This morning came and I woke feeling a body ache, and a malaise of spirit.  I was fortunate to have passed the night without throwing up.  My wife just now recovered from a brief but hard-hitting viral illness.  One definition of misery is to be retching into a toilet.  So far, I’ve dodged that bullet.

Floundering about what to write I began reading a passage from Thus Spake Zarathustra.  I am heartened by how down to earth, how apropos of our emotional ebb and flow, is this collection of brief meditations.  The story of this morning was no exception.  Entitled The Ugliest Man, its an tale of an encounter between Zarathustra, and a man by the wayside so nondescript that Zarathustra blushes in shame.  The man recognizes Zarathustra and offers him a riddle:  What is the revenge on the witness?  Zarathustra is nonplussed and momentarily is overcome with pity for the man.  Zarathustra recovers and says to the man that he recognizes him as the murderer of God!  The man was unable to endure one who knew him through and through, the ultimate witness,–so he had to kill him.  He took his revenge on this witness! 

Zarathustra has answered the riddle and turns to leave.  The man begs to talk further and explains that Zarathustra is the only one who has not offered him pity, but has understood the shame of his unutterable predicament.  The ugly man can handle hatred, persecution, straight-up opposition but not pity.  Pity dehumanizes, demeans, sometimes prompting a token gift of alms. 

Nietzsche’s story then gains momentum with a discourse on pity.  Here are a few lines:

—Whether it be the pity of a God, or whether it be human pity, it is offensive to modesty. And unwillingness to help may be nobler than the virtue that rushes to do so.

That however—namely, pity—is called virtue itself at present by all petty people:—they have no reverence for great misfortune, great ugliness, great failure.

Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looks over the backs of thronging flocks of sheep. They are petty, good-wooled, good-willed, grey people.

As the heron looks contemptuously at shallow pools, with backward-bent head, so do I look at the throng of grey little waves and wills and souls.

Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those petty people: so we have at last given them power as well;—and now do they teach that ‘good is only what petty people call good.’

And ‘truth’ is at present what the preacher spake who himself sprang from them, that singular saint and advocate of the petty people, who testified of himself: ‘I—am the truth.’

That immodest one hath long made the petty people greatly puffed up,—he who taught no small error when he taught: ‘I—am the truth.’

Perhaps you can see where this is going.  The widespread, typical emotional response to the ups and downs of life, the slings and arrows, which is nothing except life, is pity and self pity.  How demeaning and destructive this is.  This inclination, this ground-held-in-common is regarded with contempt by the writer, Nietzsche.  Nietzsche sees this proclivity as defining the zeitgeist of the West.

My mind quickly segued to the reflexive pity-party that our president likes to offer when questioned or opposed about anything.  He is the eternal victim hanging from the “liberal” cross.  He does not stand alone as he has a circle of ferocious defenders who marinate in self pity, in victim-hood, and resonate with his habitual lying.  Truth is a meaningless and useless concept if whatever one chooses to say defines the world.

The Jussie Smollett fiasco also came to mind.  It seems that holding fast to a lie is the new definition of integrity.  Smollett is “a victim” no matter what,  Plenty of individuals within his circle are supportive of that approach to life.

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I’ll do my best to have less self pity, to waste less time conjuring up excuses for not playing the game to the best of my ability.

To compose this post is a rejection of self pity, on this Thursday morning.

The ugliest man quotes Zarathustra’s own words back to him.  I think they are worth meditating upon:

When you teach: ‘All creators are hard, all great love is beyond their pity,’ O Zarathustra, how well acquainted you seem to be in weather-signs!