God is dead. ~ Nietzsche
Nietzsche is dead. ~ God
Some are born posthumously. ~ Nietzsche
When I wake up and realize that I didn’t die in my sleep, I sometimes begin the day by repeating this mantra: “Life is weird, other people are assholes, and nobody really knows anything about anything.”
Setting the bar this low isn’t a coping mechanism or cop out, it’s a fresh perspective on what I should expect for the day. Everything above that bar then seems like a miracle: when 712 million people on our little planet live in extreme poverty — on less than $2.15 per day — the fact that I can walk down Montana Avenue and enjoy a $4 coffee is nothing short of a miracle. When you expect nothing, disappointment becomes an impossibility, and miracles abound.
I don’t think that unexpectance or disexpectance equals enlightenment, but it sure is a great anti-anxiety remedy. After all, expectations are disappointments looking for a place to happen. Reality isn’t here to cater to our whims; reality is rather indifferent to our minuscule existences.
But we’re all “here” — “alive” (whatever that means) — so we should shuffle around this mortal coil with a resigned grace of someone who knows that the game is rigged but we must play anyway. Nobody gets out of here alive.
So here’s one strategy for playing the game of life: adopt the mantra “Life is weird, other people are assholes, and nobody really knows anything about anything.”
Life is Weird
Reality — out “there” — doesn’t provide coherence; it’s just “there.” Actually it’s fairly amorphous, chaotic. A butterfly flaps its wings in Osaka and there’s an earthquake in Peru. Most of us engage in Sisyphean quests to make sense of the senseless, to understand why accidents happen, to see Jesus’s face in a graham cracker, to see patterns in apparent randomness and accept them as “meaning” something.
A bird flies into a window and we think it’s an omen. A stranger smiles at us — a rarity on Montana Avenue thanks to earbuds and Beats headphones — and for a millisecond we think they are our soulmates and we are experiencing a cosmic connection. All explanations can be deconstructed into absurdity. The bird wasn’t delivering a prophecy; it was just stupid or myopic. The stranger wasn’t our soulmate; they were probably smiling about the treats from the salad bar in the bag they were carrying.
We all have belief systems regarding how the universe is operating. On one hand, phenomena could occur randomly; at the other extreme, they could be fated. If life is random, it seems rather meaningless; if fated, it seems meaningful, but often as horrific as it can be beautiful.
Between chance and fate lies a gray area, likely beyond human comprehension. I’m unpersuaded that assigning minute responsibilities to any god is useful — she, he or they are probably busy doing other things. Perhaps embracing the complexities of karma and probability waves collapsing is the best we can do to explain why certain events in our lives unfold as they do.
So if destiny isn’t the way the universe is operating, and we’re not pawns in some bizarre god’s chess game with unknown rules, and the universe isn’t occurring completely at random, then why do events occur the way they do? Since we can never be 100% certain of why reality unfolds the way it does, it is best to believe — like physicists studying spooky action at a distance — that “Life is weird.”
Other People are Assholes
When we do something we are aware of the intention behind our action. In general, we generally regard ourselves as non-assholes, so if something goes awry we deem it an accident or mistake and give ourselves as pass. When other people engage in similar behavior we often ascribe intentionality to them and deem them assholes.
Secondly, when our friends, loved ones, clients and patients recount how their coworkers stole credit for their idea, or that they’re late because the first driver at a red light caused the ten people behind them to miss the green light because they were texting, what do we say? “What an asshole!” It’s reflexive — a linguistic tic that affirms solidarity against the wide array of assholes misbehaving out there in the world.
Adolph Hitler thought that he was saving Germany. If the Germans had won World War II, we would be reading textbooks about his genius rather than his insanity. Assholeness is relative. Everything Hitler did was perfectly rational to him at the time. And let’s be honest… there’s a little Hitler in everyone: everyone’s logic makes sense to them — even if it is warped beyond belief to others. That doesn’t make them less of an asshole — it just means that we should make better use of mirrors in our homes.
Nobody Really Knows Anything About Anything
Nietzsche suggested that we avoid adding more unknown to the already unknown, but human beings aren’t very adept at unknowing. We would rather be certain and wrong, than uncertain and accurate. Our attempts to understand, measure, and control reality may be just elaborate forms of denial.
That is why relativism should reign supreme in the carnival of chaos we call existence. That doesn’t mean that every utterance in every clown car is viable or accurate; it means that everyone has their own perspective or colored lens through which they see the world.
Certainty — whether religious, scientific, or philosophical — is a mirage that evaporates upon closer inspection. Fundamentalists cling to dogmas like drowning men clutching to life-rafts and this rigidity foments conflict: wars fought over different interpretations of sacred texts or ideologies that promise utopias but instead end up creating dystopias.
The internet has accelerated this epistemological mayhem to warp speed. Paradigms shift overnight as algorithms churn out contradictory “truths” tailored to echo chambers. Yesterday’s wisdom becomes clichéd memes over sexy images; academic experts are dethroned by influencers armed with lethal combinations of ignorance and charisma.
Are we even capable of embracing life’s inherent uncertainty? Can we relinquish — or at least tame — our minds’ craving for definitive narratives? Why can’t we just say, “It is what it is” or “Nobody really knows anything about anything?”
So we return to the mantra: “Life is weird, other people are assholes, and nobody really knows anything about anything.” Far from nihilistic despair, this weltanschauung offers clarity amidst chaos — a reminder that expectations are misguided and certainty is a delusion.
If enlightenment could fit inside a fortune cookie, it might read, “It’s all bullshit.”
Don’t grasp or cling to anything too tightly. Be 100% engaged with life but not attached to outcomes — that’s my basic understanding of Buddhism… everything is ephemeral and all of our beliefs and actions will someday be looked upon the way you and I regard leeching and burning witches at the stake.
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Previously Published on Medium
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