Introduction - Childhood Influences

I would like to begin this blog by outlining my philosophical background and core beliefs and principles, as I believe these are crucial to understanding the thoughts and reflections that will follow. These are obviously the result of my life journey, so I will give some narrative to explain the way my beliefs have developed. As I wrote above I have lived in four countries and this has shaped my perspective of the world, particularly the two years I spent in Papua New Guinea (PNG). At age 10 + 11 I was old enough to consciously take note of the differences in wealth and culture between east and west but also young enough for these differences to be imprinted on me and my understanding of the world at a deeper sub-conscious level.

The other factor that significantly shaped my world-view was Christianity. My father is a minister in the church and my mother’s father was president of the Baptist Union in New Zealand. Many might conclude that we were a deeply religious family but I think this would overstate its impact. I was not taught a doctrinal version of the faith; I was never told what to believe, but to believe what I believed. Indeed my father (who is a very liberal Christian and says he believes as little as possible) always challenged our beliefs whatever they were and encouraged a questioning approach. Christianity does run strong in the blood though and with the significant exception of school, almost all of my childhood community interaction was through one form of Christian group or another. So Christianity shaped me primarily by limiting my exposure to other sets of values rather than by giving me a set of easy answers. On the whole though, this is compensated for by my experiences in PNG that also came as a result of the beliefs and work of my parents.

I’m not sure when I first developed a sense of a personal faith but I would guess it was sometime between the ages of 8 and 12. From then on my faith was always based upon a sense of a personal relationship with God. From this I made a self/spirit initiated personal and public commitment to faith through immersion baptism at age 15 in 1996. From that point on I was active in the church at both a local and state level and spent my first three years of working life in different parts of the church as well.

Studying Nietzsche

It first occurred to me that I was not a natural fit in the church during my second year at university in 2000. I took the philosophy unit entitled ‘Morals and Modernity’ which included six weeks studying Friedrich Nietzsche’s (pronounced Neat-cha(s)) ‘Beyond Good and Evil’

One of the central tenets of Nietzsche’s philosophy was a division of human kind into the ‘master mentality’ and the ‘slave mentality’ (sometimes referred to as master morality and slave morality, but simply put as ‘the strong’ and ‘the weak’). (As I describe them I am trying not to place value judgments on them myself but let Nietzsche’s value judgments come through. I ask the same of you at this point, we can make our value judgments later on.) As Nietzsche characterised them people of the master mentality are masters of their surroundings, they have faith in themselves and are often self-righteous with an attitude to life that disregards the constraints usually applied by society. People of the slave mentality (who as Nietzsche saw it made up a substantial majority of the population) lack confidence in themselves, perceiving themselves as weak, and are slaves to their environment. They want the world to be a safe place and group together with others like themselves for strength in numbers. Nietzsche saw Christianity as being synonymous with the slave mentality, a people who worshiped a pitiful god, who died crucified on a cross; a god of self-sacrifice who taught vulnerability. A faith group who’s love for others was born out of pity which they used to imply superiority and prop up their own self image. Thus Nietzsche despised the slave mentality and Christianity along with it and perceived himself as being of the ‘good’ master mentality. It is important to clarify though, that for Nietzsche what was important was not people’s situations but their attitudes. For example he did not perceive suffering as inherently ‘bad’ but it was how one approached it that was important. If one underwent suffering in order to achieve something Nietzsche saw that as okay but he was very unsympathetic to those who wallowed in their suffering.

Many attempts have been made to say ‘there are two types of people…’ but most either describe unimportant characteristics or traits that do not fit neatly into two boxes. Almost by definition most simple human typologies are too simplistic to be of any use. However I found Nietzsche’s description of humanity (which pre-dates modern psychology and to which I cannot do justice so briefly) very compelling and most informative. I would go so far to say it is the best simple summary of humanity I’ve come across. It is a description of a fundamental part of human nature that I’d been subconsciously aware of but unable to articulate.

I do however take issue with Nietzsche’s prescription for humanity and the value judgments on which this is based. Ironically, and perhaps hypocritically in a book titled ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ where he argued for moving beyond moral judgments, Nietzsche made a clear judgment about the virtue of the master mentality over slave mentality and to oversimplify again took the general view that we should all adopt a master mentality. So I distinguish between Nietzsche’s description and his prescription and it is the description that has contained the most insight for me.

Leaving the faith

What struck me most when I first studied Nietzsche was that I identified strongly with the master mentality and yet also with the church and the Christian faith even though I largely agreed with and accepted his description of them as opposites. How were these three compatible? For a while I sat comfortably with this apparent contradiction or paradox and merrily continued my active involvement in the church. I did become more conscious of my personal strength and developed a sense of leadership, utilizing that strength for the benefit of the church community and to help others find their own inner strength too.

After a couple of years though this developed to a point where I found much of the language of the church unhelpful, an excessive consoling of the weak which simply allowed them to remain as they were, satisfied with mediocrity. The strength of Nietzsche’s criticism began to ring true. I spent 18 months or so wrestling with these theological/philosophical differences which I decided centered on the nature of the God that the church proclaims, a patriarchal patronizing God. A God who is all good and almighty contrasted with humanity as bad, sinful and frail. This is summed up in the fact that when anything good happens, Christians say ‘Praise God’ and when something bad happens they say ‘Sorry God we stuffed up can you please forgive us’. I experimented for a time trying to identify with other notions of God from other parts of the church. A mother God; a God of no gender; but I could not escape the residual image of a strong God who picks us up when we fall over, of humans as the children of God.

Gradually this sense of discord grew until one Sunday at the end of 2003 the call to communion was “Come because you are weak, not because you are strong” and a series of phrases based on the same theme ‘Come because you are ____, not because you are ____’. I had a strong sense that this invitation did not include me, so I stood up and walked out. It was really a decision of the heart not the head. My theological differences simply reflected that I had grown out of my relationship with God to the point where I no longer sensed his presence. I no longer had the spiritual connection or personal relationship with God that had always been the basis of my faith. So I decided to leave the church, attempt to de-socialise myself from its culture, find a new community and begin to construct a new understanding of the world. At the time I wrote:

I want to find a community
of values, spirit and critical thought
free of institution, doctrine, and expectation
where I can be inspired and challenged by others
but make my own decision
about what, how and why
life is, God is, the world is and I am.

Core Beliefs

Having given up my faith and left the church I was left with the question ‘So if I don’t believe in God, what do I believe in?’ In many ways the values that I had as a Christian had not changed, but I had to come to a new understanding of life, the world and humanity upon which to base my everyday existence. So I returned to Nietzsche, who had provided the seed for my differences with the church and the most compelling description of humanity I had found.

Nietzsche provided a basis but there is also much to critique in his mid 19^th century analysis. The first problem is the loaded terms of master and slave or even, strong and weak. I prefer to speak of the empowered and the disempowered. Secondly I view these not as two mutually exclusive categories but as a spectrum along which we all exist and move (hopefully towards the empowered end, note a similar value judgment). Thus our level of empowerment describes a predisposition to interact with other people and our environment in a certain way. Different people exhibit different degrees of empowerment to influence/manipulate their environment around them or be influenced/manipulated by it and these can vary in different situations. All interactions will involve a bit of both but the degrees of each can vary considerably from situation to situation and from person to person.

The notion of empowerment also allows the inclusion of vulnerability as a positive factor (for Nietzsche it was consigned to the slave mentality). For true empowerment includes acknowledging one’s own weaknesses and appreciating the flawed nature of the human self and the way this contributes to a rich experience of ‘life’. This must sit in balance with our drive for self improvement as an empowered appreciation of vulnerability leads to a desire for ongoing learning and new challenges. This in turn leads us to apply critical thinking to all things, but particularly to our selves to keep self-righteousness in check.

An appreciation of vulnerability also leads to a sense of interdependence with other people and our environment and a desire for relationships of equality as opposed to relationships of dependence and inequality. True empowerment includes the desire and ability to empower others based on the recognition of our interdependence. Thus Nietzsche’s power-over based master/slave dynamic is replaced by a power-with dynamic that seeks to enhance our equality.

From here follow, I think fairly obviously, principles of community living, participation, and loving others as your self. Less obvious perhaps is a value of openness which I believe is required to achieve true interdependence and also to reveal the vulnerabilities many of us often try to hide. These are all summed up quite well in the philosophy of nonviolence which seeks to build peace by acknowledging that it can never be achieved by violence. Instead we can use our own vulnerability to break down the barriers between people and establish relationships that are mutually beneficial and based on a shared understanding of our own interdependence. Thus nonviolence states that instead of hurting or killing our opponent we should find ways to empower them. However to do this we must first be empowered enough to humble ourselves for the benefit of all.

The pursuit of mutually empowering relationships also leads to my commitment to collaborative or consensus decision making processes. These value a diversity of views and try to draw together the strengths of all perspectives to reach an ideal outcome upon which everyone can agree. (This contrasts with democratic processes that are based on a contest of ideas put in opposition to one another with the outcome being decided upon by the majority.) Consensus requires a degree of individual and group empowerment in order for everyone to truly hear the perspectives of all involved. However the reward is that both individual and group empowerment are enhanced by a process that unifies rather than divides.

So in summary the principles that I use to guide my life are as follows:

• Empowerment
• Equality
• Community Living
• Collaboration
• Nonviolence
• Openness
• Participation
• Love others as yourself
• Simplicity
• Critical reflection