Phat writes:
quote:
I believe that God wants us to need Him. He of course needs nothing.
Except for humanity to need him, as indicated by your first sentence.
Otherwise, why does he get upset when people don't need him?
Ooh, the end of
Pygmalion is coming up (it's fun when the play I was in starts invading my life outside of the theatre). Eliza is finally beginning to assert her independence:
HIGGINS. You never asked yourself, I suppose, whether I could do without YOU.
LIZA [earnestly] Don't you try to get round me. You'll HAVE to do without me.
HIGGINS [arrogant] I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own spark of divine fire. But [with sudden humility] I shall miss you, Eliza. [He sits down near her on the ottoman]. I have learnt something from your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly and gratefully. And I have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather.
And indeed, Higgins doesn't "need" her. He will be able to get on in his life without her. And he doesn't want her to need him, either:
HIGGINS. I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesn't become either the human face or the human soul. I am expressing my righteous contempt for Commercialism. I don't and won't trade in affection. You call me a brute because you couldn't buy a claim on me by fetching my slippers and finding my spectacles. You were a fool: I think a woman fetching a man's slippers is a disgusting sight: did I ever fetch YOUR slippers? I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face. No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you'll get nothing else. You've had a thousand times as much out of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your little dog's tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my creation of a Duchess Eliza, I'll slam the door in your silly face.
And later:
LIZA. What am I to come back for?
HIGGINS [bouncing up on his knees on the ottoman and leaning over it to her] For the fun of it. That's why I took you on.
LIZA [with averted face] And you may throw me out tomorrow if I don't do everything you want me to?
HIGGINS. Yes; and you may walk out tomorrow if I don't do everything YOU want me to.
Higgins
wants Eliza, but he doesn't
need her. And if she decides to walk out, he won't hold it against her. He may not think much of her prospects without him (certainly if she were to marry Freddy...and Shaw took great pains to write in his epilogue that her marrying Freddy would be a disaster as well as any attempt she made to teach phonetics), but the point is that he doesn't want her to be beholden to him. If he did, then that would mean he needed her and Higgins is very clear that he doesn't need anybody.
[Note, they changed this ending radically for
My Fair Lady, having Higgins abandon his Miltonic ideals for love...and Eliza abandoning her independence for the same.]
If god didn't need us, he wouldn't care if we were able to be independent of him. Oh, he might be happier if we were to include him, but someone who doesn't need you doesn't get angry when you don't need him back.
Rrhain
Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.
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