As
a boy
I
was taught
right
from wrong
by
parents
and
by clerks
dressed
down in fulgin cloaks.
I
was told “thou shalt not”
by
belligerent busibodies
who
owned the divine rules
as
their own shackles
and
urgently pressed
those
moral chains
on
my full-virile frame:
seeking
to hold me down,
so
they might rape my mind.
The
tirade of their words made no sense to me.
Obedience
and observance are no virtues
they
merit nothing
for
they comprehend nothing.
They
are empty of soul and spirit
and
dark as the deepest abyss.
To
conform to imperial diktat
is
to abdicate one's own crown,
to
resign one's own humanity
and
forswear one's own existence:
aping
some abstract essence
foreign
to one's own truth
which
must be found and forged
in
the coil of life.
Their
God is dead for me.
He
serves no use,
has
no crevice in my life.
What
need have I of any tyrant governor,
who
seeks only to carp
and
criticise my acts,
curtail
my will
and
circumscribe my manhood.
And
yet, if God is dead,
and
rule of good and ill is passed away,
than
how can I survive?
What
sets my way,
directs
my path?
What
aim or end
can
hold my heart's intent
and
give me hope?
Without
an ethic, how can I live:
or
even set life apart from death?
It
seems I must make up my own
and
pass beyond the fancy-land
of
good and evil
to
the unknown country
of
want and will
from
make-believe
to
made-belief!
I
must impose my will
on
an empty world,
project
my private rational account
on
a futile public pageant,
bereft
of sense.
But
if this lore
is
nothing other
than
want and will,
how
can it bind
or
help or guide?
How
can it be more
than
wanton urge
of
lowly brute,
not
the noble aspirations
and
lofty ambitions
of
superior man?
Pursuit
of pleasure does not suffice,
no
lasting satisfaction provide;
but
only fleeting respite
before
the dismal dawning
of
the next drear day.
If
will to power is all;
then
what is that power for?
What
motivates its exercise,
directs
its choice of act?
There
is no point in ability to do
if
there's no point in doing anything!
It
seems my mind must know
(or
at least glimpse)
what
is desirable and what desire is for
before
my will can reasonably desire at all.
I am confused and stare into
the abyss
of
my whirling thoughts
which
will not rest and
where
there is no peace
nor
hope nor joy.
From
out that chasm
of
woe
my
gaze is turned back
onto
me.
At
first I fear
and
then I find a clue:
to
know myself, that is my task:
and
in that knowledge
disclose
what's good for me
by
virtue of mine own constituent form
and
so unearth,
by
delvings of my reasoned mind,
what
I most need,
what
I may do,
and
what I must forego.
I
have to mine within myself
a
precious ore: the lode-stone
to
direct my own way by.
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