Nietzsche and Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Becoming Gods

God is dead God remains dead and we have

killed him

how shall we console ourselves the most

murderous of all murderers the holiest

and the mightiest that the world has so

far possessed has bled to death under

our knife who will wipe the blood from

us with what water could we cleanse

ourselves what purifications what sacred

games shall we have to devise is not the

magnitude of this deed too great for us

shall we not ourselves have to become

gods merely to seem worthy of it there

never was a greater event and on account

of it all who were born after us

belonged to a higher history than any

history so far it has been said that man

does not live by bread alone but that he

also requires a meaning to sustain him

amidst the harsh realities of life

historically this meaning has been

provided for by a belief in the sacred

that is in the existence of unseen

realities which are posited to be the

source of power and significance

primitive man experienced the sacred in

the form of what the religious historian

mirch at a yachtie

called higher often easy occurrences

whereby objects of nature appeared to

transform in front of his eyes and

become imbued with a transpersonal power

and significance the rituals and

festivals devoted to the gods and

spirits of nature were centered around

evoking these experiences through means

such as rhythmic music and dance and the

use of psychedelic drugs for primitive

man the sacred was real and convinced of

his participation in it he felt his life

to be meaningful the advent of

Christianity in the West represented but

a slight modification in this primitive

world view at least for the purposes

that concern us here within the

Christian worldview the sacred was

transferred from the imminence of nature

to the transcendence of heaven and the

polytheism of many nature gods combined

into the monotheism of one supreme god

but despite these changes the sacred

retained its preeminent importance as

the goal of life for the Christian

remained the same as that of the

primitive to live as close as possible

to the sacred which the Christian did by

living in communion

with God in the hopes of ascending into

heaven in the afterlife the Christian

like the primitive was assured of the

existence of the sacred and thus he too

felt his life to be meaningful even when

external conditions were harsh but

Christianity according to Nietzsche was

destined to fall from its beginnings and

when it did he correctly predicted that

those in the West would be forced for

the first time in history to perceive

the cosmos through the lens of a profane

worldview totally stripped of the sacred

with no connection to the sacred he

thought Western man would be thrown into

a tumultuous epoch defined by a crisis

of meaning it should be said at once

that the completely profane world wrote

Mircea Eliade a-- the holy desacralized

cosmos is a recent discovery in the

history of the human spirit for the

non-religious men of the modern age the

cosmos has become opaque inert mute it

transmits no message it holds no cipher

the collapse of Christianity was

inevitable explained Nietzsche given its

metaphysical faith which was also the

faith of Plato that God is truth that

the truth is divine this faith was

Christianity's Achilles heel from the

start has given the supreme value

christianity attributed to the truth it

was only a matter of time until more

inquisitive minds within the church

would turn a critical eye upon the roots

of Christianity and ask the fatal

question what if God Himself turns out

to be our most persistent lie over the

centuries and especially with the rise

of the scientific worldview disbelief

and Christian dogma spread throughout

Europe and by the late 19th century this

disbelief had grown so strong that

Nietzsche felt compelled to announce to

the world

God is dead but he did not speak these

words in outright celebration instead he

prophesied that as the realization

slowly dawned on the West that at the

bedrock of their worldview was a

persistent lie a growing skepticism and

demoralization would emerge feeling

ashamed that so much time and energy was

invested in a worldview based on a faith

in

Nietzsche believed modern man would

react in an extreme compensatory manner

and not only disbelieve in Christian

dogma but not believe in anything at all

in a note from the will to power

Nietzsche shed light on this historical

development the end of Christianity at

the hands of its own morality which

turns against the Christian God the

sense of truthfulness developed highly

by Christianity is nauseated by the

falseness and mendacious nough sulk

ristin interpretations of the world and

of history rebound from God is truth to

the fanatical faith all is false this

drastic shift from God is truth to the

fanatical faith all his false resulted

in the retraction of all religious

values and along with it a sense of the

sacred from the worldview of the modern

West this has proved highly problematic

as the sacred has been an integral part

of the worldview of virtually every

culture in history embodying the higher

values and spiritual ideals which have

enabled those in the past to strive for

heroic goals and push their culture

forward lacking these elevating values

and ideals

Nietzsche thought modern individuals

would be led to drastically

underestimate their own potential for

greatness in doing so they would

incapacitate the heroic impulse to will

ambitious goals and eradicate the

desires that create clefts which

differentiate the higher type of human

beings from the lower consequently she

envisioned a type of individual emerging

whom he called the last man namely one

who instead of focusing on ways to

enhance the grandeur of man is concerned

solely with using science and technology

to enhance the pleasure and comfort of

men if asked what is love what is

creation

what is longing what is a star the last

man thought Nietzsche would blink and

dumbfounded abusement it is with this

modern world in mind that Nietzsche

wrote his masterpiece thus Spoke

Zarathustra representing his attempt to

restore the sanctity and dignity of

human existence in a spiritually

destitute modern world among my writings

my Zarathustra stands by itself

Nietzsche wrote in his autobiography

JMO with this book I have given mankind

the greatest gift it has ever been given

however as the death of God has resulted

in a growing skepticism

neasha did not think everyone capable of

such a spiritual Reeve of ocation

instead he believed the task would be

left to a select few who possessed the

knowledge and strength needed to

extricate themselves from the decaying

spirit of the times and who in the

struggle to realize heroic goals can

find the meaning fulfillment and the

ability to affirm life which so many are

starving for today it is to these select

a few individuals those who have ears

for Zarathustra that Nietzsche wrote his

masterpiece to lure many away from the

herd he has Zarathustra inform his

readers that is why I have come in a

series of speeches given through the

mouth of the Prophet Zarathustra

Nietzsche puts forth what the

philosopher Peter Berkowitz called an

ethics of self deification a set of

severe demands intended to introduce

modern individuals in the wake of the

death of God to the possibility of

becoming gods for too long thought

Nietzsche human beings have externalized

their highest values and ideals of

perfection into the cosmos it is now

time he thought for the individual to

realize himself as the creator of these

values and thus capable of forging his

own meaning and embodying his own

justification rather than remaining

dependent on external institutions and

creeds but given that a herd instinct

remains a dominant force in the psyche

of man

Nietzsche realized that the demands of

Zarathustra are so antithetical to human

nature that if one were capable of

attaining them they would have to

overcome the limits of their humanity

and become what he called the Superman I

teach you the Superman announces

Zarathustra man is something that should

be overcome what have you done to

overcome him all gods are dead now we

want the Superman to live for the more

courageous and independent souls of

today the ideal Nietzsche expounds

through the mouth of Zarathustra is not

to become the Superman as such a task is

too far beyond what is

possible for the modern human but

instead to act as bridges to the

Superman or in other words to live as a

higher type of human being so as to pave

the way for even higher types to emerge

in the future

Zarathustra informs the higher humans

living today I need pure smooth mirrors

for my teaching upon your surface even

my own reflection is distorted many a

burden many a memory weighs down your

shoulders many an evil dwarf crouches in

your corners and there is a hidden mob

in you too and although you are high and

of a higher type much in you is crooked

and malformed there is no Smith in the

world who could hammer you straight and

into shape for me you are only bridges

may hire men then you step across upon

you in the series of videos that follows

we will explore some of zarathustra's

more insightful and powerful speeches in

which he puts forth his ethics of self

deification and his ideal of the

Superman in the process of doing this we

must take Nietzsche's advice and despite

his often prophetic pronouncements not

mistake him as a preacher or one

attempting to found a new religion no

fanatic speaks to you here he wrote of

thus Spoke Zarathustra this is not a

sermon no faith is demanded in these

pages instead in traversing the parables

of Zarathustra we will extract much more

value if we see in them a manifestation

of a deep concern which plague Donita

his entire life that being how to

reinstitute the yearning for greatness

in a world which stripped of the sacred

and all higher values and ideals is

increasingly becoming inhospitable to it

the time is coming when man will no more

shoot the arrow of his longing out over

mankind and the string of his bow will

have forgotten how to twang for when the

hunger for heroism dies in the culture

the culture begins to die too

to the individual in the culturally

decaying modern West that Nietzsche

dedicated his masterpiece but by my love

and hope I entreat you

he has Zarathustra plead with his

readers do not reject the hero in your

soul keep holy your highest hope

you