At Noon Beneath the Mulberry Tree
‘Human beings create their own consciousness.’ From time to time, I return to this sentence. The human being who builds the self is, in Nietzsche’s terms, the Übermensch. The bringer of ancient light: Zarathustra. Nietzsche’s choice of this figure was no simple coincidence. Beyond good and evil, his was a struggle that would endure for as long as human beings continue to exist.
In the innocence of my youth, I had made it my task to perceive people not as good or bad, but as aware or unaware. A good person could be the villain in someone else’s story. A person deemed bad, too, could do good for another. Just like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, truth and lies, the masculine and the feminine could only exist in relation to one another. Without darkness, there would be no light; without ignorance, no knowledge.
And yet this idea of dualism had always seemed somewhat unsatisfying to me. I had come to believe that everything exists through its opposite, and that it carries that opposite within itself. For the measure of awareness lay not only in understanding something through its opposite, but also in recognizing that it contains its opposite as well. And yet culture could not simply stand beside nature, nor civilization beside barbarism, nor purity beside contamination, as though these were equal and harmless counterparts. In some cases, then, dualism remained unavoidable.
At this stage of civilization, things become even more complicated. Culture has taken nature captive. The world is now confronting the heavy consequences of consumer culture. The culture we have built since the Industrial Revolution was founded upon the destruction of what had once existed alongside it. This civilization, with progress placed at its center, reproduced its own barbarism in the twentieth century. What we are living through today tells us that civilization is still in its infancy.
In fact, we are now experiencing something akin to the crisis of the age into which the Decadents of the nineteenth century had fallen. The exhaustion of that era became visible through the collapse of faith in progress, reason, and the promises of modern civilization. Today, we are witnessing the end of an age that is severed from nature and mistakes growth through consumption for a sign of civilization.
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Everything attributed to nature has begun to rise again: regenerative agriculture, regenerative finance, circular economy, holistic health… Each of these has become a concept carried into the post-truth age, a sign of modern humanity’s attempt to restore the bond it has lost. The world, fragmented for centuries in the name of progress, is now compelled to think with another form of reason, another language. And this time, returning to nature alone is not enough; it is also time to repair the relationships we have built with nature, with ourselves, and with one another. For beyond good and evil, none of the oppositions presented to us now seem like equal contrasts. Some bring the other into being, while others attempt to destroy it.
But what if the real problem in this destruction is not how these oppositions are understood, but the hierarchies we assign to them?
Throughout history, Western thought learned to progress by placing one pole above the other. Reason was deemed superior to emotion, culture to nature, man to woman, civilization to barbarism. The idea of a unity in which opposites do not exclude one another, nor establish dominance over one another, was disregarded. So how was this invisible cloak, which the modern individual carries from romantic relationships to professional life, first placed upon us?
I suppose this is where I need to turn toward Eastern thought: a forgotten path through which to rethink what has been fragmented. Like a kintsugi plate, could bringing what is broken back together be the true essence of progress? Doesn’t Tikkun Olam find its meaning here as well?
We no longer need a Zarathustra descending from the mountains to teach us self-overcoming, but rather a voice that is familiar, present, here, yet forgotten. A consciousness that reminds us how to connect, how to repair. And what if this voice rises not from the summit of a mountain, as Zarathustra’s did, but from the shade of a mulberry tree?
This is a voice that reminds us not to imagine a new civilization, but to remember how to repair the one that already exists. And perhaps this act of remembering is hidden in the memory of an unspoken history; in the words of women who have known rupture most intimately, and who speak the language of repair better than anyone.
Perhaps the sages of this new age are those who remind us not of domination but of healing; not of conquest but of repair. In this way, darkness may make room for light, death may give meaning to life, and opposites may exist without destroying one another. What we need is the shade where reason and emotion sit beneath the same tree and listen to one another.
