god Killing

god Killing

Samuel Bird

Mind and material, subjective and objective, ape and God met together making man. Both in the world and able to think without, both being and yet a consciousness to be aware of it, the mind is thrust into being. They are stuck alone, with their kind being the only entity they know of that has their cursed gift or gifted curse. This entity of awareness, that we are, brings perception and value. They synthesize facts of the world from around them, but then see another way that world ought to be. Furthermore, the world itself isn’t explained by its components or the whole as they can see it. What initiated being? Where did their values meet the world? What core facts built to the more complex ones they then lived by? Something from deep within them needed these concerns to intercept in an answer that gave all others. This was their god, or Esse Maxim. It was the thing that related them to the rest of the world. It gave the contextual meaning, the epistemic grounding, and ethical and aesthetic grounding the conscious mind craved. Flipped on their heads, the deep foundational and undergirding core fact of Esse Maxim stood in the sky overhead. Prayers, incense, and sacrifice offered up to the highest of ideals as an entity itself. This is where man finds his inescapable. He can’t avoid his god, he can only choose what that god is. Perhaps an ancient deity of nature or the God of the Old Testament. In less formal methods he may find himself or his fellow as his god. Perhaps even something even lesser like his pleasure or some institution of his own kind. This thing that he gives supreme intrinsic value that all else borrows, then drives the entirety of his being. The avoidance to find a god is fruitless as any means to run becomes the new god. So we stand in, with the inevitability of kneeling before something. The question is not if we will, but what is worth bowing before?

With my suspicion of the justification aspect of knowledge, I must admit I know one shadow more than nothing. This removal of unnecessary certainty brings great humility to how I approach the world and my effort to more greatly pull it into my mind. These late-night reflections, introspections, and processing of perception have put me in a position where I know nothing, while perhaps still knowing more than others. Wisdom replaces knowledge with the understanding of how little I can epistemically grasp. For this reason, I am humbled by the monolith of all I don’t know, but I am wild, free, rebellious, and somewhat ignorant to those around me. I look forward to seeing what insights I can gain from their specific slice of the world and experience in it, however, I have no one to resign my thinking to. I don’t think I am smarter than everyone else, but my thinking has led me to find not one king or master on the earth. No source of insight, command, or unquestionable decree is to the point of earning my unconditional acceptance. For this reason, no mind does anything more than slightly infer the quality of its ideas. How many geniuses bring about foolishness and fools pure genius? This leaves me with my head high with no bowing to my peer humans. I kneel before none, heed none, and owe none more than what I will. However, this hard-earned confidence leaves an emptiness within my soul. It may be true that no one human is sufficient to trust with the perception and cognition of the world, but something within me still calls for that. Perhaps then, it could be myself. However, I cannot bow before that which is bowing back in the mirror. Neither myself nor others are sufficient. Even if in delusion, I need something to look up to. There is one thing I bow before, and that is my God. When I discovered this God, I quickly went about killing off my old gods. My adoration, fear, and worship were saved for that God only. Now, when I act in the world, it is from a position of confidence. My God is to my back, then what can be before my face?

What of these old gods I killed? What made me objectively value them as being worth the sinking of the dagger on the altar of my new God? No matter the social and mental ease of all things being equal, nothing is. If we can assume that our different iterations have different qualities, some will change what results they have. Then, if we can assume that one result is better than another, that property then transfers to that being. Some may argue for some ethereal and essential equality, but there is great variance in outcomes. I then having values, will find that the gods I see before me vary on how well they bring such about. In a unique sort of way, this God will also then be what I use to alter what it is that I value. So then, what God has earned the right to make my good and evil? Value exists only in the mind, so morality then could be best held by the subject that pertains to all objects. What then did this new God beat out over the old god? For one, this new God is more consistent. By the values He made, He lives within them. The first weight of the lawgiver is their lawfulness to their law. My old god would disregard his system for His arbitrary ends. My new God is bound by the principles He Himself set. This new God has greater explanatory power. Facts of the world align better with His nature as I know it. Finally, He is more of a God to me. Witnessing Him finds myself seeing just how far I am, and hoping He will bridge that distance. Something about Him is far enough ahead of me that bowing not only seems possible and reasonable, but almost necessary from the facts. His sheer violent magnanimity awakes the recesses of my soul to worship, rather than my effort to force it. I have had a series of gods in my life, and I can confidently say that this God could easily smite all that went before. 

I hope my hyperbolic metaphor didn’t lose you. I am not advocating for competitive religiosity but for a deep question of the qualities, nature, and result of your Esse Maxim. This God you find foundational to all else, is necessary. It will be. However, though it must be, we can choose which god it is. So then, how do you kill your old God? When you realize that this thing so central to who you are was a lie, how can you leave it behind? Simply put, you are not strong enough to press it out of a box, creating a vacuum. Rather, it makes more sense to find a better replacement for the box. Firstly, you have to win over the rest of your being. If you are going to do this right, the only way is to successfully mourn your old God. Feel the agony of cutting the umbilical to your maternal connection to reality. Mourn the hours spent, relationships predicated, and possibly wasted engagement.  If it helps, if engagement is the metavalue, then you will at least have something to show for it. Still, who thought the destructive volleys would come from the same hand that erected the temple? Will you be a traitor? Will you always wonder if your old and weak God was more, but you simply forgot to wait them out? These are questions you will have to weigh. By allowing your mind to consider them across time, you will come up with possible resolutions in moments you least expect them. At the least, the sharpness of the change will dull its edge on your grown character and you will create a new self apart from this idea. You must be prepared to let this god be killed. How can we do it? Perhaps we can starve this god? Not another burnt offering to sustain them. However, even the weakest of gods is more powerful than you and can sustain itself. How then do you rid yourself of this old pattern of thought, philosophy, or article of faith? Prepare to acknowledge your finitude. You can’t kill this God. The drinker’s bottle, the businessman’s dollar, and the thinker’s lie have become more to him than what they were, and somehow more than what he is. Burn it, starve it, scream at it, and yet it lives on. Crashing in on yourself, you find that this thing that precedes you, can’t be stopped by you. Then who? Who is big enough, strong enough, and powerful enough to slay this deity-turned-demon? Who will come to you to secure a place in a fluctuating universe and keep you at a safe distance as it battles it out with the old god? There is none other than your new God. This God is the bridge between mind and matter, not you. It is the undergirding for being as you know it, not you. It necessitates all facts and values, not you. The first act this new God will do to earn your worship will be to slaughter that which inappropriately stood in its place. Allow yourself to step back as the new God that you have brought into the world, kills off the way you saw the world before. Have faith that it will and that the world it will reign over will be one you wish to live. Then when it emerges victorious, hail it as all it is and the savior from what was. All men have gods, some have gods worth worship. 

In my arrogance, I wish I was a god, so I could send my spirit to be with you. In my brutal inability, I instead ask that you take my heart. Existence is the trapping between sheer being and vacuous nothing. You, as consciousness, will require things of the world it will not offer you. Then, when you invent a new thing to believe in, you find it fleeting insufficiency based on the new experiences you gain. Please, consider Esse Maxim. Because it is what you build as a bridge between yourself and the world around you, you have the capacity and right to do the upkeep on that bridge. I hope that once you pick a good bridge, you can simply must sand and paint as needed. However, I have been human long enough to suspect you will have around three to four times in your life that you are compelled to completely rebuild that bridge. Removing your Esse Maxim via a replacement leaves one sensitive and vulnerable. What words wouldn’t fail me in your consolation and expression of adoration? I want you to know what you do is honorable. In fact, I would choose the word heroic. You venture from the land you know, through a harsh and desolate one, to find if an oasis is on the other side. However, you don’t know, presenting a legitimate risk. With the faith that there will be a destination worth its journey, also have faith that you can do it. While you traverse the horrors of being without Esse Maxim, look forward to that new moment. That moment you build your new temple, new altar, and new shrine, to the one and only God, at least for now. In the meantime of finding God, ask what it is about you that such a being would find worthy of allowing it to come to you. No doubt that familial treatment infers a spark of sacred within your soul. In the meantime of all these things, fight for your gods. Crusade, lament, and sacrifice with all you have. The inevitability to find one thing above all leaves our kind with the opportunity to find the very best thing to be so. May your new God bless you.