The Donkey and the Elephant
A Pre-Election Day Reflection
Nietzsche once said that, “God is Dead, and we killed him.”
In the absence of God, man does not simply stop worshiping. We have a religious instinct to worship. To seek wisdom, strength, and morality in authority. Yet, without a higher power who transcends human flesh, we are forced to worship humanity or the product of humanity.
In the United States of America, there are two gods: The Donkey and the Elephant.
Yet, are these not merely puppets of the one, true god who rules over this country? The god which forces them to fight one another? The god who seeks to divide us in order to deepen its control? The god who stops at nothing to mutilate, sicken, and destroy every ounce of culture in this country? The god who keeps us endlessly fighting in useless wars over seas? The god who slowly castrates our humanity by inundating our minds in an unescapable ocean of mindless entertainment? The god who manipulates our desires in order to keep us in an infinite cycle of consumption and production, debt and labor? The god who forces us to pay for its poisoned food only so we can pay to be treated for the illnesses it gives us? The god who seeks to destroy every ounce of meaning in our lives and replace it with pleasure and fear?
Who is this god in which I speak?
Is it greed?
Is it lust?
Is it war?
Is it pride?
Is it progress?
No. For these, also, are merely puppets of this clever god. The god in which I speak goes by the name Power.
You’ve heard the old maxim that power corrupts. That “absolute power, corrupts absolutely”. But Nietzsche said that power only corrupts those too weak to yield it.
No man is strong enough to control entire economic markets.
No man is strong enough to rule a nation.
No man is strong enough to control nuclear weapons.
Yet, we have people and groups of people who control entire economic markets, rule nations, and control nuclear weapons.
So what’s the big deal, why don’t we just rebel, remove them from office, or kill them?
This entire globalized world has systems put in place across every government, corporation, and major organization that every last individual is absolutely replaceable. People speak of the potential of ‘AI’ running the world, but they do not realize that it already does and has been for a very, very, very long time. Our corporations, governments, and organizations are artificial intelligences that have evolved and adapted overtime to have total and absolute control over humanity. It needs only for us to play our role.
How then, do we stop it? How do we stop a world controlled by humanity’s weakest instincts from robbing us of our culture, meaning, and livelihoods? How do we stop it from turning us all into mindless machines?
It starts with giving your wife flowers.
It starts with setting your phone down.
It starts with shaking hands with the woman in the ‘Harris, Walz’ t-shirt.
It starts with hugging the man wearing a MAGA hat.
It starts with choosing to eat healthy—or at least as healthy as you can.
It starts with choosing to worship love over power, greed, pleasure, war, hate, pride, or ‘the progress of humanity’.
It starts with not believing that you are ‘good’ and all those who defy your ‘good’ are ‘evil’.
It starts with recognizing that you are not God. You don’t have all the answers. You can only guess what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’. You are not perfect.
Yet, Nietzsche also said that ‘man is a bridge’. A bridge to what exactly? The overman. We are a bridge to a higher version of ourselves. One who goes over and beyond the ‘all-too-human’. For there are two types of power. There is one in which we use to project control over others and obtain all things which satisfy our desires. And there is another that only exists within us.
There was a lost Gnostic text discovered in the mid 1900’s called the Gospel of Thomas. It was rejected by the biblical canon. Generally, one thinks of ‘the Kingdom of Heaven’ as something which is only accessible after death, but the Gospel of Thomas says otherwise:
If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father.
The kingdom of heaven is not in sex, money, knowledge, or power. It is within you and all around you. Make yourself a bridge to that kingdom, not the troll who lives underneath.
It’s either that or we destroy it all and start over.
I’ll leave it up to you.