About this episode
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
