Creature Feature

abstinence / sex jason
Above and beyond all is the transcendent deity. In the Book of
Baruch this
deity is called the Good and is identified with the fertility
god Priapos. In the
Secret Book of John and elsewhere this deity is called the One,
or monad, as
well as the invisible spirit, virgin spirit, and father. It is
said that the One
should not be confused with a god, since it is greater than a
god. Elsewhere the
transcendent is called the boundless, depth, majesty, light.
Poimandres reveals
itself as the light, mind, first god. Mandaeans call this deity
the great life and
lord of greatness, Manichaeans the father of greatness, Muslim
mystics the exalted
king, Cathars the invisible father, true god, good god.
Drive In Memories
Use a ‘pic’ , light it to get rid of mosquitoes, it’s like a
sitronella candle but more like incense
Ddt trucks would drive by to fumigate for mosquitoes
Or you can get your car fumigated
Teenage Doll
I Was a Teenage Frankenstein
Daddy-O
Angel’s Wild Women
The Devil Girl from Mars
Monsters from Green Hell
Drugs and The Priestly Caste`
Visual Hallucinations, Illusion, a form of hyperacusis, body
image distortions...
euphroia, anxciety, depression, flight of ideas, clang
associations, inability to abstract.
Autopnomic responses, pupillary dilation, nauseam dizziness,
flushjing, absominal complaints, blood pressurem, and pulse...
depression with the ever present risk of suicde may develop
during or after their administration.
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Timothy Leary - people who like the drug and want control - WANT
to not use labels “no calling anyone names.” “Like psychotic.”
liked the No - Leader aspect - anti-authoritarian by - breed >?
- Leary’s transformation, coming from Harvard, what WAS he like
before?
We were not out to discover new laws, which is to say, to
discover the redundant implications of our own premises...
HUMILITY> HOLDING ONESELF = ideally
We were not to interpret ecstasy as mania, or calm serentity as
catatonia; we were not to diagnose Buddha as a detached
schizoid; nor Christ as an exhibitionistic masochist; nor the
mystic experience as a symptom, nor the visionary state as a
model psychosis.
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Producting Optimally positive reactions to the drug, positive
reaction in this study is defined as:
“Pleasant, ecstatic, non-anxious expereience. Broadening of
awareness.Increased insight.
An additional aim of the study is to determine if the reactions
(positive and negative) are enduring.
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Wanting to do research with the drugs.... Well, society making
that the obvious decision...
So, the scientists get a hold of the drugs as they can, to use
in research projects...
but the ones who get famous use them in party settings, outside
the laboratory, to change society, to get at ‘ecstasy’, which
can’t be controlled or got at through scientific method, they
preach about while .... the fear of the experience is able to be
expressed by their partners by chastising the free-using
scientists by saying, “this must be regimented and we must stick
to laboratory rules, etc” ’QUOTE “Research is a phony ritual to
counteract fear of the mystery.”
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The Good vs. Dangerous...
Innocents vs. Experience
veiled as good vs. evil
BUT TRULY THE CRAZY SEXY COOL vs. THE
after being chastised by Mike for using the drugs before the lab
test, in a party environment
“Another thing, said O’Donell, there’s the power thing. Miek was
sorer because we weent ahead last night without him. Welkl tat’s
the way it’s going to be. Everyone who isn’t tripping himself
because he’s too scared or tired is going to resent our doing
it. Sex, drugs, fun, travel, dancing, loafing. You name it.
Anything that’s pleasurable is going to bring down the wrath of
the power- control people. Because the essence of ecstasy and
the essence of religion and the essence of orgasm (and they’re
all pretty much the same) is that you give up power and swing
with it,. And the cats who can’t do that end up with the power
and they use it to puniosh the innocent and the happy. And
they’ll try to make us look bad and feel bad.”
Fear of freedom, and fear of the prudish social forces which
attack freedom...
wanting it to be a love drug, he realizes the drug doesn’t solve
any problems... it is merely a door opener to the grand
theater...
realizing, reluctantly, that there are equal parts God and Devil
(or whatever you want to call them) in the nervous system...
“I began to feel the frustration of the guy who invented the
wheel at that horrid moment when he real-lized that it could be
harnessed to any damnable human game - to a war chariot, to a
bulldozer, to a Las Vegas roulette table.
The old games will always be with us: spontanaeity vs. control,
freedom vs. structure, love vs. isolation. The stage sets get
bigger. The energies move faster, our insight into the divine
plan becomes more awe-fully detailed. The razor edge of paradox
remains.
...
BE LIKE THE THUNDERSTORM
.,..
And the quizzical smile of O’Donnell remained.
DARKENING OF THE LIGHT
In adversity
It furthers one to be perservering. (I Ching)
End Notes & Eratta
With a mystical flourish the Gospel of Philip recommends
that rather than be called a Christian, a person with knowledge
might be understood
to be at one with the gnostic revealer and be called Christ.
This recalls
the Gospel of Thomas, saying 108, where Jesus says, “Whoever
drinks
from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become that
person, and
the hidden things will be revealed to that one.“
Gnostic Philosophy
GNOSTIC BIBLE- pg 2-3
Consequently, gnostics provided innovative and oftentimes
disturbing interpretations
of the creation stories they read. They concluded that a
distinction,
often a dualistic distinction, must be made between the
transcendent,
INTRODUCTION 3
spiritual deity, who is surrounded by aeons and is all wisdom
and light, and
the creator of the world, who is at best incompetent and at
worst malevolent.
Yet through everything, they maintained, a spark of transcendent
knowledge,
wisdom, and light persists within people who are in the know.
The transcendent
deity is the source of that enlightened life and light. The
meaning of the
creation drama, when properly understood, is that human
beings—gnostics
in particular—derive their knowledge and light from the
transcendent god,
but through the mean-spirited actions of the demiurge, the
creator of the
world, they have been confined within this world. (The platonic
aspects of this
imagery are apparent.) Humans in this world are imprisoned,
asleep,
drunken, fallen, ignorant. They need to find themselves—to be
freed, awakened,
made sober, raised, and enlightened. In other words, they need
to return
to gnosis.
pg 4
The role of the gnostic savior or revealer is to awaken people
who are under
the spell of the demiurge—not, as in the case of the Christ of
the emerging orthodox
church, to die for the salvation of people, to be a sacrifice
for sins, or to
rise from the dead on Easter. The gnostic revealer discloses
knowledge that
frees and awakens people, and that helps them recall who they
are.
6
More abstractly, the call to revelation and knowledge—the
wake-up call—is a winged divine messenger in the Song of the
Pearl, instruction
of mind in Hermetic literature, and enlightened Manda dHayye,
knowledge
of life, in Mandaean literature. In other words, the call to
knowledge is
6 INTRODUCTION
the dawning of awareness, from within and without, of “what is,
what was,
and what is to come.“ It is insight. It is gnosis.
Gods and Aliens
Elder Gods vs. Rebel Gods
“”Many who believe in UFOlogy see this as nothing less than an
alternative to other relgions.“”
Faith is not fideism or simple obedience to a set of rules or
statements.
Fideism is an epistemological theory which maintains that faith
is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile
to each other and faith is superior at arriving at particular
truths (see natural theology)
Faith is a gift from God to the Christian and faith can be
increased by the growth of the “believer” through God’s Holy
Word and through various actions detailed in God’s Word. Faith
is not to be confused with belief or believe as these are two
separate and distinct words and meanings. Men can and do believe
in many things, and in the Bible it is stated that Satan
“believes” in fact or actuality Satan “knows” whom God is, but
does not have the faith for salvation. Belief has action but is
without “substance” until faith has been supplied by the giver
who is God.
JUDAISM
A traditional example of faith as seen in the Jewish annals is
found in the person of Abraham. On a number of occasions,
Abraham both accepts statements from God that seem impossible
and offers obedient actions in response to direction from God to
do things that seem implausible (see Genesis 12-15).
Criticisms of faith
Rationalists criticize religious faith arguing its
irrationality, and see faith as ignorance of reality: a strong
belief in something with no evidence and sometimes a strong
belief in something even with evidence against it. Bertrand
Russell noted, “Where there is evidence, no one speaks of
‘faith’. We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or
that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to
substitute emotion for evidence.”[28]
Carl Sagan states that faith is the belief in the absence of
evidence. “For me , believing when where is no compelling
evidence is a mistake. The idea is to withhold belief until
there is compelling evidence, and if the universe does not
comply with our predispositions, okay then we have the wrenching
obligation to accommodate to the way the universe really is.”
[33]
Knight of Faith
Loneliness / Power - Primal / Dour
Dour: DEFINITION
\dogged: stubbornly unyielding; “dogged persistence”; “dour
determination”; “the most vocal and pertinacious of all the
critics”; “a mind not ...
harshly uninviting or formidable in manner or appearance; “a
dour, self-sacrificing life”; “a forbidding scowl”; “a grim man
loving duty more than humanity”; “undoubtedly the grimmest part
of him was his iron claw”- J.M.Barrie
dark: showing a brooding ill humor; “a dark scowl”; “the
proverbially dour New England Puritan”; “a glum, hopeless
shrug”; “he sat in moody silence”; “a morose and unsociable
manner”; “a saturnine, almost misanthropic young genius”- Bruce
Bliven; “a sour temper”; “a sullen crowd”
Slavery / Triumph
THE UNIQUE
THE UNIQUE
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
9:36 AM
He hates the death penalty because it is the image of the human
condition, and, at the same time, he
is drawn to crime. Because he has taken the side of mankind,
solitude is his lot. With him the rebellion of
reason culminates in madness.
For Stirner the history of the universe up to the time of Jesus
is nothing but a sustained effort to idealize
reality.
From
the time of Jesus, the goal is reached, and another effort is
embarked upon which consists, on the
contrary, in attempting to realize the ideal.
socialism, the heir of Christ, extends its sway.
The only truth is the Unique, the
enemy of eternity and of everything, in fact, which does not
further its desire for domination.
The Unique
Even before Nietzsche, Stirner wanted to eradicate the very idea
of God from man’s mind, after he had
destroyed God Himself. But, unlike Nietzsche, his nihilism was
gratified. Stirner laughs in his blind alley;
Nietzsche beats his head against the wall. In 1845, the year
when Der Einziger und sein Eigentum (The
Unique and Its Characteristics) appeared, Stirner begins to
define his position. Stirner, who frequented
the “Society of Free Men” with the young Hegelians of the left
(of whom Marx was one), had an account
to settle not only with God, but also with Feuerbach’s Man,
Hegel’s Spirit, and its historical incarnation,
the State. All these idols, to his mind, were offsprings of the
same “mongolism”—the belief in the eternity
of ideas. Thus he was able to write: “I have constructed my case
on nothing.” Sin is, of course,
a “mongol scourge,” but it is also the law of which we are
prisoners. God is the enemy; Stirner goes as far
as he can in blasphemy (“digest the Host and you are rid of
it”). But God is only one of the aberrations of
the I, or more precisely of what I am. Socrates, Jesus,
Descartes, Hegel, all the prophets and philosophers,
have done nothing but invent new methods of deranging what I am,
the I that Stirner is so intent on
distinguishing from the absolute I of Fichte by reducing it to
its most specific and transitory aspect. “It has
no name,“ it is the Unique.
For Stirner the history of the universe up to the time of Jesus
is nothing but a sustained effort to idealize
reality. This effort is incarnated in the ideas and rites of
purification which the ancients employed. From
the time of Jesus, the goal is reached, and another effort is
embarked upon which consists, on the
contrary, in attempting to realize the ideal. The passion of the
incarnation takes the place of purification
and devastates the world, to a greater and greater degree, as
socialism, the heir of Christ, extends its sway.
But the history of the universe is nothing but a continual
offense to the unique principle that “I am”—a
living, concrete principle, a triumphant principle that the
world has always wanted to subject to the yoke
of successive abstractions—God, the State, society, humanity.
For Stirner, philanthropy is a hoax.
Atheistic philosophies, which culminate in the cult of the State
and of Man, are only “theological
insurrections.“ ”Our atheists,“ says Stirner, ”are really pious
folk.“ There is only one religion that exists
throughout all history, the belief in eternity. This belief is a
deception. The only truth is the Unique, the
enemy of eternity and of everything, in fact, which does not
further its desire for domination.
With Stirner, the concept of negation which inspires his
rebellion irresistibly submerges every aspect of
affirmation. It also sweeps away the substitutes for divinity
with which the moral conscience is
encumbered. “External eternity is swept away,” he says, “but
internal eternity has become a new heaven.”
Even revolution, revolution in particular, is repugnant to this
rebel. To be a revolutionary, one must
continue to believe in something, even where there is nothing in
which to believe. “The [French]
Revolution ended in reaction and that demonstrates what the
Revolution was in reality.“ To dedicate oneself to humanity is
no more worth while than serving God.
Moreover, fraternity is only “Communism in its Sunday best.”
During the week, the members of the
fraternity become slaves. Therefore there is only one form of
freedom for Stirner, “my power,” and only
one truth, “the magnificent egotism of the stars.”
In this desert everything begins to flower again. “The
terrifying significance of an unpremeditated cry of
joy cannot be understood while the long night of faith and
reason endures.“ This night is drawing to a
close, and a dawn will break which is not the dawn of revolution
but of insurrection. Insurrection is, in
itself, an asceticism which rejects all forms of consolation.
The insurgent will not be in agreement with
other men except in so far as, and as long as, their egotism
coincides with his. His real life is led in
solitude where he will assuage, without restraint, his appetite
for existing, which is his only reason for
existence.
In this respect individualism reaches a climax. It is the
negation of everything that denies the individual
and the glorification of everything that exalts and ministers to
the individual. What, according to Stirner,
is good? “Everything of which I can make use.” What am I,
legitimately, authorized to do? “Everything of
which I am capable.“ Once again, rebellion leads to the
justification of crime. Stirner not only has
attempted to justify crime (in this respect the terrorist forms
of anarchy are directly descended from him),
but is visibly intoxicated by the perspectives that he thus
reveals. “To break with what is sacred, or rather
to destroy the sacred, could become universal. It is not a new
revolution that is approaching—but is not a
powerful, proud, disrespectful, shameless, conscienceless crime
swelling like a thundercloud on the
horizon, and can you not see that the sky, heavy with
foreboding, is growing dark and silent?“ Here we
can feel the somber joy of those who create an apocalypse in a
garret. This bitter and imperious logic can
no longer be held in check, except by an I which is determined
to defeat every form of abstraction and
which has itself become abstract and nameless through being
isolated and cut off from its roots. There are
no more crimes and no more imperfections, and therefore no more
sinners. We are all perfect.
Since every I is, in itself, fundamentally criminal in its
attitude toward the State and the people, we must
recognize that to live is to transgress. Unless we accept death,
we must be willing to kill in order to be
unique. “You are not as noble as a criminal, you who do not
desecrate anything.” Moreover Stirner, still
without the courage of his convictions, specifies: “Kill them,
do not martyr them.”
But to decree that murder is legitimate is to decree
mobilization and war for all the Unique. Thus murder
will coincide with a kind of collective suicide. Stirner, who
either does not admit or does not see this,
nevertheless does not recoil at the idea of any form of
destruction. The spirit of rebellion finally discovers
one of its bitterest satisfactions in chaos. “You [the German
nation] will be struck down. Soon your sister
nations will follow you; when all of them have gone your way,
humanity will be buried, and on its tomb I,
sole master of myself at last, I, heir to all the human race,
will shout with laughter.“ And so, among the
ruins of the world, the desolate laughter of the individual-king
illustrates the last victory of the spirit of
rebellion. But at this extremity nothing else is possible but
death or resurrection. Stirner, and with him all
the nihilist rebels, rush to the utmost limits, drunk with
destruction. After which, when the desert has been
disclosed, the next step is to learn how to live there.
Nietzsche’s exhaustive search then begins.
Surgeons have this in common with prophets: they think and
operate in terms of the future.
Nietzsche never thought except in terms of an
apocalypse to come, not in order to extol it, for he guessed the
sordid and calculating aspect that this
apocalypse would finally assume, but in order to avoid it and to
transform it into a renaissance.
He
recognized nihilism for what it was and examined it like a
clinical fact.
Revolution was in reality.“ To dedicate oneself to humanity is
no more worth while than serving God.
Moreover, fraternity is only “Communism in its Sunday best.”
During the week, the members of the
fraternity become slaves. Therefore there is only one form of
freedom for Stirner, “my power,” and only
one truth, “the magnificent egotism of the stars.”
In this desert everything begins to flower again. “The
terrifying significance of an unpremeditated cry of
joy cannot be understood while the long night of faith and
reason endures.“ This night is drawing to a
close, and a dawn will break which is not the dawn of revolution
but of insurrection. Insurrection is, in
itself, an asceticism which rejects all forms of consolation.
The insurgent will not be in agreement with
other men except in so far as, and as long as, their egotism
coincides with his. His real life is led in
solitude where he will assuage, without restraint, his appetite
for existing, which is his only reason for

existence.
In this respect individualism reaches a climax. It is the
negation of everything that denies the individual
and the glorification of everything that exalts and ministers to
the individual. What, according to Stirner,
is good? “Everything of which I can make use.” What am I,
legitimately, authorized to do? “Everything of
which I am capable.“ Once again, rebellion leads to the
justification of crime. Stirner not only has
attempted to justify crime (in this respect the terrorist forms
of anarchy are directly descended from him),
but is visibly intoxicated by the perspectives that he thus
reveals. “To break with what is sacred, or rather
to destroy the sacred, could become universal. It is not a new
revolution that is approaching—but is not a
powerful, proud, disrespectful, shameless, conscienceless crime
swelling like a thundercloud on the
horizon, and can you not see that the sky, heavy with
foreboding, is growing dark and silent?“ Here we
can feel the somber joy of those who create an apocalypse in a
garret. This bitter and imperious logic can
no longer be held in check, except by an I which is determined
to defeat every form of abstraction and
which has itself become abstract and nameless through being
isolated and cut off from its roots. There are
no more crimes and no more imperfections, and therefore no more
sinners. We are all perfect.
Since every I is, in itself, fundamentally criminal in its
attitude toward the State and the people, we must
recognize that to live is to transgress. Unless we accept death,
we must be willing to kill in order to be
unique. “You are not as noble as a criminal, you who do not
desecrate anything.” Moreover Stirner, still
without the courage of his convictions, specifies: “Kill them,
do not martyr them.”
But to decree that murder is legitimate is to decree
mobilization and war for all the Unique. Thus murder
will coincide with a kind of collective suicide. Stirner, who
either does not admit or does not see this,
nevertheless does not recoil at the idea of any form of
destruction. The spirit of rebellion finally discovers
one of its bitterest satisfactions in chaos. “You [the German
nation] will be struck down. Soon your sister
nations will follow you; when all of them have gone your way,
humanity will be buried, and on its tomb I,
sole master of myself at last, I, heir to all the human race,
will shout with laughter.“ And so, among the
ruins of the world, the desolate laughter of the individual-king
illustrates the last victory of the spirit of
rebellion. But at this extremity nothing else is possible but
death or resurrection. Stirner, and with him all
the nihilist rebels, rush to the utmost limits, drunk with
destruction. After which, when the desert has been
disclosed, the next step is to learn how to live there.
Nietzsche’s exhaustive search then begins.
Nietzsche and Nihilism
“We deny God, we deny the responsibility of God, it is only thus
that we will deliver the world.” With
Nietzsche, nihilism seems to become prophetic. But we can draw
no conclusions from Nietzsche except
the base and mediocre cruelty that he hated with all his
strength, unless we give first place in his work—
well ahead of the prophet—to the diagnostician. The provisional,
methodical—in a word, strategic—
character of his thought cannot be doubted for a moment. With
him nihilism becomes conscious for the
first time. Surgeons have this in common with prophets: they
think and operate in terms of the future.
Nietzsche never thought except in terms of an
apocalypse to come, not in order to extol it, for he guessed the
sordid and calculating aspect that this
apocalypse would finally assume, but in order to avoid it and to
transform it into a renaissance. He
recognized nihilism for what it was and examined it like a
clinical fact.
He said of himself that he was the first complete nihilist of
Europe. Not by choice, but by condition, and
because he was too great to refuse the heritage of his time. He
diagnosed in himself, and in others, the
inability to believe and the disappearance of the primitive
foundation of all faith—namely, the belief in
life. The “can one live as a rebel?” became with him “can one
live believing in nothing?” His reply is
affirmative. Yes, if one creates a system out of absence of
faith, if one accepts the final consequences of
nihilism, and if, on emerging into the desert and putting one’s
confidence in what is going to come, one
feels, with the same primitive instinct, both pain and joy.
Instead of methodical doubt, he practiced methodical negation,
the determined destruction of everything
that still hides nihilism from itself, of the idols that
camouflage God’s death. “To raise a new sanctuary, a
sanctuary must be destroyed, that is the law.“ According to
Nietzsche, he who wants to be a creator of
good or of evil must first of all destroy all values. “Thus the
supreme evil becomes part of the supreme
good, but the supreme good is creative.“ He wrote, in his own
manner, the Discours de la Methode of his
period, without the freedom and exactitude of the seventeenthcentury
French he admired so much, but
with the mad lucidity that characterizes the twentieth century,
which, according to him, is the century of
genius. We must return to the examination of this system of
rebellion.1
Nietzsche’s first step is to accept what he knows. Atheism for
him goes without saying and is
“constructive and radical.” Nietzsche’s supreme vocation, so he
says, is to provoke a kind of crisis and a
final decision about the problem of atheism. The world continues
on its course at
1 We are obviously concerned here with Nietzsche’s final
philosophic position, between 1880 and his
collapse. This chapter can be considered as a commentary on Der
Wille zur Macht. (The Will to Power).
random and there is nothing final about it. Thus God is useless,
since He wants nothing in particular. If
He wanted something—and here we recognize the traditional
formulation of the problem of evil—He
would have to assume the responsibility for “a sum total of pain
and inconsistency which would debase
the entire value of being born.“ We know that Nietzsche was
publicly envious of Stendahl’s epigram:
“The only excuse for God is that he does not exist.” Deprived of
the divine will, the world is equally
deprived of unity and finality. That is why it is impossible to
pass judgment on the world. Any attempt to
apply a standard of values to the world leads finally to a
slander on life. Judgments are based on what is,
with reference to what should be—the kingdom of heaven, eternal
concepts, or moral imperatives. But
what should be does not exist; and this world cannot be judged
in the name of nothing. “The advantages
of our times: nothing is true, everything is permitted.“ These
magnificent or ironic formulas which are
echoed by thousands of others, at least suffice to demonstrate
that Nietzsche accepts the entire burden of
nihilism and rebellion. In his somewhat puerile reflections on
“training and selection” he even formulated
the extreme logic of nihilistic reasoning: “Problem: by what
means could we obtain a strict form of
complete and contagious nihilism which would teach and practice,
with complete scientific awareness,
voluntary death?“
But Nietzsche enlists values in the cause of nihilism which,
traditionally, have been considered as
restraints on nihilism—principally morality. Moral conduct, as
explained by Socrates, or as recommended
by Christianity, is in itself a sign of decadence. It wants to
substitute the mere shadow of a man for a man
of flesh and blood. It condemns the universe of passion and
emotion in the name of an entirely imaginary
world of harmony. If nihilism is the inability to believe, then
its most serious symptom is not found in
atheism, but in the inability to believe in what is, to see what
is happening, and to live life as it is offered.
This infirmity is at the root of all idealism. Morality has no
faith in the world. For Nietzsche, real morality
cannot be separated from lucidity. He is severe on the
“calumniators of the world” because he discerns in
the calumny a shameful taste for evasion. Traditional morality,
for him, is only a special type of
immorality. “It is virtue,” he says, “which has need of
justification.” And again: “It is for moral reasons
that good, one day, will cease to be done.“
Nietzsche’s philosophy, undoubtedly, revolves around the problem
of rebellion. More precisely, it begins
by being a rebellion. But we sense the change of position that
Nietzsche makes. With him, rebellion
begins with “God is dead,” which is assumed as an established
fact; then it turns against everything that
aims at falsely replacing the vanished deity and reflects
dishonor on a world which doubtless has no
direction but which remains nevertheless the only proving-ground
of the gods. Contrary to the opinion of
certain of his Christian critics, Nietzsche did not form a
project to kill God. He found Him dead in the
soul of his contemporaries. He was the first to understand the
immense importance of the event and to
decide that this rebellion on the part of men could not lead to
a renaissance unless it was controlled and
directed. Any-other attitude toward it, whether regret or
complacency, must lead to the apocalypse. Thus
Nietzsche did not formulate a philosophy of rebellion, but
constructed a philosophy on rebellion.
If he attacks Christianity in particular, it is only in so far
as it represents morality. He always leaves intact
the person of Jesus on the one hand, and on the other the
cynical aspects of the Church. We know that,
from the point of view of the connoisseur, he admired the
Jesuits. “Basically,” he writes, “only the God of
morality is rejected.“ Christ, for Nietzsche as for Tolstoy, is
not a rebel. The essence of His doctrine is
summed up in total consent and in nonresistance to evil. Thou
shalt not kill, even to prevent killing. The
world must be accepted as it is, nothing must be added to its
unhappiness, but you must consent to suffer
personally from the evil it contains. The kingdom of heaven is
within our immediate reach. It is only an
inner inclination which allows us to make our actions coincide
with these principles and which can give
us immediate salvation. Not faith but deeds—that, according to
Nietzsche, is Christ’s message. From then
on, the history of Christianity is nothing but a long betrayal
of
this message. The New Testament is already corrupted, and from
the time of Paul to the Councils,
subservience to faith leads to the neglect of deeds.
What is the profoundly corrupt addition made by Christianity to
the message of its Master? The idea of
judgment, completely foreign to the teachings of Christ, and the
correlative notions of punishment and
reward. From that moment nature becomes history, and significant
history expressed by the idea of
human totality is born. From the Annunciation until the Last
Judgment, humanity has no other task but to
conform to the strictly moral ends of a narrative that has
already been written. The only difference is that
the characters, in the epilogue, separate themselves into the
good and the bad. While Christ’s sole
judgment consists in saying that the sins of nature are
unimportant, historical Christianity makes nature
the source of sin. “What does Christ deny? Everything that at
present bears the name Christian.”
Christianity believes that it is fighting against nihilism
because it gives the world a sense of direction,
while it is really nihilist itself in so far as, by imposing an
imaginary meaning on life, it prevents the
discovery of its real meaning: “Every Church is a stone rolled
onto the tomb of the man-god; it tries to
prevent the resurrection, by force.“ Nietzsche’s paradoxical but
significant conclusion is that God has
been killed by Christianity, in that Christianity has
secularized the sacred. Here we must understand
historical Christianity and “its profound and contemptible
duplicity.”
The same process of reasoning leads to Nietzsche’s attitude
toward socialism and all forms of
humanitarian-ism. Socialism is only a degenerate form of
Christianity. In fact, it preserves a belief in the
finality of history which betrays life and nature, which
substitutes ideal ends for real ends, and contributes
to enervating both the will and the imagination. Socialism is
nihilistic, in the henceforth precise sense that
Nietzsche confers on the word. A nihilist is not one who
believes in nothing, but one who does not
believe in what exists. In this sense, all forms of socialism
are manifestations, degraded once again, of
Christian decadence. For Christianity, reward and punishment
implied the existence of history. But, by
inescapable logic, all history
ends by implying punishment and reward; and, from this day on,
collectivist Messianism is born.
Similarly, the equality of souls before God leads, now that God
is dead, to equality pure and simple.
There again, Nietzsche wages war against socialist doctrines in
so far as they are moral doctrines.
Nihilism, whether manifested in religion or in socialist
preachings, is the logical conclusion of our socalled
superior values. The free mind will destroy these values and
denounce the illusions on which they
are built, the bargaining that they imply, and the crime they
commit in preventing the lucid intelligence
from accomplishing its mission: to transform passive nihilism
into active nihilism.
In this world rid of God and of moral idols, man is now alone
and without a master. No one has been less
inclined than Nietzsche (and in this way he distinguishes
himself from the romantics) to let it be believed
that such freedom would be easy. This complete liberation put
him among the ranks of those of whom he
himself said that they suffered a new form of anguish and a new
form of happiness. But, at the beginning,
it is only anguish that makes him cry out: “Alas, grant me
madness. . . . Unless I am above the law, I am
the most outcast of all outcasts.“ He who cannot maintain his
position above the law must in fact find
another law or take refuge in madness. From the moment that man
believes neither in God nor in
immortal life, he becomes “responsible for everything alive, for
everything that, born of suffering, is
condemned to suffer from life.“ It is he, and he alone, who must
discover law and order. Then the time of
exile begins, the endless search for justification, the aimless
nostalgia, “the most painful, the most
heartbreaking question, that of the heart which asks itself:
where can I feel at home?“
Because his mind was free, Nietzsche knew that freedom of the
mind is not a comfort, but an achievement
to which one aspires and at long last obtains after an
exhausting struggle. He knew that in wanting to
consider oneself above the law, there is a great risk of finding
oneself beneath the law. That is why he
understood that only the mind found its real emancipation in the
acceptance
of new obligations. The essence of his discovery consists in
saying that if the eternal law is not freedom,
the absence of law is still less so. If nothing is true, if the
world is without order, then nothing is
forbidden; to prohibit an action, there must, in fact, be a
standard of values and an aim. But, at the same
time, nothing is authorized; there must also be values and aims
in order to choose another course of
action. Absolute domination by the law does not represent
liberty, but no more does absolute anarchy.
The sum total of every possibility does not amount to liberty,
but to attempt the impossible amounts to
slavery. Chaos is also a form of servitude. Freedom exists only
in a world where what is possible is
defined at the same time as what is not possible. Without law
there is no freedom. If fate is not guided by
superior values, if chance is king, then there is nothing but
the step in the dark and the appalling freedom
of the blind. On the point of achieving the most complete
liberation, Nietzsche therefore chooses the most
complete subordination. “If we do not make of God’s death a
great renunciation and a perpetual victory
over ourselves, we shall have to pay for that omission.“ In
other words, with Nietzsche, rebellion ends in
asceticism. A profounder logic replaces the “if nothing is true,
everything is permitted” of Karamazov by
“if nothing is true, nothing is permitted.” To deny that one