“How could anything originate out of its opposite?
Truth from error, for instance?
Or the will to truth from the will to deception?
Or selfless action from self-interest?
Or the pure, sun-bright gaze of wisdom from a covetous leer?

Such origins are impossible,
and people who dream about such things
are fools – at best.

Things of the highest value
must have another, separate origin of their own,
– they cannot be derived
from this ephemeral, seductive, deceptive, lowly world,
from this mad chaos of confusion and desire.

Look instead to the lap of being,
the everlasting, the hidden God, the ‘thing-in-itself ’
– this is where their ground must be,
and nowhere else!”

…it could be possible that appearance,
the will to deception,
and craven self-interest should be accorded
a higher and more fundamental value for all life.

It could even be possible that
whatever gives value
to those good and honorable things
has an incriminating link,
bond, or tie to the very things
that look like their evil opposites;
perhaps they are
even essentially the same.

Perhaps…

Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Judith Norman, aphorism 2

From time to time, I am jolted awake.  My default mode of life, a reflex assumption that I bring to each new day, – there’s a distinction between things. That good and evil are opposites. Perhaps as a consequence of my upbringing, social conditioning , – I am inclined toward “the good,” imagine myself to belong to that tribe, to be in that camp.

Today’s stiff wake-up came as I read the New York Times, The Morning email. The email mentioned  Secretary of State, Andrew Blinken’s visit to Ukraine.  Two bullet points from the New York Times:

• In recent days, Russian troops have captured settlements and villages near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. See a map of Moscow’s push.

• At a Kyiv bar, Secretary of State Antony Blinken — who is also an amateur guitarist — played Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

There are times when waking to reality is so radical, so similar to whiplash, the nightmare of my fevered imagination is “the truth” after all,  the odds are long that I am going to wake up.  The scene of Blinken playing Neil Young’s iconic song in a Kyiv bar weeps irony. 

The irony is identical to that of Nietzsche’s observation that there is no other origination of what is righteous and true than this mad and chaotic world.