The Nietzsche Prophesies

The tee shirt read:

“God is Dead” - Nietzsche
“Nietzsche is dead” – God

Since finding out that I managed to break a bone in my ankle while wearing the boot that was supposed to protect my pulled Achilles tendon and cracked heel spur, I have been in a serious blog-funk, writing about civil wrongs, structural poverty, the welfare state, challenges to America’s national identity and punative liberalism. To cheer myself up, I thought I would take a look back at the “ubermensch,” that prophet of the “master morality,” the phun – philosopher,… Friedrich Nietzsche.

In the latest issue of The American Spectator (a good magazine) Tom Wolfe (“I Am Charlotte Simmons”) quotes Herr Nietzsche’s views on 19th century culture, his predictions of 20th century political upheaval and 21st century moral decline. Cheerful stuff, that. So here goes, Nietzsche in 1882:

“When I say ‘God is dead’ it is not a manifesto. I’m merely bringing you the news … of the greatest event in modern history. Well-educated, influential people no longer feel the immanence of God, even when they pay Him lip service. They have become rationalists. They no longer believe that God makes humans in His own image. They now accept the theory that the human beast is in no essential way different from the beasts of the field.”

Nietzsche was a Social Darwinist and, like Darwin's survival of the fittest, his views of the “overman” and the “master race” were adopted by the Nazis. However, Nietzsche did not share the Nazi doctrines of anti-Semitism and racism and he foresaw the cataclysm that would attend the death of God in Western Civilization.

“The faith that humans originally invested in God, they will now invest in barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods interested solely in plundering non-brothers. In the 20th century this will lead to wars catastrophic beyond all imagining.” The First World War was the beginning episode of Nietzsche’s prophecy. And he foresaw something even worse that would follow the great wars.

“In the 21st century will occur something worse than the great wars: namely, the total eclipse of all values. For without a profound belief in an almighty diety or deities, so-called ‘values’ become arbitrary and capricious. The pain the human beast will feel when he realizes he can believe in … nothing … will be worse than any he has felt before.”

When we look at the world today, do we see the “death of God” and the “total eclipse of all values.” Take a look at Western Europe where church-going is at an all time low and anything goes seems to be the moral standard. Take a look at Hollywood and MTV. Can America be far behind? What are we prepared to do about it?

There, that cheered me up.