Nietzsche
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“God is dead!” proclaims Nietzsche, he also pronounces that the only true Christian died on the cross. Seemingly purposing that only the man, Jesus Christ, who lived in his own footsteps and knew his father to be God could truly embody the perfect Christian. Meaning that once people began interpreting the life of Christ and implementing their own sacred laws, which one must live by in order to be Christian, man began to oppress its own growth. Nietzsche seems to fundamentally disagree with Judeo Christian beliefs that teach hatred and not love for the fallacies innate in all men. He believes that man should embrace his faults and make a mockery of them, until he breaks them down enough to rise above them. Therefore, a religion which is intolerant of these faults does not allow man to grow beyond them by embracing them, but keeps man confined to the boundaries of ones own shame. Man has therefore willingly broken away from Christianity in search of higher consciousness and in effect killed the Judeo Christian God by denying him. Because of the dogmatic doctrine Christian faith is based upon, people are unable to freely seek the answers to the greatest mysteries of life. Instead man must atone for all of his faults instead of delving into them and deciding for himself what may be right or what may be wrong. Nietzsche also despises the Christian belief that all life is precious and the thought that no man is better than any other. Nietzsche finds this fundamentally wrong, and believes instead that the whole point of the existence of man is to obtain something higher, through the preservation of the best, not the preservation of the many. The wise philosopher gives examples of how this dogmatic religion has turned to naught but ash. How there is no longer a guiding force behind man kinds actions, and how those who seek to follow a deceased Christian God only seem to become more lost. Possibly because the are looking to a no longer existing external force, when for the first time in human history we have all the background knowledge inherently imprinted within us which makes us wise enough to look inward. There seems to be a way in which all belief systems in human history seem to break down, being broken down as mere illusion and folklore that guided us through to find higher truths. Beginning with simple fetishism, through to the divinity of God in early Christianity, and most recently to science, each step disillusioning the one before it by highlighting its fundamental principles and proving them untrue.
In this way it is apparent that the United States of America is the forerunner in beginning to disprove or at least deny the belief system that is modern science. Many share the thought that advancement of science beyond its basic findings are costly and inconsequential. The impossibilities of curing all the worlds diseases, and improbability of cultivating other planets, break man kinds faith in science. As new more deadly diseases emerges from the mutation of old pathogens we find ourselves in the same place as we were before science. Left with nothing to believe in Nietzsche proclaims that we will turn to nihilism upon the death of God and science. And in many ways it seems our nation is already there. Baby’s of baby boomers see a world in shambles with no hope. Where no amount of God nor science can turn back the inevitability of demise. So with nothing left to do the younger generation looses the, “will to man.” Seeing no good in each other gangs are created amongst a group of peers, each groups strongest will being the destruction of anything unlike themselves. They no longer care to work together, instead of preparing for the existence of something greater than what we are now, they seek to destroy everything that has been created to this point. The parents as well have turned to nihilism, instead of trying to help the younger generation, they work only to survive themselves until death takes them away from what has become a world of embarrassment. And though Nietzsche is sometime revered as the creator of nihilism, it seems to me that complete nihilism is an embarrassment to him. It seems as though it should be only a step in achieving a higher consciousness. Just as man denies certain aspects of Christianity or science, we must also deny parts of nihilism such as the static nature of being nihilistic. We must break through from just making due until death, to instead finding the true values of life and value of earth in sustaining life. In other words, it may take nihilism as a belief system to guide people in the creation of a world that is suitable for Nietzsche’s Superman to live in. However, the Superman or “Ubermensch” would not be nihilistic, and would rather be past even that belief system. By the time this being is in existence not only would God and science be dead but so would their successor nihilism, advancing on to the belief system that the revolutionized Superman deems appropriate for such a time and place.
The idea of the superman in Nietzsche’s works is a fundamental element, he uses it to challenge the fixed values of society. These values behind what is considered to be good and evil, he confirms, have been founded on the Christian faith serve only to hamper human potential and have no basis on the everyday experiences. His aim is to show us that for society to be able to live up to its true potential we need a new system of values which is more suited to our needs. In rejecting the idea of a God who gives values changeless and magnificent of the everyday world he gives us superman, a real individual who creates values which are confidently fixed in the everyday changing world. This is someone who, by trusting his own sense of what is good and evil succeeds better than any other. It is argued that only by following his example can we hope to improve ourselves and our society. Mankind, in order to justify its existence, has always required some belief in a higher purpose in life. People are never satisfied with the idea that there is no meaning in anything they do or accomplish. Without such a belief, life becomes impossible to accept as the question asked by nihilism is continually before one, “why live at all?”
Nietzsche dismisses this answer to nihilism. As effective as it is he finds fault with it in that it serves to make one feel ashamed of himself and the world. In so doing this belief extinguishes an individual’s hope of fully realizing his own powers and strengths as such things are viewed in a negative light as being worldly thus evil. Nietzsche holds that such restraint tends to weaken an individual making him sickly and weak physically and psychologically; such a thing imposed upon society would naturally lead to a sick and weak population. Not