after all?
Don’t get me started on that one.
You are opposed to liberation theology, then?
Liberation, tribulation, I couldn’t care less. What bothers me is that no one has questioned my gender. How do you think I feel? Name me one solid theological work in the past twenty-five years that has suggested that I may not be patriarchal. Some of the process theologians have come close, but they’ve depersonalized everything. All this talk about inclusivity is just plain hypocrisy. You can’t have it both ways, you know. And as long as everyone is going to keep me male, I’m not going to change my ways.
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was going to be such a sore point. You were about to describe how you tempt human creatures into violating the boundary of omnipotence.
III
Very well. As I said, one of the major differences between a God and a human being, according to Genesis, has to do with power. A God just speaks and things come into being.
“In the beginning was the Word.”
Unfortunately, it was kind of slurred. Actually, in the beginning was a thought. A God doesn’t have to speak. In true omnipotence, all you have to do is think the thought, and your will becomes reality.
Sounds like the fantasy of some people I know.
Where do you think they get it from?
Transforming thought into matter is the hard part, isn’t it?
You are talking about creativity. I am trying to focus on relationships. Haven’t you ever noticed that the worst symptoms in families always show up in communities marked by intense will conflict? Schizophrenia, suicide, anorexia, abuse, and many physical deteriorations almost always show up in families where people are trying to will one another to change. They harp, they cajole, they seduce, they argue, they implicate, they preach, they warn, they threaten, they remind, they guilt, they charm, they accuse, they point out. Find me a polarized relationship and I will show you the will conflict.
And the same would be true for institutions?
Exactly the same. Almost all forms of neurosis and psychosis come about from the effort to will what can’t be willed. You can will going to bed, but you can’t will sleep. You can will going to the dinner table, but you can’t will appetite. You can will physical contact, but you can’t will orgasm. You can will being together, but you can’t will togetherness or symptoms or relationships or morality.
So by seducing everyone into willing, you make them deny that they are not omnipotent.
Omnipotence always leads to impotence.
Why can’t you apply the same to helpers?
That’s what I was getting to. You can.
This is going to be good.
I no longer spend much of my time trying to get people to will one another to conform to their thoughts. I now confine myself to those who try to will them to stop willing one another. I cover far more territory that way. Instead of trying to tempt twenty different families or organizations, I just tempt their consultants. The efficiency has gone up logarithmically. You see, it is the nature of humanity to resist efforts to be willed. Nothing slows someone down faster than trying to will them to speed up. If you don’t believe me, come up behind somebody in the fast lane and blow your horn hard in an effort to get them to pull over and let you by. Those “by-ways” go all the way back to the Garden.
But the kind of willing counselors do is for their own good.
Whose own good? Anyway, the intent is irrelevant. The point is, the average person will resist efforts to will them by willing the wilier with equal determination to stop willing, or by applying their own will to themselves. In a way that frustrates the will of the wilier.
That is utterly perverse.
If I don’t say so myself.
You “snake in the grass.” You have turned the good will of good people against themselves.
And I have developed a terrific support system.
I don’t think I want to hear this.
I have moved up a notch to the supervisory level. The same logic that made me focus on helpers rather than clients led me to realize that if I can tempt supervisors to will their supervisees to will their clients, my efficiency would reach astronomical levels.
How do you do this?
By getting everyone to focus on method and technique, rather than the nature of their presence.
But isn’t there such a thing as being a professional?
Or a hack.
And how do you distinguish between a professional and a hack?
They may both do what they do with polish. But the hack is not transformed by his experience.
I am beginning to see where you are going.
As long as I can focus helpers on the right technique, the less they are affected, themselves, by the outcome of what they do; and the more they leave out the variable of their own growth and presence, then the more they miss the Creator’s focus on becoming; and the more frustrated they become at not being able to will, then the harder they try to exert their will; and the harder they try to exert their will. . . .
I get it, I get it. The more they act like they are omnipotent. And this fits in with omniscience, doesn’t it? On the one hand you get everyone to keep willing insight into unmotivated people and on the other you get publishers to perpetually produce books on technique in order to preserve the illusion of power.
Actually we have a secret agreement, the publishers and I. Recently we made a compact. They publish books full of data and technique, and I seduce everyone into violating the omnipotence limitation. It works well for both of us. It’s a huge conglomerate and includes publishers in the world of therapy, religion, education, management, government.
Have you given it a name?
What would you think of Faust Publications?
Your persistence and stamina are truly extraordinary.
As with all my disciples, it comes naturally, from our lack of self-regulation. Let me give you one of my latest success stories. I have just tempted the supervision committee of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy to rule that all supervision must view family therapy in the context of sociological and cultural factors. In other words, the counselor and the therapist and ultimately the client must be focused on these irrelevancies to maturity.
You make it sound as though a person’s background is unimportant.
Cultural camouflage is one of my greatest inventions, and the focus on cultural diversity one of my most attractive temptations. But culture is as irrelevant to maturity as gender. In fact, whenever people explain their functioning in terms of their background, that is not more information to be stored; such moments are exercises in denial of personal responsibility. As I have it now set up, many trainers with great savvy who disagree with an exclusivistic focus on culture and who might have stood in my way are going to be rejected or forced to conform their thinking to the new standards.
But that is the committee’s right.
Don’t you get it? I have gotten them to squelch diversity in the name of diversity. I just love the symmetry.
I suppose you would say that’s one of the spin-offs of seducing people into thinking omnipotently.
Of course. It’s one thing,