What the Three Peoples Should Reach For

There is no doubt that my reductive Three Peoples theory is as good as it comes. But what should the Three Peoples reach for? Of what should they dream? What should be their goals?

I'm glad you asked that, Senator. The answer is pretty simple. They should reach for what comes next.

Now, for the People of the Subordinate Self, workers and peasants, they should strive for responsibility. And there happen to be convenient religions all over the place to help them with that. Evangelical Christianity is one such. The whole point of the religions that emerged in the Axial Age is that they propose a god that does not get involved in daily life like the gods of the Iliad, but set up the world with rules and roles, and you are supposed to live responsibly in the world that god has created for you, or else divine judgment.

For the People of the Responsible Self, the great middle class, they should strive for creativity. It is not enough just to go to work, obey the law, and follow the rules like a good bourgeois. Step out a little! And try something new.

As always, the big problem is with the People of the Creative Self. That's because they think so highly of themselves. I was thinking about this today, as I was reading about the Muslim terrorists that organized the terror bombings of Christian churches and slaughter of "Easter worshippers" in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. These were not helpless victims, according to Terry Glavin in The National Post.

At least two of the suicide bombers had law degrees. Two were brothers from a wealthy Colombo family, one of whom attended university in the United Kingdom and earned a postgraduate degree in Australia. There were nine of them altogether, eight men and a woman. Most were “well-educated and come from (the) middle or upper-middle class,” Ruwan Wijewardene, Sri Lanka’s deputy defence minister, told reporters.

Well, well. Now there's creativity for you! And it is a creative act, to think up and plan a series of terror attacks on Christians and their churches. But obviously it is wrong.

Obviously, also, our Educated Youth has a problem with the problem of good and evil. In fact, one might even start to think that Nietzsche had it wrong when he wrote about the world Beyond Good and Evil. It is precisely when you are starting to think about what lies beyond good and evil that you need to get a grip on yourself about good and evil. Because obviously, some creative things are good, and some creative things are bad.

Obviously the key question here is power. Without power the question of good and evil does not arise. But with power, the question of good and evil does arise, and it becomes more important the more powerful you become.

Nietzsche railed against "the priests" for teaching us to hate ourselves with their notion of good and evil. But I think that it is natural that as people started to throng to the cities that the issue of good and evil should become more salient.

It's just that as we rise even further from mere city life to creative life we do not get beyond good and evil, but even deeper into the question of right and wrong. With great power comes great responsibility, as Ben Parker told Peter Parker, the Spider-Man. Power, responsibility.

Now, we might say that the People of the Subordinate Self have no power, and therefore have no opportunity to do evil. They can, I suppose be the unwitting agents of evil by subordinating themselves to an evil lord, and becoming his agents.

We might say that the People of the Responsible Self have little power, since all they do is follow the rules and act responsibly. But, of course, the responsible course of action is not always so obvious. And as Dickens makes clear in Bleak House, even the lower parts of the middle class like the Smallweeds can lord it cruelly over their one and only servant girl, Charley.

Obviously, when we come to the People of the Creative Self the issue of power and agency becomes overwhelming. The whole notion of Creativity is to hack a new path through the jungle. The new idea might work; it might not work. It might be a good idea; it might be an evil idea.

What is more, there is the temptation to think your idea is a good idea. Of course it is, a good plan, a most excellent plan; it is bound to succeed.

But, in fact the originator of a plan is not the best judge of its potential, or its value. In the marketplace ideas are judged by the market. In crime, the accused is judged by the jury. In politics the politicians are judged by the voters.

Of course, this is nothing new. It is right there in the aphorism of Juvenal: who will guard the guardians?

And so we may say that the People of the Creative Self should beware of power, and accept the verdict of the deplorables. They should turn away the offer of power, to listen to the verdict of the underlings.

It is all very well for Google to cry "Don't Be Evil," but who is to determine how and when Googlers might be evil?

The modern age is really the first era in which the People of the Creative Self have attained battalion strength, the ability to spread real damage. And so it comes to the deplorables to insist that our glorious betters -- the creatives, the artists, the writers, the activists, the generals, the politicians, the geniuses -- establish as their faith the importance of humility, and the need to refuse, and more than thrice, the kingly throne offered by Mark Anthony to Caesar.

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, said Henry Kissinger. And so Jesus, the creative Son of God, must refuse the offer of power over all the kingdoms of the world.

The People of the Creative Self must reach for humility.