In the Preface to his 1887 groundbreaking book The Genealogy of Morals the German philosopher and author Friedrich Nietzsche writes:
“The sad truth is that we remain necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not understand our own substance, we must mistake ourselves; the axiom, “Each man is farthest from himself,” will hold for us to all eternity. Of ourselves we are not “knowers”
When I read this the first time it seemed to account for the many questions I had – and continue to have – about our place in the world. Such as: why are we here, or – for that matter – what are we supposed to be doing here?
(And yes, that is why the world is in the mess that it is today: we have no idea – as the expression goes – if we’re coming or going. As a consequence we – as a species – appear to be going to hell in a handcart. But I digress … )
I suspect that our Raison d’être is entirely tied up with the meaning and purpose of the universe – when they prove to be one and the same – since we will not be able to define ourselves independently from the magnitude of it.I suspect that finding our place on this earth beyond being merely another creature on it will be the fundamental truth that constitutes the treasure in our heart – as Nietzsche put it – for us to discover and explore. This truth will provide us with the inspiration to continue on the path that evolution has brought us to so that we may create a future for ourselves worthy of the cosmic effort that brought us about. This as opposed to continuing blindly on our current course of action which, in in my mind – and in the minds of many others – has our species heading for its own destruction.
My point is this : what other way is there for us to justify our existence, or – for that matter – to justify the existence of the universe? I sincerely hope that – naively as that may be – we will eventually get to that point as a species and avoid our own destruction. But, clearly – given humanity’s current status in the world, that is not going to happen anytime soon … In other words: we’re just not getting it!
The alternative is to see ourselves as innocent bystanders in some kind of aberrant cosmic event, and I have no idea how to defend such a view beyond being a proponent of extreme nihilism or finding comfort in the mindset of victimhood.
In the meantime this blog will likely prove to be a meandering, repetitive and no doubt confusing collection of personal thoughts and observations regarding the things we do and have done in the past and what they tell us about ourselves as a species while we head towards an uncertain future.And yes, as much as I realize that for most of these utterances I am primarily in my own echo-chamber, the question might arise as to why I bother to put any of this on the internet: your guess is as good as mine. To paraphrase something Kafka once said: it is not that anyone has asked me to, but that is immaterial.