Beethoven se “Ode to Joy” 200 jaar later

Ode to Joy (Die misiek)

Beethoven se “Ode to Joy” is 200 jaar oud vandag.

Ode to Joy

Buurman met die skeppende siel

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(The Marginalian by Maria Popova <newsletter@brainpickings.org>)

Dostoyevsky, on the Meaning of Life

“I mean to work tremendously hard,” the young Fyodor Dostoyevsky (November 11, 1821–February 9, 1881) resolved in contemplating his literary future, beseeching his impoverished mother to buy him books.”

“At the age of twenty-seven, he was arrested for belonging to a literary society that circulated books deemed dangerous by the tsarist regime. He was sentenced to death. On December 22, 1849, he was taken to a public square in Saint Petersburg, alongside a handful of other inmates, where they were to be executed as a warning to the masses. They were read their death sentence, put into their execution attire of white shirts, and allowed to kiss the cross. Ritualistic sabers were broken over their heads. Three at a time, they were stood against the stakes where the execution was to be carried out. Dostoyevsky, the sixth in line, grew acutely aware that he had only moments to live.

“And then, at the last minute, a pompous announcement was made that the tsar was pardoning their lives — the whole spectacle had been orchestrated as a cruel publicity stunt to depict the despot as a benevolent ruler. The real sentence was then read: Dostoyevsky was to spend four years in a Siberian labor camp, followed by several years of compulsory military service in the tsar’s armed forces, in exile. He would be nearly forty by the time he picked up the pen again to resume his literary ambitions. But now, in the raw moments following his close escape from death, he was elated with relief, reborn into a new cherishment of life.”

Soos iemand gesê het; Na die ondervinding het een man van sy kop af geraak, en een man het een van die Wêreld se grootste krywers geword.

Hy het hy sy lewe lank aan depressie gely (hy het ook epileptiese aanvalle gekry). In al sy stories het die mense swaar gekry, was hulle arm, baie naïef en selfs nie baie slim nie. Mens kry die indruk dat hy mense nie vertrou het nie (jy kan hom dit beswaarlik verkwalik na sy ondervinding met die vuurpeleton), en dat hy ook nie baie van mense gehou het nie, dat hy gedink het mense is basies oneerlik en afstootlik. Hy het baie meegevoel gehad met die armes en verstotenes, en het die sogenaamde Liberales verpes. Hy was ook nie ‘n vriend van die Katolieke Kerk nie, maar het die Christendom verdedig tot op die einde van sy lewe.

“He specialized in the analysis of pathological states of mind that lead to insanity, murder, and suicide and in the exploration of the emotions of humiliation, self-destruction, tyrannical domination, and murderous rage” (Encyclopedia Britanica).

Hy het akkuraat voorspel wat sou gebeur indien die radikales in Rusland aan die bewind sou kom. Duisende mense is in tronke gestop of is vermoor … in die naam van vryheid.

So, wat het verander in Rusland? As jy teen die Tsaar in opstand gekom het is jy vermoor. As jy teen Stalin in opstand gekom het is jy vermoor. As jy teen Putin in opstand kom word jy vergiftig of val jy per ongeluk by die venster van ‘n hoë gebou uit. Dit is genoeg om enige mens depressief te maak.

En tog het hy geglo dat die lewe goed was, en om te lewe ‘n voorreg. Hoeveel van ons sou, na alles wat hy deurgemaak het, so positief gebly het?

Trump and the unstoppable march of psychological development.

To beat Trump, we need to know why Americans keep voting for him. George Monbiot thinks that Psychologists may have the answer. And indeed, if you look at it from a developmental psychological perspective from Abraham Maslow to the Integral Psychology of Ken Wilber, it becomes clear that the political divide in American (and the rest of the Western world), is not economically or class driven, but is rooted in individual psychological development, or the lack of such development.

“Many explanations are proposed for the continued rise of Donald Trump and the steadfastness of his support, even as the outrages and criminal charges pile up,” says George Monbiot. “Some of these explanations are powerful. But there is one I have seen mentioned nowhere, which could, I believe, be the most important: Trump is king of the extrinsics.

“Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world.”

But intrinsic and extrinsic values are only points on a continuum of one of the developmental lines of developmental growth that all individuals grow through. Values arise through a series of interior, nested, hierarchical stages of growth, firstly motivated by external (extrinsic) forces such as the need for food, shelter, clothing, sex and other physical needs, then safety needs, love and belonging needs and then esteem (or ego) needs – all of them lower, deficiency needs.

Value needs motivated by internal (intrinsic) forces, only make their appearance at the next hierarchical stage of development when the drive for self-actualization kicks in, when we become spiritually, emotionally and intellectually mature.

There are many other lines of development like the intellectual growth line, moral developmental line, emotional growth line and artistic growth line. There are many more lines of development according to Wilber’s model of human development. To divide human behavior as intrinsically and extrinsically motivated is very simplistic and does not get us closer to an answer to the why and how of the Trump enigma.

According to Wilber: “Liberalism reflected many things at once: a move from ethnocentric to world centric perspectives; from monarchy/aristocracy to democracy; from slavery to equality; from a society informed by myth to one informed by science; from a role-identity to an ego-identity; from duty and honour to dignity and  recognition; from ethnocentric values to universal values (especially freedom, equality, solidarity).” And that is what Trump and his followers hates with a passion about Democrats, especially their inclusiveness which they see as weakness and a denial of traditional values, ethnocentric values like nationalism, family values, militarism, patriotism, patriarchalism.

George Monbiot:

“People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likely to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.”

In other words, extrinsically motivated people are still in what Maslow called a deficiency need stage of development, and have not yet reached the higher self-actualization stage of development.

Ken Wilber:

“Mainstream Republicans or conservatives have very strong amber/traditional values. Hence, when they say that ‘character counts,’ or that they want to ‘instill values in people,’ or that they are ‘the party of values,’ they almost always mean amber values only, traditional values, ethnocentric values: nationalism, family values, militarism, patriotism, patriarchalism, good ole Biblical injunctions and command morality.” In other words, the old “us”, the good people versus “them”, the bad people.

Levels of development according to Wilber:

Level 1 (Infrared) Archaic – Physiological needs dominate.

Level 2 (Magenta) Magic Tribal – Egotistic narcissistic stage of development.

Level 3 (Red) Magic Mythic – Might is right stage. Survival of the strongest. Egotistic. Dictators like Hitler and Stalin’s operating level.

Level 4 (Amber) Mythic traditional. Concrete operational stage of development – Ethnocentric, Nationalistic (my God, my church, my nation, my language, my flag, my people, are the best). Fundamentalistic, conservative, racist, sexistic.

Level 5 (Orange) Modern. Formal operational stage  – World centric, Cosmopolitical, self-esteem needs, materialistic, rational, democratic.

Level 6 (Green) Post Modern – Relativistic, sensitive, pro human and woman and animal rights, environmentally centered, inclusive mode of thinking.

Level 7 (Turcoice) Integral – Holistic, Cosmo centric, realm of ideas. Self actualization stage of development.

Level 8 (White) Super Integral.

George Monbiot:

“Trump exemplifies extrinsic values (Wilber’s Amber stage values). From the tower bearing his name in gold letters to his gross overstatements of his wealth; from his endless ranting about “winners” and “losers” to his reported habit of cheating at golf; from his extreme objectification of women, including his own daughter, to his obsession with the size of his hands; from his rejection of public service, human rights and environmental protection to his extreme dissatisfaction and fury, undiminished even when he was president of the United States, Trump, perhaps more than any other public figure in recent history, is a walking, talking monument to extrinsic values.” (In other words, Integral Psychology’s Amber, bordering on, and even regressing to the Red stage of development).

George Monbiot is right when he says; “We are not born with our values. They are shaped by the cues and responses we receive from other people and the prevailing mores of our society.” But there is a limit to where an individual can develop in all the lines of development, and if Red or Orange is your limit of moral or intellectual or any of the lines of development, there is nothing that can do to get you past that limit. The tragedy is that when you reach your limit, you believe that that is the limit for everybody else. You do not believe that there is a higher level to grow into, and anybody who tells you so is a liar and a threat to society, and must be eradicated by any means, even if you have to kill him or her (remember the inquisition!).

“They are also moulded by the political environment we inhabit” says Monbiot. “If people live under a cruel and grasping political system, they tend to normalise and internalise it, absorbing its dominant claims and translating them into extrinsic values. This, in turn, permits an even crueller and more grasping political system to develop.”

 We saw that in Nazi Germany where good, ordinary, jovial, and fun loving, civilized people were swept up and carried away and turned into Jew murdering hordes by Hitler and his fanatical commanders. But it was not “dominant claims” that were “translated into extrinsic values”, Those values were there all along, operating in that concrete operational stage of development where most of the German population found themselves in at that time. It only needed one man, Hitler, to fan it into a frenzy that eventually scorched the Earth. Currently Trump is doing exactly the same in America, because the majority of American people have not yet advanced into the Orange, Modern, Formal operational stage of development, which is World centric, Cosmopolitical, materialistic, rational, and democratic, or into the “green” postmodern stage of development which is characterized by a relativistic, sensitive, pro human and pro woman and pro animal rights, environmentally centered, inclusive mode of thinking.

Erich Fromm: “The person who has not freed himself from the ties of blood and soil is not yet fully born as a human being; his capacity for love and reason are crippled; he does not experience himself nor his fellow man in their – and his own – human reality.”

Monbiot: “If, by contrast, people live in a country in which no one becomes destitute, in which social norms are characterised by kindness, empathy, community and freedom from want and fear, their values are likely to shift towards the intrinsic end. This process is known as policy feedback, or the “values ratchet”. The values ratchet operates at the societal and the individual level: a strong set of extrinsic values often develops as a result of insecurity and unfulfilled needs. These extrinsic values then generate further insecurity and unfulfilled needs.”

‘From his endless ranting about ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ to his reported habit of cheating at golf, Donald Trump is a walking, talking monument to extrinsic values.’ (That is “Orange” values.)

Monbiot: “Ever since Ronald Reagan came to power, on a platform that ensured society became sharply divided into “winners” and “losers”, and ever more people, lacking public provision, were allowed to fall through the cracks, US politics has become fertile soil for extrinsic values. As Democratic presidents, following Reagan, embraced most of the principles of neoliberalism, the ratchet was scarcely reversed. The appeal to extrinsic values by the Democrats, Labour and other once-progressive parties is always self-defeating. Research shows that the further towards the extrinsic end of the spectrum people travel, the more likely they are to vote for a rightwing party.”

Wilber beautifully captures this failure of the Democratic party to counter the conservative gains in popularity by his postulation of the development of a “Toxic Green” faction in liberal politics, exemplified by Hillary Clinton (who called rightwing supporters “human thrash” and hillbillies and other derogatory names), who regards herself (like all her “Toxic Green” friends) as more intelligent, more moral, more ethical, in fact in all respects superior to  the rest of humanity. No wonder Trump walked all over her and demolished her totally! And she deserved it. And of course, thinking people will distance themselves from such arrogance and not vote for the Democrats, or even go to vote for Trump.

Monbiot : “But the shift goes deeper than politics. For well over a century, the US, more than most nations, has worshipped extrinsic values: the American dream is a dream of acquiring wealth, spending it conspicuously and escaping the constraints of other people’s needs and demands. It is accompanied, in politics and in popular culture, by toxic myths about failure and success: wealth is the goal, regardless of how it is acquired. The ubiquity of advertising, the commercialisation of society and the rise of consumerism, alongside the media’s obsession with fame and fashion, reinforce this story. The marketing of insecurity, especially about physical appearance, and the manufacture of unfulfilled wants, dig holes in our psyches that we might try to fill with money, fame or power. For decades, the dominant cultural themes in the US – and in many other nations – have functioned as an almost perfect incubator of extrinsic values.”

Because the majority of Americans (and the World population) are still in the “Orange” and “Red” stage of development and driven by deficiency needs, they tend to worship “strong” leaders like Hitler and Putin and Trump.

According to Wilber, the Western society today is made up of about 30 % amber, 50% orange, the rest is green with about 2% at turquoise.

Monbiot:

“A classic sign of this shift is the individuation of blame. On both sides of the Atlantic, it now takes extreme forms. Under the criminal justice bill now passing through parliament, people caught rough sleeping can be imprisoned or fined up to £2,500 if they are deemed to constitute a “nuisance” or cause “damage”. According to article 61 of the bill, “damage” includes smelling bad. It’s hard to know where to begin with this. If someone had £2,500 to spare, they wouldn’t be on the streets. The government is proposing to provide prison cells for rough sleepers, but not homes. Perhaps most importantly, people are being blamed and criminalised for their own destitution, which in many cases will have been caused by government policy.

“Yes, Trump is dominating the primaries. That doesn’t mean he’ll beat Biden.

“We talk about society’s rightward journey. We talk about polarisation and division. We talk about isolation and the mental health crisis. But what underlies these trends is a shift in values. This is the cause of many of our dysfunctions; the rest are symptoms.”

Or more accurately, a regression from Green (Post Modern stage of development) to Orange (Modern – Formal operational stage) or even to Amber (Mythic traditional – Concrete operational stage of development). In times of uncertainty and crisis people long for the good old times when there was law and order and stability, there was strong leadership, and white was white and black was black with no gray in between. And every time those lower stages do come into power today, the first thing they attack and attempt to eradicate is liberal freedoms.

 To evolve is to reach for higher internal states of being, higher states of consciousness, then conditions outside sustains and do not impede internal growth, but when external conditions deteriorate and starts to threaten (or seems to threaten) the physical existence of individuals, regression and involution takes place … and enters Trump, the great savior, a messiah sent from Heaven.

Monbiot:

“When a society valorises status, money, power and dominance, it is bound to generate frustration. It is mathematically impossible for everyone to be number one. The more the economic elites grab, the more everyone else must lose. Someone must be blamed for the ensuing disappointment. In a culture that worships winners, it can’t be them. It must be those evil people pursuing a kinder world, in which wealth is distributed, no one is forgotten and communities and the living planet are protected. Those who have developed a strong set of extrinsic values will vote for the person who represents them, the person who has what they want. Trump. And where the US goes, the rest of us follow.

“Trump might well win again – God help us if he does. If so, his victory will be due not only to the racial resentment of ageing white men, or to his weaponisation of culture wars or to algorithms and echo chambers, important as these factors are. It will also be the result of values embedded so deeply that we forget they are there.”

This is a very good article by Monbiot about Trump and what underlies the shift to the Right in American politics and Trump’s growing popularity. Trump is indeed “king of  extrinsics”, speaking the language of people stuck on Wilber’s Amber stage of development (Mythic traditional. Concrete operational stage of development) where physical and ego needs dominate.

Once you grow beyond the deficiency-need stage into growth needs (intrinsically motivated thinking and behavior), a new, exiting, and wider world opens up to you, a more inclusive, forgiving and accepting life unfolds in and around you. It has to do with what Wilber calls Growing up, Waking up, Cleaning up, and Showing up, something Trump is not able to do.

Trump is going to win this election, and the World will never be the same again. Sometimes you must go down before you can move up again. Evolution has for ever been for going up, from the time of the Gig Bang to this present moment, it is not going to quit now, despite the Trumps of this world.

To beat Trump

A Primer; I have been asked to comment on this article by George Monbiot. Before I give you my response, I want you to read the first part of Monbiot’s analysis of the phenomenon that is Trump, and respond to it if you like. Like all people like Trump, there is no middle way – you either like him or you hate him, and there are deep seeded (and unsettling) psychological reasons for both.

In the mean time I will expand on my initial response and post it here as soon as it is done.

George Monbiot:

“To beat Trump, we need to know why Americans keep voting for him. Psychologists may have the answer

“Many explanations are proposed for the continued rise of Donald Trump, and the steadfastness of his support, even as the outrages and criminal charges pile up. Some of these explanations are powerful. But there is one I have seen mentioned nowhere, which could, I believe, be the most important: Trump is king of the extrinsics.

“Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world.

“People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likely to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.

“Trump exemplifies extrinsic values. From the tower bearing his name in gold letters to his gross overstatements of his wealth; from his endless ranting about “winners” and “losers” to his reported habit of cheating at golf; from his extreme objectification of women, including his own daughter, to his obsession with the size of his hands; from his rejection of public service, human rights and environmental protection to his extreme dissatisfaction and fury, undiminished even when he was president of the United States, Trump, perhaps more than any other public figure in recent history, is a walking, talking monument to extrinsic values.”

***

“Trump might well win again – God help us if he does. If so, his victory will be due not only to the racial resentment of ageing white men, or to his weaponisation of culture wars or to algorithms and echo chambers, important as these factors are. It will also be the result of values embedded so deeply that we forget they are there.”

Singers of Life

Loren Eiseley (Maria Popova; Marginalia)

“Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents. No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery, the bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death. And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable. The sighing died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so tragically prolonged. For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence. There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil thing were being slowly forgotten. Till suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats joyously together as birds are known to sing. They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven, for they were the singers of life, and not of death.”

We are not birds. We know the Raven, the evil thing, and we do not forget. We know it is always there in the background, waiting “formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable”. It will come again and again and again to take, to murder.

What song do we sing in the face of such “judgement”, in response to war and murder and violence?

But what choice do we have? We do not forget, so we sing, but not like birds, for we are the singers of life and of death.

Nuwe Prentjies

Na ‘n lang gespook is die twee nou klaar, dink ek. Daar is altyd plek vir verbetering, maar iewers moet mens besluit dit is nou genoeg.

Prentjies maak is groot werk, en uitputtend Die enigste kompensasie is die eindproduk, en hier is dit. Julle moet besluit of dit goed genoeg is.

Girl at Lilly Pond (Oil on canvas 300 x 240mm)

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile

Bertrand Russell

Rooi Granaat (Olie op doek 300 x 240mm)

Nick Cave

“I think there is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the mystery of things — the impossibility of things — and recognise the evident value in doing that, and summon the courage it requires to not always shrink back into the known mind.”

Friedrich Nietzsche: Antichrist – Psychonaut – Philosopher

Once more we follow in the actual and philosophical footsteps of our “Antichrist – Psychonaut – Philosopher and seer of divine visions” Friedrich Nietzsche form his stay in Sils-Maria in the Swiss Alps, all the way to his fatal encounter with a horse in Turin (if there ever was such a horse), to his total mental breakdown and final demise.

Nietzsche never was easy to understand, not as a person and even less as a philosopher. His mission in life seems to have been to fight the church and the false, life denying doctrine of eternal damnation, based on a totally base moral system devised by priests, with the sole aim to mislead and control their all too willing little flock of sheep.

“Our moral judgements are signs of decline, of disbelieve in life, a preparation for pessimism,” he declared. (The Will to Power: p. 149)* 

The Christ, through St Paul, spread light into the world. Nietzsche, professing to overcome the nihilistic devaluation of life preached and promoted by the church, in fact gave rise to existentialism, which led to the post modern nihilism of Derrida and his friends which is destroying the Western world of today.

The Christ, after his ordeal in the desert went out to attack the church and the priests of that time. He accused the church and the Sanhedrin of preaching and spreading a false gospel. He accused the priests of corruption and competing for status and money (remember the clearing of the temple of traders) while persecuting the people mercilessly for not abiding strictly by the Law as stipulated in the Torah. In this Saul wholeheartedly supported them by killing and torturing the followers of the renegade Messiah … until the meeting on the road to Damascus.

And that is precisely what Nietzsche held against the Christian church of his time. He accused them of being false, bigoted, immoral morons pretending to be something that they were not, and he spent his life exposing the (deliberately) harmful messages and practices of the church of his time which, he believed, were a gross distortion of the message that Christ himself tried to bring to His followers.

The harmful message Nitzsche finds in the concept of “the good man” the moral man, the “ herd animal, blue-eyed, benevolent, ‘beautiful soul’” and ultimately in the altruistic man. In that “decadence morality, in more palpable terms Christian morality … and the over-valuation of goodness and benevolence” lies the trap that renders man weak and forever dependent on a God that is only good and caring and merciful, (and a powerful church) to save him from evil.

According to Nietzsche; “the morality of compassion looks both presumptuous and misguided. It is presumptuous because it concludes from the outside that a person’s suffering must be bad, thereby flattening out “what is most personal” (GS 338) in the person’s life and interfering with her deciding for herself on the value of her suffering. It is misguided both because it runs the risk of robbing individuals of their opportunity to make something positive (individually meaningful) out of their suffering, and because the global devaluation of suffering as such dismisses in advance the potentially valuable aspects of our general condition as vulnerable and finite creatures.” (Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. The Dawn of Day (p. 27). Kindle Edition.)

By postering God as the good, benevolent, all-powerful, omni-present, all-knowing entity in the face of the horrors man encounters in his life in this world, Christianity inadvertently created its own biggest problem. It was an obvious lie, a lie that atheists, philosophers and other opponents of the church pounced on immediately, and which Nietzsche attacked vehemently.

Life is not a bed of roses. Real, day to day life is filled with abhorrent horrors, with war, with rape, with cancer and brutal accidents, with murder and abuse of children and untold atrocities perpetrated against fellow man. And we pray, but nothing happens. We lament, we cry, we beg, but my child still dies of cancer, my beautiful wife suffers a fatal stroke, the beloved family dog is run over by a bus and famine or pestilence kills thousands of people. In the meantime the church sugarcoats this brutality with Chistian platitudes … God loves you. Christ is forever at your side, protecting you, and the ultimate lie … All evil is the devil’s doing. God is innocence personified.

And for this lie, Nietzsche is willing to kill God because “the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable”.

“The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances. ‘Where has God gone?’ he cried. ‘I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. We are all his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun?

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives – who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed – and whoever shall be born after us, for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.”

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (pp. 14-15). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition

Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882–March 28, 1941)

“The man* who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness. He alone lives, while other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip past them in a kind of dream. Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.”

I do believe that the Christ as well as Nietzsche would have agreed with her wholeheartedly.

What Nietzsche killed was the god created by man, for man, in his image; a god that loves what he, the creator of god loves, and hates what he hates. He loves my church, not yours. He loves my country and my people and my culture and my flag but not yours, he even loves my skin colour, not yours … unless I decide to change my mind tomorrow, then he will love you too.  For Nietzsche the belief in the Christian God as preached by the church has become unbelievable.

“Given Nietzsche’s expressed conviction that many Christians ought to remain ensconced within their ideology because it is the best they can do for themselves.

“In Nietzsche’s mind, those who cannot do without Christianity and its morality would only be harmed by understanding how destructive and self-defeating it is; Nietzsche wants to explain those terrible effects, but he also wants to protect Christianity-dependent readers from harm.( Anderson, R. Lanier, “Friedrich Nietzsche”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition))

For Nietzsche, “being is counted as holy enough to justify even a monstrous amount of suffering. The tragic man (his Ubermensch), affirms even the harshest suffering; he is sufficiently strong, rich, and capable of deifying to do so.” (The Will to Power p. 543)

Life is what it is and should be. To suffer is (a calculated) part of life and not punishment for sin meted out by a vengeful god. “the species of man he (Zarathustra) delineates delineates reality as it is; he is strong enough for it – he is not estranged from or entranced by it, he is reality itself, he still has all that is fearful and questionable in reality, only thus can man possess greatness.” (Ecce Homo p. 128).

“Somehow, this man of stark contradiction,” said Maria Polova, “cycling between nihilistic despondency and electric buoyancy along the rim of madness, has managed to inspire some of humanity’s most surefooted spirits.”

St Paul by Rembrandt

Maybe he was as deluded as Paul, maybe he was as enlightened as that Saint. What he gave us was an undiluted, un-sugarcoated view of the world according to the Übermensch, and he urged us to embrace that world, to live that world with – and despite – the daily dose of the good, the bad and the ugly. That is life; deal with it.

And that is why I followed our psychonaut from Basel to Sils-Maria and to wherever his travels took him, until at last we meet in Turin where we cry about a horse being whipped mercilessly in the street (and indeed cry about everything else in this brutal, absurd, senseless, wonderful in world), and why I prefer to follow him down Alice’s rabbit hole even into the asylum, rather than to sit in a church, listening to complacent “Jesus loves you” sermons so far removed from real life that it is in fact nauseating: (your child is dying from cancer – Jesus loves her, hallelujah. Your daughter has been abducted, raped, and brutally murdered – Jesus loves you, hallelujah. Stalin killed more than 10 million Soviet citizens in his purges and ten million more through starvation – Stalin did not love them, did Jesus not love them too? In 1894 the bubonic plague killed 13 million people in Asia. April 30, 1991, and 138,000 people drowned in Bangladesh … need we go on?)

“And to this world, to this scene of tormented and agonised beings, who only continue to exist by devouring each other, in which, therefore, every ravenous beast is the living grave of thousands of others, and its self-maintenance is a chain of painful deaths; and in which the capacity for feeling pain increases with knowledge, and therefore reaches its highest degree in man, a degree which is the higher the more intelligent the man is; to this world it has been sought to apply the system of optimism, and demonstrate to us that it is the best of all possible worlds. The absurdity is glaring.”

― Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume I

Like Annie Dillard, we must keep on looking for the tree with the lights in. The light won’t save you – you are the tree and the light, and that is all there is, and you are that. There is no good and no bad, no saint, no sinner, no savior. There is only God loving God, loving all of creation to all eternity and beyond. As soon as you realize that you will move beyond duality, and you will be free (something Nietzsche could not do despite his excessive use of morphine. I believe his all consuming hatred of the church had something to do with is failure to transcend the ego and become an Übermensch himself).

Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse – Steppenwolf

Even the most spiritual and highly cultivated of men* habitually sees the world and himself through the lenses of delusive formulas and artless simplifications — and most of all himself. For it appears to be an inborn and imperative need of all men to regard the self as a unit. However often and however grievously this illusion is shattered, it always mends again… And if ever the suspicion of their manifold being dawns upon men of unusual powers and of unusually delicate perceptions, so that, as all genius must, they break through the illusion of the unity of the personality and perceive that the self is made up of a bundle of selves, they have only to say so and at once the majority puts them under lock and key.