So, we no longer trust in the grand narratives (“isms”) that sustained our fathers and mothers – sky-god religion, nationalism, capitalism, socialism and scientific progress. No center remains, no central authority. We are left, it seems, to our own wits, to make it up as we go along. Yet, there is one remaining authority, an author, indeed: Wildness, Will, Nature, if you will. Dare we call it the god within?
Nietzsche’s madman goes into the streets, to announce that God is dead. What he finds instead, I would suggest, is a god within. He finds, as William Desmond says, “the will that is fragmented through all things…that surges forth in every new growth, driving the cosmic chaos into fleeting forms of partial unity.”
Do we understand that god is known only as partial unity? Do not trust grand narratives, those that spew from the President’s oval (egghead?) office, the professor’s Power Point and so many a preacher’s pulpit. Grand narratives are big lies used to manipulate and enslave you and me. The media are master tellers of such master plans. Stop listening to them, too.
The herd follows the grand narratives of politicians, priests, corporate shysters and the well-groomed network anchors. The mesmerized flag-waving herd do not understand that in order to be free, they must survive on their own intellect and gumption, fueled by Wit and Wisdom deep within. The herd’s wits are dulled from following the party line. The ambitious sociopaths in the ranks of the state, church and corporations know this, so they devise their own grand narrative and present it as truth. By laying claim to the truth, they lay claim to power. They claim exclusive privilege to will to power, the divinity within.
It is our calling to employ our own wits and resources to make a go at this feral life, free of dogma and propaganda. There is no big story, no grand truth to discover. Everything is partial. Divinity dances in the fragments.
How then do we persist without falling into despair and a dark pessimism? How do we go on when the shysters of the state, church and capital keep creating these grand narratives that the herd believes (e.g., worship of the military, war, progress, wealth, etc.), which they use to enslave all of us, even if we do not want to play a part in their little fiction?
There is an answer for our time, and it is found among the ancient Cynics, Diogenes, in particular. Summarizing Peter Sloterdijk, Desmond writes:
They did not argue with the tyrants, but laughed, danced capers and farted at all self-appointed authorities. Such elemental glee and irrepressible laughter cannot be spun into a sinister, grand narrative…It deflates the pretensions of all such narratives…The Cynics were perfect rebels…They simply startled people back to the body and delight in the present moment, knowing that in the end, before ideas, creed, party and fatherland, these alone are the real things.
Laugh, dance and fart tonight. Don’t let the damned shysters tell you a tale. If you can’t avoid hearing their stories, then at least don’t believe them. You will know if you are being drawn into their cadence of lies. You will stop dancing wildly without embarrassment in the middle of the shocked crowds. You will start marching goose-step down the street before the cheering crowds. When the herd begins to love you, the last vestige of god, the god within, is dead.
Note: For more on the Cynics, see William Desmond, The Cynics, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2008.