Revolutionary in their monotheism though they were, not even the ancient Hebrews believed God could create ex nihilo. The Lord, for all of his power, still had to draw up creation from the chaotic primordial sea. There had to be some substance with which to, and substrate upon which, to mold the world. The ancient imagination rebelled at the thought of something arising from nothing, and for very good reason: this is not something we find in the human experience.
A human being can no sooner conjure up a sense of self-worth from nothing than Yahweh could the world from some pristine emptiness. We are, for good or for evil, social beings and, as such, the Self and Other are inextricably linked and the circumference defining the former is collectively drawn by the boundaries delineated by the latter.
Now, I suppose each one of us here could surrender himself to the dark and isolated place our ugliness has relegated us to and attempt to conjure up a sense of self-worth as we hang suspended in the void. We've never heard anything like a compliment, so we'll praise ourselves. Every other member of our race considers us hideous, so we'll gaze in the mirror long enough to convince ourselves we're not repulsive. And why not? If we've become the sole inhabitants of our private little worlds, ugliness and beauty are rendered meaningless. The very human loneliness of the Hebrew God who ushered in other beings simply to hear other voices too brutal for us, we can aspire to emulate the Christian god who, though radically alone, convinced himself he was both One and Many and thus not actually alone even during those endless nights when he was the only thing that was.
Talking to one's self is a habit of the very lonely, something I can attest to. You speak to yourself in the dead of night, trying to spin companions out of shadows and the fractured reflections of broken mirrors. You clutch yourself tightly as you fall asleep alone, desperately hoping to feel something like the embrace of the Other that so many take for granted. Your spectral companions, stitched together from dead dreams and rotting fantasies, assure you that you have some worth even though the citizens who populate the world beyond the threshold of your front door despise you for the egregious crime of having been born an abomination. During the witching hour, that tiny moment between the darkest moment and the dawn, you can sit upon your rotting throne and pretend its gilded in gold while you preside over a court of ghosts and echoes.
It's all worthless, all empty. The sun rises and you find yourself dethroned, your reign over the Kingdom of Bones and Dust abruptly ended. The king realizes he was the deformed jester all along, the crown on his head made of tin, his illustrious robes nothing more than gaudy rags. The hateful voices of the Other, calling him loathsome, unlovable and unwanted fill his ears and, though he desperately wishes otherwise, the pleasant lies he told himself while he languished alone in the dark are unable to drown them out.
There's a reason both illusionists and monsters surround themselves with darkness: the former because the lack of light allows them to fool others, the latter because it allows them to fool themselves.
