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