By Static Week --- If God is dead, what has replaced Him? Faced with
this question, Nietzsche himself would tell us that the "Overman" iswhat has replaced God. The "Overcoming of Man": the "man" (understood as
"the human¹"), now as "Transcended Humanity," has developed enough tools
to shape and write its future from the present according to its own will
to power. Yet, is this really the situation we find ourselves in? Is
this the reality behind the death of God? Behind the overcoming of
dogma? Beyond a "humanism" that speaks of Human Rights while violating
them in practically every corner of this world?
Unfortunately for us all, nothing could be further from the truth. The
"Overman," the "Overcoming of Man" (which is none other than the
"Overcoming of Humanity"), lies in becoming aware of the will to do
everything we are prepared to do. In acquiring the true human virtue of
being Human: beyond our humanism.
Faced with this reality, my good friend and comrade Lusberth, in one of
our random conversations about various issues, told me: "Religion is one
thing, spirituality is another." And here is where I wanted to arrive:
to what extent does spirituality itself, beyond dogma, perhaps offer a
deep, internal, and satisfying understanding of the will to power? To
what extent is the "Overcoming of Humanity," the "Superhumanity," if you
will allow me the boldness, capable of transgressing its own limits and
going further toward the building and achievement of a New World?
We see such worlds today both in Mexico (specifically Chiapas), where
the EZLN² "still and always resists the invader," and in Syrian
Kurdistan (specifically Rojava), where a twenty-first-century revolution
is taking place thanks to the tools of resistance granted by Democratic
Confederalism. All of this, in both cases - as well as in many other
cases closer to us³, or even unknown to us - is carried out by heroic
and anonymous entities that show us that a new world is possible today.
That a tomorrow from the past is being built in the present.
Of course, the construction of a new and better reality will always
involve good and bad moments, successes and mistakes; a series of
internal contradictions that, beyond the moment in which they occur,
must be overcome. For a French woman or man at the end of the eighteenth
century, making the Revolution and storming the Bastille in 1789 also
meant an entire journey through uncertainty and "unreality," bathed in a
constant "And now what?" - filled with contradictions and governments of
despotic and reactionary tyrants against whom one had to rebel again.
All of this is part of that great living being that is the revolution -
that, without a doubt.
Nevertheless, in both present and past revolutions (we will speak of
Russia in due time), we find examples not only of fully revolutionary
practices4 but also of elements traditionally considered "reactionary"
that serve the people. I refer here to the place occupied by certain
members of religious estates or those linked to religion itself
(considered by that Great Bearded One as the Opium of the People), who
know their role in the Revolution5. I point here to two cases cited by
George Woodcock in his text Dawn of Anarchism6: Winstanley and Roux.
Both were religious; the latter was also a priest. Winstanley, a staunch
fighter of the Digger movement during the English Revolution, said:
"God is nothing other than the incomprehensible spirit of reason. Where
does reason reside? It resides in the depths of every creature according
to the nature and mode of being of the creature itself, but supremely in
man. Therefore, man is a rational creature (...). This is the kingdom of
God within man."
In the case of Roux, priest and member of the Enragés during the French
Revolution, we see7:
"Before leaving prison, Louis[Louis XVI], seeing that Roux was a priest,
asked him if he could entrust him with his will. Roux coldly replied: 'I
am only here to take you to the scaffold.' And yet, the man who looked
with satisfaction upon the king's execution as a living manifestation of
authority had to later protest from his own prison cell against the
brutalities that the Terror inflicted upon men and women whose only
crime was the rank into which they were born. (...) Roux was brought
before the revolutionary tribunal and, convinced that his death was
inevitable, mocked the guillotine by painfully taking his own life. 'I
do not complain of the tribunal,' he said before dying; 'it has acted
according to the law. But I have acted according to my freedom.' To die
placing freedom above the law was the death of an anarchist."
And so, both then and now, there are "servants of God" who, having
understood the message of Christ, the message of the Qur'an8, the
message of any sacred (and revolutionary) text worthy of the name, put
themselves at the service of the Revolution for their people: "A
shepherd must be with his flock." Thus it is those who possess a strong
spirit - disciplined, self-disciplined, organized, and consistent - who
stand with their people. I speak of today's Base Believers9, of those
Zapatista priests who in the 1990s put themselves at the service of the
people of Chiapas, of those Muslims in Rojava who are fighting reaction
alongside their own, alongside their people. I speak of the example of
so many heroic and anonymous entities I know little about but who are
always there; standing firm, against wind and tide, like an unyielding ship.
It is them I refer to: those people are mine, they are my people. And
they are the ones I want at my side on the day of the Revolution.
Because they are people who have truly understood what Human Overcoming
means - beyond any dogma and institution whose doctrine oppresses rather
than liberates. They have understood the message, absorbed it, delved
into it. These people are my brothers and sisters, and with them remains
all the work of the Revolution.
These words are written by someone agnostic, who doubts the existence of
God, who is unable to see a God with a human face in the sky because
they already see Him in every moment, in every detail. Within me and
everywhere. God is Everything, omnipotent and omnipresent, and perhaps
it is something so simple and at the same time so complex to understand
that even today we do not fully comprehend it. In the spirit dwells the
will to power, and the will to power dwells in the spirit. In our
spirit: because we carry a New World in our hearts, and that world is
growing right now. In this very moment.
We must not fear ruins, for they are always the foundations of something
new: yet to be built.
¹ We also refer here to women, to any person in their human condition.
Authors generally speak within the historical and social limits of their
time.
² Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.
³ Such as the FAGC (Federación Anarquista de Gran Canaria).
4 And when I speak of Revolution, I also speak of Freedom, as well as of
Equality and Fraternity.
5 I could mention other little-studied examples here. Among them, an
interesting medieval precedent in Dulcino stands out. See as an
audiovisual approach.
6 Full text here.
7 George Woodcock, Dawn of Anarchism, pp. 20-22.
8 Salvador Gómez Nogales, "Eastern Wisdom and Arab Philosophy," in
Andrés Martínez Lorca (ed.), Essays on Philosophy in Al-Andalus (2017),
pp. 162-163: "(...) The text of our Muslim compatriot Ibn ?Arabi can
summarize everything said: There was a time when I reproached my
neighbor if his religion was not close to mine. But my heart is capable
of becoming all forms: it is a meadow for gazelles, the cell of a
Christian monk, a temple for idols, the tablets of Mosaic Law, the
volume of the Qur'an. I profess the religion of love. And wherever the
mount turns, love is my creed and my faith."
9 Those who follow the purest (and thus less adulterated, less
instrumentalized) teachings of faith.
Bibliography:
Gómez Nogales, S. "Eastern Wisdom and Arab Philosophy," in Andrés
Martínez Lorca (ed.), Essays on Philosophy in Al-Andalus (2017), pp.
143-165.
Woodcock, G. Dawn of Anarchism.
https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2022/04/06/esbozos-para-un-nuevo-pensar-i-revolucion-y-libertad-de-culto/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
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