Spirits We Are Hiding
Liberals are misjudged and there is no remedy for that. That cannot be helped. You may wonder how the world appears to the liberal minded.
The world is viewed as a changing matrix, an organism-like phenomenon which is perpetually searching a more efficient way, (by trial and error) an improved way of processing of nourishment, of information exchange, of new meaning, of right and wrong… The world as it is, could be quite different now if any number of prior states had been a bit different. Nietzsche describes this world as twisted, tricky, barbed, and loving. There is no other world, a B world, just this one world in which we all must live, make decisions.
Naturally if you believe that a creator God revealed to humankind what is moral, the standards of right and wrong, – I and those like me, who in our heart of hearts, honestly think standards of right and wrong are improvisational, made up by trial and error as we go – we appear to you as “devilish” and dolts!
While on my way to Starbucks this Sunday afternoon I glimpsed a repurposed military vehicle, a heavy truck painted camo-green. The big vehicle, flashed through the intersection, oddly sticking out with it’s half dozen flags, one American and the rest pro-Trump campaign flags flying from every support at the perimeter of the rear bed. This vehicle, a dark menacing machine, transmitted a message of consummate, unalloyed violence while surrounded by civilian Teslas, Toyotas, Fords, etc. along Randall Road in Geneva.
Am I ok to be misunderstood as someone on “the left”? I cannot imagine how my mind will change, or what I’ll be labeled in the future. I hope not to become stupid, a tedious bore.
As it has been said before “life is short and death is long”.
People will probably misjudge us
and misconstrue us on account of this:
so what!
People will say: “this ‘genuine honesty’ –
this is devilishness and absolutely nothing else!”
So what!
And even if they were right!
Haven’t all gods so far been devils like this,
who have become holy and been re-baptized?
And, ultimately,
what do we know about ourselves?
And what the spirit that leads us wants to be called?
(It is a question of names.)
And how many spirits we are hiding?
Our genuine honesty, we free spirits,
– let us make sure that it does not become our vanity,
our pomp and finery, our limitation, our stupidity!
Every virtue tends towards stupidity,
every stupidity towards virtue;
“stupid to the point of holiness” they say in Russia,
– let us make sure we do not end up becoming saints
or tedious bores out of genuine honesty!
Isn’t life a hundred times too short to be bored?
You would have to believe in eternal life in order to . . .
Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Judith Norman, aphorism 227
4 thoughts on “Spirits We Are Hiding”
Here’s the main difference between the owner of the Trumpish massive vehicle with the flags and the liberal walking to Starbucks: If the liberal approached the driver to calmly discuss the world at large he would most likely be threatened with violence, whereas if the MAGA drive approached you with an intent to have a conversation, your answer would be, “Let’s go have a coffee and talk.”
I’m clearly projecting here, but the person who has swallowed Trumpian rhetoric is steeped in the fear of change and has a propensity to blame anyone who looks different or thinks differently as the reason for the world being “against” him/her (most likely “him”). They believe that if they could only eradicate the “others” from their imagined world, all would be well.
Again, liberals are usually seeking ways to be inclusive, even with those whose ideology does not fit with their own. This is both the liberals’ strength and weakness, for the world would be a better place if we all could find peace with each other yet at the same time, liberals are more vulnerable to being overrun by the fear-riddled bullies because of that open mindset. A true conundrum.
Emotion is the substrate for reason. When fear is the primary state of the body every other emotional response is contaminated, skewed. Are we as a society on a road of no return, beyond a turning point where reconciliation is possible?
Unfortunately, there is more than a 50/50 chance that we have gone beyond the tipping point, in more than one way. The lead article in the NY Times earlier today (Monday 8/12) reads:
How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points?
Earth’s warming could trigger sweeping changes in the natural world that would be hard, if not impossible, to reverse.
And so, here we are! Alienated from each other to the point of violent confrontation, all while obliterating our only home. Some folks believe that God will destroy the “other”, bring eternal life to the true believers and allow them back into Eden. Some appear to have everlasting faith that power and wealth will save them and that somehow they are deemed immortality by virtue of entitlement. Still others are under the delusional theory that they will be redeemed by having the correct color of skin. Personally, I blame evolution for having brought us to this place in time. We humans have most likely evolved to that point of no return and if that’s the case, nature will have declared a Mulligan, wiping the slate clean to start from scratch.
I hate the fact that you and I and the other rational, life-affirming creatures are witnessing this travesty when it did not have to be this way. On the other hand, perhaps it was inevitable.
The coffee this morning is hot, astringent, and the music is fine in the Starbucks room. “Someone To Watch Over Me” is now playing and it is good to be alive. (I Wonder if organizations, systems, even individuals reach a point of development that begins to defeat the organism within it’s environment. A time comes to start over!)