As I only recently learned, during a lecture by Rick Tarnas, you really have to start with Nietzsche. It was he who coined the phrase, "What does not kill me makes me stronger." As I understand it, he was the first to really GET this idea that suffering actually has meaning and purpose...which is to make us stronger, wiser, deeper, etc. Now poor Friedrich was a very very very intelligent and thoughtful man, and very very very very lonely. He apparently never knew the love of a woman. He knew prostitutes, but was never LOVED by a woman. (Probably because of that 'stache...I mean LOOK at it!) Now this could not have been good for his psyche. In fact, Tarnas makes the case that his lack of intimate relationship did indeed hinder his psychological development in that his ego remained quite inflated. Anyone who has ever been married can attest to the marvelous, deflating effect a spouse can have on one's ego, yes? However, maybe it was because he held himself in such high regard that he was able to see the enormous ego humans had maanaged to develop. So huge, that we had effectively ditched God.
This is where we get to his most famous, and mostly misunderstood statement, that "God is Dead" which points to our increasing desire to trust in Science and what could be observed and measured, thus turning our backs on what can't be observed, measured, and proved--the existence of the Soul, of God, of a Cosmic Order that infuses everything around us. He saw that we were taking on so much importance in the universe (this was the post Rennaisance, Enlightentment era, when we were extremely impressed with ourselves) that we were about to supplant the deity. Mind you, we are only talking about the Western Psyche here, in all its glory and all its shame.
For most of our history, people generally thought of the world at large as having some sense of sentience, and that we belonged IN and TO the world and cosmos, were a natural part of it. The numinous deities lived in everything, and anything could be a means by which to connect to and understand them: tea leaves, entrails, serpents, planets, etc. However, the Rennasiance changed all this. In a positive way, we woke up and grew up, individuated if you will, from this enmeshed relationship with the parental Gods and Goddesses. Science determined that the Gods did not live in the earth, the trees, the oceans, the mountains, etc. They no longer inhabited the sun, moon, and planets. No longer spoke to us through oracles and signs. Tarnas calls this the 'disenchantment of the universe', when the cosmos no longer had a consciousness, and became a lifeless lump of matter. The Western Mind set it up so that a disembodied God was up there in 'heaven' somewhere, and only maintained a direct line to humans. Especially those living in Europe at the time.
That scene from Angels in America comes to mind...my version of the Angels talking to one another in the voice of Eddie Izzard: "Have you seen God lately?"... "No, I haven't seen him, I thought you had.".... "Well the last I saw Him was EONS ago."... "Holy crap, do you think he's GONE?"..."He can't be GONE...can He?"..."SHIT! What do we tell the humans?"..."Um...tell them he went out for sushi, and He will be RIGHT BACK."
This position, being the special beings on the planet with a direct line to Our One God made it possible for us to rape, pillage, colonize, and destroy the earth and other peoples up until...well...right now.
You know that game telephone, where you whisper a message in someone's ear and send it around the circle? Imagine getting a whispered message from God...how hard is is to ACCURATELY communicate the answer to your prayers. "What God? You say it's ok for us to go to the New World and grab all the gold from the Godless Heathens? Cool! Hey fellas , we're good to go! I got it straight from the Big Guy." Or what if you DON'T get an answer to your prayers..."Hey fellas, we're good to go..."
We were no longer part of the world, we were the owners of the world. And the world did not have a soul, it was a lifeless lump of Unobtainium waiting for us to mine and use. It was our Manifest Desitny to do so. Poor, sensitive, insightful Nietzsche saw this coming, and proclaimed it loudly. He also got that we were ignoring a vast reservoir of interiority where God still lived quite apart from our contolling egos...deep within the human Psyche and in Nature. People listened, but did not really really get it in a big way. However, Freud and Jung got it...and ran with it.
More to come.
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