The age of dissolution is not only a process of destruction. It is also a release of energies that were previously bound inside stable forms. Technology, the global circulation of information, the breakdown of old social constraints — these liberate forces that can be turned to more than one purpose. The mass is carried by them toward further leveling. The differentiated individual can, within limits, turn them toward the maintenance of his own type.
This is the positive side of riding the tiger. The man does not merely endure the released energies. He selects among them. He masters particular techniques that increase his independence or his capacity for clear perception. He uses the mobility of the age to avoid becoming trapped in local forms of dissolution that have no exit. He uses the availability of knowledge to deepen the understanding that the surrounding culture no longer transmits.
The danger remains constant. Every energy taken up carries the imprint of the process that released it. The man who uses the tools of the age must continually purify them of the horizontal intention that accompanies them. Without that purification the tools eventually use the man. The work of purification is another expression of the interior sovereignty already required.
Energies of the age are therefore neither simply to be rejected nor simply to be embraced. They are to be tested against the higher measure. Those that can be made to serve remain available. Those that cannot are left aside. The discrimination is practical and ongoing. It is one of the concrete skills of the man who rides the tiger rather than being ridden by it.