Plague Journal, Pied Cow Part III
But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?
Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.
Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth the world’s outcast.
Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.—
Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is called The Pied Cow.
— The three Metamorphoses by Friedrich Nietzsche
Morning breaks sunlit, warming, a harbinger of spring. Left behind winters snow cover will melt today. Subterranean life will benefit from slow diffusion of moisture through the humus. Nature is cyclical, auto renewing when tended properly.
We have not tended Nature properly. It does not appear that our purpose is to do so. Even as we Americans have badly botched combating the pandemic, it appears that we are unwilling to take measures necessary to reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere, driving the greenhouse effect. We Americans are immune to fact. We are warming the planet. Life is now untenable over large sectors of geography for longer periods of time. Simply put, in many places it is dangerously hot to be outside, even in the shade.
The old pattern materializes, emerging from the depths, becoming visible. I speak of the pattern of denial, repudiation of the warnings of a highly contagious, lethal virus — doing too little, too late. According to the CDC we have vaccinated 14.6 percent of the population, while states are pressing toward unrestricted opening of businesses, even of sporting events and the Disney theme parks in California.
This burlesque of denial was displayed on CNN last night, the Senate debate over the pandemic relief bill. In the early morning hours Senate republicans made repeated attempts to amend, to reduce the aid for their countrymen immiserated, dehumanized by unemployment, reduced to servility… just another episode in a sorry story of anti-rational humanity.
Words written by Nietzsche in 1883, Zarathustra says that the camel always seeks its burden, because that is what it is, a load bearing mammal. And so it is with the vast majority of humanity. We prefer superstition: the conviction of our own unworthiness, overburdened by our sinfulness, we keep looking, and looking, and looking for relief/release/salvation from outside of ourselves. Waiting for Godot: the smooth talking politician, or the angry-father-figure-autocrat whose accusing rhetoric convicts the immigrant, a defenseless scapegoat for our ills.
Things need not be this way. Zarathustra’s final words spoken at the town called The Pied Cow instruct us of other possibilities for constructing reality. What is called for is the openness, the receptivity, and the imagination like that of a child. Can you remember, at least dimly what it was like to be a child? Remember how you played with possibilities, giving your imagination free reign to make-of-the-world what suited and pleased you? The child speaks a “yes,” a consecrated yes to the possibilities presented by the living world.
It is in that direction, that our survival lies.
