The world is currently navigating through unfamiliar seas heading to nowhere lands. It’s been many years since we were faced with a stir-up this size (namely a pandemic), and no matter how resourceful and well-off our country is, we are never prepared. We are now facing unprecedented procedures in anything. Knowing that the coronavirus spread through the droplets of our mouth and nose, this affects how we conduct our social activities. Of all the effects this coronavirus had on the world, I assume the social effect is the most fatal. It questions our identity as a social animal, disrupting our habit of socializing, regardless of your social status or level. We always thought we were born ready, but just not for this one.
We were always safely connected and, in some way, heavily guarded when it comes to our social life. We can always go visit our friends and relatives whenever we feel like it, get involved physically with people, visit our favorite cafés or bars, or go shopping or for just the window. Our perception of socializing has been shaped, tried, and tested for years, that we could well-handedly deal with rejection, light loneliness, or even be content being with ourselves. Just as every break-in wreck the current form and leave some areas unwatched, imagine how a break-in this caliber is capable of doing to our conception of social life.
All chaos must be brought to order. That’s the simplest way to explain how to resolve every issue possible. Picture it this way, our messy bedroom is full of chaos, and organized one is an order. Chaos promotes problems, and order resolves one. Stirred-up life is chaos, and a well-ordered one is all we want. Then we wonder, what could shut up chaos, and what would speak for the order?
We would think, the invention of vaccines is the only answer. Some might think, and some already said that the answer lies in our ability to live ‘in peace’ with the coronavirus. New normal, they said. I noticed that there must be more than just those two competing arguments there, while the rational aim for taming the raging waves, the others create their own waves with their own arguments. See how a void can transform into a black hole in just months? Now, it’s all ours to discern them one by one, to pick which ones we would believe, because all we needed is something to believe in, eh?
Nietzsche has thought about these issues hundreds of years ago. Not that he has predicted the emergence of this virus (No, he didn’t know who makes this virus for a lethal purpose like you have heard somewhere), nor has the answers to these issues. What he has known for a long time is, how we, as a human being, are in dire need of something to believe. He knows, that our will (or being) is always in chaos, and need something to bring it to order. As in one of the paragraphs of his collection of aphorisms The Gay Science (GS), he said;
“The very fact that our actions, thoughts, feelings and motions come within the range of our consciousness - at least a part of them - is the result of a terrible, prolonged "must" ruling man’s destiny: as the most endangered animal he needed help and protection; he needed his fellows, he was obliged to express his distress, he had to know how to make himself understood - and for all this he needed "consciousness" first of all: he had to "know" himself what he lacked, to "know" how he felt, and to "know" what he thought.” (GS 354)
What he accounts as ‘consciousness’ is basically our knowledge, of things, of ourselves, or of whatever helps us communicate our needs to others, or as he writes ‘to make himself understood.’ And in my personal opinion, he’s not only talking about something grandeur but also about something peripheral to our daily lives. Consciousness/knowledge is something to be carefully maintained and regularly updated, think it to be like something we deeply loved, our vehicle maybe, that needs to be washed and polished regularly to maintain its shine. In that way, we need to maintain the sharpness and finesses or our consciousness, or knowledge, up-to-date.
Now that we’ve understood the concept of consciousness/knowledge as a basis to integrate ourselves (keep ourselves from chaos,) let’s talk about the source of them. Inside or outside. In this essay, let’s turn our focus on only the outside source. We normally gain knowledge from the process of consuming and digesting information. Let’s imagine this case by going to the shopping centers (hypothetically, we’re still physical distancing), where we could find numerous stores offering different things. Now, go back to the last point where Nietzsche said that consciousness/knowledge always comes from necessity. What do you need from shopping centers?
Let’s refer back to our discussion about the coronavirus which has created a stir-up so enormous we couldn’t see clearly any more what it is we exactly need, and we scaled down our need to whatever comforts our mind. And it is what we need! In general, we need to be comforted, be secured with our lives and the future, don’t we? This is what Nietzsche opposes, as he called it the ‘sabbath of the sabbath’, or if freely translated, ‘the final truth.’ Of course, we’re not talking about anything final here, but you see his point here, don’t you? We need the kind of consciousness/knowledge that comforts us. In what way? I guess everyone’s different.
Even before this pandemic, there is already a gap between ‘what we know’ and ‘what we want to know,’ that creates a tension that we manage daily with ‘managing expectations’ strategy. We’re used to this term and adapting to it. We have limits, and what the pandemic does, it expands those limits until we’re helpless and succumbs in desperation. That creates the perfect window for the bombardments of information to sneak in and err us. What we need is strategies, different ones from merely managing expectations, because sadly, now it’s too blurred to expect. What are those strategies, and how we could finely tune ourselves into it?
Of course, these strategies are nowhere near practical, because learning to face reality with practical things never works. Instead, we’re going to see how we should approach various types of ‘consciousness/knowledge’ the world has to offer. As Nietzsche puts it;
“No, we have got disgusted with this bad taste, this will to truth, to "truth at all costs," this youthful madness in the love of truth : we are now too experienced, too serious, too joyful, too singed, too profound for that... We no longer believe that truth remains truth when the veil is withdrawn from it: we have lived long enough to believe this. At present we regard it as a matter of propriety not to be anxious either to see everything naked, or to be present at everything, or to understand and "know" everything.” (GS 4)
There are three degrees – according to Nietzsche – to knowledge, as commented by A. Setyo Wibowo in his book Gaya Filsafat Nietzsche, the first one is ‘veiled-truth,’ a deception, which leads us into the second phase, the dissatisfaction of what we already know, the realization of a veil covering the truth, encouraging us to try to uncover it, which we never will, or even if we will, it won’t be the truth anymore.
Nietzsche thinks that the truth will never be uncovered because it’s too chaotic, and when it’s finally uncovered, it’s not the truth anymore, Idee fixe (fixed idea, an idea that dominates one’s mind especially for a prolonged period: obsession.) The revelation of the truth is a two-edged sword for Nietzsche, one brings light to one side, the other disguises the other. How then, and what then, should we do to REALLY uncover the truth? Nietzsche’s philosophy is never about finding the truth, instead, he offers ways to stand face-to-face with the truth, and how we shall conduct ourselves before the truth. Further, he puts it;
“’Is it true that the good God is everywhere present?’ asked a little girl of her mother: "I think that is indecent": a hint to philosophers! One should have more reverence for the shame-facedness with which nature has concealed herself behind enigmas and motley uncertainties. Perhaps truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons?” (GS 4)
What he offers us to do is to show some reverence to it, ‘perhaps the truth is a woman who has reasons for not showing her reasons.’ For Nietzsche, to be able to talk properly about the truth, we must first acknowledge the contradicting nature of the truth itself, the chaotic side of the truth, and never arrive to a shallow conclusion. Nietzsche believes that we, as a human being, will never arrive at the ‘final truth,’ and realizing that, for him, is already a quality.
Wrapping up, in an unprecedented period as these, it’s hard for us both economically, socially, and philosophically. As what we already know is going under a huge test, it’s normal that we feel uneasy, stressed out, or even losing our way. I guess, what Nietzsche is saying in the excerpts above, specifically about reverence, is to take every information with a grain of salt and always position ourselves in the questioning side before believing. In the end, all we needed is something to believe in, eh?
