Shall We Invent A God!
There was only one norm, man;
and every people thought that it possessed this one ultimate norm.
But above and
outside, in some distant over-world,
one was permitted to behold a plurality of norms;
one god was not considered a denial of another god, nor blasphemy against him.
It was here that the luxury of individuals was first permitted;
it was here that one first honored the rights of individuals.
The invention of gods,
heroes,
and overmen of all kinds,
as well as near-men and
under-men, dwarfs, fairies,
centaurs, satyrs, demons, and devils
was the inestimable preliminary exercise
for the justification of the egoism
and sovereignty of the individual:
the freedom that
one conceded to a god in his relation to other god
–one eventually also granted to oneself
in relation to laws, custom, and neighbors.
–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 143 by Friedrich Nietzsche
An interesting discussion this past evening. The topic was American representative democracy, the widening division of viewpoints in the country, and future prospects for governing the nation. I observed that this feels a troubled time. There is no question that many past generations also concluded that their time in history was troubled. Granted that it is presumptuous to think that our time is privileged to be the final chapter of American democracy. But who can say? Only in retrospect will a summation of the first quarter of the 21st century be possible.
Is our time of trouble, the end time, the end of something? Or is it the birth of something new and better? Are new gods being minted? Is this the advent of an age of pluralism of ideas, of ethnicity, of a substantive advance toward gender equality? Is the axis of value shifting? Are newer, more humane ends being coined? How will we regard money and power, in a century of ever more intricate globalization where every person in some respect is my neighbor? Will I fashion a neighborhood more interesting, stimulating, or one more stifling, meager and dangerous?
A genie can never be forced back into it’s bottle. Weapons are facts of American life. Will some still insist to romanticize our guns or will another, more kind god take their place?
Sobering is it not to recognize that a god can manifest anything, even insanity. Or dare I say kindness…
