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Chapter five of my psychedelic autobiographical adventure: The Way To Ouray: Down The Rabbit Hole
"What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the superman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. Behold, I teach you the superman. The superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the superman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go. "
- Friedrich Nietzche
"What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the superman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment."
What makes humans different from all the other great apes is that a few of us decided to come down from the trees to live. Our needs and skills became different. That small choice to come down to live out our lives is what led later generations to arrogantly laugh at those ancestors who decided to stay put.
It has become a painful embarrassment to even think about that being us once upon a time. And so we laugh it off as if we are the epitome of existential perfection and nothing needs to change for us. But what brought the few down from the trees is the same thing that will bring down only a few of man to the land of the superman.
What is superman to man? Nietzche saw the superman in the same way humans view other apes: below man. The aboveman, the superman, is born from a course-changing action. Many men will not take advantage of this leap, but the few who do are the forerunners of the superman.
What is the leap?
"Behold, I teach you the superman. The superman is the meaning of the earth."
If the earth were uninhabited, what purpose would it serve? The fact that it has no known consciousness to be able even to ask this question gives us the answer. For the earth to have meaning, it must have inhabitants to cultivate its purpose. And so was the birth of the first living creatures.
Amoebas. Single-celled little mother fuckers that eventually would lead to us building cities and bombs on top of the earth. Behold, the nuclearman! The pivot in man's destiny lies here. As we ascend through the technological explosion, two paths lead to two different ends.
On the one end lies death and destruction. On the other end lies the land of the superman. The nuclearman in the year 2020 is unpredictable, but it seems like we are close to the path we will end up choosing. Perhaps a few will find a way to detach themselves from the other human apes and climb down the branches of our current home.
The way Nietzche uses the word "earth" implies a home, whether planet earth or a planet suitable for us to inhabit. If nuclearman were to destroy our current home and some humans found a way off it, the next inhabitable home would be where the opportunity for the superman to rise upon would be. The supermen would hold higher values and look back at us as we look back at apes - a primitive form of existence.
The way to the land of the superman must first start with leaping out of our current environment and into unknown territory. This territory is suitable for the development of the superman, assuming we don't get eaten up by something else stronger than us before we reach this stage of our existence.
The superman would be free from our current boundaries, as when we left the trees, we were free from the limitations of the tree branches. The superman would have more freedom to develop higher cognitive skill sets and would build a better home to live on. Quality is the philosophy of the superman, and it is quality that defines existence.
"Let your will say: the superman shall be the meaning of the earth!"
Nuclearman has learned to use the earth's resources to his benefit at the planet's expense and the cost of certain people. Little does nuclearman try to understand what his actions will cause in the future, as short-term profits are his long-term goals. If nuclearman continues to be short-sighted, then nuclearman has no tomorrow, hence no future for the superman either.
In 2020, nuclearman faces a heavy addiction, pulled inward by a drug that caters to his deepest desires through an algorithm that appears to know him better than he knows himself. It has learned and still is learning how to control our thoughts, behavior, and actions.
If this drug continues to take more and more control away from us, what purpose does the earth serve to the superman? What meaning does it give if not to become better than we are today?
You should yearn to be free from the shackles that man has been shackled to for so long, as the ape ancestors who came down from the trees desired to be free from the shackles of their forest. Nuclearman in the year 2020 feels this yearning as social media exposed its algorithmic puppeteering in the polarized environment we are living in.
While we can benefit from using the digital world to make the superman, it has and is being used to prevent us from reaching our most significant potential as supermen. Nuclearman is his own worst enemy. He doesn't have to be, but he chooses to be. He has so much potential to explode into the superman and fly off into greatness. Still, nuclearman in the digital age must first come to terms with how he uses the earth's resources.
"I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes!
Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go."
Man fears his death. He understands it is inevitable yet can't fully come to terms with it. So he invents another world in which death does not exist. The more he invests in this imaginary world, the less investment he has in the world he lives within.
The less time he uses in making the best of his term while living here in this world. And so, the manufactured imaginary worlds become their poison. Some know they are poison mixers and use them for short-term goals at the expense of other unaware poison mixers. But aware or unaware, poison mixers are not fans of what this world has to offer and will descend into death and destruction of this world for imaginary worlds.
Nietzche gave four recommendations that he believed are the solutions to man's dilemma:
1) Don't follow Christian herd morality
2) Own up to envy
3) Never drink alcohol
4) And God is dead
The Christian herd mentality extends further than Christianity itself. It includes anything that mimics its mentality. Astrology would fall under this, just like the Anti-GMO movement is just as guilty of this behavior. Just because one does not believe in the Christian god or any god doesn't mean that they don't also follow something of similar thinking.
The point is to recognize your independent thought process and do what will best benefit the earth's continued existence. Remember, the purpose of the earth is dependent on your existence. You are the meaning of the earth!
Next, owning up to envy. Envy is what got me to Ouray and to become the man I am today. A step closer to resembling the superman of tomorrow, the challenges I chose to face in Ouray were mountains that symbolized the problems in my life that I needed to conquer. And so I climbed them. I even fell a few times, but I would get up, brush myself off, and move forward.
Except for that one time, I fell off a mountain and dislocated my shoulder. However, after rehabilitation, I went back to Ouray and climbed some more mountains. You live, and you learn. No one told me the road to the superman would be easy, and I'm letting you know through my experiences that it is not an easy path to walk.
The following recommendation from Nietzche is an interestingly specific one. Isn't heroin, crack cocaine, or meth just as bad as alcohol? I'm sure a similar question had to have crossed his mind when developing this recommendation. His reasoning behind alcohol specifically was that it numbs the mind and takes away time from fulfilling your most significant potential. I am not aware of his thoughts on other drugs, but if he is against alcohol for its time-wasting effect, wouldn't other drugs like heroin be included by default?
And what about pot? Would that be included? I have written this entire book on the influence of pot and climbed mountains with joints stuck to my lips. I drove through the dangerous winding roads of the Rocky Mountains for hours and hours while smoking pot, and many of my best ideas were formed when on pot. So, I believe it is in a gray area.
You could argue that it should be on the naughty list, but I would beg to differ and say it should be added to the list of recommendations of things you should do to become the best version of yourself.
And lastly, but certainly not least, God. Is. Dead. Simply put, replace religion with culture. The word culture shares room with the word cultivate and the word cult. The root term, cult, is what all three have in common, yet it is the most despised out of all three of them.
When people refer to religious or political cults, they refer to an unusual group of people who do uncommon activities. But isn't that what all religious and political groups usually start as, if not all of the time? There had to be a few people who rejected new ideas, no matter how popular they were.
God only knows that was the birth of Christianity itself. So why are people so scared of cults? Or maybe the better question to ask is, is something a cult because it fits the agreed definition of a cult, or is it considered a cult because no one thought of labeling it something else instead?
What if, instead, someone would have called a group of people who could easily be labeled a cult a "fan base”? The implications are different. But if someone believed aliens were coming to bring them back to their home planet and thought the only way to do this was to commit suicide, would you still call them a fan base? Maybe hardcore fans? At this point, the phrase "fan base" would be synonymous with a cult, so it wouldn't matter.
Culture and cultivate, on the other hand, these two terms are more in step with Nietzche's thought process.
Reggae is my number one sound, but I listen to everything from the sick beats of Die Antwoord to more of a smooth jazzy feel from Claude Thornhill, to the blues of Louie Armstrong, to the hope of the Beatles, to the rebel roar of Black Sabbath, to the adventures of ACDC, riding up the Rocky Mountains to John Denver all through to Bob Dylan. I'll hit up some Eek-A-Mouse and somehow land on top of Cher. I dig the Celtic sound, but my mind loves to wander off into the sounds of Bollywood. You put on some dubstep, and you'll find my head in outer space while my feet barely touch the ground.
Music is the color in my life. I have cultivated a palate of sounds that express my essence.
My favorite dish to make includes falafels with greek salad and guacamole when it comes to food. I make a mean greek salad and guacamole! Holy moly! The secret is in the fresh culantro and shawarma seasoning.
I have cultivated a culture that represents who I am amongst it all, and I didn't need an outside authority to tell me how to do so. Religion is known to do this. If we break down the word religion, it would be re and lig. Reconnect.
There is a much deeper definition of religion than that, but that would be the basic definition in the English language. Like a cult, religion requires seven requirements to be recognizable as a religion or cult: central story, rituals, central language, sacred items, sacred texts, a set of ethics, and belief in it all.
That does not mean religion does not produce anything valuable. It just has to be filtered out from the religion itself and cultivated into your current beautiful mural that you designed to fit Nietzche's recommendations.
In the end, that's all these are. Recommendations to become the best version you were meant to become. The earlier you learn to do what's in the earth's best interest, the more time there will be to cultivate these qualities of the superman.
When I was younger than five years old, I remember living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. My biological father Rocky and I would watch Superman on an ugly-looking couch together. It's one of the very few good memories I have of him. It's the one thing that was mine and his. The one thing that genuinely connected us.
When my siblings and I were taken away, I still had Superman. My comic books were my bible. I envied Superman on so many levels. Not just his powers but what he stood for. Hope. I wanted to be a symbol of hope for the down trotted. I even would dress up with a towel over my shoulders and boxers over my head in the hope that one day I would be strong enough to be the one that saves both the damsel in distress on the one hand and the world on the other.
As I aged, Superman matured. He became much more than hope. Through Nietzsche, he became a way of life. Something to live up to, and something to pass forward so that the generation of the superman may rise. We are but a flicker of the bigger picture to come. Once we arrive, all the ghosts of the past will merge into one image of the future: the superman. I don't see my generation achieving such a jump, but I see more of us being forefathers to it all. More than what was in Nietzsche's generation. A generation of unowned up to envy herd followers, drunkenly stumbling down a dullish cultureless path towards death.
In many ways, similar to our generation, but today, information is moving faster than a speeding bullet as we merge with technology. I believe the merging of us with the machines will bring forth the dawn of the superman.
It is then that money, class, and state would theoretically cease to exist. There would be no need for those things in the age of the superman. We would focus our attention on the stars, where we came from, and learn to be gods over our swirling ball of fire in the sky that was once our god. This is the future I see for humanity. A hopeful future.
A little over a couple of weeks into my separation from Heather, I somehow landed on the footsteps of Nietzsche's teachings. My friend Scotty invited me out to go bar hopping with him, along with his new girlfriend at the time, Stephanie. Christina, Heather's best friend that she has known since age five, was there too. I thought it was weird that she came because she knew that Heather and I had separated again. But whatever.
Maybe she just wanted to make sure I was ok. To this day, it remains a mystery. We went from one bar to another, drinking and playing different games that each bar had. The final bar had beer pong. Christina was on my team. Since I bought her a drink earlier, she bought me a coke and put some of her Crown Royal liquor she had stashed in her purse in there. I haven't been that drunk since I learned how to party like a Chabadnik (One of the fun groups of Orthodox Jews and probably the most insane).
I was so drunk out of my mind. Scotty was friendly enough to let me sleep over at his place. He even gave me a blanket and a garbage can to use for my stomach contents. I ended up leaving his house at 6 in the morning. I was incapacitated for the next day.
I was a hot mess, and I never wanted to see another drink again. I wouldn't do so again after that (minus two events, but my new feelings of repulsion helped to use those two times to solidify my Nietzscheist vow). I have Nietzsche to thank for that. His four recommendations on becoming the best version of myself prevented me from getting caught in the crippling grasp of alcohol. I wasn't a fan of it. I never was. I only did it to get altered, but I preferred the mental bends of weed instead.
Alcohol had only acted as a replacement or a way to complement weed in my past. It was never my go-to drug. However, it was for my biological father. He was an alcoholic and a mean one at that too.
Perhaps that plays a part in my lack of fondness for it. During the times when I was forced to stop smoking weed, alcohol, unfortunately, would be the next of kin.
Over time, I would begin to enjoy it during these periods and even drink it regularly. Like after work, when I would usually smoke a bowl, I would open a beer bottle instead. I was a bit scared that I would become like my birth father and that Mary Jane was the only thing stopping me from becoming an alcoholic.
Even though I have had over a year of no smoking and drinking because I was determined to succeed in paramedic school, there have been other times when I had nothing to motivate me, and it wasn't as easy to put my crutch down.
Puking my brains out at Scotty's and then stumbling on Nietzsche influenced me to eventually vow never to pick one up again, no matter what. Vowing never to touch alcohol again may have hurt my chances of getting second dates with people. It may have even made me look odd at parties, but to become the best version of myself outweighs any petty embarrassment I may get.
They are pretty simple rules for me, especially the one that recommends never drinking alcohol. I chose to get high and ride my bike instead. I decided to stick to my eat all-day diet and lose weight. I used my job to distract my attention away from the divorce, and for good measure, I decided to move away from everyone and live on the beach.
I desired to build myself into a better man. I wanted to stay alive even though I had contemplated death during this period. It is death that puts life into perspective, so I decided to listen to the call to Ouray.
My envy for Art's trip to the cannabis convention in Denver had laid the pathway for the calling to travel to Colorado. My original plans were to stay in Montrose. I bought an Airbnb and soon learned that the house was connected to a funeral parlor. I know I felt like I was dead inside at the time, but not dead enough to sleep with Death himself.
It was starting to eat away at me. So I decided to look elsewhere.
I looked in Kush Tour Magazine for places with great pot, and there it was. An ad for Ouray Main Street Inn. I looked at their website, and the pictures alone spoke more volumes than the words themselves. So I booked a stay with them, got called an "Ass Hat" by the Montrose Airbnb host for canceling, and found meaning in my life again on the mountains of Heaven. I even carved my name on top of one of them. I felt redefined at that moment.
My whole life has been a prelude to Ouray. Despite all the struggles and lessons I have encountered, Ouray was the haven that brought it all together in the form of its majestic mountains.
My first time seeing Ouray wasn't until the sun came up. It was an eight-hour drive from Denver to Ouray. I didn't get there until after nine at night. The day before was the first time I heard of John Denver and his music. Youtube suggested it to me because of my Bob Dylan list. I decided to play his song "Rocky Mountain High" as I smoked my first joint in Ouray. The first mountain I saw was Mount Hayden, and an overwhelming feeling of peace washed over me.
I haven't felt happy like this in a while. It was the first time in a long time that I felt spiritual in the presence of the grand nature around me. I had never seen mountains like these before, and for the first time in a long time, I could smoke weed freely and go where I please. I was not held captive anymore. I was a free man. I was free to rediscover who I am and reconnect with my inner child.
My trip was needed to face the inevitable split from Heather. Deep down, I knew I needed to go to a fortress of solitude where I could find myself again. I have been with her for almost a few years and almost lost myself in her image. Luckily it wasn't long enough not to recognize the road back to me. So when I found myself again, I came back down from the mountains with a fresh spirit, purpose, and more suitable value. I came back down with the heart of the superman.
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If you enjoyed reading this chapter from my psychedelic autobiographical adventure, you can purchase the entire book here!
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