Ernst Jünger.

Jünger (1895-1998) was a German soldier, poet, philosopher and author of several books. I am almost done with his The Forest Passage.

It is hard to categorize this short work, but I have hit upon "an anti-1984" as my best, if far too simplistic, shorthand.

It is a call to conscience-based resistance to all forms of totalitarian dehumanization, and it does so in an almost-stream-of-consciousness fashion. Junger managed to anticipate the dehumanizing power of advanced communication technology, and its effectiveness in the hands of those who would chain us, first of all to fear.

Drawing upon our wells of theology, poetry, myth and courage, it asserts that we can--and must--successfully resist. Even if the success is only in one's soul. My favorite quote, from near the end:

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.

Here is a quote from a different work, giving you a sense of the man.

My evil star, however, had fated me to be born in times when only the sharply demarcated and precisely calculable were in fashion.... "Of course, I am on the Right, on the Left, in the Centre; I descend from the monkey; I believe only what I see; the universe is going to explode at this or that speed" - we hear such remarks after the first words we exchange, from people whom we would not have expected to introduce themselves as idiots. If one is unfortunate enough to meet them again in five years, everything is different except their authoritative and mostly brutal assuredness. Now they wear a different badge in their buttonhole; and the universe now shrinks at such a speed that your hair stands on end.

A final note: Jünger was received into the Catholic Church two years before he died...at age 103.