Self-Interest as the Solution to Christianity; an Elliptical Critique
Here I wish to shed some light on a
rather common mentality in our time: Self-interest. The self-interested man is
one who continues the plight of the animal and forges his will by means of
superior intellect to satiate his primal instinct to survive. He is the Übermensch, the artist, the man who
escapes the snares of “mediocrity”, the man freed from master-slave morality,
who overthrows the shackles of taboo, who undermines the machinations of Attila
and the Witchdoctor, who has buried the fabricated notion of summum bonum and has set himself up as
his own god. He recognizes power for
what it is and wields his own. Scoffing
at the funerary culture of Christianity, still grieving its deceased deity, he
is free. All things proceeding from his
own will, he is his own prime mover. All things directed by his own desire, he
is his own form of good. All potentiality
flees before him as he creates himself through his own act. He is, to himself, eternal. He was there at the beginning and will be
there at the end. The world without him
is meaningless because the world only exists to him insofar as he exists. He is
not a microcosm within the universe: Everything
is as it is to himself: He is the cosmos. He lives with one notion ever reverberating
through his mind, “I am who I am.” He
claims he is comfortable with this and this is what makes him most ridiculous.
Among all the truths he conjures
and inculcates into his infallible worldview, one haunts him like the devil: “I
will die.” It is an ugly fact of which
even the lowest animal is somewhat aware.
The primal instinct is to escape death and, for intelligent man, this
instinct exudes forth from his brain as an obsession. The Over-man
is still trodden under by death and this is the humor which mingles with
Nietzsche’s notion of the “gay science.”
For the egoist, the attempt to apply meaning to life is absurd. All is futile. All is vain.
Whatever cause, whatever impetus man finds to occupy himself dies with
himself. Mediocrity is overcome in
pursuit of immortality but immortality is merely a sham and the greatest
allegation against mankind’s inexorable demise.
We are, each one of us, doomed to die.
What is immortality? The historically minded person who thinks
that immortality subsists in posthumous fame or the continuation of his legacy
or geniture need only ask himself if this would give satisfaction to his own
will to survive. It does not. Alas, the greatest humor of our existence is
that mortal man is too smart for his own good.
He transcends himself merely by thinking of the world without him which
inevitably will be the case. For quite
some time, the world existed without him and will continue to exist after he is
gone. Mind games aside, he cannot cope
with this. The individual cannot squeeze
his mind into the tiny frame of subjectivity and call himself content with his
own “eternity”. He knows that his end is
upon him even now: Even now we are wasting away: Even now our bodies succumb to decay. Many see their impending death take hold of
them slowly, torturously, and so unbearably that they hasten it. Man becomes so oppressed by his own mortality
that he often fails to see the value of life at all. Old and feeble, mind slipping this way and
that, friends and family already gone, he puts a weapon to his head or perhaps takes
the rest of his medication all at once.
This, surely, is mediocrity. Is
it better to live on in the face of irresistible failure or to go against one’s
primal instinct? Either way, we are
finished. How depressing life is. Man craves to exist but sees his very
existence slipping like sand out of his mighty hands.
It is apparent that our attitudes are
led in any of three directions. Many
choose to believe that “this” life is not our only life: Immortality is the most common precept among
religions and one need not wonder why.
It seems that immortality is somehow inherent to our thinking, as if
primal man merely assumed that he would keep living on in some way after death. The thought of life after death is an
inclination so natural to man that we accept it without reserve from early
childhood. We cannot fully grasp the
thought of non-existence and so it is no offense to the intellect to believe
that we cannot entirely cease to exist.
We are hard pressed to explain how, but it makes sense to us. It is a mysterious notion, but an easy notion
because it is so satisfying.
Many may attest to their belief in
the hereafter but nonetheless inadvertently fall into another attitude: Unsatisfied by the shadowy uncertainty of religion,
their craving for immortality turns to distraction. Ravenous consumers, rabid
hedonists, and raging addicts of all kinds fill every waking moment with
pleasure, noise, and work. It is most
likely the most common attitude of our time.
Look around and bask in wanton distraction. Death is the last thing we wish to think
about and, even when death comes into our home and makes her presence felt in
our family, we hide her behind rituals, eulogies, flowers, decoration,
formaldehyde, and a lot of makeup. When
one cannot see around death into the afterlife, he closes his eyes and runs
from it.
Perhaps to be ever on the run is a
pitiful way to go about life but, all existential dilemmas considered, it is a
valid alternative to a third and even more pitiful attitude; to look death in
the face and accept it. This is real
mediocrity. This is submission to
slavery. This is direct tyranny without
law or arbiter. The will to survive
courses through the marrow of our bones but it is not enough. Someday, we will not be. It is our greatest imperative to exist; we must exist, but we are not in control of
this. We can negate ourselves, but we
cannot keep ourselves alive. We have a
mind for eternity, but our bodies fail us.
We are each one of us a failure, but to accept this failure and die with
it is worse.
Self-interest is supreme
stupidity. To see one’s own failure
amounts only to wisdom; to recognize what it is to be human; to be
contingent. But the self-interested man,
though he is bound to accept his ultimate failure, refuses to believe. He takes
wisdom only part-way and dies with it, too proud to give credence to
success. He cannot, because to admit the
possibility of salvation is to admit his own impotency; that his primal
instinct can only be sated by someone other than himself. This is mediocrity.
