I hope the reader–if they have been reading me through the last couple of days–does not find me awful to read, drudging up misery and sickness which are inappropriate to speak of publicly. Yet if I felt that I might be understood, I felt I had no other forum in which to speak… And that is why though I have read no more than 9 pages today and may not read again until Sunday, I have the need to confess… Confess that I have been unhappy… Even though in the murkiness of this sadness, I only reach out… hoping there is a God to Whom to speak… a God Who Is, Who Was, and Who Always Will Be… I have no consolation at times… I have not–alas–much more consolation at times, because I haven’t got a paying job and am trying desperately to get my written work published.
There have been times when I felt I was dying inside… and I felt that living was based on two things: on God, the near-constant Companion who Alone Understood why I believed I suffered… and on my hopes that someday I would be a great writer, a Shakespeare, a Dickens, a Jane Austen or a Twain… somehow I would get there, and when I did the pain I felt in the past would fade like a mist, leaving the feelings which success were supposed to… I knew I might never marry, but to be a “Great Writer” and to believe in my religion–these would console me no matter what.
So it is that God in my imagination is three things: my Father, who does for me what no earthly Father ever has, my Friend, who understood what no earthly Friend has ever done, and Transcendent, who creates the meaning without which no life has meaning. I never doubt–with Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning–that when a person finally says, “I have nothing for which to live” is the moment when they die. I never doubt that when a person sees no God outside himself or herself to serve, that is also when they lose the ability to lose others or themselves. It is true that a person could say, “Ah, but I live for Justice” and it would do for a while. Yet once their justice won, then the problem would begin: “I have it all,” they would say, “Now what is it for?” This reflects the song from Fiddler on the Roof when romantic love is a disguise for a greater idea,
I used to tell myself,
That i had everything,
But that was only half true,
I had an aim in life,
And that was eveyrthing,
But now i even have you.
I have,
Something that I would die for,
Something that I would live for too-
Yes!
Now I have everything,
Not only everything,
I have a little bit more
Besides having everything,
I know what everything’s for.
I know it seems odd to imagine a world where people imagine that made “everything” worth it was romantic love. I often wonder if we still believe in romantic love as a people. Yet if it is not romantic love that makes “everything” we have–and we are an incredibly rich country if you think about it–worth it… what is? I know we are supposed to find our “everything” worth it in “social justice” and “equality” even when we are white. Yet despite not wanting to black people to suffer, I simply can’t find it there.
That is why I say all my prayers to God, for all that the creators of Fiddler on the Roof may have doubted devout answers at times. Tevye complains about how God treats him at times, but he does not suspect that the reason he never doubts life’s value is because he takes it for granted. God has given Tevye what he needs to live. Tevye, despite being a good man, may not have suspected it. Yet it was true. Tevye loved life because he loved God. If his God had truly died within him, he would have shot himself.
I have read Frederic Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra. For all of his hatred of God and goodness, his life’s end was logical given what he believed in. He went insane and killed himself, having set up the foundations for Naziism in Germany–or helped. Superficially I guess a person could be a “good” Nietzschean. Having read him in college I have no idea why a person ever would be… I see beautiful world choice in him, but no beating heart for anyone save the self. Nietzsche claimed that a person could be good for the future overman, but who ever would be if they thought about it? It is not like the overman really loves anyone for producing him. No, ultimately cruelty and selfishness are what a Nietzschean should be, and perhaps one who laughs at the real Nietzsche, dying in his hospital in the dark. The real Nietzschean says, “I got what I wanted; that is all there is.”
I read Wicked and believed that the writer is a stupider version of Nietzsche. If a person believed in that book, they might as well admit they could kill for fun. The book defends Adultery but misses something: most moralists, even if they believe (most of them do) that Adultery is wrong, would actually claim that Murder 1 is the “ultimate crime.” I personally thought reading Wicked that what the book was good for was producing a low-budget justification for whatever evil deed the reader wanted to do. A person might commit murder, commit adultery, commit theft (including embezzlement), lie, and then say, “I got what I want.” Nietzsche is just smarter because he says outright, “I can be selfish and cruel.” That is why I shall write my book Oz Revisited taking down Wicked, as soon as The Firebird Unchained is written. I want to give that completely worthless human being a piece of my mind.
I know all of this sounds perverse… yet it needs saying in every generation: there is a God and a right and wrong. I only wish Americans of this generation where happier and healthier, because then they would see it. If they saw that Thus Spake Zarathustra and Wicked were a pair of sick sluts, they would tell them to go to hell. I am sure of it… I am not really a happy person always, but I have always believed Americans are good at heart. If they were warned about evil in a way they understood, they would listen. I am sure.