Chesterton: the Anti-Gamma Philosopher

If Friedrich Nietzsche is the “Gamma Philosopher,” as Vox Day called him in a recent post, then G K Chesterton is the Anti-Gamma Philosopher. This isn’t to say that Chesterton was an Alpha or Sigma — he definitely wasn’t. To all appearances, he was not especially virile; he was nerdy, unathletic, and could be a bit slovenly in his everyday appearance; he definitely wasn’t handsome or any kind of ladies’ man; and although he eventually married, his wife was a thoroughly plain jane rather than any kind of beauty queen. Chesterton clearly had gamma potential, but he appears to have ended up a good-natured, well-adjusted, and highly successful man. For that reason alone, Gammas and potential Gammas should read him.How did Chesterton avoid becoming a Gamma, when he didn’t lift, didn’t become a deadly MMA fighter with an intimidating aura, didn’t become the captain of his school’s football team with the prettiest cheerleaders all vying for his attention, and didn’t become a skilled pickup artist with a long list of enviable conquests? I think his secret lies in his witty observation, “Angels can fly, because they take themselves lightly.”The tl;dl (Too Long; Didn’t Listen) of this episode is that Chesterton took himself lightly; Nietzsche did not. You could easily imagine Chesterton being roasted by a panel of comedians and laughing more than anyone else. You could imagine Chesterton thoroughly enjoying the jokes being made at his expense and then topping them, both with self-deprecating humor and by giving as well as he got and roasting the very people who were roasting him, and it would have all been done in a spirit of expansive cheer and friendly fun. Chesterton had a quick and nimble wit and a jovial spirit and could have won any audience over to his side. He was not a gamma-esque “secret king,” so he would have been free of the need for others to give him the honor and deference due a king.You can imagine Chesterton rolling with the punches and having a deep belly laugh at his own expense. You can hardly imagine Nietzsche doing the same. Nietzsche held too many grudges and nursed too many resentments and took himself far too seriously to ever truly let himself go and cheerfully laugh even when he was the butt of the joke. Nietzsche was too smart and thought too highly of himself to live a normal Delta life doing normal Delta things. He was the “secret king” incarnate, and he seriously “believed in himself” like the maniac Chesterton describes in the second chapter of Orthodoxy (in which he recounts a conversation with a publisher friend of his about whether it is good to believe in oneself):I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness.This passage cuts straight to the heart of the matter. “I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men.” And what secret kings would Chesterton and his friend have found sitting there, atop these “thrones of the Super-men,” in the imaginary castles nestled in the dismal corners of a dilapidated insane asylum? Nietzsche and his ilk. What answer does Chesterton give to this solipsistic monomania? Not logical arguments, where the flawed premises of self-worship and bitter resentment are left intact, but rather a complete shift in attitude and perspective: renouncing one’s secret kingship and embracing one’s status as a human being, subject to the laws of Nature and Nature’s God.The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the in