Ambition

I want to be God.
I hear you screaming in your head. What kind of egotistical freak would even say such a
thing?
Well, me, for one. And before you judge me too harshly, let’s have a close look at it.
I…want…to be…God. Five words in four morphemes (units of meaning), with a large
number of various ways to stress the words. Each word is a simple one-syllable unit, meaning
that these are very old words – many linguists believe that the earliest and most basic word forms
are single syllables. These are words which have had a long time to accumulate meaning.
I will let you decide where to place the stresses on the words in that sentence. When I read
what I’ve written up there, I hear it as a flat recitation, with a slight accent on want and God.
Hear it how you will.
“I” is the subject. This sentence is not about being, or God, so much as it is about Me. I is the
most common word in conversational English; most conversations are about I in one form or
another. I do, I am, I think and I like are the most basic uses of I, and I use all of them
frequently. They come, of course, in too many variations to mention, starting with negations: I
don’t, I’m not, I don’t think, and I dislike. Since everything you say emerges from your mouth
or hands, which is connected to and controlled by your brain, you can make an easy argument
that ALL conversations are about I. I feel this to be true: anything I tell you, I want you to know
it seems true/false/appropriate/inappropriate to me.
I/me is the sum-result of all that is. I carry reality in my head, just as you do, and to me, there
are only two places in the universe, in my head and out of my head. The you that is, right now,
is the total of everything in your world: your body, your mind, your environment, your history
and your sense of self. To say “live in the moment” is good advice, but also is a truism. You are
here and now, and the world you live in is part of you, as you are part of mine. Every moment I
have experienced, every desire I have, every movement of the chemistry of my brain: this adds
up to me, and I’m justifiably proud of it. The succession of days and places, people and actions
is what makes me unique.
I’m not advocating solipsism, the childish game of pretending that everything beyond yourself
is but a dream in your head. What I see is as real to me as what I carry inside. If I step on a
thumbtack, the pain I feel is not part of a dream. Why would I have evolved to carry a dream in
which I step on thumbtacks? There is no logical way of proving that the world exists outside my
intellect, but to disbelieve it is so much hard work that I’m too lazy and selfish to even try it. I
take the elevator when I’m going to the top floor of my mind.
Likewise, I don’t believe that all is Maya (Sanskrit for “illusion”, more or less). The stuff of
the world, even if I carry it in my head, is real enough to me. Deciding that it’s all illusory was a
good way out of an intrinsically confused world once, but we don’t have time for that anymore.
The world needs us now, and deciding that it doesn’t is irresponsible. Like with the solipsist,
there is no logical answer to the proposition that all is illusion, other than that it’s a profoundly
unsatisfying conclusion to come to, and more effort than is reasonable. Any argument can be
simply be stated to be more examples of illusion.
I like the world, and if you decide that it’s all illusion, I will decide that you are deliberately
blinding yourself. But of course, that’s not what Maya means to a Hindu – the real use of the
word is much more intricate and sensible than what I’ve just said, and I apologize to any Hindu
who is offended. I use the word because it’s so much better than any of the English words that
might apply. I recommend a trip to the encyclopaedia.
 The I that is me right now right here is not, however, limited to the confines of my body. My
mind, holding the reflection of all that is inside it, albeit imperfectly, is part of a greater reality as
well. You can never stop touching the universe, physically or mentally. You need not posit
magic as the explanation of this fact; it’s self-evident. The neck-bone’s connected to the brain-
bone, the brain-bone’s connected to the eye-bone, the eye-bone’s connected to all that stuff out
there. Nothing passes my senses without changing what I am inside. Nothing comes from what
I am inside without changing what passes my senses. I don’t need to believe in a separate
spiritual plane, different and difficult to attain. THIS “this” where/when I am IS the spiritual
plane; existence is impossible enough to instil me with wonder and awe. My mind and body
dwell in the mind and body of the universe, and vice versa. That’s enough for me.
I love being me. I love being all that I am, and holding all that is not me within me. You are
a pleasant facet of my being, and I love you, if you offer no harm to me and my world. I might
not tell you this to your face, as love and trust must be earned and reflected, but know that I have
extended to YOU, as a part of ME, the right to be loved.
If I love being me, then why on earth/heaven/everything would I wish to be God? Apparently
I already am!
Not so, my precious little fuzzy-cuddlies. There is a great deal of negativity in my world:
violence, pollution, greed and shoes that don’t fit my size 14 feet. I suppose I could close my
mental eyes to these things, tell you and myself that they are meaningless, but I won’t. Never.
To accept all that is, I must acknowledge that my power is limited, and that there are an infinite
number of aspects to reality that I cannot immediately affect. Perhaps I am merely a god, no
different from the billions of other gods who walk my reality.
Onwards. Want is a tricky thing. If I want something, I am telling you/me that I wish to
incorporate the object of my want into my universe. A lot has been written about this process.
Many are convinced that want and desire are the root of all suffering; wanting things we cannot
attain or possess only causes us misery, and therefore we must learn not to want, and to dwell on
a higher plane. This is a self-evident truth, like other spiritual truisms with a long tradition of
serious examination. Unfortunately, it is not the full truth. While it is true that wanting a perfect
world will lead you to examine the imperfections of your world, and of course, yourself, it is not
the wanting that is the problem. It is the size of the desire, and the object of the want that is the
source of the problem. Wanting things and states of being is not a bad thing itself. Wanting the
Wrong Things, however, is a bad thing.
I’m a good person, even if I’ve done some bad things. I feel that I deserve a luscious green
world populated by happy wealthy people for whom liberty, equality and fraternity are the norm,
where the currency of communication is underwritten by the precious metal of love, and where I
don’t have to pay for my extra-large hazelnut americano. You are probably a good person too,
and you deserve a world in which children clean their rooms, unwarranted aggression is
unknown and cars don’t pollute.
We will never have those things, but it is not want of those things that makes us miserable.
Want is God’s way of telling you that you should work for something. Want without effort is the
source of suffering, not want itself. There is joy in effort – in making the world a better place –
and it contains its own reward. I would humbly suggest that wanting a Lamborghini is immature
and useless. Wanting a car, so that you can travel, so that you can support yourself, so that you
can participate in the greater world, so that you can do god works, is a good thing. That was
supposed to say “good works” but it’s an excellent typo and I’m keeping it.
I want lots of things, some of them selfish and some of them not. I’ve never owned a home –
I want that. I could sit in a scummy apartment somewhere trying not to want a home, or I can do
the work that’ll get me one. Having a home is an inalienable right of all humans, and I deserve
one. I’ve earned it, in my roundabout way.
I want money, too. I’d love to be rolling in piles of cash. Immediately, you find this puerile
and unenlightened. Not so, me hearties. I want money so I can do things: I would love, for
instance, to sponsor a village in a harsh place in the world, to buy its people a generator, to build
them a school, to hire them a doctor, to loan them money to start businesses. This is a good
thing to want. I do not want a Lamborghini, but I wish I had enough money to pay for one.
So want is not the problem. Wanting the wrong things is the problem. Wanting status often
becomes viciousness. Wanting possessions often becomes greed. Wanting a home often
becomes wanting to separate oneself from the world. Wanting and not getting often becomes
misery.
It makes sense then to blame want for the world’s problems, and to advocate disassociation
from wants and desires. I propose a different solution. Want things, but don’t expect to have
them. It’s ok to set yourself goals that are always beyond yourself. Want world peace, and
never stop wanting it, and therefore choose carefully which politicians you are willing to support.
Want an end to hunger, and therefore be willing to give of what you have to those who cannot
otherwise have it. Want the right things, and be willing to settle for progress towards those
things, not absolute success.
Want the Lamborghini if you must, but settle for the Chevrolet. This will leave you more
resources to put against your desire for an end to disease. All things must be in balance: want the
sun and the moon, but settle for the earth. But never stop wanting, or you will also stop doing.
That’s the inescapable truth. Vision without motivation equals nothing but misery, for the
visionary and his peers.
The most famous line in the English literary canon is the snippet of Hamlet’s soliloquy, as
written by the greatest author in dramatic history, one William Shakespeare, who wrote with the
hand and pen of God. Hamlet, contemplating life and death, asks himself and the audience, “To
be or not to be? That is the question.”
It is time to finally answer that question. I say, “Be, already.” Be the best, be the biggest, be
the smartest, be the prettiest, be and be and be some more. I am, I will admit, not always the best
me that I could be, but I can say that by definition being is infinitely more interesting than not
being. I am not the best, the biggest, the smartest or the prettiest of all humans, but I am without
a doubt the best, biggest, smartest, prettiest Chief Rabbi and Grand Wazoo of the best, biggest
smartest and prettiest bunch of congregants that the Temple of Fun has ever shown the world
(that includes you, dear reader). I am, at this moment in which I write, the best I can be, because
I want to be the best and I’m willing to do what it takes to be the best me I can be. Perhaps later
on, when I’m feeling fat and lazy, my desire to be the best will evaporate somewhat and I won’t
be the best me I can be, but I will still be, and be good.
Being good, like wanting the right things and working towards them, contains its own reward.
For normal humans, being good feels good, and being bad is not really fun for more than the
time it takes you to realize that you’re being an idiot.
Some would have you believe that to be the best you you can be is to ignore the past and
future, and forget about your circumstances, and live in a mythical present. I, with my
experience of attempting various shortcuts to nirvana, can tell you that this is not a very
sophisticated way to be. As noted earlier, what I am is the sum total of all that is within me and
without me: my environment, my history, my physical self, my mind, my indefinable spark. To
fully be is to be aware of all these things. I don’t like every moment of my history, but I’m not
going to stick my head in the sand and try to make it go away. I’ve done some terrible things
(about which I will not go into details), but that was the me that I was then, and it is part of the
me that I am now. The great philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot
learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” Do something stupid once, and never forget that
you did it. You just don’t always have to care.
Ah, there it is. The immortal “I don’t care.” It’s a lie, of course, but a useful one. When I say
I don’t care about the bad parts of my history, I’m making an emotional statement, not an
intellectual one. I do care, but right at this moment, in order not to be crippled by the sadness of
my past, I hold it in my intellect, and not so much in my emotions. The embarrassment and
shame of having done bad things is there to remind me never to do it again, but wallowing in
negativity is not creative.
To be is also to be fully part of the universe. To be is to be one with all things. The computer
on which I type is part of me. The coffee I drink is part of me. The chair on which I sit is part of
me. Being more than me is like the bonus of having a mind – I get to be so much more than the
meat of my being. Once again I must reiterate that I don’t need to believe in a special plane of
being to really BE. This one is amazing enough. I get to reach out with my mind to the farthest
corners of reality. I can touch the infinite without leaving my chair. That, my babies, is a good
thing, and another of your inalienable rights. This is the spiritual plane, all day, every day. Eat
it, drink it, dream it – it belongs to you. Don’t worry about whether you live in the now or not;
it’s impossible not to. Just live in the most interesting, vibrant and meaningful now that you can.
Now we come to the final morpheme of the sentence that started all this: God. A mythical
creature who comes in as many forms and flavours as there are people in the world, who doesn’t
exist, and whom we can’t live without. I don’t believe in any of the traditional gods – it’s just
too much work. To believe in a God who created the world 6000 years ago, for instance, you
have to ignore evolution, plate tectonics, the big bang, all of astrophysics and the presence of evil
in the world. I suppose I could convince myself that all the evidence for reality is false, but I’d
really have to work hard at it, and I’d rather have a soda. Water takes the path of least resistance,
and frankly, being liquid in my belief systems is better than being solid. In order to believe in
one god or another, you have to think you’re better than the people who don’t – that you know
something they don’t. Putting one illogical system above another is like claiming that rotten
apples are better than rotten kumquats.
That said, I use God every day. I say things like, “God gave you a brain – use it.” How can I
say these things if I don’t really believe in God? Well, there are two answers. First, it’s a
metaphor. It means, “You have been born with a functioning intellectual and emotional organ
courtesy of billions of years of evolution – use it.”
Secondly, I do believe in God. Just not any of the old outmoded ones. God is omnipotent,
omnipresent and Fun. We have another word for this: we call it a “universe.” Everything that
happens happens because of the universe. The universe is always there/here. The universe
exists in and out of time, so it knows what will happen next. These are poetic truths that have
spilled over into the realm of literal truths. The final truth, that the universe is Fun, is a poetic
truth that motivates everything in life of a positive nature (at least in my reality), so it might as
well be a literal truth too. I believe in my liquid way in the undeniability of poetic truths, so I
believe in God, even if I don’t. Go figure.
So I am connected, by way of all things, to God. I’m not just the god of my reality, I’m part
of the God that IS reality. But that leaves out the “want to be” section. This is where things get
tricky.
“I want to be God” is a poetic truth, and a very powerful one at that. Our vision of God for
thousands of years of human development is a truly just and great God who is beyond us.
He/she/it/they is the author of good works, of the presence of goodness on the plane of being we
call the day-to-day world. It is a being that is way beyond us. I will never be that mythical God,
but it’s good to want things that are forever beyond you. I will never, for the rest of my life, lack
motivation. I will never stop striving, trying to achieve, receiving the rewards of new
knowledge, new powers and new wisdoms. I will never stop wanting to experience with all my
being the oneness and perfection of the cosmos. I will never stop wanting perfect
communication with my species and my environment. That I will never achieve this goal is just
fine with me – it’s not the achievement but the work that contains the rewards of friendship,
love, psychological unity or, in short, Fun.
If you are going to aim at something, why not aim at the highest form of it? You don’t have
to kick yourself for not achieving it. Ignoring the world will not bring you closer to God. It may
alter the illusion of the world, but it will not penetrate it. Perhaps there is a joy in ignoring the
past and future, in divorcing yourself for wants and desires. I don’t need it. I can’t help loving
this world, polluted and dangerous as it is, and that love is what makes me always want to make
it better.
So if I can look you in the eye, and tell you that I want to be God, you will recognize it for
what it really means. It does not mean that I wish to control you, to make you dance to my tune.
It means I want us all to be able to hear the tune. It doesn’t mean that I’m the root of all
goodness. It means that I wish not to be the root of any evil. It doesn’t mean that I have the
answers. It means that I am the answers, as are all of you.
Finally, it means that if I want to be God, and I ever do somehow do it, that all of you can too,
and this, my purple flowers of heaven, is the purest essence of Fun.