The God Paradox
rolf...@yahoo.com
of the book THE GOD PARADOX
by Ralph Rewes
Available at Barnes and Nobles (by order), Amazon.com and Lulu.com.
or
The Paradox Individual-Society
Friedrich W. Nietzsche mocked human necessity for social life in his
remarkable poem "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (Thus Spake Zarathustra) in
a very incisive way. For that reason and for being perhaps the most
honest philosopher ever known, his enemies are endless.
Every one took personally everything Nietzsche said and felt insulted
in particular; in reality, he brutally criticized human frailty in
every one of us - not us as persons. He did this with no exception.
In his poem, Nietzsche points out man's intense need for company.
Zarathustra went to live a hermit life in an isolated cave where he
spent years searching for peace. One day he came out, stood before the
all-shining sun, and said something that sounded like this :
"For years I have lived a pure still life. I found peace, I breathed
peace, I ate peace: now I am fed up." And from the mountain where the
cave was he went down to rediscover the world - to meet people again.
The (sometimes) thinking animal is intrinsically antisocial; but he
has been cursed with a paradox: He cannot survive without social
organization.
Born defenseless and harmless, at birth man is the most pitiful baby
creature. Yet, when he grows up, it is obvious what he becomes -
especially when he climbs up on his peers in order to dominate them.
Some take for themselves the role of leaders. Others simply cattle up
and follow leaders, aware of their own weakness. Soon leaders become
aware of the weakness of masses and masses become aware of their
destructive power, becoming cattle, seldom aware of its potential
usefulness. It is then than leaders will decide what to do with mass
power and all ends up in the mass mess we seldom get trapped in.
The strength of the masses does not lie in their almighty crashing
capacity, but in their will to be controlled by leaders who, according
to their mental sanity, can canalize or blast their disintegrating
power.
The capacity of the human animal to get along with his neighbors is
popularly expressed with the phrase, "Two is company, three is a
crowd."
Individually, Homo sapiens sapiens is a glorious, loving, lovely
angel, who is able and willing to help his neighbor, to give himself
in sacrifice, ready to think and create. As a Massemensch, he is
caught in a violent turmoil of unpredictable, violent mob reactions -
like buffalo stampedes.
The moment three peaceful, lovely self-nominated "he who knows that
knows" get together, a peculiar transformation takes place. One of
them becomes nasty and groups up with another. The two will attack the
one remaining. This is called bonding and works potentially.
If this happens to each of them at the same time, one gets three nasty
guys out of three nice chaps. Not to talk about his female
counterpart. It would take a whole life span just to put facts
together and no conclusions - totally useless anyhow.
>From then on, the chasm between his individuality and the mass
patterns widens up. There is no such thing as generation gap. The
actual gap is the one between the individual and the rest of two-
legged creatures.
As soon as baby sapiens starts putting together words taken from his
community, he seems to try to tell his neighbors the famous, yet real,
Latin phrase "Nec possum tecum vivere, nec sine te. "
To conclude, "with you because you kill me, and without you because I
die."
If there is any identification and communication among those of the
same-age group, it is because they face similar problem at the same
time.
An objective observer when analyzing the teen sapiens can tell that
they do not at all get along together well either, except for mating -
and, that too, is a touchy matter for them.
Of course, this gap grows bigger, instead of disappearing with
maturity. Mature people are more irritable. They tolerate each other
less and less; yet at the same time, they need each other more and
more.
To need something we hate is a sin with its subsequent punishment
inherent to it. It is paradoxical that even when he (sapiens-sapiens)
wants it, he cannot repeat what the prudent donkey in Eric Arthur
Blair's masterpiece said, "I know God gave me a tail to shoo flies
away, but I rather have no tail and no flies."
Individuals may try to go against society, but they will never
succeed. In fact, they are just pretending. They really want changes
favorable to them, in some cases for the worse in society.
When he (the sometimes thinking one) does so, he will have to face the
bitter reality sooner or later: If he goes against society, he is
going against himself.
The umbilical cord between individual and society - a nutritious one -
hat cannot be cut off without risking starvation (real or
intellectual).
Most of the instruments or tools individuals need for their welfare,
comfort and survival are socially manufactured. Individuals cannot
produce efficient tools by themselves. In the present, the least
important everyday object must be built or manufactured collectively.
It is obvious (I should recall here that there are many nincompoops
around us who cannot see the obvious) that the individual capacity is
degenerating; man can't do anything (or almost anything) by himself.
This gets on his nerves. He tries hard to find something he can handle
by himself with no help from his neighbor bipeds. This is also
applicable to his most intimate moments.
It is no cause of amazement that we find good-will suggestions as one
I read in an old issue of Esquire. One of its writers wrote an
intensive article praising the wonders of masturbation. He called it
"the best way to have sexual satisfaction without getting involved
with other two-footed."
As in the previous example from "Thus Spake Zarathustra," what moves
the sapiens-sapiens to look for social affairs is not exactly love for
his equally molded creatures. What really moves him is one of his
greatest godlike motivations. The hat-wearing animal gets terribly
bored, like God alone.
Thinking could be his most wonderful gift, but it does not really turn
him on. He must seek for something else. He is even compelled to do
idiocies, even if he is aware of doing them. There is an intrinsic
evil pleasure in doing wrong for evil's sake, as Edgar A. Poe stated
in his story "The Black Cat."
To palliate his exhausting reality, the shoe-wearing animal looks
forward to diminish the power of the whole organized human society and
stick to small communities or societies within society.
There are religions, fraternal organizations; there are cities,
states, provinces, countries, etc., etc., etc. The clothed animal is
trying to fool himself; he is not. He understands his limitations.
Otherwise the whole human herd will be a disorganized herd and we
would be eating grass (I mean the type of grass horses eat).
I guess there is some relation between this human hate for his own
living supporting organizations and his progress. Because on his
capacity in dealing with contradictions lies the whole question of
intelligence.
It is a test with which man tries to prove whether he is able or not
to cope with reality. The price for errors is extremely high. Nature
does not bargain. He has to know what he is going to lose or what he
is going to gain. He has to learn that every step in this life has a
high price. Even when he thinks he found a bargain, he is cheated.
There are moments, though, when even the most thoughtful are
intelligent no longer. They go out, and shout screaming his lungs out
because to feel is fun!
Society is composed by the same types we classify theatrical
characters. And social situations can be traced with a remarkable
parallelism with play classifications. There are melodramatic people
as well as tragic people.
There are one-sided men as well as there are multifaceted men. And,
needless to say, many situations are as crashing as a tragedy or as
willow-weeping as a soap opera, or funny as comedy, tragicomedy or
those lovely farces (deeply and paradoxically sunk in reality).
Some men enjoy life by taking it like it is: a melting theater. A
really wise fellow - one of those who became very famous, and only
because of that many people took into consideration what he said -
some clever - I repeat - intelligent, and remarkable man whose name I
don't remember but I have the notion it was Shakespeare, said
something like that. And he was damn right!
On stage one can realize the attitude, the inherent attitude of men
toward others. Everything deals either with getting rid of or taming
another creature. That is life itself. Theater is life seen in a lab
tube. When William wrote those beautiful undertaker's delights he
didn't do anything else but to show actual hobbies in belligerent
thinking creatures.
The other plays are always taming - in one way or another - especially
his comedies. Either they showed people being tamed on-stage or try to
tame the audience (political pamphlets, etc.).
As I have already said, two types of men compose Societies: Leaders
and Massemenschen. They both hate each other, yet both pretend to love
each other. Leaders hate and despise masses. They do their best to
bring them toward a sacrifice, no matter what kind of sacrifice
(patriotic, religious, etc.). They are sadistic.
Masses hate leaders, but they hate themselves more; therefore, they
want to be punished and follow leaders to reach that goal. They are
masochistic.
Only those who are able to separate themselves from groups and analyze
the sapiens-sapiens individually can appreciate the beauty, the charm,
and the incredible source that move this lovely animal through
absurdity and his obsession to give names to things and events; yet
this attitude is very dangerous.
Enrique Jardiel Poncela, the famous Spanish writer in his "La Tournée
de Dios" showed God going on a tour in Spain and He was invited to
visit the Botanical Gardens in Madrid. Proud botanists showed him all
plants and trees, neatly classified and name tagged. After reading the
tags, God turned around and asked his hosts: "Then, what?" Nobody knew
the answer.
Absurdity is all-inclusive in human behavior and human attitudes. Man
himself is absurd for his link to eternity and infinity. No matter how
many times he has tried to explain himself and the whole, he is
bounced back to the same conclusion:
There is no reason whatsoever for his existence. For he is part of a
whole (call it matter, god or whatever) that is eternal, endless, and
consequently, without conclusion. Therefore, man's only explanation is
death.
The contrary is absolutely expletive, i.e. to ornament the sensation
of loneliness coming from eternity, an extenuatory philosophical warm
cloth on the head of some too-much-thinking men.
Like Zarathustra, man goes again to the small world, to society, a big
one for some, a tea-and-sympathy one for others, a death-of-a-salesman
for the deprived, etc., etc., etc. It makes no difference if he tried
to explain his fellow bipeds that God is dead*, nobody would care. If
God were dead, they will make another one.
*( »Sollte es denn möglich sein! Dieser alte Heilige hat in seinem
Walde noch nichts davon gehört, daß Gott tot ist!« Zarathustra)
Man is tied to his community, to other fellow beings as a dog could be
tied to his doghouse by a chain. And as well as some dogs realize
their chain, some men do. For the dog, however, there is some hope
left... someday the chain may break. Is there hope for man or would his
neck break first?
Some men go berserk before depressing realities. They do not accept
that, no matter what he does, the laws of the universe are rigid and
immutable. Everything can be denied. But that does not mean denial can
change things. Or, as someone spoofing Shakespeare would say: "You can
call it Frank, but for me it is still a hot-dog!"
Man refuses to admit realities that are - or even may be -
unpleasant. He is the typical "Verweigerung der Verweigerung" (The
Negation of Negation, also known as Denial of Denial). A great German
Philosopher said, "Man is able to seek for a stupid explanation when
the intelligent one does not suit him."
Men who live an intensive social life are really the most bored people
on earth; and what is worse, they are boring. A life of a person with
limited (but chosen) social elements is much richer.
Society, in short, does not satisfy at all the necessities of man as a
spiritual animal. It may satisfy some material necessities, yet to
satisfy his necessities, man is directly tagged to society for it is
impossible for him to enjoy spiritual things on an empty stomach.
Man cannot forgive these ties because they are social animals by
necessity. Only by necessity, sex inclusive, even when he plays with
himself.
END OF INTRODUCTION