We humans have no idea how to handle conversions.
When “the scales fall from our eyes”, or…
…when we suddenly become aware of the element within which we swim (“this is water!”)…
…when we suddenly become aware of the gross institutionalized, systemic injustice of a system that we, ourselves, have participated in…
…when we wake up in an oikophobic nightmare and finally see the evil in which we are immersed…
…or…
…when we swallow a hard truth that gives us a xenophobic glimpse into the goings on of a cabal meeting in distant lairs…
…when we finally see the They Live writing on the wall that we have been dupes of a totalitarian global elite who’ve sold us libertine liberty in order to buy out the very ground of our humanity so they can excavate it, leaving us traditionless, soilless, bloodless, posthuman…
All becomes clear.
We transcend the world of confused, shadowy obscurity into a new clearer realm of dazzling insight.
We are enlightened, born again, woke, red-pilled into the Kingdom of Truth.
And we try in vain to unshackle the minds of the complacent consumers of shadows plays but they are strangely invested in these illusions. They do not want to wake up. They complain that you are the one who is strangely invested in illusions. You are the one who needs to return to reality.
And you know what?
They are right.
Because, as deluded as they are, you are doubly-deluded.
You believe you have transcended to Transcendence.
And you are wrong. You have only transcended to another immanence… an immanence that is oblivious to its own obliviousness .
You love your new immanence. Some immanences truly are much better than others.
Some immanences give wonderful relief from despair. Or from onerous obligation. Or from anomie. Or from self-fragmentation. Or from fear. Or from perplexity, or indifference, or faltering.
Every new immanence gives us relief from some painful form of alienation.
This relief from alienation bestows a beautiful illusion upon us that we have popped outside the human condition and can now experience it from an external godlike perspective. We can now see where we were imprisoned objectively in the bright sunlight, in a way impossible when we were still sealed inside its cold, dark, clammy walls.
This conceit that We have escaped ignorance, that We have transcended to insight, that We now know — is a new and for most, much worse meta-imprisonment, meta-immanence, meta-ignorance, because now we lack all motivation to see that we are still inside the human condition — still a schmo among schmos.
Nope, mere shmohood is not good enough for I — the one true I who was born to sit on the egoic throne situated at the very center of the universe.
We are as gods: woke, red-pilled, enlightened, born again.
We are reborn into a community of others who are also woke, red-pilled, enlightened, born again. They all agree with me that our tribe really knows, where other tribes only think they know. But I trust my tribe, because, according to me, they know.
I call this condition misapotheosis.
In misapotheosis we think we’ve become something special, when we are really just another know-it-all, ignorant-ass god.
There is nothing more human than mistaking yourself for a god.
*
Are we doomed to divinity?
Probably. Being a god is divine.
But we can, if we decide to choose otherwise.
If, by some miracle, we manage to stop spewing our hot wisdom at the unfortunates around us, and just listen — (no, not that way; don’t “be a good listener”) — if we really listen with hearing ears, and hear with a faith that, despite our glorious omniscience we still have something deeply, urgently important to learn…
…if we can miraculously incarnate ourselves back on the human plane as a mortal student…
…we discover that we can transcend again.
And again.
And again.
Each time we return more human and less godlike.
Each time we find ourselves in a world populated more densely with gods and more sparsely with mere humans.
If we do this too much we may become like Diogenes wandering the streets with a lantern asking “Where are the fucking humans? All I see are crowds of glorious, all-knowing gods.” And if we happen upon a Socrates who actually knows he doesn’t know, we almost fall out of our chair.
*
It takes perseverance, effort, wisdom, talent to become a mere human among humans.
It takes more than most people have to understand the ordinary, humble miracle of liberalism — to feel the obligation to hammer out with others the questions of what is true? what is just? what is beautiful? what is good? and to do so as an equal among equals, a schmo among schmoes.
We want to transcend our schmoness and exalt ourselves as the ones with insight into Just Justice, True Truth, and so on and so on.
*
Equity is the unfair imposition of one hubristic group’s of fairness on those who have lost too much power to resist it.
Only a god could be ignorant enough to enforce equity on others without noticing the inequity of it.
*
Somehow, in this time — this time that everyone agrees is a uniquely degraded, distracted, dissatisfied, despairing, dangerously demented time — somehow in this time everyone has become wise to liberalism.
Everyone is too radical and insightful to buy liberalism.
Everybody knows what this society really needs instead of liberalism.
If only those who really know could have their way.
*
So goddamn many gods.
So few humans.