Joshua Minton’s Online Pulpit : The Death of the Will to Power and the Next Great Awakening

The Death of the Will to Power and the Next Great Awakening

Posted by Josh in July 11th, 2008

Awakening

In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a paragraph and murdered religion. Sure, it was a slow death but a death it was. He wrote:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

He predicted that in the absence of religion as an organizing force of society, the Will to Power would rise first in nations and then in individuals who would lead those nations. He didn’t predict the exact personalities and I’m talking FDRStalinHitlerMussoliniChurchill blues here people. But he did a pretty solid job of calling the rules of the game. And those leaders during WWII had some serious power, Jack. And they each brought it about by willing it to be so. If you’ve never read the book Will by G. Gordon Liddy (of Watergate and talk radio fame), go pick up a used copy today; that dude forgot more about willing a situation into order than you’ll ever know, scrub–so don’t even try to compete.

The Will to Power was all that existed to compensate for the subcutaneous insurrection that took place when Nietzsche declared the idea of god, the image we each have in our minds, to be deceased and dysfunctional.

Joseph Campbell once gave the best explanation of the problem with religion. He said something like: God, the word “God,” is a metaphor which points to a mystery that absolutely transcends all our knowledge. The categories of thought which break reality into constituent individualites which are then analyzed and responded to cannot contain the experience of what the word “God” is pointing towards–something completely beyond our knowing. The great mystery. The void. Sunyasha. Paradise. Heaven. Bliss. Nirvana. Shall I go on?

Listen to the Tool song Lateralus and you’ll feel what I’m talking about on this.

Anyway, Campbell continued by saying that if you want to think about God you may say, “Is God one or many?” One or many–these are concepts still within the categories of thought, what the Indians call Maya. The metaphor is pointing to something–and you can’t even say “thing” because things are in time and space. It’s pointing to some transcendent unknown beyond the entire structure and nature of our five senses and ability to analyze. Campbell taught that all religions were constellations of metaphor and ritual which when acted within could put the individual into accord with this unknowable reality.

And the difference between an atheist and a theist is that the theist believes these religious constellations to be historical facts that actually happened and aren’t just symbolic of a higher truth we can all reach through different methods of worship and thought.

And the atheist knows that the metaphors are not facts, so they’re lies (hence, “God is Dead”). Both theists and atheists are slaves to the Petulant Worship of Faith or Reason which have nothing to do with reality in the moment. With truth for its own sake.

So once you see the structure and nature of experience and its ending (death) as an accepted fact, you understand that the purpose and meaning of the metaphor is pointing toward infinity and you can be chill with it like John Coffey in The Green Mile.

What happens when you sit with something or someone long enough? You get to know them. How many of us are brave enough to say we’ve really sat down with death and accepted it for the concrete steel titanium fact that it is?

And finally accepting it, doesn’t a great freedom spring up in the moment? Can’t you feel it in your chest lifting you, prompting you to breathe in and capture this moment like a Ferrigno biceps flex with both arms.

Who knew it could be so liberating finding out and accepting every one of us is on death row without reprieve and that we have an opportunity to rattle our cups against the cage and make some good old fashioned fucking noise before we go?

We then may look around ourselves and see our children for the blessings of energy, commitment, and love that they are. Thank any deity you can toss a corn hole bag at if you have someone at home who loves you unconditionally and will take whatever bullshit you’re dishing out assuming you’re willing to accept theirs also.

The Will to Power will finally die out in the early years of the 21st century and good riddance. The light of Science may yet shine on our society in benevolent ways instead of the malicious shadow its been casting since the Gatling gun was invented.

Science as an institution is based at its core on constantly proving itself wrong and challenging its fundamental precepts in order to move forward and gain a larger and deeper understanding of the outer space universe of sociology, physics, and biology. And I can feel a new social-spiritual uprising upon us, a phenomenon which intelligent historians and sociologists like Paul Johnson (my favorite historian by far) call “Great Awakenings.”

I submit that we are in the presence of the beginning swell of the next Great Awakening in the history of our human species and that this one will wipe clean the hatred, bigotry and unforgivable ignorance currently plaguing our collective mind. It will neutralize, once and for all, the Will to Power as the primary driver of human social and psycho evolution and bring on the age of the Micro Tribe, a social unit of physical and technological structure where we draw circles of trust around ourselves and those we love and interact with the world through these trust fields. Compassion and reason will be the currency of this new age while fear and ignorance collect dust in the back our minds and hearts.

Elysian Fields are there for individuals with enough courage to sit with and accept the ultimate fact of existence–death. And despite the inevitable destruction of oneself, still see beyond it to the enormous opportunity of seizing this moment to live a life of betterment for yourself and all of those around you.

Peace and prosperity don’t just happen. They have to be willed into existence at the same time by a lot of people.

So what the fuck are you waiting for?

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