There are, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, things that people used to simply do without attaching a morality to them; they did them because they had to do them, and because the body, that incorruptible chronicler, does not care about concepts. Breathing was one of them. Eating. Sleeping.
And then came a time that turned everything people did into tasks. It took away the self-evidence of things and gave them instead programs, key figures and – as the crowning glory of impertinence – small friendly diagrams that look as if one wanted to assist people, while in truth one is only putting them on the leash of their own control. Thus sleep too, this last reserve of non-availability, was turned into a category that can be improved; and with the word “improve”, as you know, the entire bourgeois world already enters the room: duty, performance, comparison, conscience.
Since Hans Castorp had, in this house, ceased to be merely a guest and had become a case of prevention, he had learned that everything that used to be a private matter can today be put into an app. Not because the app is evil – it is not evil, it is polite – but because the world that demands it is driven by a peculiar fear: the fear that something has not taken place if it has not been measured.
The Berghof had curves. The Sonnenalp has scores. And the night, esteemed female reader, esteemed male reader, the night now also has a reception.
