Natural Indifference

“You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power—how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference?" --Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good & Evil, Chapter I, Section IX

Stoicism is so fashionable of late

A good reason to be suspicious of it

"It is what it is," the smooth, stoic voice proclaims

Oblivious to the semantic nullity of tautological maxims

Stating the obvious as if you have discovered something new

Is like claiming to have found new land when old homes on it mock you

When things are especially miserable and frightening and hope shrivels

It sounds like salutary sagacity to admonish ourselves bravely to endure

Without complaint, without whining or clutching pearls or tearing hair

The stoic advises us to imitate those parts of nature that can weather adversity

The mountain that does not tremble when storm and strife appear

The moon, that fixes its cold eye on weddings and funerals and droughts and deluges

Never grimacing or shouting or weeping; indifferent, silently shepherding the tides

We ought to learn, says the stoic, to get by unperturbed, to enjoy what little we have and remain indifferent to what we are denied

Here is a formula for the obedience and polite compliance we expect of pets or slaves

Here is anesthetic consolation for the victim, and giddy liberty for the villain

Even when tyrants and fools make a game show of our politics and a brothel of our economy

Even when silicon based minds become poets and prophets while our minds stare, blank and confused, at anything richer or stranger or longer than a tweet

Even when new diseases ruin our lives and their ancient ancestors are granted leave to run riot anew, to scar and scare children and decimate dodderers

Even when war, long lulled into sweet slumber by diplomatic drudgery and honest, polite negotiation, flashes its red teeth and leaps back into annihilating action

Even when old wounds are used to justify fresh carnage, and the survivors of monstrous injustice decide they have good cause to slaughter children, mistaking revenge for justice as they do

No scar is a license to wound others

Even when our phones never cease to call us, and never hang up

Even when food goes uninspected and wages go unpaid and streets cannot remember the last time they were properly swept

You know what an embarrassed street smells like

"It is what it is," says the smirking stoic, and the street silently endures its shame

Indifference is natural

The grass and the wind and the mosquitos do not object or interfere

When the slavering jaws of the hyena rip the leg of the squealing, squirming young gazelle from the rest of its trembling form

They do not carry signs and shout that the hyena must be stopped

"It is what it is," say the sky and the sea and the tall shadows of twilight

Nature is never alarmed or outraged by itself

How could it be?

There is nothing that it is like for nature to be itself

There is nothing that it is like for a counterfeit mind made of silicon to be itself, though it can be trained to pretend, like an actor that is all costume and mask, without an annoying body of its own

We must dare to admit that there is something that it is like for us to be ourselves

In that tiny, titanic sense alone, we are supernatural beings

Nature is an author blind to reviews

We are characters in its work, sure

But we are also readers, and critics, and authors, however clumsy or afraid

We are not obliged to endure injustice and stupidity and misery when they are visited upon us by our fellow, odd primates

We are right to be moved by revulsion or pity or outrage, when the hungry predator tears at vulnerable innocence

There is much that could be better than it is

Improving what lies within our reach

Is all art means