I've envisioned a new God.

I have created a God. He spans the evening sky like a web of perpetual lightning. He can not be prayed to without arms spread wide open and the face towards the sky -- his presence demands an open chest.

"Created" is perhaps a strong word, "envisioned" may be more true to what has happened. I demanded, in the described pose, that a great world-spanning entity like this exited, and there it was.

This God is meant to fill the void that has been left by all existing Gods, who all demand meekness. This God can not be addressed, understood, contacted in a meek state of heart or mind. His presence in ones consciousness demands a reckless kind of pride which is rooted in the firm knowledge that, as a being of strength and commanding intelligence, one has no other choice but to be reckless in this time, where creators are extremely rare, where the space to create is still so virgin-like, and there are not yet any standards.

The creation of this God is part of our great project (5) to create a master-ethics for mankind.

To you who are not meek but do feel the desire to bestow your will-power on a psychic meta-structure that will support projects of boldness and spiritual fearlessness, I make known this New God, who has no name yet but is electrical and directly accessible if ones pure energetic potential is above average, well developed and rooted in moral independence.

The New God is hereby offered to you as a means, a part of a new infrastructure for valuing.
From hereon prayer works the other way around -- God does not bless us, we bless God. We do not ask God for anything, we offer to God from our abundance.

Already this God is fierce, as I envisioned this God so. Spread out your arms if you and open up to this mighty creation, and you will see that giving and receiving are no longer a matter of loss and gain, but that one can only give, and only gain.




I originally created this post on ILP. Some rudimentary discussion on this took place here -- [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

However it seemed to me that some of you, dwellers of Satyrs Lair, may be inspired by the existence of such God, and could perhaps help me find a name for it. Jokes are welcome.

Indeed....my God is an active god...a god as actor.

One, inspired by Nietzsche, who was named Kazantzakis once wrote a little book he called ascetic, or Ασκιτικη.
In it he describes a god as struggling becoming god of pain and suffering; an imperfect god whom musters up his army, mankind, to do battle against the forces of darkness and chaos.

This is a more realistic conception of god. A god within which man stands as ally not as submissive beggar.
A god as general; an ordering god struggling with our help to put order where none is present.

We offer nothing to god, as we have little to give, but he asks much of us. He asks for our work and struggle and loyalty to create himself.

Frankly, this strikes me as ridiculous. Whether the symbolry of morality/value that this product of superstition represents is one thing or another, it's still superstition.

By all means create an idol to represent masculinity, individuality, selfishness, egotism and so on... but do it in such a way that it remains clearly a symbol, an artistic depiction, of the ideal that you have chosen to glorify and to pursue.... and not a theistic noumenon that refers to nothing real.

There's a book by Hermann Hesse, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], in which a greek god called Abraxas is used in a similar way as here. You might want to look into that.

Some quotes:

Quote :

"Der Vogel kämpft sich aus dem Ei. Das Ei ist die Welt. Wer geboren werden will, muß eine Welt zerstören. Der Vogel fliegt zu Gott. Der Gott heißt Abraxas."

(The bird struggles out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wants to be born, must destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.)

"Schicksal und Gemüt sind Namen eines Begriffs." Das hatte ich nun verstanden.

("Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept." That was clear to me now.)

"Ich habe nichts dagegen, daß man diesen Gott Jehova verehrt, nicht das mindeste. Aber ich meine, wir sollen Alles verehren und heilig halten, die ganze Welt, nicht bloß diese künstlich abgetrennte, offizielle Hälfte! Also müssen wir dann neben dem Gottesdienst auch einen Teufelsdienst haben."

("I have no objection to worshiping this God Jehovah, far from it. But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely the artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil.")

I see a usefulness for the concept "God".
Primarily it functions as a way of keeping the tribe intact by evoking some "higher" power to placate and comfort those that have no ability to think outside absolutes or who cannot cope with the responsibilities and accountability existence entails.
The simple require something simple to make sense of what is far too complex for them to comprehend or to accept.

Its secondary function is to offer an ideal all try to live up to and as a personification of all the forces, known and mostly unknown, which made life and individuation possible.
It is a way of being thankful for one's own existence via a symbol which incorporates all which participates in existence which a single mind can never know.

To worship a god is to give thanks for one's own existence, this including all that threatens this existence and makes it all the more valuable.

"Schicksal und Gemüt sind Namen eines Begriffs." Das hatte ich nun verstanden."

I had forgotten about Hesse. I have only read Narziss und Goldmund, which I found an intelligent work at the time. What you have quoted is fitting indeed -- understanding this New God (your judgment "superstitious" is itself perhaps but a superstition ) does indeed rely on this conception of fate and temperament.

They are truly beautiful quotes. My God is however not the aim of the bird, he is not the end of anything, only a means, an addition to the context we have been building.

I envisioned this God in a tangent shooting from the value-ontology project we (5) have been working at.

Satyr -- I do not feel that man has need of a God to be pain and suffering and struggle and overcoming -- this is simply a quality of nature. Any conceptions of a metaphysical nature proposed by me are meant to serve philosophy, not tribes or masses or simply individuals.

So this God serves philosophy, and as individuals may not seem to generally amount to much in the great storm of suffering and overcoming, and Gods have been a testaments to this littleness, philosophy must amount to more than God, and God must now attain to philosophy, because it has hijacked the universe, and taken fate out of his hands.

Fixed Cross wrote:

Satyr -- I do not feel that man has need of a God to be pain and suffering and struggle and overcoming -- this is simply a quality of nature.

If God is not another way of saying nature or of personifying a natural force, then it is a concept detached form all experience and so it only seduces those wanting to escape.

If you cannot comprehend how shared struggles and shared tragedies and pains bond individuals then I pity you.

God IS this struggle to deal with existence and if most conceptions of Him have become childish projections about some transcending or immanence which means nothing at all but pretends to say much, just like most of Buddhism, then this is more an indication of the minds these conceptions rely upon to persist.

Fixed Cross wrote:

Any conceptions of a metaphysical nature proposed by me are meant to serve philosophy, not tribes or masses or simply individuals.

Philosophy is not disconnected from reality.
Metaphysics presupposes physics.
Philosophy is nothing more than the love of wisdom as this relates to the world.
Philosophy, like any other activity serves the mind using it or else it is useless and meaningless: mind-candy.

Fixed Cross wrote:

So this God serves philosophy, and as individuals may not seem to generally amount to much in the great storm of suffering and overcoming, and Gods have been a testaments to this littleness, philosophy must amount to more than God, and God must now attain to philosophy, because it has hijacked the universe, and taken fate out of his hands.

If what you call "philosophy" is not meant to serve the man in an effort to expand himself then it is meaningless.
To expand one's self is not to dismiss or forget or deny self, it is to m,now self, first, so as to then choose what aspects one finds noble and which ignoble in reference to a desired ideal.

Those aspects of self which are considered "negative" in relation to the desired are never forgotten or totally overcome but they are controlled.
Understanding nature, like understanding a beast or a river's flow, means that one can control it, not change it.

The past is the immutable as the past cannot be altered.
The past is the river which you must redirect or find ways to use.
You cannot overcome your past (nature) but you can learn to endure it or direct it (nurture).

The word "philosophy" is not a magical term. It only means a friend of wisdom.
Wisdom is always in relation to reality, the world as it is experienced.
Anything, including your so called "God" which has no reference and no application to this experienced world is meaningless and a form of escapism and self-narcosis.

Beautiful. That it has no application to the world as you think it, Satyr -- the world of lack and entropy, of dissatisfaction and purposelessness, of blindness and the past -- is a good thing! And if philosophy is not a magical term, then we shall make it so!

Ah, how much power is demanded of us. And how weary you are, dear Satyr. Not to be regretted, though: such a calling ought to serve as a separating principle.

More later.

It is amazing what an idea can do...
The ideas we have had of Gods have done much
Perhaps you might want to think it is a creation of humans
But in a determined world of no beginning...has not this idea always existed?
Manifesting through life.

Fixed Cross wrote:

I had forgotten about Hesse. I have only read Narziss und Goldmund, which I found an intelligent work at the time.

Hesse's only real works of note are Steppenwolf and Demian. I've also read Siddhartha, The Glass Bead Game and Narziss and Goldmund.

He was a buddhist.

Quote :

What you have quoted is fitting indeed -- understanding this New God (your judgment "superstitious" is itself perhaps but a superstition ) does indeed rely on this conception of fate and temperament.

It seems to me that one's fate is determined by one's temperament. That, to use N's terminology, to have a destiny of mastership, one is required to have the appropriate nature and to actualize that nature. This is the importance of genetic fitness in the evolutionary sense; one's Will is also a signifier of fitness. For a man, probably the most important signifier as it pertains to his hierarchical position, access to resources and mates.
When considered with this god of yours, I question then why you are applying a tool of slave morality (the ultimate authority; god) and applying it in this fashion.

To a slave denial of self and submission to an external ideal is the goal. To a master, the reverse. To the weak, the safety and comfort provided, the reassurance are attractive. But to another who loves life and danger, it might seem like a padded cell. In this fate and temperament can be clearly seen.

But as an aside, I am of the position that different spirits being sympathetic to different "fates" should be educated in appropriate value systems catering to those fates. Not all truths are spoken for all ears. Think of it as a caste system of morality.
Equality for the rabble; egotism for the nobility. And that these should be kept separate from each other and cross-pollination of ideology, of pollution. One cannot teach sheep how to rule, nor can one teach a king how to be content chewing grass in a meadow.
A philosophical aristocracy.

Quote :

They are truly beautiful quotes. My God is however not the aim of the bird, he is not the end of anything, only a means, an addition to the context we have been building.
I envisioned this God in a tangent shooting from the value-ontology project we (5) have been working at.

The Self is all that should concern you. If you are sincere; but instead you invent this fantasy to swoon after.
To pursue this ideal in detriment to your self is self-denial, perhaps self-hatred. It is nothing more than an eloquent description of all that you lack, which you project outside yourself and then seek in the other.

Is the Ubermensch a god? Is he an ideal? Or is he simply the one genuine man, who knows himself, and is content with his "fate" as the pure product of his Will or temperament .... to the extent that he can say Once More to all eternity?

The utility of these idols and symbols is that in their creation, one is expressing one's own lack and is attempting to fulfill that need via a representational piece, be it through the use of words, paint, morality, whatever. But an essay is just an essay, a painting only a painting and a morality still only a system of values; each of which as an instrument of one's temperament paves the path of one's fate.

You betray yourself; you want an ideal to follow, a signpost to guide you. You realize this and so you flatter yourself that you can cast off this guide when He has served His purpose. He is a "means" but apparently not an "end". I can find nothing but humour in the attempt to subvert judaeo-christianity through the creation of a "rival" god.

The socialists, liberals, secular-humanists; the heirs of christianity, beat you to it. They call it the Democratic Republic of Heaven. Do you understand me?

without-music wrote:

Beautiful. That it has no application to the world as you think it, Satyr -- the world of lack and entropy, of dissatisfaction and purposelessness, of blindness and the past -- is a good thing!

You say so because you have no understanding of what the consequences are.
You dwell in the superficial and immediate. You only see decay and pain and suffering, and not the glory of resisting or the nobility of finding beauty in a rarity which is symmetry or pleasure in the moment.

without-music wrote:

And if philosophy is not a magical term, then we shall make it so!

Spoken like a true effete male.

without-music wrote:

Ah, how much power is demanded of us. And how weary you are, dear Satyr.

Again you speak as someone who lacks understanding.
There is weariness in me but not from what you would like to think.
I am weary of simplicity or those denying nature while pretending to be defenders of it and protectors of it; I am tired of stupidity, in short.
I am tired of having to face it daily, because I cannot escape it; that I must mingle with it because it is a matter of survival.
I am tired of explaining what seems to me to be clear and obvious.


On my own, dear friend, I am happy.
Most who know me think of me as easy going and funny and comfortable. Strangers I meet tell me that they feel as if they know me for years, if they catch me on a good day.
I am forgiving an tolerant, unless the other shows signs of an arrogance which they cannot defend against me.

I have my dark days and they are plenty.
That's when I feel like creating, thinking, being alone, drinking, writing.

without-music wrote:

Not to be regretted, though: such a calling ought to serve as a separating principle.

If by "calling" you mean the call of the real, of nature, of the world, then I accept the call.

How can one tell if there is a lack of intelligence or they are too stupid to recognize it?

New Gods are not necessary, as cultural evolution, which reflects the physical, has a marked tendency towards atheism. Religion is the opiate of more primitive consciousnesses, those still seeking to remain in the shelter or due to a lack of physical evolution unable to find a way out of it. Intellectual curiosity is the driving force but most are stuck with their senses and appetites.

You can take the monkey out of the jungle but you can't take the jungle out of the monkey.

Abstract wrote:

How can one tell if there is a lack of intelligence or they are too stupid to recognize it?

In the same way one can tell if an animal is intelligent.

Actions, behaviors...with humans words and ideas.

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

How can one tell if there is a lack of intelligence or they are too stupid to recognize it?

In the same way one can tell if an animal is intelligent.

Actions, behaviors...with humans words and ideas.

That presumes we had intelligent understandings of the relations of behaviors to intelligence in the first place...

My point would be that often someone thinks something is stupid because they are ignorant of something that would otherwise explain it or show signs of intelligence within...

Abstract wrote:

Satyr wrote:

Abstract wrote:

How can one tell if there is a lack of intelligence or they are too stupid to recognize it?

In the same way one can tell if an animal is intelligent.

Actions, behaviors...with humans words and ideas.

That presumes we had intelligent understandings of the relations of behaviors to intelligence in the first place...

My point would be that often someone thinks something is stupid because they are ignorant of something that would otherwise explain it or show signs of intelligence within...

this is an argument from the negative.
You imply what you cannot deliver and then you claim that the other cannot understand or that the subject might be so mysterious, because we just do not know, that it might be all that it is claimed that it is and that we just do not know it yet.

The argument from the negative us also used by Christians. They claim that we do not know enough to dismiss the concept of God.
In which case anything can be defended as being rational since we are ignorant about everything.

This is what I call a top-down reasoning. One begins with a premise, which he has no reason to presume, and then justifies it using different tactics one of which is the ignorance one.

I'm more of a bottom-up thinker.

With the ideas of "bottom-up" and "top-down" when you say such I invision ...say a tree... from top down would be taking the top point or the many leaves and finding the source... where as bottom up is thinking of the seed and discovering the tree...

herein bottom-up is extrapolation, and top-down is interpolation?

Abstract wrote:

With the ideas of "bottom-up" and "top-down" when you say such I invision ...say a tree... from top down would be taking the top point or the many leaves and finding the source... where as bottom up is thinking of the seed and discovering the tree...

herein bottom-up is extrapolation, and top-down is interpolation?

No.
You take the tree as a given and place yourself outside of it.

Top/Down reasoning begins with a projection based no ignorance and oftentimes one which totally contradicts sensual experience.

Take the concept of "God" but also the concept of an "absolute" ofttimes referred to as a "whole" or a "one". .
Both are similar because both function using the same tactics, only on is religious and anthropomorphizes its projection and the other is secular and it abstracts it into a nonsensical concept which is explored has no basis in anything perceived.
In both cases one begins with the given and then seeks to explain reality as it is perceived in accordance to this guiding first "self-evident" principle.

To do so both resort to romanticism or place the blame on the world perceived or imply some test or they simple relabel things as "perfect" or "good" or "complete" when none of these concepts has any connection to a lived reality. To compensate they both imply some hidden, mysterious, world which underlies or overlies the perceived and totally contradicts it.

So, religions present a paradise, a nirvana, or some ambiguous state with mystifying terminology meant to pretend that it is saying something profound when nothing is really being said....like "conscious unconsciousness" or "life after death" or "emptiness" or "immanence" or "thing in itself".

Bottom/Up reasoning begins with as few preconceptions as possible and the ones it adopts out of necessity as a tool not as a de facto given and then builds upon them using experience.
Where it cannot offer insight it remains silent, where it can it offers opinions based on probabilities and never on absolutes.
For instance, when no beginning or end is perceived one does not assume that such a concept has any meaning outside the human mind which needs it to make sense of itself.
When no "one" is perceived, outside the human mind and within the limits of human perception and life cycles one does not presume it but only as a tool for understanding, not one of worship.
When nothing perfect and complete and whole is experienced, in fact one can feel in one's self the extent to which these concepts are totally detached from a lived-experience, then one does not take these concepts seriously.

One does not jump to conclusions which are completely alien to the lived world simply because it feels good or it is comfortable...and when one does so for reasons of utility then one does not exaggerate these tools and metaphors so as to pretend to itself that it is reaching into some deep understanding of existence.
A useful tools, like the concept of a one and a zero, of nothing and something, are that and no more: tools that aid understanding and tools, primitive as they are, based on human binary conceptualizing.

In this case the mysterious is preserved as an honest assessment of one's own limits. A humble view which also makes of the world a more fascinating and valuable experience.

For example, if I see mysterious lights in the sky I do not jump to the conscious that they are intelligent and extraterrestrial or God coming down or some other exaggerated projection of fear and hope or imagination disconnected from all previous experiences.
I analyze the perception on my experiences with similar phenomena and if I lack them I refrain from letting my imagination go off into flights of fancy.
I first look for the simplest explanation then for the most plausible one after that.

I can agree with that style of thinking