King Vishvamitra

“Who through millennia of self-torture acquired such a feeling of power and self-confidence that he endeavored to build a new heaven—the uncanny symbol of the most ancient and most recent experience of philosophers on earth: whoever has at some built a “new heaven” has found the power to do so only in his own hell” (Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay, Section 10).

Our administered science and technology does not require ascesis, however. To master, but not to use. I wonder about the conservation of energy in mnemotechnics—is the pain required to assemble a technology of forgetting equal to the pleasure gained by its use?