All Great Deceivers
With all great deceivers
there is a noteworthy occurrence
to which they owe their power.
in the actual act of deception…
They are overcome by belief
in themselves:
It is this which then speaks
so miraculously and compellingly
to those who surround them.
The founders of religions are distinguished
from these great deceivers
by the fact that they never emerge
from this state of self-deception.
Self-deception has to exist
if a grand effect is to be produced.
For men believe in the truth
of that which is
plainly strongly
believed
Human All Too Human by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans, by R. J. Hollingdale, aphorism 52
One wonders at the “Trump effect.” That is how so many could be attracted to someone perceived by others to be a destroyer, a spoiled man-child, who has parlayed a family name into a seat in the Oval Office. He leveraged a television show, The Apprentice. What grand deception! Apparently under certain circumstances belief in one’s self is enough to offset, indeed transform deficiency of character, absence of self-control into a formula for success.
A friend offered me a youtube video which he believed that I would enjoy. I managed to finish the viewing experience in several sessions. The video was a dialog between Dr. Jordan B. Pederson and a evolutionary biologist. Pederson is a former college professor, who has been a long time propagandist for the evangelical subculture. I worked to follow the dialog as Pederson continually attempts to warp biological and ethnological insight to conform with hard right evangelical causes. The causes are anti-immigration, and the imposition of an evangelical meta-narrative upon the rest of us, especially those evangelicals sharply define as outsiders, gay and transgender Americans. Pederson shills for religionists who oppose the cosmopolitanism inherent in democracy.
A true believer in the grip of belief in themselves is never troubled by doubt. Listening to Pederson’s self-deception, the note of certainly was similar to the sound of fingernails scraping across a blackboard.
In his book, Ecce Homo Nietzsche asks whether it is doubt or certainty that drives us to madness. He concludes that it is certainty. “Because we all fear truth, …and to confess it.” (Why I Am So Clever, aphorism 4)
2 thoughts on “All Great Deceivers”
In your missive for the day, at the end you note:
“In his book, Ecce Homo Nietzsche asks whether it is doubt or certainty that drives us to madness.”
In this context, what is the definition of “madness”? I suspect Nietzsche means the self-deception of mankind, though many of us may be driven to madness by viewing life through clearer glass. In other words, when people have an ability to see the machinations of our fellow Homo sapiens without the baggage of religion or cultism or overt cultural bias, the fact that we are almost forced to watch the train wreck of our species can drive one towards madness. I would call this the madness of sanity (a bit of an oxymoron). Many folks can see the great psychosis of the human mind and plead with others to take heed. Rarely will they. Those people (sounds quite pejorative on my part) are mired in a mindset that does not allow for thinking even near the edges of the box, much less outside of their self-imposed confines. They feel safe inside those boxes and Donald Trump, despite his blathering idiocy, makes them feel even safer with his chest thumping bravado. He doesn’t need to make sense, he only has to blame others, call himself a martyr, and tell his followers that he is their messiah. What’s not to believe?
Yes, with respect to the topic addressed by Nietzsche the use we decide to make of the term “madness” is the pivot point for the discussion. “Certainty” is the expectation that what is real is pure, un-corrupt by improvisation, unsullied by failed attempts to advance a sense of self, etc., To speak from my own experience such a POV can only be inhabited by withdrawal into a faux and distorted story of our human experience. Not that one has any real choice in the matter. It is only in retrospect that we can assess that we were quite mad to have believed all of that “schtick”. In life first of all we get “the exam” and then, comes the lesson if we are fortunate.