Existentialism Philosophy






Nietzsche: America’s Gnostic Superman
 

A heritage founded upon faith has transmuted into a secular society that replaced God with a belief in the superman culture of egalitarianism. With each interminable message that every deviant behavior is equivalent with moral conduct, we are told that only the enlightened are able to dispense the aptitude for ruling. The modern day Gnostics that preach the gospel of materialism have adopted Nietzsche as their patron saint, while they crucify without exceptions, the last remnants of ordained obedience.

The superman is not a person, it’s a malicious culture. The propaganda of equality is founded upon a cross of arrogance. The symbol of universal hope has been stolen and replaced with a certainty of despair. Just look at the company that the American Nietzsche keeps. The progressive borrows from the communist, while never admitting they are an admirer. The fascist condemns the Marxist, when they compete for the most perfect despotic government. Each evolution and method of control are medals of achievement for the collectivists. Purging the body politick from obstinate resistance to the replacement society is the prime objective. Equality has come to mean compliance.

Nietzsche is no different than any other tyrant who sought to replace the almighty. From Science, Politics and Gnosticism by Eric Voegelin this account is offered:

“Creating a new world requires destruction of both the "givenness" of the order of being and of its transcendent origin. Divine being is explained as human invention. Examples from Nietzsche.

The first golem legend. Parallel to Marx's speculations. The tension between the first and second realities is the tension between the order of God and magic. First reality = truth, second reality = death.

The second golem legend. "God is truth" becomes "God is dead". The hubris of a human creator will turn him against God.

Analysis of Nietzsche's story "The Madman". Like the golem story but the moral is not accepted. The murder of God requires a new god: the superman. In reality, having cut themselves off from God, the gnostics begin murdering men.”

Contrast Nietzsche with Kierkegaard. “For Kierkegaard, life is a movement from an essential to an existential condition. Man's essential condition is being related to God. On the other hand, the existential condition arises from his alienation from God. This alienation creates anxiety which in turn creates the desire to once again be in an essential condition. To achieve this means to be related to God, "since this is 'a far higher thing than to be related to' anything else" (qtd. in Stumpf 448).

So for Kierkegaard life is a series of stages. Each person must decide for himself how to approach these levels, but the goal, at least for Kierkegaard, is to achieve the third stage, the religious stage. This consists of not only choosing for oneself, but "in being infinitely interested in the reality of another" (CUP 288).”

Now consider the mindset of Nietzsche: “For Nietzsche, the Ubermensch or Superman is an ideal . . . Rather than turn inward to find subjectivity and God, Nietzsche says that man should strive to realize his nature manifested in the will to power . . . For most people, values are created for them. These people, whom Nietzsche called the herd, see values as something which should apply equally to all. For Nietzsche, this morality is fine for "paltry people" (qtd. in Stumpf 51). However, for those who have the will to create values for themselves this is a life-denying view . . . The first step for man, then, is to overcome this herd view of values created for the herd by the priests. Nietzsche calls them the "other worldly," the "despisers of the body" and says they "are not bridges to the Superman"”

But who are the real priests in modern society? Surely, they are no longer the orthodox clergyman on institutional religion. The role of cleric has been seized by the new gatekeepers of the Gnostic religion. Their will to attain power is not based upon a need or desire to fulfill themselves - to become all you can become - but on a drive to achieve a superman deity, and omnipresence over their fellow man. The psychoanalysis of Freud acts as a co-enabler for the rationalization of these fake elite supermen and an apology for the culture that tolerates their deceit. Equality for all means superiority of the select.

Nietzsche’s value as an Existentialist is not in his triumph of nihilism or that he buried God, but in his originality for confronting the failures of an earlier age. His influence upon Objectivism and impact upon Ayn Rand is cited by Leonard Peikoff: “Rand quotes Nietzschean sayings, she is inspired by Nietzschean visions of joy, and she expresses an intellectual elitism that one associates with Nietzsche.” However, the arrogance in one’s own ability to supplant the substance of human nature with an apparition of what you will it to be, is the basic failure of a world that denies God.

When the ethos of a culture accepts their own domination as an artificial means for self realization, the only equality that remains is the subjugation of the "paltry people". Admittedly people have never been coequal, but that does not mean the negation of universal human dignity, because of a variance in ability or resolve. America has become a gnostic society believing in a destructive altruism, because it no longer accepts faith in our divinely created being. Nietzsche made tolerable the replacement of the pastor with worldly high priests of a demented secular society. Supermen we are not, humble beings we all are meant to be, and knowing the lines between the two is our responsibility. The real Existentialist will challenge this maxim without creating a false dialectic. Our duty is to search for the balance that promotes a just society, while respecting individuality. Nihilism is a path of doom, what road will you walk?

SARTRE - September 26, 2003


posted by SARTRE at 9/25/2003 |


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