Before I leave, for already the city lights intoxicate my eyes and dazzle my mind, I must explore myself. The Apollonian command, though thyself, resonates. But I dare ask: how much of myself should I know? It is tantamount to asking: what is good for me to know?
Knowledge is evil. We know this. It is the crux of the Abrahamic religions. Yes, the happy couple that is purported to be the progenitor of humanity is punished for disobeying the command of God, i.e., don’t eat from the Tree of Good and Evil. But how many times does God not change his mind later on in the quaint story in which He is not only the author but the main actor? What distinguishes the Original Sin (thank you St. Augustine for formulating your pessimism and hatred for humanity into the whimsical ‘Original Sin’) from all sins that follow? The distinction lies in the fact that Adam and Eve partake in Knowledge.
Again, Knowledge is evil. The purpose of Abrahamic religions, if not all religions, is to tell us how it is. And how it is is how it is! In summa: religion is not for the thinking. We may notice a progressive aspect in the Apollinian religious edifice, after all Apollo is the god of reason and he commands his disciples: “Know thyself!” But drowned by the loud cheers of men, he adds, “But within bounds”.
Adam and Eve do consume the fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil, but this tree is in reality the Tree of Knowledge. And as I have said before, Knowledge is evil, but it is also good.
Knowledge is good. It leads to understanding, self-awareness. This was the real crime of Adam and Eve. Yes, their situation in the Garden of Eden was beautiful. It is the romantic Golden Age when man toiled the earth and it bore him what he deserved; how communistic! But romanticism is naïveté; it is absurdity.
Upon consuming the fruit of the forbidden tree, Adam and Eve become aware of their nakedness.
The Golden Age has never existed, but this horrible myth has captured the minds of most great men, from Plato to Karl Marx. Their political systems are nothing more than manifestos for the arrest of our degenerate socities; an attempt at returning to the Golden Age. Such pessimism!
We moderns, we too are infected by this evil. We no longer speak of a Golden Age, at least not in public. But we do speak of reforms, that fastidious necessity. We are children of the Age of Reforms. We are always reforming, attempting to arrest the fall, to slow how fast we distance ourselves from the past, which harbors the good.