PREFACE: individual > nation (only individual can be saved/damned); salvation in the “forest” (=individual freedom); “forest passage” = return to freedom; relies only on self (all institutions bankrupt); forest rebel’s aim: not to improve the world or to fight society (it’s beyond corrupt) but to 1) save his own soul 2) obey his conscience; his successor in Eumeswil (1977): anarch, almost identical but not the same: forest rebel has been expelled from society <-> anarch has expelled society from himself; example: young social democrat who shot down half a dozen auxiliary policemen in front of his apartment -> violence is better than relying on legal procedures (running to the layer while mother being raped); safety of home: depends more on family father with axe in hand (-> Iceland) rather than constitutions

INTRODUCTION: book: call for resistance, strategy of opposition to oppressive power (Leviathan); forest passage: set oneself apart from the masses; background: Nazi dictatorship; goal: new freedom (=religion, not enlightenment rationality); archetypes: soldier & worker, technology transforms them both (-> modern utopia: “new man”) <-> forest rebel: resists technology (degrades human life); automatism promotes fear (eg constant need to listen to the news - “bed time story” of the state, lots of antennae ~ “hairs standing on end” -> symbol of fear); representatives of forest rebels: David (shepherd), Joan of Arc (virgin), William Tell (archer) + anti-Nazi resistance leaders (Petter Moen, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke); religion: irrationality & myth <-> cult of reason; source of strength to opposition: personal integrity from human freedom, self-respect and tradition

1. core question: question involving personal danger
2. nature of questions changed (answers more important than solutions ~ interrogation); elections vs questionnaires; silence itself is an answer too; election became form of plebiscite (poll); illusion of freedom must be maintained
3. in dictatorship: 90% affirmation is not enough (10% enemy not acceptable) <-> 98% affirmation is favorable; 2% who voted “no” has double benefits: 1) they justify the 98% “yes” (they could have voted for “no” -> freedom still exists) 2) they show that there is still danger -> dark taboo; dictatorships cannot survive without hate; election becomes questionnaire
4. intention to vote no might be shared with others <-> orchestrators will try to make you believe you are alone; numerical majority: signs of moral superiority (eg peace referendum: only a criminal would vote “no”) -> man falls into trap
5. humor is absent from tyranny; some nay votes may have been “corrected” -> finding one nay vote means plenty
6. voting “no” -> voter does exactly what opponents expect of him; he endangered himself only to contribute to the official statistics; he is depositing his honest capital in a crooked bank; there are much better ways to express his views: eg writing “I said no” or just “No” on the side of a bridge or writing “hunger” on the factory wall -> causes much more disruption
7. voting “no” doesn’t shake the opponent but changes the voter
8. “yes” stands for necessity, “no” for freedom -> it degenerates when one is missing; forest passage: freedom of individual
9. solitary voter not yet forest rebel; need to abandon framework of old majority conceptions (statistics, numerical ratios); dictatorships not only dangerous but endangered too; minority ~ chemical reagent with unforeseeable potential; mistrust grows as approval rate approaches 100% (resistance have become invisible) -> need to keep an eye on everyone; increased police force diminishes external power; ruler’s nightmare: hiding wolves turning flock of sheep into a pack
10. two figures: 1) Worker (confidently marching toward its goals) vs 2) Unknown Soldier (hero who shoulders great burdens in the midst of mechanical devastations, true descendant of western chivalry); World War II: machines » soldiers
11. reasons for brutality: cruel nature of rational thought, elimination of free competition -> speed must be maintained by fear -> persecution; two concerns: meeting obligations & not deviating from the norm; is there any other option? to resist new concept of power new concept of freedom is needed (not only want to save your own skin but willing to risk it); danger of comfort: man relies on assistance too heavily (eg water, electricity) -> becomes helpless when they don’t work; domesticated animal ~ slaughterhouse animal; catastrophes test how much you are still natively grounded (=connected to earth); extreme that: decision between giving up or persevering from his own innermost forces (-> forest passage)
12. imperial expansion: perfect security <-> individual: defenseless
13. symptom of fear; turning point: Titanic (comfort vs destruction, automatism vs catastrophe); man restricts his own power in exchange of technology/convenience: no longer tree in the forest but passenger in a fast-moving vessel; gives sense of power at the expense of freedom; sign of fear: constant need to hear the news; myriad antennae ~ hairs standing on end
14. freedom from fear » power & health; monologue with fear -> it has the last word vs dialogue -> freedom remains; path of self-sacrifice vs slaughterhouse -> each of us has to face the decision alone; individual isn’t an elite, it is concealed in each of us (sleeping in the forest); illusion: machines are greater than man (man created them -> he can tear it down too)
15. danger: reliance on pure imagination (~Christian nihilism); “For we cannot limit ourselves to knowing what is good and true on the top floors while fellow human beings are being flayed alive in the cellar.” imagination gives power to act but isn’t enough in itself; world ~ fast-moving vehicle (Titanic/Leviathan) <-> forest: perfect stillness; two simultaneous reality (-> myth)
16. only a fraction of masses will resist; present powers not enough to resist; essential characteristics of forest rebel: 1) doesn’t allow any power to dictate the law to him (neither through propaganda not force) 2) he means to defend himself (not only through instruments/ideas of the present but that of the past too); fundamental question: how do people respond in a catastrophe?
17. anyone can find himself one day outside of the law -> life changes from well-being to destruction; ancestors: more used to hard life (-> role of warrior, physician, judge, even priest) <-> people in collective society much more defenseless; forest passage is not anarchy against machine world; jumping off the ship isn’t a good option with l either; poet is a forest rebel; forest passage: available everywhere; isn’t anti-eastern; recurrent theme: seemingly superior giants defeated by free man
18. freedom is immortal but takes different form throughout history; freedom must be earned each time anew; genuine history can only be made by the free
19. we should consider the possibly of a catastrophe but not focus on them too much (otherwise it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy)
20. teaching of the forest: ancient as human history; it is concealed in every individual
21. forest is secret; human fear is the same (fear of destruction, fear of death) but takes different forms; forest passage: passage through death
22. church: source of good & danger of rigidity; state will (unsuccessfully) try to replace the church; churches provide oasis in the growing desert but it’s better not to rely on it -> church can provide assistance but not existence; “The desert grows, woe to him in whom deserts hide.”
23. doubt & pain: everybody has to face them; time questions man about his power (sign of interrogation: loneliness); man’s conquest of space in general -> individual’s freedom restricted
24. preparation: task of churches (they can preserve greater force than worldviews); strong need for churches coexists with aversion to them; gullibility of modern man: believes what he reads in the newspaper but not what is written in the stars; no distinction between health and salvation -> priest replaced by doctor; sense of something missing -> start searching, theologian (=one who knows like Sonya in Dostoyevsky) removes the scales from his eye <-> others send him to chase mirages
25. possibility of new order: spiritual movement in opposition to nihilism; spirited atheist: more sympathetic than indifferent man-of-the-crowd
26. forest rebel: makes difficult decisions, isn’t indifferent; cannot wait for churches/spiritual guides
27. man must meet with himself; solitary meeting with no priests, no doctors (but power to create can contribute to healing); “People have been cured whom the doctors had written off, but none who have themselves up for dead. Avoiding doctors, trusting the truth of the body, keeping an ear open to its voice: this is the best formula for the healthy.”; don’t trust consultations, state has increasing influence on health services under the guise of philanthropy, your files might be used against you; “We are truly alive only insofar as we are able to emerge from mere functionality”; in case of a catastrophe (eg. ship sinks), other things become important (eg. being able to survive in icy water), regularly vaccinated and sanitized crew has lower chance of survival; greatest danger of our times: overpopulation (cf. Gaston Bouthoul)
28. individual freedom and constitutional rights constantly violated by state; ruling party can change constitution too; “In Germany, open resistance to the authorities is, or at least was, particularly difficult, because a certain reverence for the state had survived from the days of the legitimate monarchy; along with its dark sides, this had advantages. Consequently, it was difficult for the individual to understand why, with the arrival of the victorious forces, he was held liable for his lack of resistance, not only generally, as part of a guilty collective, but even personally-for instance, for continuing to practice his profession as a musical director or a civil servant. […] we can only advise that it always be kept in mind in times of widespread public injustice. […] On the one hand one is suspected of collaborating with occupiers, on the other of being a party lackey. […] he is threatened with liquidation through both involvement and non-involvement.”; great courage is expected -> forest rebel fit for purpose (eg William Tell); tiny group of resolved individuals can be effective against the Leviathan (eg conspiracy of Malet against Napoleon); in peaceful times few criminals can turn a city in turmoil -> same is true if relationship is inverted; example: young social democrat shot down half a dozen policemen in front of his apartment; “Long periods of peace foster certain optical illusions: one is the conviction that the inviolability of the home is grounded in the constitution, which should guarantee it. In reality, it is grounded in the family father, who, sons at his side, fills the doorway with an axe in his hand. This truth, however, is not always visible and should also not be a pretext for objections to the constitution. The old saying holds that ‘The man is guarantor of his oath, not the oath of the man.’“; Germans have been reproached for not opposing with enough resistance <-> they didn’t yet know the rules of the game; middle position is always subject to double threat; “All the Germans who fell, unarmed and in desperate situations, defending their women and children are to this very day barely considered. Their solitary ends too will be known; their weight will also be thrown onto the balance. We, on the other hand, must take care that the spectacle of unopposed violence does not repeat.”
29. forest rebel isn’t a soldier but can use military tactics (eg sabotage, disrupt supply routes - eg Spanish guerilla warfare against Napoleon during Peninsular War); 1 front fighter supported by 100 in the rear ~ 100 persons work can be disrupted by 1 forest rebel (same ratio); freedom conquers fear; “Catastrophes must be practiced for, as an emergency drill is practiced before embarking on a cruise. An entire population that prepares itself for a forest passage becomes a formidable force.”; objection: Germans were not made for this type of resistance -> there were many things they didn’t think they were capable of; “More important is to apply the old maxim that a free man be armed - and not with arms under lock and key in an armory or barracks, but arms kept in his apartment, under his own bed. This will also have repercussions on what are considered fundamental rights.”; power focusing on forest passage: no intention of offensive attack but strengthens its defensive capacity
30. military converted into work; new weapons abolished distinctions between combatants and non-combatants; legal prosecution of the defeated became customary (<-> before rulers didn’t consider themselves authorized, eg Bismarck vs Napoleon III); nowadays war and peace difficult to distinguish; borders between duty and crime blurred; global guilt spills over into individual cases; “A person must know the rules of the territory in which they live.”; mass: follows propaganda -> relationship with law & mortality purely technical <-> forest rebel: reserves the right to judge for himself what to support/contribute to -> requires sacrifice but gives sovereignty; “Dominion, however, can only come from those who have preserved in themselves a knowledge of native human measures and who will not be forced by any superior power to forsake acting inhumanely. […] When all institutions have become equivocal or even disreputable, and when open prayers are heard even in churches not for the persecuted but for the persecutors, at this point moral responsibility passes into the hands of individuals, or, more accurately, into the hands of any still unbroken individuals.”; rationalism leads to mechanism which leads to torture
31. in general, institution provide moral guidance but when they are transformed into weapons of civil war, the decision falls onto the individual; cult of crime: heroizing wrongdoers (while being under foreign occupation criminal appears a kindred soul) -> this creates ambiguous moral shadow on resistance movements: power holder places common criminal on a higher level than those who resist; real issue: majority do not want freedom, even afraid of it
32. hostility to property: “property is theft”; movement of the dispossessed: great momentum but also great danger (redistribution of injustice -> never-ending spiral); Germany: attempt to impose permanent dispossession -> harder test than the war but they passed despite any outside support; “The wealth of the county resides in its men and women who have endured the kinds of extreme experiences that come around only once in many generations.”; changeless property lies in the forest -> attached to his holder (hidden property = authentic property); “Anyone who has lived through the burning of a capital or the invasion of an eastern army will never lose a lively mistrust of all that one can possess in life. This is an advantage, for it makes him someone who, if necessary, can leave his house, his farm, his library, without too much regret. He will even discover that this is associated with an act of liberation. Only the person who turns to look back suffers the fate of Lot’s wife. // As there will always be natures who overestimate possessions, so there will never be a lack of people who see a cure-all in dispossession. Yet a redistribution of wealth does not increase wealth - rather it increases its consumption, as becomes apparent in any managed forest. The lion’s share clearly falls to the bureaucracy, particularly during those divisions where only the encumbrances are left over - of the shared fish only the bones remain.”; handling dispossession: get beyond the idea of personal theft (otherwise you are left with a trauma and a risk of responding with terror); better alternative: consider that war affects everyone, albeit in different ways and for different reasons; drawing on capital: not expenditure but investment in new government orders; fears of slavery (body: last visible property) -> exaggerated (present terrors more than enough); “Nevertheless, the nightmarish utopias of Orwell and others have their usefulness - even if this particular author showed that he had no idea of the real, immutable power relations of this earth and simply surrendered himself to terror. Such novels are like intellectual exercises by which a few detours and dead-ends may perhaps be avoided in practice.”; from forest rebel’s perspective: it’s up to him to decide what he considers property and how he will defend it, he must distinguish between things unworthy of sacrifice and those worth fighting for (= our true, inalienable possessions that we carry in our heart); “Preserving one’s own nature is arduous - and the more so when one is weighted down with goods” (eg. Cortez’s Spaniards were burdened with gold); “In comparison, the riches that belong to one’s being are not only incomparably more valuable, they are also the very source of all visible riches. // Anyone grasping that will also understand that epochs which strive for the equality of all men will bear quite other fruits than those hoped for. They merely remove the fences and bars, the secondary divisions, and in this manner free up space. People are brothers, but they are not equal. The masses will always conceal individuals who by nature, that is, in their being, are rich, noble, kind, happy, or powerful. Abundance will flow their way to the same degree that the deserts grow. This leads to new powers and riches, to new distributions.”; people are always hopeful when new leadership arises
33. “soul murder”: destroying the being in man <-> not possible when immortality is present -> new slaveholders try to extinguish it; “The words move with the ship; the home of the Word is the forest.”; language brings the spirit back into primal phenomenon; this makes alliance between thinker, theologian and poet possible
34. new access to sources has powerful effect; light external world visible ~ language makes inner nature compensable; law and domain starts with naming; all conquests/buildings/conducts are preceded by revelations/plans in words and language; history in world of language > history in world of things; poet can emerge like a lion even if language is in full decay

SUMMARY: (1) The questions put to us are simplified and made more incisive. (2) They drive us to an either-or decision, as revealed in elections. (3) The freedom to say no is systematically excluded. (4) This is intended to demonstrate the superiority of the questioner, and (5) it turns a nay into a venture that only one in a hundred will dare. (6) The arena for this venture is strategically ill-chosen. (7) This is no objection to its ethical significance. (8) The forest passage is freedom’s new answer. (9) Free men are powerful, even in tiny minorities. (10) Our present epoch is poor in great men, but it brings figures to the light. (11) The danger leads to the formation of small elites. (12) The figures of the Worker and the Unknown Soldier are joined by a third, the Forest Rebel. (13) Fear (14) can be conquered by the individual, (15) once he realizes his power. (16) The forest passage, as free action in the face of catastrophe, (17) is independent of the foreground political technicalities and their groupings. (18) It does not contradict the development, (19) but brings freedom into it through the decisions of the individual. (20) In the forest passage there is a meeting of man with himself in his undivided and indestructible substance. (21) This meeting banishes the fear of death. (22) Even the churches can only lend a hand here, (22) since man stands alone in his choices. (23) The theologian may be able to make his situation clear to him (25) but cannot deliver him from it. (26) The forest rebel crosses the null-meridian under his own power. (27) In the questions of healthcare, (28) law, (29) and arms, he takes his own sovereign decisions. (30) Morally, too, he does not act according to any doctrine (31) and reserves the right to judge the law for himself. He takes no part in the cult of crime. (32) He decides what to consider property and how he will defend it. (33) He is aware of the inviolable depths (34) from which the Word rises up to constantly fulfill the world. Here lies the task of being “here and now.”