Creating Superman

Nietzsche by jdgomezmo

Reading the work of Friedrich Nietzsche we are welcomed into an armchair of volatility, comfortably immersed in insane thought. I think this guy invented superman, though I haven't actually followed the lore of the caped one.

Now the superman emerges from what was Nietzsche’s greatest work. Thus spake Zarathustra. Nietzsche, already established as a profound German philosopher, racked by illness, almost on the verge of death, speaks his last will and prepares to succumb. He is in his mid thirties. But by a miraculous as-luck-would-have-it stroke of fate, he is cured and then is overcome with the 'joys' of life. This sadly, does not last and in a few more years he is up in the Alps somewhere, in solitude, contemplating (you may be tempted to ask what exactly he was 'contemplating', I’m getting there, I’m getting there).

He writes,

I sat there waiting - waiting for nothing
Enjoying beyond good and evil now
The light, now the shade; there was only
The day, the lake, the noon, time without end.
Then my friend, suddenly one became two,
And Zarathustra passed by me.

He discovers a new religion, a new philosophy; he discovers the answers to his lifelong unrest with humanity, the human condition and destiny.

And he invents Superman.

Through the words and wisdom of Zarathustra, a close parody of the Persian prophet who spawned the religion of Zoroastrianism, he extolls the virtue of what is conventionally known as 'evil'. He exposes altruism, sympathy and every other 'good' sentiment held noble by the world's religions as 'weak'. He curses them to be the cause of dragging humanity to the dredges of mediocrity, of encouraging the great to become like the insignificant and helpless; the 'herd' or the masses.

He argues that for the human race to develop there should arise from among us a class of people stronger, braver, fiercer and more violent. A class of man that lives dangerously takes risks and explores new frontiers. A people not held back by sympathy to the weak, a people who exult in the glory of war; who conquer all before them, who will set the platform for the creation of the ultimate human; the Superman.

But the natural order of things is against the creation of this Superman. Nature favours the weak. It seeks to sustain the herd. It does not encourage individual human greatness. Democracy is the bane of mankind, for it only enforces the will of the herd, the will of the masses, thus preventing the rise of an elite class of human, preventing the progress of the species to a higher level.

What he advocates is simple. It is also kinda bizarre. We are weak. There is poverty and destitution. So instead of sympathizing and languishing along with the greater part of humanity we must individually shun the weak and only associate with the powerful. Breeding must only take place with other powerful people. Love should not be allowed to result in childbirth, because love knows no rationality. Children so born out of the powerful should in turn be groomed through education and conditioning to even greater heights, thus becoming more noble than the preceding generation. The goal of Superman is a dream, a dream that should be fixed in the eyes and minds of everybody, excluding anything else.

A socially engineered path to creating an uber-human is what his religion is about. Yes he created a religion, out of thin air, the thin air of the Swiss Alps. ‘He conceived of man as something that man must surpass’ – Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.

Nietzsche went mad in his mid forties, and died at fifty six. His work was largely disconnected and invited a lot of criticism, yet he succeeded in bringing a fresh perspective into established institutions and thought that had gone unquestioned for centuries.

And after the Superman? After the superman comes Eternal Recurrence. When everything will fall apart all over again and the whole progress of human thought will have to start once more form the primitive ages. This according to him is the ultimate and terrible truth.

Insane or what? And I ask that in all objectivity. And also, what a difficult name to spell eh..