"Nietzsche and the Dervishes"

Hakim Bey, (Spring Equinox, 1989)

Rendan, "The Clever Ones." The sufis use a technical
term rend (adj. rendi, pl. rendan) to designate one
"clever enough to drink wine in secret without getting
caught": the dervish version of "Permissible
Dissimulation" (taqiyya, whereby Shiites are permitted
to lie about their true affiliation to avoid
persecution as well as advance the purpose of their
propaganda).On the plane of the "Path," the rend conceals his
spiritual state (hal) in order to contain it, work on
it alchemically, enhance it. This "cleverness"
explains much of the secrecy of the Orders, altho it
remains true that many dervishes do literally break
the rules of Islam (shariah), offend tradition
(sunnah), and flout the customs of their society — all
of which gives them reason for real secrecy.

Ignoring the case of the "criminal" who uses sufism as
a mask — or rather not sufism per se but dervish-ism,
almost a synonym in Persia for laid-back manners & by
extension a social laxness, a style of genial and poor
but elegant amorality — the above definition can still
be considered in a literal as well as metaphorical
sense. That is: some sufis do break the Law while
still allowing that the Law exists & will continue to
exist; & they do so from spiritual motives, as an
exercise of will (himmah).

Nietzsche says somewhere that the free spirit will not
agitate for the rules to be dropped or even reformed,
since it is only by breaking the rules that he
realizes his will to power. One must prove (to oneself
if no one else) an ability to overcome the rules of
the herd, to make one's own law & yet not fall prey to
the rancor & resentment of inferior souls which define
law & custom in ANY society. One needs, in effect, an
individual equivalent of war in order to achieve the
becoming of the free spirit — one needs an inert
stupidity against which to measure one's own movement
& intelligence.

Anarchists sometimes posit an ideal society without
law. The few anarchist experiments which succeeded
briefly (the Makhnovists, Catalan) failed to survive
the conditions of war which permitted their existence
in the first place — so we have no way of knowing
empirically if such an experiment could outlive the
onset of peace.

Some anarchists, however, like our late friend the
Italian Stirnerite "Brand," took part in all sorts of
uprisings and revolutions, even communist and
socialist ones, because they found in the moment of
insurrection itself the kind of freedom they sought.
Thus while utopianism has so far always failed, the
individualist or existentialist anarchists have
succeeded inasmuch as they have attained (however
briefly) the realization of their will to power in
war.

Nietzsche's animadversions against "anarchists" are
always aimed at the egalitarian-communist narodnik
martyr types, whose idealism he saw as yet one more
survival of post-Xtian moralism — altho he sometimes
praises them for at least having the courage to revolt
against majoritarian authority. He never mentions
Stirner, but I believe he would have classified the
Individualist rebel with the higher types of
"criminals," who represented for him (as for
Dostoyevsky) humans far superior to the herd, even if
tragically flawed by their obsessiveness and perhaps
hidden motivations of revenge.

The Nietzschean overman, if he existed, would have to
share to some degree in this "criminality" even if he
had overcome all obsessions and compulsions, if only
because his law could never agree with the law of the
masses, of state & society. His need for "war"
(whether literal or metaphorical) might even persuade
him to take part in revolt, whether it assumed the
form of insurrection or only of a proud bohemianism.

For him a "society without law" might have value only
so long as it could measure its own freedom against
the subjection of others, against their jealousy &
hatred. The lawless & short-lived "pirate utopias" of
Madagascar & the Caribbean, D'Annunzio's Republic of
Fiume, the Ukraine or Barcelona — these would attract
him because they promised the turmoil of becoming &
even "failure" rather than the bucolic somnolence of a
"perfected" (& hence dead) anarchist society.

In the absence of such opportunities, this free spirit
would disdain wasting time on agitation for reform,
onprotest, on visionary dreaming, on all kinds of
"revolutionary martyrdom" — in short, on most
contemporary anarchist activity. To be rendi, to drink
wine in secret & not get caught, to accept the rules
in order to break them & thus attain the spiritual
lift or energy-rush of danger & adventure, the private
epiphany of overcoming all interior police while
tricking all outward authority — this might be a goal
worthy of such a spirit, & this might be his
definition of crime.

(Incidentally, I think this reading helps explain N's
insistence on the MASK, on the secretive nature of the
proto-overman, which disturbs even intelligent but
somewhat liberal commentators like Kaufman. Artists,
for all that N loves them, are criticized for telling
secrets. Perhaps he failed to consider
that — paraphrasing A. Ginsberg — this is our way of
becoming "great"; and also that — paraphrasing
Yeats — even the truest secret becomes yet another
mask.)

As for the anarchist movement today: would we like
just once to stand on ground where laws are abolished
& the last priest is strung up with the guts of the
last bureaucrat? Yeah sure. But we're not holding our
breath. There are certain causes (to quote the Neech
again) that one fails to quite abandon, if only
because of the sheer insipidity of all their enemies.
Oscar Wilde might have said that one cannot be a
gentleman without being something of an anarchist — a
necessary paradox, like N's "radical aristocratism."

This is not just a matter of spiritual dandyism, but
also of existential commitment to an underlying
spontaneity, to a philosophical "tao." For all its
waste of energy, in its very formlessness, anarchism
alone of all the ISMs approaches that one type of form
which alone can interest us today, that strange
attractor, the shape of chaos — which (one last quote)
one must have within oneself, if one is to give birth
to a dancing star.