Here’s Your Chance!
“There cannot be a
God, because then we could not endure not to be gods ourselves!”
I would like to spell out one implication of Nietzsche’s battle cry in this
brief column. Too often such
titillating declamations die away into rapidly fading echoes because we
cannot really imagine what difference they would make in real life. They
seem to express a certain brand of attitude, defiance, I guess, but unless
they can be shown to make a difference in the living of life, the Superman
remains an empty ideal. There’s nothing wrong with an empty ideal, mind you:
it serves as a challenge for us to fill it. If we don’t, we will have failed
to earn that wisdom or its fruits. So can we make some sense of our own
“godhood?”
By the way, I place the term in lower
case as a way of indicating that I am using it “under erasure.” As Nietzsche
said with regard to “truth,” there is none. But we must retain the
category of “truth” precisely in order to remind ourselves of its
emptiness. Otherwise, our favorite fictions may begin to creep over into the
other, empty, category, and we will begin to regard them as truths, as we
once regarded the fictions we have since rejected. In the same way, we dare
not set ourselves up as real Gods, because that would be like thinking you
are Napoleon. (Though come to think of it, one of my favorite historical
characters, Louis Napoleon, or Napoleon III, did after a fashion strive to
play the role of his more famous uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte, another favorite
of mine. And it was the younger Napoleon’s Icarus-like attempt that makes
him one of my favorites!)
Here’s what I have in mind. One of the
major reasons individuals give for rejecting belief in a providential Deity
is poor job performance. His worshippers seem to be paying him for nothing:
the world looks just as bad as it would if no one were overseeing it. And so
why not conclude there is no one overseeing it? It’s not just that no
one is showing up to work; no, there is no one to show up for work!
Nor can you. The job’s still open. That is, it would be if it were an actual
job. But it isn’t because the job description is just too vast. Look at the
mildly amusing movie Bruce Almighty, where an average jerk gains the
power of God and doesn’t know how to wield it. Big surprise, right? As if
anybody could. The answer to this one’s prayer is going to stomp on that
one’s toes. No one could keep it all straight. In fact, that’s really what
we’re saying when we exclaim, “God alone could do so and so.” Nobody could.
God is no one, as when Polyphemus cried out “Noman is killing me!”
But I want to suggest that you and I
do after all, each in our own tiny way, have that job, whether or not we
are doing a very good job of it. It is nowadays common to hear it said that
each individual makes his own reality. I am convinced there is significant
truth in that maxim. Our world is, on one level, the product of our
subconscious, instantaneous judgments and perceptions of what we see
happening around us at each moment. We feed input through certain grids,
some hard-wired into the human organism, others shaped through learned (or
mis-learned) experiences. We are not seeing the whole thing, the
“undifferentiated manifold of perception,” but only an interpreted and even
censored version. We need to try to understand these mechanisms, as Kant
did, through sustained introspection. “Why am I inclined to think people do
not take me seriously? Is it something I am reluctant to admit about myself?
Dare I face it?” “Why am I so pessimistic? How do I really know that the
future must be a replay of the past?” And so on. This is where the
“affirmations” of New Thought come in. They are attempts at reconditioning
our thought patterns. I used to ridicule the idea—that is, until I
understood it.
We create our worlds also insofar as we
send out signals inviting certain responses, positive, negative, friendly,
hostile, icily indifferent. We may not be aware of the invitations we are
sending out, asking others to behave toward us in a certain way, and they
may not consciously be aware of the transaction either, but we are
exchanging eloquent signals with those around us. How others treat us is
often surprising just because we are conscious only of the response, not
what elicited it.
Naturally, many people we encounter are
riding roughshod over us just because we happen to be in their way, and we
had nothing to do with it. We didn’t invite or create such behavior, any
more than we somehow caused a traffic jam miles ahead that is making us
stand still on the highway. I may be a megalomaniac, but I’m not a
solipsist.
Equally true and equally important, we
create each other’s realities insofar as we allow each other to. Think how
many times someone’s chance remark or thoughtless deed has depressed or
angered you for a whole day—or much longer. They cast a pall over your day,
or your life. Consider how an encouraging “word in season” has lifted you
up, opened a way where you had not noticed one, given you heart and hope.
Someone, many others, are creating your world with you or for you.
If their input is negative, you ought to
be able to fend it off. Fundamentalist motivational speaker Bill Gothard
was, like the stopped clock, right despite himself occasionally, as when he
argued that, when someone insults you, you needn’t get all bent out of shape
over it. Just realize that the insult came to you for one of two reasons.
First, maybe you deserved it. The insulter’s lack of tact aside (grow up,
will you!), maybe they’re right. In that case, why be sore at him? Take the
rebuke like a man (or if you prefer, like a “mature adult.” But I prefer to
say “man” since I figure women are more mature anyway and don’t need the
advice.) and correct the flaw. You really ought to thank him for bringing it
to your attention.
Alternatively, you might not have
deserved it. In that case, the bullet has missed you. Instead of licking the
wound you didn’t actually get, turn your attention to the gunman. It’s his
problem, not yours, that led him to insult you. In his own confused and
coded way, he might even have been asking you for help! Either way, get down
to business helping yourself by improving, or helping the one who would have
offended you if you were insecure enough to take it seriously.
In any case, you can learn to screen out
other people’s attempts to control your emotions. You can stop them from
polluting the world you are busy creating. But remember, too, that your acts
and words are influencing the other person. You are creating his or her
world, probably thoughtlessly, like the idiot Demiurge Azathoth. Take
thought of the creative fiats you hurl from your modest Olympus! Your little
words, pats on the back, jokes, comments, approvals, will write the script
for another. You are the man behind the curtain in the Emerald City: you are
the god about whose shoddy providence they are complaining!
Great is your power over another, if only
you knew it! Be a kind, beneficent, and deliberate creator. To take on that
burden is to undertake the job left vacant by the death of God. To take his
place, “must we not after all, become gods ourselves?” No wonder the
mythical God did such a poor job! You can hardly blame him after all: the
poor chap didn’t exist! But you do. In your small or great sphere of
influence, do God’s job right!
So says Zarathustra.
