Being Over and Against or In The World

This phrase, 'over and against', is one that has become familiar to me primarily through my reading and reflection on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Rilke, Strauss, and other similar thinkers. The notion of being 'over and against' the world is often contrasted with the idea of being 'in the world'. Animals, Heidegger and Rilke would have us believe, are 'in the world' in a way that we are not. Something different happened to our form of consciousness. It acquired some kind of intensity or severity and it puts us in a position not of being in full accord or harmony with the world, but being outside of it, against it, poised towards manipulating it.

This applies to ourselves just as much as it does to the outside world. It is not only the natural world that has become an object of rational control, but our own bodies and minds. We submit ourselves to the same standards of control that we apply to the outside world. We, too, are raw material to be rationally manipulated.

In Heidegger's thinking this stance of being 'over and against' the world is tantamount to nihilism. Nihilism, at it's core, is an attitude or orientation towards the world that asserts (or assumes) that there is no meaning in the world other than the meaning we impose upon it.

This notion of being 'over and against' the world is undeniably spatial: it always involves a spatial metaphor in which we find ourselves on the 'outside' of ourselves and our experiences. We are not engaged directly in the 'flow' of experience, but have placed ourselves outside of it, assuming a perspective that is somehow detached from the immediacy of what we are going through.

My life has, as of late, been tumultuous and uncertain. My living and working situations have both undergone significant changes. It has caused me some pain and, to be frank, so much has been changing inside and outside of me that I've lost track of what is happening to me. I have no idea what I'm becoming, and I'm tempted to embrace Nietzsche's claim in Ecce Homo that one becomes what one is through habitual misinterpretation of what one is, through constant mistakes and failures. I am becoming what I am, no doubt. But it is hard for me to let go and simply go with my becoming.

Instead, I have resisted what is happening to me.

This resistance, moreover, has a spatial quality to it. I have not simply allowed myself to be immersed by my experience. I have placed myself 'over and against' my self. I've been looking down on myself, refusing to accept that this is my life, that this is what is happening to me. I feel this movement outside of myself. This push to be elsewhere.

It comes along with a kind of arrogance. An indigence or sense of superiority towards my situation.

In reality I know that I'm just not capable of facing the pain head on. I cast sideways glances at it by adopting this arrogant pose. I set myself outside of it and thus ease the pain I experience by being in it.

I am not in control. This causes me pain. The arrogance of separation is what helps me cope with it.

How unfortunate.

I'd like to be strong enough to face it head on, without the pretense of superiority.

A task, no doubt.