The Colby Echo

Issue date: 2/9/07 Section: Opinions

"This is my way. Where is yours? -Thus I answered those who asked me 'the way.' For THE way-that does not exist."

Thus spoke Nietzsche's Zarathustra over a century ago. For some time, I've grappled with how far to take this sentiment. Yes, I believe there is more than one right way to live. But I also think that certain ways are better than others, and, perhaps unlike Nietzsche, that certain ways are better for everyone.

Perhaps the best example is that I'm often uneasy about religious fervor present in some friends. Why (I wonder) willingly place the meaning, the value of one's life in the hands of another, even an Almighty? I find the idea of such surrender mind-boggling. Others, on the other hand, find it comforting. I admit that I sometimes envy people of faith for their surety, though I cannot bring myself to join them. It'd be nice to know that I had an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent entity "on call" for tough spots. But I've yet to be convinced. I'm also too vain, too much the existentialist aspirant, to consider accepting divine aid in anything I attempt. The grace of any God would, in my mind, diminish my achievements. So doubt and pride have driven me away from established faiths, and I often wonder why others don't see eye to eye with me on at least the pride issue. Humility is one thing, and even self-denigration can be acceptable; surrendering personal autonomy is another matter entirely.

But I also wonder: when religious friends of mine are happy, when they're among the nicest and most well-adjusted people I know, why worry? Do I really want to attack their core beliefs, to shake the very foundations of their moral and social lives? Religion has shaped many of my friends for many years, and much of what endears them to me is in some way linked to that shaping. They are who they are-my friends-at least partly because of their faith.

But other words of Nietzsche echo in my head: "The noble soul has reverence for itself."

When I was brooding about this article last semester, a friend suggested that accepting different life-guiding philosophies in my friends is not to compromise my own, but rather to embrace the diversity we moderns in general, and Colbians in particular, claim to value. Maybe she's right. Nietzsche wrote: "What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do?"

Of course, while embracing the diversity of, say, my friends' academic majors is easy enough, it's on a totally different scale than that of agnostic or atheistic humanism versus religious devotion. And Nietzsche also said that for greatness one must be willing to inflict suffering and able to bear the cries of one's victims; though that sounds alarming, his ultimate goal was humanity's self-transcendence. My friends of faith are doing just fine. But what if I think they can do even better? Is it my place to suggest this? Should I be willing to piss them off, even to hurt them, to make them stronger? Is that even in my power?

As so often happens, I've reached this grand conclusion: I don't know.

But surely there's value in the asking... right?

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools