Beliefs

The issues of religion and politics are very touchy. People tend to hold their beliefs very dearly, regardless of the extent to which those beliefs shape their day-to-day lives. Many people are strong believers and live their lives accordingly. Many more cling to the fundamentals of one belief system or other that show little or no effects in their lifestyles. I, for one, have swayed back and forth between the two a great deal in my life. I have experienced a great deal of emotional turmoil at times, and have seen myself become rabid and brutal in defense of ideas and values that have very little bearing on my life or choices. But as I have progressed in my spiritual journey, I've made a little headway in better living by the principles I claim to value.

One of the principles I've struggled with has been tolerance. My predisposition is to look at things from an all-or-nothing standpoint, and tolerance has not eluded that unfriendly gaze. I let myself think for a while that I must let everyone believe whatever ridiculous nonsense they choose to, because that's their "right." I later swung to the other extreme and thought that I must take (and give) great pains to "help" others part with their mistaken beliefs, even as my own were constantly growing and changing. I hoped that by unloading my beliefs on passersby, I might be able to nail down my belief system definitively and move on to other things, like living life. I didn't necessarily need all of the gruesome details, but I wanted desperately to know the basic gist of the big picture. I felt compelled to lash out at all of the unsatisfactory attempts to explain things from society's religions, especially atheism and popular forms of monotheism. I resented their audacious claims about the world beyond time and space. At the same time, though, I fumbled around desperately for some story about that world that I could buy.

Lately I've come to terms with the idea that I will never be certain about what exists beyond this world. My beliefs and understanding about this world and beyond will continue to grow and change as long as I continue to live and breathe. When I accept that, I learn to practice tolerance because the beliefs I ridicule today may be the ones I embrace tomorrow. But I am still much less likely to accept some beliefs than others. As I have explored different ideas, I have learned that some are simply too far-fetched. If these ideas were harmless, then tolerance would be in order. But in many cases, false beliefs do more harm than good. When that's the case, I should look for opportunities to discuss the ideas and propose alternatives. Tolerance means respecting that each person is going to believe whatever he or she wants to believe. I cannot change what another person believes, but I can exchange ideas and perspectives so that we can each come to new understandings. Everyone is free to believe what they want, but that doesn't mean that simply believing a thing makes it right.

Having said all of that, I am going to lay out some of my fundamental beliefs. The realm of possibilities in my belief system remains wide, but my experience in life thus far has provided me with a basic framework for understanding the world and my place in it. One of my core beliefs is that the driving force in the Universe leads us toward connectedness, integration, and depth and broadness of experience. Our job is to try to live life as fully as possible, seeking joy and avoiding suffering, and to help others do the same. These ideas aren't new or original in any sense, and the spirit of these ideas has appeared in some form in countless traditions throughout the history of human thought. But in addition to our constant misinterpretation and misunderstanding of each other, I believe we supplement and distort very basic ideas about life in ways that disconnect us from each other, limit ourselves, inhibit joy and increase suffering.

I call the life force in the Universe love. Many other people call it many other things. A few common names for it in Christianity might include Grace, Holy Spirit, or Jesus Christ. Some would simply call it compassion. I believe that the Universe as a whole is simply an expression of it. Love has no opposite because love is all there is. In our exercise of free will and choice, we often attempt to suppress or subvert love. Our efforts are simply misguided or perverted forms of love. Love is a river and sometimes we try to swim upstream because we think that's where we'll find love. But we're already drowning in it. When we fail to serve as conduits for love, we cause suffering, which creates more opportunities for compassion. We make lots of mistakes. We hurt each other in horrible, shameful ways. People are left to experience dereliction, degradation, isolation, and painful, undignified deaths. But the drive to empathize with each other remains even when we think we don't want it. Love will prevail because life is nothing more than love experiencing itself in an infinite variety of forms. Consciousness is the sleight-of-hand that convinces us that we are separate from the rest of the Universe, thus allowing us to experience a broader range of suffering and joy in life. We are drops in a river that have convinced ourselves we are separate and distinct from the rest of the flowing water. The spirit that animates us is the same spirit that animates all matter.

In this framework, the closest thing to sinfulness is self-centeredness. This is basically indulgence in the illusion of separateness and failure to participate fully in the joy, suffering, and compassion of life. This is not in opposition to love; it instead is the failure to use all of the love available. Self-centeredness leads people to stumble around blindly when they could move forward into life and embrace and experience love, integration, and connectedness. In addition to limiting our ability to experience a full range of what life and love offer, self-centeredness shuts out the compassion of others, and short-changes people who would otherwise receive love through us. We must constantly work to expand our capacity to give and receive love and compassion. In doing so, we both help others avoid suffering and help them expand their own capacities for love and compassion.

This understanding of life and our role in it doesn't easily translate into our modern society, which so highly values individualism. But while I believe that individuality is an illusion created by consciousness, it's still the basis for our interaction with the world. The practice of compassion seeks to break down the artificial distinctions that we create between each other, but corporate capitalism and the American dream rely heavily on them. Our economy is driven by self-interest at the cost of the well-being of others, and failures to exercise love and compassion are greatly rewarded with material wealth. Yet as our world continues to experience problems of incredible magnitude, we continue to have further opportunities to exercise and practice love and compassion with each other. Even if our species faces great calamity, people will continue to have chances to love and care for each other until we draw our final breaths. I'm up to the challenge. Are you?

Freedom: Resolving the Oppositions

In studying Nietzsche's philosophy, it can be difficult to find a clear understanding of what his views are on freedom. In some areas, he seems to argue strongly against the idea of "free will," while in other areas he seems to suggest that the heights of human achievement are reached by the "free" spirits. At first glance, Nietzsche might seem to contradict himself on these issues. His views on human freedom, however, are much more complex than to allow for a simple answer of "determinism" or "free will." Nietzsche views human behavior as being the result of complex relationships between various drives, and to the extent that our drives dictate the courses of our live, we lack "free" will. But to the extent that we are able to moderate the relationships between our drives, we become more "strong" in our will and thus are able to achieve more.

In Beyond Good and Evil, § 21, Nietzsche addresses the issue of free will directly. People who defend the notion of free will want to "bear the whole and sole responsibility for one's actions." In order to be so responsible, we must be separated completely not only from all of that which brought us into being, but also from all of that which acts on us in our lives to push us in this direction or that. On the other hand, Nietzsche criticizes what he calls the "unfree" will, "an abuse of cause and effect." He points out that cause and effect are figured as material things, a cause creating an effect, rather than as simply the conception of the relationships between events. This conception exists in our understanding of the events, though not necessarily in the events themselves. Our understanding of the world in terms of cause and effect is not itself a problem until we begin to believe that these "symbols" exist themselves in nature. When we impose the "mythology" of cause and effect onto the material world, we are stuck with the idea of the "unfree" will. The unfreedom of will is problematic in two very "personal" ways: on one hand it denies a person the glory of his goodness, on the other it allows him to deny responsibility for his failings. Nietzsche does not believe that either of these possibilities is realistic or does any practical good. In answer to the idea of unfree will, Nietzsche points out that "it is only a question of strong and weak wills."

With what Nietzsche calls the strong and weak wills, the question of human freedom is not whether or not it exists, but to what extent does it exist? Where the human will, the will to power as it expresses itself in an individual, exists strongly, human freedom expresses itself greatly. Where the human will seems to be greatly broken and subverted by exterior forces, it is the weak will, and it might seem to illustrate what Nietzsche would call the "unfree" will. Free will, then, does not exist independently, it is something that must be chosen and embraced by humanity. Where humanity fails to choose and embrace the will to power, human freedom does not exist, but when it is embraced and taken on, such as in Nietzsche's stages of self-transformation, humanity can, and will, be free.

In Beyond Good and Evil, § 26, Nietzsche discusses the relationship of the "superior" human being to the common people, the persons of strong will to the persons of weak. The superior human beings, though they feel compelled to set themselves apart from common humanity, must "go down…above all, 'go in'." He suggests that through the process of studying the "average man," the philosopher will come to a more realistic understanding what it truly means to be free. Though a person with a higher calling than the average man might long to escape humanity—"aspire after a secret citadel where he is set free from the crowd"—in studying average humanity and its bondage are necessary steps toward achieving freedom. The cynics are more honest, he says, than those who would stand on higher moral ground and look upon human drives with disgust, and therefore can lend to the true seeker of knowledge a greater understanding of those human drives. The indignant man wants to deny those drives, is ashamed of humanity's overall inability to suppress them. Without accepting the reality of these drives of weak will, one can never sublimate them in order to embrace a stronger will, a greater freedom.

Beyond Good and Evil, § 29 discusses those who enjoy more freedom than the average man. "Few are made for independence," he says, "it is a privilege of the strong." So much of humanity is blind to its own drives that it cannot possibly overcome those drives and choose freely what it will take from life, what it will make of life. The strong, however, or those who are most insightful into their own spirit and character and the spirit and character of humanity, are able to choose to redefine values, as the lion in the stages of self-transformation. "…he is probably not only strong, but daring to the point of recklessness." He speaks here of the stages of self-transformation as a labyrinth, and when the strong enter this labyrinth, the average man can no longer sympathize, cannot understand the complexities of what becomes of this strong man. The values of the average man are dictated by the drives to which he is either blind or indifferent, and when a man of strength throws off these values and seeks the values of his own virtue, he leaves the average man behind. This average man does not enjoy the same freedom, but neither does he risk so much as the one who undergoes the process of self-transformation.

Beyond Good and Evil, § 41 addresses the issue of discovering whether or not one is suited for freedom. "One must test oneself," he begins, "to see whether one is destined for independence and command." None of us is completely enslaved by our circumstances, but we must judge for ourselves whether or not we will be capable of dictating our own freedom. This is not something that another person can decide for us, and in order to prove this to ourselves, we must be able to let go of all of those things upon which we depend. He provides examples of things that we would let command our will, such as other people, our homeland, or our own values. To attach ourselves to any of these, he suggests, is to sacrifice our independence, to give up our freedom in the name of some other good. "One must know how to conserve oneself: the sternest test of independence." A person of strong will can choose to give himself prudently to such causes without sacrificing himself wholly, and as a result of this economy, the strong, independent person will retain enough of himself to do as he wills.

In sections 42 through 44, Nietzsche discusses the "new" philosophers, "very free spirits, these philosophers of the future." He points out that though these philosophers love truth, they do not believe that this is a truth for all. He claims that there can be no common good, as "what can be common has ever but little value." He criticizes heavily those whom he calls "eloquent and tirelessly scribbling slaves of the democratic taste." Freedom, liberty, and independence seem to be used synonymously with democracy and equality, and yet Nietzsche points out that to be caught up in this herd, one is about as far from true independence, from "free" will, as one can get. The new philosophers will not be those who find a way for all to achieve freedom, they will simply be those who achieve their own freedom by way of self-transformation and embracing values of their own, not values for all.

Nietzsche points out some of the absurdity of modern thought when he asks, "why atheism today?" (BGE § 53). In the rejection of traditional religion, many modern philosophers are rejecting the idea of free will. The modern philosophers may be anti-Christian, but they are just as religious in their beliefs, Nietzsche suggests. Where once believers in God sacrificed what was precious to His will, modern philosophers sacrifice their wills to "stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness." Determinism would take the responsibility of living from man just as God would. Where God allows for free will, those who do not follow His will are sinners, and those who do follow His will are "blessed" with his "grace." Determinism portrays man as a top who spins as he's been set spinning, without glory or fault in how he spins. Nietzsche does not find either of these scenarios very favorable.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche develops what he calls the stages of self-transformation. Through these three stages, a person can go from being an average human being to becoming an "overman." In the first stage, called the "camel" stage, a person takes on the burden of the traditional values of his/her culture, perfecting him/herself as a virtuous person by the standards of tradition. Having become disciplined and capable of living values well, the person moves on to what Nietzsche calls the "lion" stage. The lion challenges the values of tradition, (which Nietzsche figures as a dragon), discarding those values that do not serve the person's higher purpose. The lion replaces these values with practical values that arise from his/her passions to serve that higher purpose. After having thrown off the traditional values and replacing them with his/her own values, the person enters the child stage, where he/she lives as an "over[person]," a carefree value-creator and person of new virtue. The lion stage has also been called the "free-spirit metamorphosis," and a person who has reached the child stage might also be known as a "free spirit." These free spirits are the people who have taken not only all that is in them and redirected, but also those who are able to redirect the forces that act on them from without in order to take their lives in a direction of their own choice.

Nietzsche's arguments in Beyond Good and Evil might often seem to refute the notion of free will, but on closer inspection, we have seen that Nietzsche simply argues that there are stronger and weaker wills. By elevating the notion of cause and effect to a sort of religion, Nietzsche suggests, we arrive at a belief in determinism where no human being is responsible for his life, good or bad, and we detect "in every 'causal connection' and 'psychological necessity' something of compulsion, exigency, constraint, pressure, unfreedom." In the ranks of the average men, many are so greatly limited by the outside forces in life, including the pressures of society, culture, custom, religion, family, friends, and even life experiences, that their ability to will from what might be called their own "free" will is nearly non-existent. Ignorance, complacence, indifference, and apathy prevent many people from rising above the forces that shape them in order to make something of themselves. The fact that many people are slaves to all of those forces around them and their own drives to which they are ignorant does not provide us with any argument that all of humanity is constrained by fate or determinism.

This is exactly what Nietzsche hopes to achieve, I think, with his formulation of the stages of self-transformation. The strong and weak wills play themselves out in the world, and in humanity there are those who have the freedom to make their own lives and there are those whose lives are made for them. Nietzsche presents his stages of self-transformation as a set of useful tools for those who would make something of themselves. By mastering one's own drives and creating values by which to live, a person is able to gain the most strength from all of his inner resources, the drives and passions that make him who he is. When all of the drives are sublimated into one direction, when all of the geese are flying in formation, so to speak, the person has the most strength as an individual and as a human being acting on the world around him. In this way, human freedom does not simply exist, human freedom is something that is available but must be achieved. Nietzsche's stages of self-transformation are a vehicle for achieving this freedom, where otherwise we might be limited to the throes of fate and chance, slaves to our own drives and to the pressures of society.

However, in Beyond Good and Evil § 231, Nietzsche speaks of predetermined aspects of humanity. "But at the bottom of us, 'right down deep,' there is, to be sure, something unteachable, a granite stratum of spiritual fate, of predetermined decision and answer to predetermined selected questions." He asserts that we cannot "relearn" certain things, but only learn them fully, "discover all that is 'firm and settled' within". While this stance on the issue of learning, on the issue of core individual identity, would suggest a certain set of limitations placed on us by fate or God or whomever, this does not necessarily stand as an argument against human freedom. A person is limited by what he is, guided by what he is, directed by what he is, but ultimately has an opportunity, if he is strong, to will with what he has what he may. Nietzsche certainly does not argue for absolute and unlimited human freedom, but he does not argue, either, for a complete lack of human freedom.

Nietzsche's stance on human freedom seems essentially to be a sort of soft determinism. The hard rules of cause and effect that would support an argument for the fate of hard determinism, as he says, are the symbols of a mythological understanding of the world that should not be mistaken for the world itself. When we transform cause and effect into material things, when we imagine that the relationship between one event and another is absolute and that one necessitates the other, we presume too much. Where it applies to human freedom, the past that gives rise to our present is not immutable, as in one interpretation of the idea of eternal recurrence. What we choose in the moment defines our past as much as our past defines the choices available to us in the present moment. It is an interdependent relationship, and with greater knowledge of ourselves and our resources, we gain greater strength to change who and what we are in both the past and the present.

This seems to be a foundation of the theory of self-transformation. In the camel stage, we perfect our ability to take on the values of tradition in order to learn about value and discipline. Taking on the values of our culture and society does not tie us more greatly to the world around us, does not make us more dependent on the traditional values, so long as we are able to enter the lion stage in which we critically examine those values. It is not our living the values of tradition that defines us when we enter the lion stage; it is how we respond to those values as we challenge what we know that defines us. We challenge the values to determine how they aid or hinder our ability to achieve our higher goals. Our higher goals, which might be what Nietzsche refers to when he speaks of the "granite stratum of spiritual fate," shape most strongly what we are, and the values that we create to serve the higher goal instruct our virtue in the child stage. If the past was immutable and unchanging, and the doctrine of cause and effect irrefutable, then perhaps society, family, and tradition would dictate our fate completely. According to Nietzsche's philosophy, the free-spirit metamorphosis is necessary if we are to gain the freedom that is available to humanity.

The aspect of Nietzsche's philosophy that I find the most difficult is simply the formulation of a single, cohesive way of understanding these issues. I see two very important issues at hand: one being the issue of the relationship between human identity or mind or spirit and the physical world or matter and existence, the other being the issue of values and ethical behavior and how a person ought to go about living "well." I have not so far, in reading Nietzsche's work, gained a very clear understanding of what his precise views are on human nature. I do not fully understand what his views are on the relationship between the consciousness and identity of the individual and the rest of the world. Only with a clear understanding of how he treats that issue do I feel I can fully understand his philosophy on values and ethics.

What are we, as individuals? This is the most important question that I have for Nietzsche. Some philosophers seem to want to define us by the minds with which we think or by the bodies with which we sense. Nietzsche addresses this issue in On the Prejudices of Philosophers, but I do not take from my reading of this section a clear understanding of what he believes. He points out that Shopenhauer believed that the only thing of which we can be completely certain is the will, but then takes great pains to show that even the will is very complex in its modes of existence. Of which part can we be certain? To this question he does not seem to provide an answer. Are each of us as individuals examples of separate and distinct wills, or is existence itself simply a result of the will to exist? Is our consciousness, our sense of identity and separateness from the rest of the world a result of our own personal will, or the result of some indivisible will for many consciousnesses to exist and believe themselves separate and distinct? Are our drives the result of a will to be driven, and does that will to be driven originate in our personal consciousness or is it received from the will of existence? What of our higher purpose? Is that a result of our will to serve some purpose? Or a will of the purpose to be served? As you can see, I have a great deal of questions for Nietzsche with this respect, and while at moments I felt as though I understood his meaning, understood how he would treat these issues, I find myself ultimately at a loss.

Without understanding how Nietzsche treats these issues, I have a difficult time understanding what his premises are for values and ethics. If the basis of his ethics is that each person should discover for him/herself their higher purpose, their own virtue which is separate and distinct from the virtues of others, then it would seem that there can be no hard rules whatsoever for human behavior. I understand this as his basis for a rejection of morality, but I am unclear on what he believes is the source of this higher purpose. Can this innate purpose express itself in some as moralists? Can it express itself in some as murderers? Can we ever know anything with any certainty about anyone else, or about even ourselves?

I appreciate Nietzsche's stages of self-transformation as useful tools for personal growth, but I ultimately feel as though he is at once too hesitant to make claims about what values exist aside from those the "overman" is to create for himself and too eager to criticize the values that have thus far been created or recognized by humanity. Perhaps I am too great a coward to be a "free" spirit, but I believe that values exist to be discovered, not created. I believe that the phenomena of consciousness provides us with the impression that we are separate and distinct entities, when we are in fact simply a part of existence as it experiences itself. Love, or life-energy, is the most fundamental of values as I understand them, and as individuals, our greatest goal should be to act in such a way that we love all of existence to the best of our ability. Love as it expresses itself in human relations would be very much like Nietzschian friendship, and one would do well to love oneself by undergoing something akin to Nietzsche's stages of self-transformation. I believe that all persons do at any given time the best they know how to do, but we are given opportunities to expand this capacity. Fear is how we react to the belief that we are separate from the rest of existence when we believe that the rest of existence will deprive us of having our needs met, and it is fear that prevents us from expanding our capacity to live well when we are presented with the opportunity. I do not believe in black-and-white morality, right or wrong, I believe only in degrees of lovingness. The more concerned we are with ourselves, the greater our fear and mistrust of the world around us will be, and the more afraid we are, the less loving will our actions be, both towards others and ourselves. I do not believe that we can separate what is good for ourselves from what is good for the rest of existence, as we are not separate from existence, and to the extent that we love, we will enjoy the benefits of love. To the extent that we withhold our love, we will suffer the lack of love, as will the world around us. As Nietzschian friends, we have an obligation to help others to broaden their horizons wherever we are capable to do so, and sometimes the most loving, the friendliest (in the Nietzschian sense, of course), thing we can do for a person is to leave him/her alone.

I do not know how best to resolve these beliefs with those we've encountered in Nietzsche's work. It seems that Nietzsche believes strongly in the limitations that individuality imposes upon human beings, and the freedom of will would be one such area. Every individual, he seems to say, is a complex interweaving of physical, social, and psychological phenomena. He seems to call individuals to explore themselves for some defining attribute or purpose so as to gain an understanding of what to do with life. Through the stages of self-transformation, a person will ideally take the best of his society and the best of himself to synthesize some worthwhile cause to call his virtue, at which he will point all of his strength. The strongest individuals will be the most free from hindrances to this goal, though they will not necessarily be any more free in terms of choosing who they get to be. The weaker individuals will be constrained in their efforts to exert power over the world around them, and will often squander their lives chasing whichever wild goose seems to be most within reach at any given moment. In this understanding of things, Nietzsche's view on freedom would seem to be something akin to the idea that the most strongly-willed people will be most free to achieve greatness, and those who are a confusion of weaker drives will not achieve much.

Becoming the Overman: Nietzsche’s Path to Transformation

Nietzsche's transformation includes three main stages: the camel stage of putting into traditional values into action; the lion stage of challenging and overcoming useless or obsolete values and replacing those with new values; and the child stage of living the new values. Those who are not already capable of effectively handling their daily lives cannot hope to transform themselves by these processes. Those who have fully developed and become competent individuals, though, can take on these processes of transformation to rise above the standard level of functioning and become creators. When a person is ready to take on such transformation, they are ready to enter the camel stage.

The camel stage is presumably called such because it is a long journey. When a person has developed into an adult, they may have already begun this process of taking on the values of their culture and society. In the camel stage, a person works towards perfecting their ability to live according to these values and take them on as a sort of second nature. Living deliberately and making informed, conscious decisions, as opposed to simply reacting and responding to the world thoughtlessly or carelessly, develops a person such that they are disciplined and able to apply themselves to life. When the person has learned to rely on self-discipline to live intentionally, they become ready to challenge their traditional values in the lion stage of development.

The lion is a fierce and wild animal capable of taking on opponents as fierce and dangerous. The lion challenges what Nietzsche calls the dragon, traditional values. Having lived by these values, the person can make decisions about what is practical and reasonable and what aids or inhibits their ability to live as they want to. This can be called the "free-spirit metamorphosis" because a self-sufficient person who has successfully embodied traditional values has reached a point at which they are able to view values critically and make informed choices about what should be valued. Persons who are not able to embody traditional values do not have a point of reference from which they can discern value. In the free-spirit metamorphosis, a person can revaluate, discarding values that are useless or obsolete and replacing those with values that serve the person's drives more fully. When the person has parted with these useless values and created those that take him/her to where he/she wants to go, they are read to move on to the child stage.

The child stage is a time when the person is able to enjoy the fruit of their labor, so to speak. Having become disciplined and having created values that serve their higher purpose, the person can live by their values in a "lighthearted, carefree" way. The child is innocent and joyful and does not have to exert great effort to live by the values that have become second nature. The child is not concerned with social norms and is not reactive to the world around him/her, but rather acts on the world outside according to his/her values, embodying his/her virtue and following his/her own drives.

In order to make serious strides in my own character transformation, I believe that the most important tasks at hand include developing a mastery of traditional values and skills and gaining more extensive knowledge of the world around me and the people in it. I especially need to develop my skills in maintaining honest and open relations with my friends and acquaintances and my skills in fostering a sense of respect and compassion for the people around me. I also need to further my education, formal and otherwise, and further develop my level of self-discipline as it pertains to time management and the willingness to complete the tasks for which I am responsible.

My need to develop my skills in dealing with the people around me is apparent because I tend to withhold pertinent information about myself when dealing with my closest friends, specifically information about thoughts and feelings that bother me. In doing this, I fail to process my feelings, and those feelings eventually affect my attitude and my willingness to act reasonably towards the people and situations in my life. In most cases where I've acted on ideas that I've hidden from others, I've found undesirable consequences that might've been avoided if I'd have been willing to hear another perspective on the problems and proposed solutions. Similarly, failure to discuss my feelings with my friends leaves me with only my own perspective on the events and situations in my life, and gaining multiple perspectives usually inspires me to overcome pain. Finally, in being open and honest with my friends, I allow them to know me as I really am. Knowing me more fully, they are able to make better decisions regarding our friendship and be more effective as friends. My honesty and openness may also inspire them to be more open and honest about themselves, which would help me to know better how to treat them as friends. So far, in my relationships, I have become skilled in being very open and direct in my communications, but I still fall back on a failure to communicate at sensitive times, some of the times when I most need to discuss things. To this end, I could use improvement.

Another area of my personal relationships that could improve would be my willingness to treat the people in my life with respect and compassion. In most of my affairs, I am both able and willing to behave respectfully and compassionately, but this tends to fall apart in my relationships with members of the opposite sex. I view members of the opposite sex not by looking at who they are, but by looking at what they can do for me. I especially find myself interested in those who can provide relief from my emotional and physical intimacy needs. I am not, however, usually willing to put the effort into developing genuine emotional connections with my partners, though, and so I rely on physical intimacy to meet all of my intimacy needs. Coupled with my failure to meet emotional intimacy needs through friendship when I keep my friends at a distance, my reliance solely on physical intimacy with women would have me be something of a nymphomaniac, provided I could find a willing partner without all that effort of meeting and getting to know people. Essentially, I have reached a point at which I understand that my relation to the opposite sex is poorly founded, and I need to revaluate my approach to such relations with a greater emphasis on respect and appreciation and less emphasis on the needs that I have that I refuse to address myself. I also need to work on taking care of my own needs, wherever possible.

Finally, I need to further my education and master such disciplines as time-management and prioritization. My formal education is following a somewhat prescribed progression, but I can always pursue knowledge on my own time, as well. This would require better time management and prioritization, however. My natural tendency is toward entropy of the spirit. When I'm not at work or school, I usually spend my time "hanging out" with friends, "killing time." It would do me well to work towards approaching work and school in such a way that I effectively manage my time in order to allow myself more of my own time. It would also do me well to strengthen my willingness to work towards personal goals of self-improvement in my own time rather than simply "killing time" until some entity outside of myself prompts me to work. By changing these things about myself, I would put myself in place to make a transition from Nietzsche's camel stage of development into the lion stage, in which I could throw off those values that fail to serve my drive and create new values.

Two of the most significant obstacles to my own self-transformation include the fear of failure and established habits that lead in wrong directions. When I think of the ways that I could seek my highest love and the means to embody that in my life, I usually imagine that the process would require a lot of effort and a long-term commitment, so I become incredibly anxious about what a waste it would be to put a great deal of time and effort into the process only to fail. As I said in my answer to question two, I have a tendency to hang out with friends and kill time when I'm not at work or doing something for school. I often find that I want to simply "relax" when I'm not otherwise occupied, not devoting myself to my transformation when I have time of my own. The fact that I operate this way seems to have causes both in my laziness and in my ill-directed habits.

So my fear of failure is one of the most prominent obstacles in my self-transformation, but I believe that it draws force from other problems, as well. Part of my fear of failure includes the uncertainty of what exactly my highest drive is, or should be. I tend to fear that I will misinterpret my drives and make a significant investment of time and effort to something that doesn't "pan out." I also worry about whether or not I will properly understand the best ways to act on those drives such that I am actually moving in the right direction. There have been times in my past that I have felt that I was doing work to better incorporate my values into my living, only to discover later that I'd actually reinforced undesirable values. There have also been times when I felt as though certain values should be among my priorities, only to discover later that the values were void of some of the qualities I'd attributed to them. This seems to fit into the scheme of Nietzschian development, though, now that I think about it. I embraced values that I took from the society and culture around me and found them to be unfulfilling, and so had to replace them with something else. I do not claim to be a value-creator yet, but I've simply been searching so far, I suppose, for a set of traditional values that complement each other rather than work against each other. The idea that a failure to try is worse than an actual failure makes great sense and takes a lot of wind out of the "fear of failure" sail. There is much to be gained, I'm sure, in the processes of becoming and learning, regardless of whether or not I learn all that I hope to or become what I hope to be. If I learn nothing else, to learn that I do not want to become a certain type of person, or cannot become that person, will be valuable in narrowing my search for exactly whom I should become.

The other significant roadblock in my self-transformation is my set of established habits. As I said before, my natural tendency seems to be toward entropy of the spirit, and I often want to rest on my laurels and enjoy the fruits around me that seem fun. It's a bit difficult to speak to this issue greatly in the midst of what is perhaps the busiest semester of my life, but in slower times I often find myself wasting time in front of a television or taking unnecessary naps. I smoke cigarettes and drink coffee excessively, and oftentimes both of those habits lend themselves well to doing nothing else other than sitting with friends, "talking shit." I have established a very strong aversion to such pointless habits as drinking alcohol and engaging in other recreational drug use through membership in a 12-step fellowship. My involvement with that fellowship prompts me to work toward character development or self-transformation to a certain extent, but it only succeeds in doing so to the extent that I'm willing to allow it. One area in which I struggle to find willingness is the drive to enjoy meaningless relationships with members of the opposite sex. In times when I could be putting effort into doing the work that fulfills me, such as reading and writing or enjoying meaningful friendships, I find myself longing greatly to find "victims" or "volunteers" among the fairer sex. Though my exploits in this area are not so involved that I could consider myself promiscuous, the amount of time and energy that I devote are sufficient that I consider myself somewhat lecherous.

The solutions that I try to implement in these areas are very similar to those that I implemented in overcoming my willingness to subject myself to the pointlessness of drug use. I try to devote myself increasingly to meaningful endeavors, including school (15 semester hours), employment (~35 hours a week), 12-step recovery meeting attendance (at least 1 or 2 weekly), service to the recovery fellowship (positions such as Area Service Committee Vice Chair and Regional Service Conference Treasurer), sponsorship of newer members in the recovery community, building a website, writing poetry and stories, and, of course, seeking meaningful Platonic/Nietzschian friendships. Though being so busy helps greatly in my refrain from promiscuity, I have wondered about your suggestion of "Putting yourself in situations where you know those habits will lead to failure or pain is one way [to break a habit]." I wonder if I might be more willing to recognize the emptiness of sex without friendship if I were to engage in a streak of promiscuity that left me feeling hollow. The other solution that I've had in mind is to try to learn how to enjoy friendships with members of the opposite sex and intimate relationships that incorporate deep, honest communication. Whatever.

Designing a school for Nietzschian self-transformation would probably be somewhat costly. A great deal of effort would also be required to establish the institution, but the return on the initial investment would be great. Some of the main concerns of the institution would be recruitment, setting, educational programming, methods of instruction, and methods of evaluation.

One of the main concerns that I would have with a small, private school would be the issue of recruitment. With a limited enrollment, which might prove to be optimal for the type of school, it would be very important to ensure that all of the students in attendance merit the right to attend. Student in this facility should be intelligent and skilled in a well-rounded manner. It would be imprudent to recruit students who might require disproportionate levels of instruction and guidance, and students in this institution should be able to walk themselves through the stages of development to ensure that they are being true to their own drives and passions. The students will likely have demonstrated in their performance in traditional education a high level of ability, but it is also important that their abilities and discipline extend beyond scholastic endeavors. They might be able to demonstrate through their achievements with some religion or personal accomplishments both a willingness to advance themselves and a certain sense of disillusionment or dissatisfaction with tradition. Self-motivation would be important, as it would be pointless to attempt to instruct students without a drive to "go under and overcome." If applicants can demonstrate that they fit those requirements, they might make worthwhile candidates for attendance at this school.

If I had unlimited resources to create private college, I would definitely situate that institution somewhere in Montana. I think that there is something about the majestic nature of wide-open space and freedom from the abundance of industry and technology that helps to inspire human creativity and passion. Nietzsche illustrated the value of solitude in Thus Spoke Zarathustra through Zarathustra's trips to the mountain. Not only would my students experience some seclusion from society outside of the school, they would have the opportunity to experience solitude from the other students in private, self-contained rooms. Should they find it necessary to isolate themselves in their rooms for indefinite periods of time, they would have the opportunity to do so. The rooms would be like small apartments, but they would also have a cafeteria available for social and practical purposes. Social relations between the students would be encouraged, and the students would be encouraged to approach these relations with a great deal of integrity and authenticity so as to gain the most from their relations with other seekers. They would also be encouraged to take both group and solitary outings into the wilderness for camping and other recreation so as to cultivate a relationship with the natural world around them and gain an understanding of what they believe about the world and their existence in it. Instructors would be nearly indistinguishable from students in their presence at the institution, living in the same quarters and following the same general guidelines and suggestions. Instructors would likely continue to grow through continued transformation of their own in their roles as such.

Educational programming in this institution would vary greatly from traditional forms. Instructors would hold a variety of seminars and group discussions on topics of their own choosing and scheduled according to convenience during the days of the week. Students would be able to choose from a weekly agenda the various seminars and discussion groups they wish to attend, and they would be free to attend as many or as few as they wish. Among the topics of discussion and presentation would be issues of traditional values, philosophical and theological treatises, contemporary social issues, and various topics in psychology, sociology, and history. Students with an interest in preparing presentations of their own could do so under the auspices of willing instructors with their consent.

The issues of educational programming and methods of instruction blend together to a certain extent. The instructors in the institution would work personally with students, and each instructor's "case-load" should be as small as possible, perhaps as many as two or three students. Instructors would work very closely with the students as mentors, counselors, and leaders-by-example. The instructors would work with their respective students to explore issues of innate values and personal development. Students would be encouraged to meet with their instructors at least once weekly for at least an hour, but could make arrangements with the instructor to meet as often as necessary. Students would be encouraged also to work closely with other students wherever possible or desirable in aiding each others' progress through Nietzschian friendship.

The final issue is that of evaluation. Given that the each student's instructor would have the greatest understanding of the student's particular standing and development in terms of character, the instructor and the student should work closely together in determining what sorts of accomplishments should be made before the student can begin to consider the idea of requesting formal evaluation. Formal evaluations would not attempt to "grade" the students' performance, but rather would attempt simply to gauge whether or not the student has made sufficient progress to "graduate." The student and the instructor would work together to give a formal presentation to a committee of other instructors, and perhaps non-participatory student witnesses, and the committee would discuss the presentation with the student and instructor, propose questions and commentary, and finally come to a decision by way of secret ballot as to whether or not they believe the student has made sufficient progress to complete their role as a student. Students might be encouraged to venture out into the world for anywhere from one to five years to apply their transformation to practical living and then return to the school to become instructors. Because it would do much good for the graduates to return to the school as instructors, it's likely that the employment span of any given instructor might be relatively brief, i.e. five or ten years, perhaps. Past instructors might retain a status on a sort of council or board to help the school with administrative and decision-making issues so that any person who has been a part of the institution would remain such for as long as is practical and fitting.

This school would not do a great deal to provide the capitalist machine with gears or axles, but it would do a great deal to provide humanity with worthwhile human beings. Though perhaps not an express purpose of this institution, it would be nice to think that by aiding people in overcoming themselves, this institution might instigate dramatic changes in the surrounding society and culture, taking power from the materialist, commercial forces that guide us and reminding people to be humans before they die. On the other hand, there's the risk that this institution would result in the severe depression and disillusionment of its students who see what an ugly society we've created for ourselves thus far. No matter how hopeless the project of overthrowing social conventions might seem, though, Nietzsche (and Schroeder) seem to argue that failure is preferable than a failure to try, so if the institution prompts students to try to make serious changes, it will certainly be worthwhile to at least that end.

Atheism

When a person embraces true atheism, they embrace the belief that there is no God, and therefore the belief that anyone who believes in the existence of any sort of God must be wrong. It is important to discuss the issue of defining God, because for all of the possible things that God could be that do not exist—for example: if God is defined as a seven-headed beast on the dark side of the moon who controls the Universe, then I would certainly agree that God does not exist—there are an infinite number of ways to define a God that does exist.
My own understanding of God begins simply with the fact that I live and breathe from one day to the next, and the life that I have was not something that I could give to myself. As a result of the fact that my parents were living, even though they had not created themselves, I was born. None of us has anything without the life that came to us, a gift from fate, chance, random accident, destiny, the Universe, or "God, the life-giver." And just saying that "God gave me this life" does not necessarily imply that God is intelligent or all-powerful or the God of Abraham or the Father of Jesus or some Great Judge who will condemn me for doing anything that makes the Pope feel uncomfortable or any of that stuff. It means simply this: it is a function of the universe to provide life to all that lives, whether it is strictly through physics and chemistry or by the results of plans made by some Grand Architect who exists outside of the universe (space and time). I live and breathe and eat food and fuck and have an intellect and a capacity for reason, and all of these things came to me from somewhere else, and I have at my disposal the entire world around me with which I can make choices about what I will do with my life. I personally define God as the agent responsible for giving me all that I have, including this Universe to play in, so NO ONE can say that God does not exist, because my existence verifies the fact that something caused me to exist (that infinite string of events leading up to my birth and the existence of the universe in which it occurred). I believe that God is loving and caring because love, which can be defined as simply 'life energy' came to me and made me a living being, and care, e.g. air to breathe and food to eat, etc., also are here as a result of those same processes that are responsible for my presence in the first place. Again, I reiterate that this has nothing to do with whether or not God is conscious or aware of what he has done or whether or not this thing was planned or impromptu, but the world and this Universe exist and I in it, so I am supremely confident in saying that I have been loved (given life) and cared for (given the means to sustain life) by some agent or force, even if that is simply chance or fate, and I call that agent or force God, and regardless of what I call it, it still exists.

Finally, to take it a little bit further, all that love (life energy—not only given to me in the form of the fact that I am alive and continue to live, but also in the willingness to live that comes to me when I enjoy life, often the result of other people around me loving me, agents carrying out God's will that I be loved) and all that care (all those things that keep me going from one day to the next) are things that I can choose to deny or reject. Food is constantly available to me and I can choose to not do the work to get it, and other people can make the choice to prevent me from getting it. In both cases, God's care is present but I am not receiving it as a result of human choices. All humans are capable of being agents of God's will (i.e. loving and caring) or of being hindrances to God's will (esp. self-centeredness that stands in the way of our ability to love ourselves and/or others)...we have the choice to either aid the Universe in giving and nurturing life or to prevent life from blooming and destroy life. The rest of life in the Universe seems to be capable of acting only in life-supporting courses of action, and even where some life is destroyed and/or harmed, it only serves the purpose of continuing life in some other form (lion kills deer, eats dear, lives for another day). Humans have the capacity to choose a course of action that harms/destroys life without adding to life in some other form. I firmly believe that it is a function of all life to be loving and caring and act in ways that add to life and allow it to flourish, and even humans have that drive (conscience), but we are also capable of subverting that drive in self-interest, thinking that by taking and hoarding and preventing life from flourishing we can control it and make it ours and not ever lose it. This is insanity—we fret about whether or not we will get what we need to survive in a world where more than we could ever need is available, but our desires tell us that we need more and we must escape the cycle of death and rebirth and gain immortality by assuming control of a universe that abhors internal controls. We are incredibly foolish in our failure to realize that we will die just as all other forms of life do, and our death will provide life elsewhere in the universe, both through our organic bodies that will decompose and rejoin the cycle of life and through the repercussions of our loving actions that have the potential to encourage (human) life to flourish long after we've gone, if we've done things during our time that are such testaments to love and care and good will. Our foolishness prevents us from recognizing that our absurd fear of dying (more self-centeredness: we try to place conditions on God's love for us—"if God really loved me, he wouldn't let me die/suffer") cause much more death and destruction than any natural chain of events ever has. Our souls, I believe, are the agents that make the choice between love and self-centeredness, thus to follow a spiritual path allows us to live in loving, caring ways, instead of the self-centered ways marked by fear and anxiety that were more responsible for any pain and suffering we endured than God would've ever laid at our feet. The difference between gratitude and entitlement become clear: those with gratitude are content to be able to live another day and take advantage of all that they have; those who feel a sense of entitlement experience anger and resentment about the fact that they must die someday and because they do not have all that they want. When I am grateful for what I have, I am able to use it responsibly, but when I feel that I am entitled to have my desires met, I become chained to my desires and I suffer greatly.

I believe that we all must make an effort to understand the universe if we are going to try to live well in it. The words "God" and "Higher Power" are simply very convenient ways to convey the idea that the universe provides us with love and care. Our failure to recognize this fact is often the source of pain, suffering, and sorrow. Not everyone has to find a "God" to believe in. But if we all would make a point of recognizing that the universe supplies us with all that we need until we pass on, we will be much more capable of accepting the love and care that the universe provides. We will be much better at using that love and care responsibly to nourish ourselves, spiritually and materially. We will be much more willing to pass the rest along and use our lives to add to the strength of the love and care in the universe, instead of detracting from it.

Black Holes and the End of Time

I can remember that, as a child, I had a great interest in the cosmos. I was fascinated with ideas about what might be out there, and I read books and articles about the universe and its wonders. Ever since then, my desire to know more about the nature of reality has done much to shape my thoughts and actions. Until I enrolled in Astronomy 102 for this fall semester, however, I'd not done much at all to gain any deeper understanding of the cosmos since I'd been just a child. Studying the universe in this class has provided me with a reawakened interest in the cosmos, but I've found myself a bit disillusioned by what I've learned thus far. The most significant source of frustration for me in my search for an understanding of the universe has been a book that I began to read a few weeks into this semester, The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking. Ideas in this book from the uncertainty principle to singularities and brane worlds seem to be at once contradictory and counterintuitive. If you please, Mr. Hawking, allow me to retort.

Hawking begins this book with a chapter describing the theory of relativity and its history, including much about Albert Einstein and his life. I've always considered Einstein one of my personal heroes, and I'm able to agree with much of what Hawking states in this first chapter. My first quarrels with Hawking's ideas, however, began as I read this chapter. Hawking claims that time comes to an end in black holes because gravity forces matter in a black hole to form a singularity, a body with no size and infinite mass. His claim is that time stands still because it becomes impossible to predict the behavior of matter once it has been "trapped" by a black hole. My first complaint is that it seems incredibly self-centered to believe that because we cannot know what happens to matter in a black hole, the information about that matter is lost to the universe. The idea of a singularity is awfully far-fetched, as it seems obvious that for a thing to have any mass at all, it must have some size, however small it may be. In the past, it was believed that the atom was the smallest unit of matter, then atomic particles, and now quarks. It seems to me that it would be entirely possible that there is, in fact, a small, indivisible unit of matter that forms the body of a black hole, and the phenomenon of black holes would be explained by the gravity that results from the infinitely dense and small configuration of these units (whether they be quarks or some smaller units).

Beyond the supposition that we might have some definitive answer to the question of what the basic building block of the universe is, I think that it is absurd to say that because we cannot predict what might become of matter in a black hole, time for that matter ceases to exist. The ideas that come from the general theory of relativity with regard to time as a universal phenomenon versus time for "any freely moving observer" seems to be shortsighted. The speed at which certain processes occur changes based on the circumstances surrounding their occurrence, resulting in experiences that would seem to indicate differing rates in the passage of time. The idea of universal time seems to be rather easily discarded by Hawking and many others based simply on the fact that certain things happen at different rates due to the effects of gravity, etc. Time has forever been a relative system of quantification, a means of comparing the duration of one process's occurrence to another's, but the inherent problems is that there is no process in the universe that occurs at a constant rate with the exception, possibly, of light travel. Our most accurate means of measuring the passage of time, however, are still based on processes whose rates of occurrence still are not perfectly constant, such as atomic decay and quartz movement. The fact that time under varying circumstances is experienced differently, whether by human consciousness or by atomic decay, says nothing to the fact that, throughout the universe, time is constant in that all things must pass through a consecutive order of events, regardless of the number of events that might occur for any other thing in the universe.

A related argument is that of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. This principle suggests that the more accurately one can predict the position of a particle, the less accurately one can predict its speed, or vice versa. Einstein was reported to have said, in answer to this idea, that "God does not play dice." Hawking, among others, argues that God must, in fact, play dice, as particles obviously cannot have a specific speed and position. It is also suggested that, because it cannot be known what path a particle may take from one position to another, it is reasonable to assume that particles will travel through all possible paths from one position to another. This assertion results in all sorts of absurd ideas including those of imaginary time and multiple histories that make sense if one believes that particles don't behave well. Simply because the speed and position of a given particle cannot be known with certainty does not mean that the given particle does not have a definite speed and position. I am in complete agreement with Einstein on this issue; I do not believe that God plays dice. Reality is not dependent on whether or not math can predict something; reality is dependent only on itself. A particle's existence alone is enough to prove that it will have a position and speed relative to the rest of the universe, regardless of whether or not that position and/or speed can ever be known within that universe. Mathematics provides tools for understanding the universe, but, just as in every other situation, flawed equations will produce flawed results. The universe will occur as it will, and simply because we cannot know exactly how it has occurred does not mean that it occurred in every possible way.

Having written all of that, it occurs to me that this paper lacks structure. I don't really know that I've followed any specific line of thought, but rather I've simply vented all of my discontent at having read Hawking's book. That in mind, I must say that I have learned much from this process. I have learned a great deal about what modern theories state about the universe and reality, and I have learned that those modern theories do not seem to be able to provide me with the types of answers for which I am looking. I am a philosopher, and these men are scientists and mathematicians. I am not concerned with quantitative aspects of truth; I am concerned with the qualitative principles that describe those quantitative aspects. Learning more about what is known and believed has led me to a deeper understanding of what I know and believe for myself, which is important enough for me, even if it is not in agreement with what modern thinkers believe. Studying in this astronomy class has allowed me an opportunity to know at least one thing with some certainty: I shall not pursue an understanding of the universe or reality through the medium of science any more than I shall look to science to tell me what my favorite color is.

Immortality

Immortality is not an unreachable ideal. The idea of the infinite, the ineffable expanse of time and space having no beginning and no end, cannot be comprehended or understood by our minds. Our souls and spirits, however, testify in their very existence that the infinite exists. A soul is the very physical makeup of our being. The way our bodies are put together and work, the very miracle of life itself, is the definitive aspect of our souls: the unique process that has resulted in being. All of creation is of the same soul, each a unique member in the ultimate body of the universe. At any given moment, all of the matter in the universe is configured in a precise design incorporating all of being in its respective form, a part of and together with the rest of the universe. The very makeup and organization of the universe, of this galaxy, of the solar system, of this planet and all its inhabitants, this is the essence of the universal soul. The soul in time is the spirit; through the processes that alter the makeup of this universal soul from one moment to the next, the spirit is expressed. The human spirit is the makeup of all of the actions, behaviors, and course of life by which a human lives, from conception to death. The human soul is the physical body that was put together by the coalescing matter of the universal soul, the body through which the spirit expresses itself. The spirit and the soul are ever changing entities, yet the universal remains constant. There is no beginning, nor is there an end, to the infinite expanse of the universe. With each passing moment in time, each soul dies to make way for a new soul, the spirit being the catalyst for these changes. All matter passes through physical changes that have always been in motion, and the spirit is the character of these changes, relating the soul of one moment in time to another. The entire universe is in motion, giving way to the universe of tomorrow, of next week, of one year from now, on into infinite. The immortality of the universal soul is inevitable; the matter of the universe is indestructible and ever lasting. Though the composition and organization of the matter will never remain the same, all of the matter will forever be. Some attempts by conscious beings are attempts at holding a portion of the soul for eternity, but all are futile. Embalming and mummification slow the process of the reunion of matter to the soul of the Earth, but in the long run, all returns. As the Judeo-Christian precept states: "ashes to ashes, dust to dust". From whence we came we shall return. Immortality of the soul happens because all of the matter from which we are composed will forever remain a part of the universal whole. The human spirit reaches immortality in the fact that all that everything we do will forever have an effect on the universal spirit. Our spirit has been shaped by all of the thoughts and actions of those who have gone before us, just as all that we say, do, and think will forever affect all of those that live with us or follow us. Our spirits live on whenever anyone draws from our lives in theirs, and our soul lives on in all life that draws from the matter from which we have drawn and used as our own. Individuality and free will are examples of the uniqueness of our souls and spirits. No other being has ever had the same composition, physically or mentally, and no other will ever have the same. Our free will has been shaped for us, we are merely spectators given the illusion of participation. The universe was already in motion before we came into being, and will be in motion long after we are gone. To align our own will with the will of the universe is to attain harmony with the universe, and through that process all blessings come. The universe has expressed itself through us, and we will join the universe in immortality and life eternal.

Manifesto of a Young Idealist

It has come to my attention that we as a society need to make some very important changes in the way we are living. We live in a material world that is built on the institutions of money, property, and prestige. We are conditioned to focus on how we measure up to such societal standards and to neglect our very own well being. We lack balance, and our poor health as individuals reflects our poor health as a community. Our well being is dependant on our various aspects of our health, many of which are neglected due to our busyness in pursuit of material objects. Spirituality is something that we seem to be lacking, yet the spirituality that is present is separated from the rest of our lives. As a society, we seem to think it necessary to keep our spiritual lives separate from our social lives, thus causing harm to both aspects. We are self-centered as a society and on the individual level, in a sense that is detrimental to our race and life as a whole. We seem to find it difficult to share our healthy behaviors with others around us, whether it be spiritual health, or other aspects of our health. On the other hand, we tend to promote unhealthy behaviors in each other. These problems stem from the fact that we have very little sense of community and a warped system of morality.

Our morality is based on the materialistic aspects of life, and the rest is left to moral relativism. Living in a society that is increasingly dependent on government, we tend to look to the government for laws. The basic idea being that, rather than exploring ourselves and discovering morals as they relate to our lives and experiences, we look to government to have our morals imposed on us by the elected officials. The individual has become so used to having a government around to decide right and wrong, we are left with little to have to decide for ourselves. We begin to believe that if it isn't illegal, it must not be wrong. The very idea of this is absurd, let alone the idea that 250 million people (in the United States) would allow a collection of corrupt politicians decide how they will live. It is the easy way out. To throw our hands up in the air and say "well, I'm not qualified to decide what's right and wrong, I should leave it up to the professionals". We depend on government to decide for us, because in order to discern right and wrong for ourselves, we would then have no excuse not to follow the rules. When we define what we believe to be wrong, we must swallow our pride in order to continue doing what we consider wrong. We must either become hypocrites or mend our ways.

I have experienced in my own life many of the negative aspects of our society, as well as many of the positive aspects. I have found that the two aren't very different, at least to me. If one fully devotes oneself to either, then it seems to work out just as well either way. We have a tendency to believe, in either situation, that all is well, regardless of whether or not it really is. My contention is that one can work on oneself until the end of time, but if one is still living in a dysfunctional society, progress will be limited. As Studs Terkel said, "how could you be raised in garbage and not stink of it?" I believe our society to be dysfunctional, which is the cause of our dysfunction on the individual level, and it I don't think that it will be long before we as a society do ourselves in, taking others down in our fall as well.

Our society is plagued with many problems. We recognize these problems, a step in the right direction; however, we seem to overlook the fact that there is a common cause behind these problems, and until that cause is dealt with, we are going to continue to be plagued by problems of increasing urgency and quantity. The old saying says that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, yet we continue to exert so much of our time and energy on solving these problems, just to find that more problems keep arising. These recurring problems seem to stem from the same cause, and still society as a whole doesn't acknowledge this. Problems such as high crime rates, low moral standards, drug abuse, prostitution, rape, suicide, and abortion are just some of those that we are dealing with today. Others that have sprung up on a global scale include overpopulation, the failing state of the environment, and the extinction of many different species. There have been many problems that have come and gone, often resembling those that are present today, but the overall status seems to remain the same. People are too concerned with working against the individual problems, rather than dealing with the dysfunction that these problems stem from. We have so many different activist groups that are determined to take on these problems, one by one. The dysfunction that is tearing us apart includes the very fundamentals upon which our society is built, such as the establishment of property and power, our control over nature, and our lack of community-oriented lifestyles.

Our establishment of power and property seems to be one of the biggest causes of our problems in society today. Unlike any other society, and unlike any form of wildlife, we have decided that certain parts of the world are property. We even for a period of time labeled fellow human beings as property. It is appalling that while we were able to so quickly understand that human beings are not property, we still haven't admitted, as a society, that there is nothing in the universe that should be property. It all belongs to the Universe, as do we. We must recognize that what we have is a gift, and it is to be embraced with gratitude, rather than assuming that we earned anything, and that because we earned these things we can and should take them for granted and deem them "ours". We have placed it in our power to take various parts of nature as our own, denying others the right to make use of those resources that were meant for all of us. The establishment of property is not only counterproductive to individual wellness, but it is also detrimental to society as a whole. To look at it from a political standpoint, one would think that socialism would counteract the establishment of property, and that in effect would make it an ideal form of government. Well the downfall of any form of economy in our society, in my opinion, doesn't lie in the way it deals with the distribution of this property, but merely the fact that property is still an institution. Capitalism reigns in our society because it gives individuals the ability to amass property and therefore assert power. Those who have the property and power are inherently going to control the government. Those in control are surely not going to work to change the system that got them where they are in society. So, in defense, they push down other economic systems to protect their own property and power. Following the trend of the society from they were spawned, the capitalists pushed down and forced conformity upon any system that didn't follow their example. Just as capitalism does this to other economic systems, our system of totalitarian agriculture does this to all other forms of living. It is the form of self-defense that wages war on the competition, rather than allowing for healthy competition, allowing the individual to choose what works best for him/her. The fact that nature thrives on diversity shows this system to be unhealthy for both the society and the individual.

The establishment of property goes hand in hand with our practice of totalitarian agriculture. We as a society believe that the earth was made for us, and that we are free to do what we want with it, no matter what harm comes to the earth or even to ourselves. We take control over the productivity of the land and soil, determining for ourselves what and how much "should" be produced. This is explained by the story of Genesis. We lived in paradise, but we ate from the forbidden tree. The fruit of this tree was the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of what is to die and what is to live. We took these decisions into our own hands, saying, "We eat wheat, we will let it live, and we will clear land to ensure that it has room to thrive. We have no use for the bugs that eat our wheat, so we will exterminate them". Our practice of agriculture forced us to spend all of our time working to ensure the production of food. Before agriculture, we ate what God provided us with, and all was well. We labor under the assumption that, if we do not force the earth to produce, she will not produce. We have populated the world to a point where earth cannot support us without being raped. We maximize production, only to see the population continue to rise. It won't be long before agriculture can no longer supply us with what we need to survive as a society, yet we continue to increase production. Each year for the last hundred centuries, we've increased production, only to see another increase in population. We make more to feed everyone, yet every year there are the have-nots who go hungry, and the haves, that have an overabundance. In a system of property, where we take it upon ourselves to decide what is fair and what isn't, we've made it so that those who don't work to ensure that the earth will produce "enough" go hungry, while those who do so are rewarded with too much.

Our society has long neglected to give the individual what is necessary to survive. Our individual wellness includes three different aspects: mental, physical, and social. In the modern age of working for a living, our wellness is often neglected, or at least unbalanced. It is necessary to have a well-rounded level of fitness, yet this is uncommon in our society. We must spend our time laboring in this system to provide what we need to merely survive physically, and often we neglect the other aspects of our wellness. We are not well rounded, and often once our mental fitness begins to suffer, the remaining aspects of wellness tend to follow. When any one aspect of our fitness is neglected, it keeps us from reaching our potential in the other areas. People in our society tend to find an aspect of their wellness that is most appealing to them, and they work solely on that aspect. We don't have time for all three aspects; we spend all of our time working. Most of the industries, businesses, and careers in our present society tie back into agriculture, or are at least supported by those who work to feed themselves. Our society is bent around providing the population with food, and we have gotten way out of hand with it. Why do we need such an elaborate system to keep our people fed? People labor themselves to death just to provide themselves with nutrition and some material comfort. All of this labor focused on providing, and little time is left to work on us. We are slaves to a society, and we ourselves are the slave drivers.

In effect, being slaves to this society, we have little time to work on what is necessary for us to work on. There is no time to live when we are fighting to stay alive, and that usually consists of working to feed ourselves and, in effect, the rest of the group. Throughout the years, life has lost many of the things that once held this society together, such as family and community togetherness, morals, and respect. It isn't because evil people came along through the years and degraded these things, or that people decided that they liked it this way better. This was inevitable. With such an increasing population, and a growing segment of that population which can not or will not support itself, we must work harder and harder to keep things going. Society has grown immensely. There are jobs that no one could've imagined thirty years ago which some people make careers out of. Life isn't about living anymore, it is about making a living. We have such an intricate system set up to govern our people, and that alone provides approximately five million jobs in the United States alone. This form of government is set up to show us what to do, what not to do, and punish us for breaking the rules. We are constantly showed what is "wrong," yet people continue to break the law, get arrested, go to jail, and possibly even be put to death. People wonder why there is such a high crime rate if everyone knows that these things are wrong. Well the problem is that people don't know that these things are wrong. They know that these things are illegal, but that doesn't make it wrong, especially if they don't get caught. If we taught our people how to discern right from wrong, we wouldn't need to punish them for doing wrong. They either wouldn't do what was wrong, or they would do it and then, on their own, face up to the consequences. This is because in a system in which everyone has a common set of values and morals, unlike our system, people immediately accept the responsibility of facing the consequences of their actions before they have even acted. In our society, there is no one around to teach a child that drugs are bad and teach them why they are bad. All kids hear is "JUST SAY NO!" Well, what do you think that kid is going to say if he hasn't learned that drugs are bad by the time he is offered his first hit off a joint? He'll say, "What the fuck were those guys talkin' about? From now on, it's 'Just Say Hell Yeah!'" Maybe down the road from his own trials and tribulations, he'll learn that drugs are bad, and he'll wonder, "Why didn't I believe 'em?" He didn't believe them because they didn't teach him. They told him.

It truly takes a village to raise a child, and our village is to big and to busy. So what happens if we continue the way we are going? People will continue to go about life, making a living, and neglecting their own health. Push yourself to an early grave, because at least then the work will be over. A lucky few find something appealing, something that catches their eye, something to believe in. Those lucky few find the will to live and a reason to seek peace of mind while pulling off the whole "work" thing. Well, I suppose I'll be one of those lucky few, and I wish to make myself happy by teaching others, and if the best teacher is example, well by God I better get to work on myself.

Another Manifesto

I was introduced to a twelve-step program, a spiritual fellowship of men and women living without drugs, in July of 1997. The people involved explained to me that there were easier, more effective, and safer ways to live than the ways I followed at the time. It took some time to get used to that idea. With a little time and understanding, I think I now have a better idea of what recovery is. Putting what I have learned there into practice sometimes presents something of a dilemma, but as they say, "progress, not perfection." I do believe that I have made progress. There is no doubt in my mind that the environment of loving and caring that I have experienced in recovery has shown me a way to live in which I can accept myself for the way I am, whereas before I was critical and unforgiving with myself. To put it simply, recovery has made it much easier to live in my own skin.

Having divulged my experience with recovery, I would like to share my thoughts on the fellowship. The fellowship has given back to our society what so many of us long for and cannot find, and that is exactly what it is: a fellowship. There are many fellowships among our society, but all too often people find it difficult to feel as though they belong. Recovery has expanded the horizons by creating an environment where people feel as though they belong, and that they are loved. This type of environment tends to promote positive behavior and growth. This, of course, is not to say that there were no good fellowships in our society before, nor is it to say that everyone will be satisfied with recovery as a place to grow. Recovery simply provides a place where people who previously felt no sense of belonging can belong, while promoting a set of positive behaviors to replace the negative behaviors that were killing the members before they found each other. I think that a set of fundamental truths and principles regarding human bonding—compassion, which seems to be lacking in many of our society's organizations and fellowships—is the heart that beats in recovery. It seems as if everything in our society revolves around "money, property, and prestige," a cycle that is specifically warned about in the program of recovery. Although it is not possible to always dealing with those matters because they are so rampant, recovery provides a place to build a foundation on a firmer principle, that of mutual support. This is not something new that has been discovered uniquely by those in recovery. However, society tends to teach us, among other things, to "look out for number one," or focus on taking care of ourselves, without letting anyone or anything stand in our way. In places like recovery, people can learn otherwise. Life takes on whole new meaning when it is lived in a supporting, loving environment. These are things that our society has taken out of our lives, but they can be regained. Recovery has brought back to life something that society has taken from us. The problems treated by recovery are not characteristic of humanity, but characteristic of our society. That is the primary focus of the message I hope to carry. Our society fails to teach us how to live, but there is still hope. We can be taught, and we can restore things to the way they ought to be.

When I say that our society seems to revolve around "money, property, and prestige," I speak of our very fundamental structure. We are, as a society, good for business and bad for people. This is the message that I got from Daniel Quinn and the message I intend to bring to you. Our society is based on creating products, which are exchanged for other products, which are exchanged for labor and service, and so on and so forth. Having lived all of our lives in such a society, it often seems first nature to us. "How else would we do things?" one might ask. We would live the way humans lived for millions of years before our society sprang up, and the way humans will live long after our society collapses. We would live through subsistence. Why live any other way? That is my question for you. Why do we need to create a business out of life and everything that life involves? Why do we need to create business out of anything whatsoever?

There are reasons, of course, for why we choose this way of life, but nothing to suggest that we need to live this way. I believe that the primary reason for living this way is the drive to control our circumstances, and the illusion of power that follows. The fulfillment of this drive is made much easier through money, property, industry, and technology. Our way of life would have never been possible if not for the establishment of totalitarian agriculture. The people of the "Fertile Crescent" began to realize that if they took the food and forced people to work for it, they could force people to do just about anything for food. It all began innocently, for totalitarian agriculture required work. People had to spend long hours working the fields, tending to the crops, because otherwise they wouldn't get what they planned on when harvest time came around. This was no problem, because this was when people were still living in the garden. They had the entire world to pick at. They had all the food they could get their hands on, as long as they just went out and got it. So why work in the fields? They set up agriculture in order to have control over what they ate. Rather than having to live on what was available, they could make things available and feast on them. Some people preferred to simply eat from the garden, rather than trying to control what grew. Those who preferred trying to control the garden soon learned a new tactic for getting these people to work in the garden. If they stockpiled their harvests, then they would have plenty of food, even during times of famine. By limiting the food to those who did their share of the work, they had soon established power. People had a choice between working and eating or not working and starving. It didn't take too long for this way of doing things to become automatic, self-perpetuating, and self-propagating.

Now there was no person or group that had to work to keep this system going, because it perpetuated itself. Those in control had a taste of power, and wouldn't let this system fail. If they let this system fail, they would be back with the masses, hunting and gathering, rather than pointing a finger and telling who to work and what work to do. I can imagine how it is more comfortable sitting on a throne of one form or another than walking around in the woods, looking for a berry bush or wild boar. On the other end of the spectrum, however, people had to work to eat. They had no choice to do otherwise, because this system spread like wildfire. The system quickly spread as far as a person could go in those early days. The system was set up in such a way that it made it nearly impossible for people to find a way out of it. This was the very beginning of the concept of genocide. Cultural pluralism was all but destroyed. In its place, we had a new system of stratification of our people. The division of the haves and the have-nots set up an ongoing struggle to keep this system in check. People grow weary of the status quo, and those who have no power or control frequently challenge those who have the money, property, and prestige. It gives life purpose, you could say. I am compelled to point out that the purpose we had before this system emerged was far superior.

There have been many attempts at forming the "perfect" way to run this system and make it work, but any attempt had to include this system of haves and have-nots. This is why capitalism beat out communism. Communism is a fine idea, but cannot work in a system of power and property because it goes against the very root principles of that system. Communism had no chance of survival in a world of property and power, because property demands buyers and sellers, owners and users. In any system that puts one set of people in control of another, exploitation is inevitable. Communism was a bold attempt to try to subvert these systems in the midst of a world so entrenched, but it didn't go far. Those who stood to benefit from inequity stamped it out quickly, and are still stamping it out wherever it might spring up. Again we see how our system of doing things will not stand for change.

The system of property and work soon overtook the entire world, and in order to do so, it had to form lies to keep people from seeing the truth. The system demonstrated that we were, in fact, meant to conquer the planet. It was the destiny of humanity, the divine mission, to rule over all of the planet. This was how the system showed itself to humanity. People of our society were soon led to believe that we as humans are the rulers of this great planet. It was not only our destiny to conquer the earth, but it was our responsibility and obligation. This laid the groundwork for all of the components of our modern society. A set of fundamental principles on which to build an empire was the end result. The rest of the story can be learned in any history book. That history book will tell you all about how life came to be, and how our current empire grew out of a seemingly unsubstantial development in the Fertile Crescent. Those history books will fail to point out, because they fail to consider, the possibility that humanity was much richer when we owned nothing.

Two major aspects of this system disturb me more than anything else: a serious negative impact on the quality of life for all creatures big and small, and the potential destruction of life for the same creatures. I am much more disturbed by the fact that we are so inhumane toward each other and toward our cohabitants than the fact that we have inadvertently threatened the viability of Earth as a long-term home for humanity. It is quite shameful that we have gotten this far in the destruction of our very home without putting an end to the madness. It is blatantly inexcusable, however, that we continue to hurt and destroy our own people the way we do. Saving the world is a great cause, but I am much more interested in seeing that we learn to live with each other, so that saving the world will become not just a worthwhile cause, but also one we are capable of accomplishing. I once heard it said that if we continue hurting the Earth the way we do, she will merely shake us off and continue on, life and all, for another few billion years. If it were merely a case of us doing injustice to the earth, I would probably have different views on the situation. We cannot destroy our home; we will simply make it impossible to continue living here. By letting this system continue to run our lives and our societies, we have neglected the essentials that we need to survive. The task of moving on is two-fold: we must help to spread the awareness of how we hurt ourselves and each other, and we must learn a new way to live so that we can live on and take full advantage of the beauty and joy in life.