretation: a gesture exists only insofar as it is read by an observer. Despite its conceptual coherence, this formulation harbors a concealed anthropocentrism and a semiotic reductionism, reducing the gesture to a communicative interface and stripping it of ontological autonomy. What if the gesture is an autonomous object, possessing an interior depth irreducible to either the performer or the spectator? In the ritual practices of the Navajo or Lakota, the gesture is precisely this: it outlives its creator, remains independent of hermeneutic contingency, and preserves its efficacy as an autonomous event within the world-without-us.
Consider, for example, Diné ceremonies aimed at restoring cosmic harmony, hózhǫ́. During a healing ceremony (hózhǫ́ǫ́gi), the practitioner-healer (hataałii) reproduces strictly canonical hand movements, directing sand, herbs, or breath along precise trajectories. Ritual cleansing movements function in a similar manner. In academic literature, they are occasionally designated as «purifying gestures», accompanying smudging ceremonies and prayer rituals. The tracing of the contours of a sand painting (iikááh) and the guiding of hands over the patient’s body are integrated into the procedure of restoring hózhǫ́ (harmony, balance). These gestures do not «signify» healing; they constitute it as an event. They do not belong to the performer, but rather to a certain order of things, through which the mediator’s body becomes a conduit for the Other. In the Lakota tradition, for instance, such gestures constitute an integral part of the preparations for the Inípi (sweat lodge) or the Wiwáŋyaŋg Wačípi (Sun Dance) ceremony. Their significance lies in ontological efficacy: here, the gesture is an instrument for the transformation of state, not a communicative act.
Flusser’s phenomenological framework, which presupposes «intention» and an «interpreter», proves inadequate to encompass these practices. The ritual gesture operates outside this paradigm: it is not addressed to an observer, but directed toward a cosmic order. Its «intention» – if such a psychological term is even appropriate here – is not subjective, but ontological. The gesture does not «signify»; it «is». It possesses its own spirit and density, persisting even in the absence of a «spectator».
Within the ritual, within the gesture, within the space between inhalation and exhalation, Something manifests itself, asking no permission for its existence. When we cease to demand explanations from the gesture, it begins to operate at a level that requires no translation. It is in this silence that its authentic nature resides.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action ...
A few words on Ernst Jünger’s book The Forest Passage (Der Waldgang). In his text, the forest is not a geographical location. It is a psychological landscape, a dreamlike space in which the author isolates himself from the historical process. He accurately diagnoses the pathology of the epoch – total mobilization, which absorbs the private sphere – yet proposes a therapeutic model that remains confined to introspection. Freedom, reduced to an internal distance from the public sphere, becomes not a protective mechanism but a transparent partition. Through it, the world is visible, yet contact with it remains impossible.
But what becomes of resistance if it does not materialize in action? Although Jünger draws a strict distinction between the «forest walker» (Waldgänger) and the passive conformist, he provides no verifiable criteria for telling them apart. If defiance leaves no trace in social reality, it becomes epistemologically indistinguishable from conformity or adaptation. This creates a dangerous aporia: expectation is ontologized, passivity is rendered normative, and responsibility is supplanted by contemplation. In 1946, Karl Jaspers insisted on public testimony as a condition for moral regeneration. Jünger, by contrast, proposes transcending historical responsibility without subjecting it to practical overcoming.
In the sections devoted to the phenomenon of property alienation, I observe the same methodological selectivity. The loss of property is described as an existential trial that reveals the authentic bond between a person and things, as well as with oneself; however, the context of systematic dispossession in occupied territories remains outside the scope of analysis. Suffering is elevated to the status of cultural capital, while historical causality is supplanted by an aesthetics of deprivation. This approach is not only ethically problematic but also logically incompatible with the claimed universalism of Jünger’s conception of freedom. If property truly is a projection of the self, then responsibility for the mechanisms of its alienation must be acknowledged in full, rather than reduced to passive reflection on its consequences.
Authentic freedom does not hide. It manifests in action, is tested by public responsibility, and is validated by the willingness to bear the consequences of one’s chosen stance. Jünger has provided a precise diagnostic cross-section of the epoch. In the contemporary context, where digital isolation and the algorithmic fragmentation of the world are often disguised as personal autonomy, his narrative remains relevant precisely as a warning. Freedom that does not extend beyond introspection risks becoming not a form of resistance, but its aestheticized surrogate. Historical reality demands action.
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