Torpedo the Ark Means: I Hate Everything

 I Hate Everything bangle by Me and Zena

See website for full details: meandzena.com

I am often asked what the phrase torpedo the ark signifies, despite the fact that I have explicitly stated in several posts that, for me, it primarily means having done with the judgement of God; i.e. rejecting any notion of indebtedness to a deity and refusing to face a celestial tribunal where one will eternally be found guilty and sentenced to death and damnation.  

In taking up this critical project - one that Kant failed so miserably to accomplish - one hopes to continue and possibly develop or send spiraling off in a new direction, the work of the truly great artists and thinkers, including Spinoza, Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence, and Deleuze.

For those, however, who like things expressed in less philosophical terms, then torpedo the ark might be said to simply mean this: I hate everything.

The concept of hate, of course, mustn't be understood in a purely reactive manner; hate is more than simply love on the recoil (as if love were the great primary term or essential prerequisite). And it's crucial not to simply fall back into metaphysical dualism, where love and hate are two fixed terms of opposition.

That said, I suppose we can provisionally agree that love is ultimately a will to merger and the dream of blissful union with all mankind, the heavenly host, and, ultimately, God himself, whilst hate is the desire to be separate and the ability to discriminate and distinguish between things. Thus whilst love makes us open up our arms and embrace the universe, hate teaches us to kick with our legs and stand on our own two feet as sovereign individuals, proud of our own singular nature and keen to discover and create new worlds. 

When Zarathustra encourages his listeners to become hard like diamonds, he means they should abandon love when it has become a morbid moral ideal exclusively tied to values born of sickness; he means they should become a little more independent and a little more hateful; that they should shatter the old law tables, tear down the Cross, and torpedo the ark.

This might seem to be an evil teaching, but, as Blake pointed out, evil is only the active or most vital power that flows into us from behind and below. And it is this power - or more precisely the feeling of this power - that causes delight and helps us give birth to what is best in us and to the future.     

We can conclude, therefore, that whilst kindness, kisses, and cuddles all have their place within a general economy of the heart, so to does cruelty, combat, and the determination to kick against the pricks and all that is rotten. As Lawrence writes, we must learn to accept all the subtle promptings of the incalculable soul; from the most passionate love, to the fiercest hate. Only this will keep us sane and beyond judgement.