"Our own hour is the era of downgoing."

The down-going, in the essential sense, is the path to the reticent preparation for what is to come, i.e., for the moment in which and the site in which the advent and the remaining absent of the gods will be decided. This downgoing is the utterly first beginning. The distorted essence of downgoing, however, takes its own different course and is mere foundering, impasse, stoppage, under the guises of the gigantic, the massive, and the priority of arrangement over what is supposed to fulfill it.

The ones who go down in the essential sense are those who run beneath what is coming (the futural) and sacrifice themselves to it as its future invisible ground: the steadfast ones who perpetually expose themselves to questioning.

Only those who belong can know the era of down-going. All others must fear the down-going and thus deny and renounce it, for to them it is sheer weakness and mere ending.

--Martin Heidegger, Contributions, tr. Rojcewicz and Vallega-Neu, pp. 314-315.