You Are A Demi-God

Yes, you. All reasonably healthy humans are demi-gods.

I apologize for hitting you with a concept that may feel foreign, dangerous and ridiculous, but it needs to be said. And regardless that we lack proper definitions for such concepts, it’s true.

I’ll also remind you that there’s nothing sacrilegious about saying this: David, the great Psalmist, was bolder than I, flatly stating, “You are gods.” He even used the Hebrew word elohim, the same word used in “God created the heaven and the earth.” And Jesus repeated the line without reservation.

Now, let’s move forward.

Two Reasons Why

#1: All of Earth’s creatures have innate abilities; humans have the ability to create abilities.

We can’t fly like the birds, but we’ve created and built flying machines that go orders of magnitude higher and faster. We can’t run like a deer, but we have machines that convey us far faster and for far greater distances, safely and reliably. More than that, we are creatures who create willfully; and to this creative ability there seems to be no fundamental limit.

So, yes, demi-gods.

#2: Aside from a few sociopaths, humans don’t openly do evil. Normal humans must be confused and seduced into doing evil. Something in human nature resonates against openly evil actions. So much so that the first and irreplaceable action of our abusers must be to portray their plans as servicing goodness.

To operate widely in mankind, evil must be disguised as good. Among the vast majority of us, evil is unable to win a straight-up comparison with goodness.

And so again, yes, demi-gods.

I could go on, but this is a short post. You can find more in back issues of our subscription letter.

How This Can Feel So Wrong

So, if we’re really these noble creatures, why does the idea of being demi-gods strike nearly all of us as wrong… even as something we must put down?

There are many reasons (and again you can see the subscription letter), but I’m going to stick with a seemingly minor thing that we see every day, which is this: We’ve learned to show our fitness by standing against evil.

In other words, we show that we are fine, strong beings by being outraged at evil.

This habit is what makes divide and conquer works so well: You divide people into two groups, then keep each half outraged against the other. With all of them needing to prove their fitness to their group, an all-encompassing battle can be perpetuated, allowing the abuser to evade scrutiny.

And decrying evil offers status benefits even without divide and conquer. The old model of “putting others down to make yourself look good” still provides cheap status, but there is a more subtle and more effective trick. It goes like this:

By calling out and condemning evil deeds (and these can be whatever passes for evil in your crowd) we show ourselves to be righteousness, without ever having to call ourselves righteousness.

Calling yourself righteous makes you a target, of course; it makes people want to shoot you down and ridicule you. But by displaying outrage against a safe target, you get to appear righteous, risk-free.

And so, calling yourself a demi-god can seem very, very wrong. It would put a target on your back at least as much as calling yourself righteous.

And yet we are demi-gods. Even if we can be confused and misdirected, we’re not going to do evil on purpose.

We Are Creators

In nearly every productive we thing we do, we show ourselves to be creative beings. And every act of creation, small or large, draws upon primal substance: counter-entropic, fathomless and unrestrained. We may lack the ability to speak of these things precisely, but that makes them no less true. When inserted into the universe by will and action, creativity and production recreate the world.

And so the person who creates willfully and benevolently is fairly described as a type of divinity… a demi-god. This is in our very structure and every healthy human has experienced it, at least in part.

Humans are born creators. This is the light we shine into the world; elevating and cleansing it by innumerable small acts. We are, whether we feel like it or not, magnificent creatures.

The universe and the noble beings in it are waiting for us – we young demi-gods – to open our eyes, to recognize our unlimited nature, and to believe what we see.

**

Paul Rosenberg

freemansperspective.com