Continuing our full-fledged assault on Christian Fundamentalism (by which I mean the right-wing orthodoxy that has permeated the world), we make forays into some more of Nietzsche's work. First of all, we discuss his work, "Beyond Good and Evil."
Fundamentalism has codes of conduct that have served humanity for the last two centuries. But the problem is that in more cases than not, it has served as a restriction as to what we can and can't do and has prevented us from reaching our potential.
First of all, in his work, "Beyond Good and Evil," Nietzsche questions whether seeking the truth is the right way. He says that too often, a search for truth as such winds up being only a reflection of one's prejudices. So, for instance, a search for truth might not do one any good if they start with the conclusion that the Bible is the sole authority of life. But on the other hand, his solution, the recognition of untruth as a condition of life has its limits as well. Is this really the case, or can it be used as a cop-out to ignore addressing the questions of torture? What about genocide -- is the recognition of untruth as a condition of life mean that we should no longer care about genocide, past or present?
He even goes on to claim:
In a startling passage (§34), Nietzsche tells us that "from every point of view the erroneousness of the world in which we believe we live is the surest and firmest thing we can get our eyes on". Philosophers are wrong to rail violently against the risk of being deceived. "It is no more than a moral prejudice that truth is worth more than appearance". Life is nothing without appearances; it appears to Nietzsche that it follows from this that the abolition of appearances would imply the abolition of "truth" as well. In an even more extreme leap of logic, Nietzsche is led to ask the question, "what compels us to assume there exists any essential antithesis between 'true' and 'false'?"
So, for all his railing against nihilism, he seems to take a nihilistic worldview himself here. After all, if truth is a matter of appearances, would that mean that holocaust denial is just as valid as contemporary history? What about the theft of the 2000 election? What about Iraq or McCain's advocacy of the invasion of Iran?
So, Nietzsche reacts to the nihilism of fundamentalism with a nihilism of his own, where he espouses a relativistic worldview. The absurdity of his claims is demolished by his own logic, which measures things by consequences. After all, if the consequence of moral nihilism is that torture is no more right or wrong than anything else, then what is our purpose as a political movement?
And yet if we move beyond merely one system of good and evil while recognizing that there is objective right and wrong in this world, we would be well-served. We could, for instance, take a Christian worldview while recognizing that there is truth in every system of thought. And there are morals that have been universally taught -- charity. Love of one's neighbor. Laws. Justice. The Golden Rule. And there are things like genocide and torture that universally offend every reasonable person.
What we must do is develop a state of constant questioning, where we question everything that has been taught. We should not be afraid to strengthen the weaker side of an argument; after all, our goal should not be to wed ourselves to one belief system, but to shed ourselves of prejudices. After all, if all we do is read sources that are written from a Christian fundie perspective, then we develop a tunnel vision that misses everything. If you're debating someone, ask questions -- don't preach. Make them defend what they are trying to say. Maybe we're in the wrong.
In order to develop a coherent political philosophy, we must be able to establish a foundation. In other words, we have to study processes by which individuals, society, and governments function effectively. So, rather than confine ourselves to the strictures of one ideology, or resign ourselves to nihilism, we must adopt a pluralistic ethos which seeks to take the best from all human philosophies. Even if Nietzsche is right about the erroneousness of the world in which we live, we must still live and function in this world. Our process must be pluralistic -- to take into account as much as possible. Our process must be scientific -- one of trial and error rather than one of "I'm right."
He develops this philosophy in "Genealogy of Morality;" where he develops the metaphor of the lion and says that we can't really attack the bird of prey for being a bird of prey, for instance. But again, could this not be used to justify torture? After all, we have no right to question the Bush administration merely for exercising the power that they had at their disposal. But this presupposes that the Bush administration did not have a choice in the matter and that they cannot help doing what they are doing. Shakespeare's Richard III showed the kind of mindset that dominates this kind of thinking; he believed that he could not help what he was doing because it was his nature and that he could not help being a brute. If this is true, then what is the point of schools, which teach our children in the way that they should go?
Yet there is some truth in what he is saying. We can't really fault a policeman for being a policeman and enforcing the law. We can't really fault a soldier for being a soldier and serving his country. And the right-wingers have no right to whine about judicial activists when all judges are taught that they need to follow the law as written and precedent as written and not legislate from the bench. And we can rescue his metaphor if we observe that Bush was not merely being President, but going beyond the call of duty. It is one thing to be a policeman, for instance, but quite another to decide that I'm a policeman and I'm going to make shit up against my neighbor because him and I have a long-running feud. And Bush is not merely being a predator in this instance, but he is going beyond the Constitution and usurping the law of the land.
For every person who turns themselves into an Ubermensch like an Ali or a Jesus or a King, there is another like the neocons whose attempts to transcend traditional morality met with disaster. For all his attempts to move beyond the traditional morality of nations and render the UN irrelevant, Bush lacked resolve -- he lacked the resolve to kill off all the Iraqi people like the Roman generals like Caesar would have and turn Iraq into our 51st state. And the consequences would have been horrendous -- oil prices up to $10 a barrel, China shooting our economy by not lending us any more money, Russia restarting the Nuclear Arms Race. When one takes any decision, one must accept the consequences that come with it. Ali was totally willing to accept the consequences of the loss of his title for refusing induction into the military. King was totally willing to accept the consequences of assassination for his beliefs. Jesus was fully aware that the consequences of his action might involve death.
What we must do is create a world where everyone can create their own destiny, where individual actions matter, and where we do not have to wait for some big daddy figure to tell us what to do. We have to free ourselves from idolatry, where we blindly accept what our leaders tell us. In order for our government to function, we must participate in the deliberations of our leaders, not just blindly go along with them. To do otherwise is to relegate one's self into a state of helplessness, which is exactly what the Republicans want -- an enslaved and gullible public would please John McCain a lot more than an engaged public.
Al Siebert wrote about the similarities between Nietzsche's views and the Survivor Personality.
Two states of mental and emotional functioning, new to the human race, were observed in Germany about 100 years ago. Nietzsche recognized the emergence of a new human he called an "Ubermensch," a new, better human with personality qualities far beyond those of the ordinary person of that time. As described by Nietzsche, this higher, advanced person was a self-created person who was emotionally "harder" than the average person in part because of having synthesized many contradictory personality dimensions. In addition, such "free spirits" were morally stronger and easily resistant to external social controls because of the development of their own individual values for living.
At the same time in Germany, Kraepelin observed the emergence of a new, spontaneously occurring mental disorder in young people which he called "dementia praecox." A few years later, Bleuler named the phenomenon "schizophrenia" (a splitting apart of the personality) to make the diagnostic term reflect the primary symptom of the condition.
The picture drawn from the long term study of people who are life's best survivors is similar to Nietzsche's description. Such persons are seen as deriving their flexibility, resiliency, and psychological strengths from the successful assimilation of many major paradoxes into their ways of thinking, feeling, and functioning. In addition, people with survivor personalities are above average in operating independently from external social forces, in successfully defending themselves against negative, judgmental reactions to their way of existing, and in resisting efforts by others to control or change them.
For all their efforts to glorify Nietzsche's teachings, Nazism and the ethic of the Ubermensch are two totally different things. The latter necessarily involves the assimilation of numerous different perspectives so that one can function on a higher level. And in order to create a healthy society in which people are immune to the lies of the right and the media, we must encourage and develop that sort of thinking in our youth.
Both Siebert and Nietzsche explain the characteristics of their Ubermensch, or person who has the ability to engage in higher-level thinking:
--Curiosity
--Laughter
--Self-actualization
--Acceptance of paradoxes
--Synergy
--Sensitivity
--Toughness
--Serendipity
The danger in Nietzsche's thinking is that one can adopt the mentality that there are two classes of people -- one group who are Ubermenschs and one group who is the slave. But if we are to create functioning individuals, a functioning society, and a functioning government, then we must be able to tolerate multiple perspectives and encourage independent thought. For instance, our government requires bipartisan cooperation in order to function. Our society requires respect of different points of view in order to function. The more we play off different groups of people like the Nazis did or the Republicans do, the less our society will function, the less our government will function, and the less our people will be able to take advantage of multiple perspectives.
Nietzsche's attempt to break the strictures of fundamentalist good and evil is equally valid to any kind of identity politics. For instance, are we going to tar and feather Obama for calling on Blacks to take responsibility for themselves because of the fact that racism is alive and well in this country? Or are we going to use our Jewishness to restrict ourselves to what the Rabbi says? Or are we going to refuse to date someone because I am a Muslim and that other person is not? In order for us to develop as a human race, we must shed any self-restrictions based on identity and make ourselves into a melting pot of people, ideas, and philosophies.
Dependency on anything and everything is what led our country to this point. Dependency on the Noble Lies of our leaders and our ignoring inconvenient facts (like the killing off of the Native Americans) has led us to this point, where we are expected to do what George Bush wants and react in fear like Pavlov's Dogs whenever there is a terror alert. Or, we are expected to purchase the latest supermarket tabloids whenever a celebrity gets nabbed. The tyranny of the Bush administration did not come on us overnight -- it is the cumulation of 200 years of dependency on what the media tells us or what the preacher tells us or what our identity tells us we should expect in life. We are all guilty of it in some way, and breaking this cycle is not going to take overnight.
Given the fact of his ethics (discussed above), I would not go so far as to claim that Nietzsche lacks compassion. But what I would argue is that what he is saying is that if we are in the right and the stronger party is in the wrong, we should not wait on some indeterminate afterlife for wrongs to be righted. We must be able to right the wrongs of this world in this life rather than use Christian morality, loving one's enemies, and turning the other cheek as an excuse not to act. Misplaced compassion is just as bad as no compassion at all; after all, should we have shown compassion towards the Nazi war criminals? Should we have shown compassion and not entered World War II?