I HAVE SPENT THE LAST 50 years trying to contemplate the nature of God. If I
speak specifically of 50 years, it is because my pride in the initial 30-odd
years of my life was to be an atheist — how much more difficult and
honorable I then considered that to be, rather than having a belief in an
All-Mighty divinity. I was a novelist, after all, so I was intensely, even
professionally, aware of the variety, and complexity, of human motivation
and its offspring-morality. It took a good number of years to recognise that
I did believe in God — that is, believed there is a divine presence in
existence. On occasion, I even contemplated the philosophical need to
approach what might be the characteristics of such an enigma. Whenever I
tried to advance my notions by readings in theology, I was repelled. The
works were studies, for the most part, of the unstated but dictatorial
injunction to have faith. They were undernourished in their appetite for
inquiry, and full of ideological dicta.
To say again, I am a novelist. The best of us spend our lives exploring what
might be human reality. In consequence, the conviction grew that I had a
right to believe in the God I could visualise: an imperfect, existential God
doing the best He (or She) could manage against all the odds of an existence
that not even He, our Creator, entirely controlled. Note the possessive: our
Creator. God, as I could visualise such a being, was an Artist, not a
lawgiver, a mighty source of creative energy, an embattled moralist, a
celestial general engaged in a war, but never a divinity who was All-Good
and All-Powerful.
MICHAEL LENNON: Scientists believe that the universe is expanding. Is this
accelerating nature of the cosmos reflected in your concept of a god who can
grow and develop?
NORMAN MAILER: I start from another direction. Having been a novelist all my
working life, I may know a little about human beings. They have been my
study. You might say my theological notions come out of such questions as,
Who are we? What are we? How do we develop? Why, indeed, are we in
existence? And is there the presence of a Creator in what we do? So the
larger cosmic speculations are of less interest to me. I would hate to rely
on the ever-changing state of advanced physics for my ideas.
In places, you've said that God and the Devil are lesser divinities in
liege to larger powers who might be the ultimate creators. Who or what do
you feel is the ultimate power in the universe? Who created the universe?
I feel the same way about the ultimate Creator as I feel about the expanding
universe: All that is too large for my speculations. But I don't see any
inherent logical contradiction in saying that I do believe our God created
the world we live in and is in constant conflict with the Devil.
I see God as a Creator, as the greatest artist. I see human beings as His most
developed artworks. I also see animals as His artworks. When I think of
evolution, what stands out most is the drama that went on in God as an
artist. Successes were also marred by failures. I think of all the errors He
made in evolution as well as of the successes. In marine life, for example,
some fish have hideous eyes — they protrude from the head in tubes many
inches long. Think of all those animals of the past with their peculiar
ugliness, their misshapen bodies, worm life, frog life, vermin life, that
myriad of insects— so many unsuccessful experiments. These were also modes
this great artist, this divine artist was trying to express something
incredible, and it was not, for certain, an easy process. Indeed, it went on
forever! I can hear the obvious rejoinder: “There's Norman Mailer, an artist
of dubious high rank looking to give himself honor, nobility, and importance
by speaking of God as an artist.” I'm perfectly aware that that accusation
is there to be brought in.
Evil, you've said more than once, is growing in power — especially in the
last hundred years. Do you think there was ever a golden age, when good was
in the ascendancy?
Let's say that in my lifetime, certain things have gotten better and other
things have grown worse, so much so that latterday events would stagger the
imagination of the 19th century. If, for example, the flush toilet is an
improvement in existence, if the automobile is an improvement, if
technological progress is an improvement, then look at the price that was
paid. It's not too hard to argue that the gulags, the concentration camps,
the atom bomb, came out of technological improvement. For the average person
in the average developed country, life, if seen in terms of comfort, is
better than it was in the middle of the 19th century, but by the measure of
our human development as ethical, spiritual, responsible, and creative human
beings, it may be worse.
The English language has hardly been improved in the last half century. Young,
bright children no longer speak well; the literary artists of 50 and 100
years ago are, on balance, superior to the literary artists of today. The
philosophers have virtually disappeared — at least, those philosophers who
make a difference.
I take it that, in your view of history, the Enlightenment and the rise of
science were not steps forward.
Mixed steps forward. Forward and retrograde. It all depends on what God
intended. I could give you a speculation: perhaps God intended that human
beings would get to the point where they could communicate telepathically.
To the degree that a man or woman wished to reach others, he or she could
transmit thoughts to them. One could create operas in one's mind, if one
were musically talented, and beam them out to all who were willing to
listen. All the means and modes of modern communication may be substitutes,
ugly technological substitutes, for what was potentially there.
My ongoing question is whether the Enlightenment was for good or for ill. To
assume automatically that the Enlightenment was good means you have to say,
Yes, it created marvelous freedom for many people. It also created the worst
abuses of communism and fascism — so much worse than the Divine Right of
Kings. It also helped to foster the subtle, insidious abuses of technology.
I've said before that technology represents less pleasure and more power. It
may be that we are supposed to arrive at our deepest achievements through
pleasure and pain, rather than through interruption, static, mood
disruption, and traffic jams.
I can see communism as an unhappy fruit of the Enlightenment, but isn't
fascism a reaction against it? The fact that it cites the blood, the
blood-consciousness, all that?
One of the cheats of the Nazis was their implicit claim that they were going
back to the blood when in fact they were abusing human instinct. The
extermination camps were an absolute violation of any notion of blood. The
Nazis were cheating people of their deaths. They informed the camp inmates
they were going to have a shower. Into the chamber they all marched, took
off their clothes, happy to have a shower what with all those lice
inhabiting them, hoping the shower would be hot. In they went and were
gassed. Their last reaction in life had to be, “You cheated me!” They died
in rage and panic. That's not going back to the blood, to instinct, to
preparing oneself to enter the next world. They were obliterated by their
own excess of reason. They were ready to assume that even their vile guards
were capable of sanitary concerns for them, the imprisoned.
Reason, ultimately, looks to strip us of the notion that there is a Creator.
The moment you have a society built on reason alone, then individual power
begins to substitute for the concept of a Creator. What has characterised
just about every social revolution is that sooner or later revolutionary
leaders go to war with each other and turn cannibalistic. Only one leader is
left, an absolute dictator. Once you accept the notion that there is no God,
then the ultimate direction for the Left, the Right, or the corporate Centre
is totalitarianism.
Much of your thinking seems to be premised on the event of the Holocaust. I
wonder if there had never been Hitler, would your notion of a limited,
embattled God have been conceived? Is Hitler the final thing that pushed you
into that belief?
Since I'm Jewish, the fair answer to that is probably yes. But there still
would have been the gulags. And the failure of Bolshevism. The noblest
social idea to come along, the most intense and advanced form of socialism,
proved to be a monstrosity. That alone would be enough. Then came a
capitalist contribution — the atom bomb, the fact that 100,000 people could
be wiped out at a stroke. And this in the early stages of nuclear
development. So if you eliminate all three of those, Hitler, gulags, atom
bombs, maybe I couldn't have come to these ideas. But historically speaking,
you can't perform such an excision. Those three horrors dominate the 20th
century — not to mention the trench warfare of the First World War, which,
indeed, accelerated the growth of communism.
Are you ready to talk about the Devil?
My notion of the Devil depends to a good degree on Milton. I think he
fashioned a wonderful approximation to what the likelihood might be. In one
way or another, there was a profound argument between God and some very high
angels — or between God and gods — and the result was finally that one god
won, the God we speak of as our Creator. God won, but it was a Pyrrhic
victory, because Lucifer, if you will, also became well installed. And this
war has gone on ever since, gone on in us.
My understanding is that God and the Devil are often present in our actions.
As I've said many times over the years, when we work with great energy it's
because our best motive and our worst motive — or to put it another way, God
and the Devil — are equally engaged in the outcome and so, for a period,
working within us. There can be collaboration between opposites, as well as
war. This collaboration can consist of certain agreements — “The rules of
war will be...” — and, of course, the rules can be broken. The Devil can
betray God. Once in a while, God also breaks the rules — with a miracle. But
my argument is that when we act with great energy, it is because God and the
Devil have the same interest in the outcome. (Their differences will be
settled later.) Whereas when we work with little energy, it's because They
are not only at odds but are countermanding each other's impact upon us.
Let me take up the “Four Last Things” of Christian eschatology: death,
judgment, Heaven, Hell. You have commented, at least obliquely, on all but
one, Heaven. Why have you given Heaven such short shrift?
Because I don't believe in it. My notion [is] that the only Heaven and Hell we
receive — the only judgment that comes to us — is by way of reincarnation.
To wit, as a reward we can be given a better possibility in our next life.
Or we can be born into a worse one.
I'm not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to
be a good man or a bad one. What, after all, is the measure of difference?
The good guy may be 65 per cent good and 35 per cent bad — that's a very
good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 per cent good, 46 per cent
bad — and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I'm 60 per cent bad
and 40 pe cent good — for that, must I suffer eternal punishment?
Heaven and Hell make no sense if the majority of humans are a complex mixture
of good and evil. There's no reason to receive a reward if you're 57/43 —
why sit around forever in an elevated version of Club Med? That's almost
impossible to contemplate.
The point is that God still has an unfulfilled vision and wishes to do more.
So I would suppose that we receive instead a partial reward or partial
punishment and it is meted out to us in our reincarnation. How better to
account for the ongoing feeling of conscience that we all seem to have?
Conscience is there for good cause; conscience is vital — if, for nothing
else, it's there because it gives us a clue to what is likely to be our next
future. Will we be reborn in a situation that offers more opportunities? Or,
for punishment, will there be fewer good chances? Will our next life be
easier or more painful?
Now, this notion is simple, but people who are fixed entirely on notions of
eternal Hell and eternal Heaven can't come near to it. Yet for those who are
wondering if there is a viable scheme to the afterlife, these assumptions
can become meaningful. Why do I strive to become a better person? Can it be
because I wish to have a somewhat better life the next time out? If I am
going to be reborn, I want to do more in my next incarnation than with this
one.
I have a joke to tell at this point: I die and go up before the Monitoring
Angel. He says, “Oh, Mr Mailer, we're so glad to see you. We've been
waiting. Now, tell us — we ask everyone this — what would be your idea of a
proper reincarnation for yourself? What would you like to be in your next
life?” I say, “Well, you know, everything considered, I think I'd like to be
a black athlete. I won't argue with where you position me at birth — it can
be under poor, ugly circumstances, I'm willing to take that on — but I would
like to be a black athlete.”
The Monitor's face clouds up. “Oh, Mr Mailer,” he says. “Everyone these days
wants to be a black athlete. We're dreadfully oversubscribed. So let me see
where you have been put.” He looks it up. He says, “I'm afraid we've got you
down for cockroach. But — here is the good news — you'll be the fastest
cockroach on the block!”
All right — we are going to be reincarnated. Whether we know what our
reincarnation will be, I doubt. I expect it will be full of surprises, most
unforeseen. Some, given our vanity, are likely to seem outrageously warped.
Norman
Mailer on love
©2007 The Estate of Norman Mailer
This is an edited extract from On God: An Uncommon Conversation by Norman
Mailer with Michael Lennon, to be published by Continuum on March 27, 2008,
at £14.99
