[0:00]And I want to read you something that Nietzsche wrote. It's perhaps the most famous thing he ever said, although it's almost entirely taken out of context and misquoted, and if not misquoted, at least misunderstood, because Nietzsche was one of these strange people who was capable of living 50 or even 100 years into the future.
[0:18]And although he was is generally regarded as an enemy of Christianity and superstition, and was certainly an unbelievably outspoken opponent of Christian traditionalism.
[0:28]He also knew that if you let the old gods die, the probability that blood would flood the land was virtually 100%. So let me read you what he wrote.
[0:40]Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the marketplace and cried incessantly, I seek God.
[0:52]As many of those who do not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Why? Did he get lost? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Is he going on a voyage or emigrated?
[1:06]Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances. Wither is God, he cried? I shall tell you. We have killed him, you and I. All of us are his murderers.
[1:20]But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun?
[1:33]Wither is it moving now? Wither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continuously backwards, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left?
[1:50]Are we not straying as though through an infinite nothing? Did we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while, must not lanterns be lit in the morning?
[2:04]Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him.
[2:22]How shall we, the murderer of all murderers, comfort ourselves? What was holiest and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned, has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us?
[2:37]What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred game shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become God simply to seem worthy of it?
[2:57]Well, as you can tell, that's a much different notion from the casual, God is dead quotation that's most generally associated with Nietzsche. Well, what is he saying? Well, he's saying something like this.
[3:11]A system like Christianity, or any system that's that's oriented a society for thousands and thousands of years, can't simply be eradicated by a casual gesture without consequences ensuing in its aftermath.
[3:29]What consequences? Well, Nietzsche says, well, we'll no longer know up from down. What does he mean by that? Metaphorically? Well, up, that's where you're headed, right?
[3:42]And down, that's what you want to stay away from. And when you eradicate the most fundamental presuppositions of your system of values, then there is no up and there is no down. And then where are you precisely?
[3:55]Well, it's not so easy. It's not so easy to say, having not necessarily ever been in that position. What is your life like when you don't know up from down? Is it merely neutral? Is is there merely no value left or could it possibly be the case that if up and down have both been eradicated, that the place that you're left in is something much more akin to a permanent state of suffering?
[4:17]Because maybe it's only the case that the constant capacity to strive for up, being an up that you believe in, the constant striving for up is actually what makes your life bearable to you.
[4:29]And if you lost the sense of up and down, the place that you would end up would be not so much neutral as terrible. Now, if you have any belief system at all, you do this.
[4:39]So let's say you're an advocate of left-wing politics. You take a pro-environmental stance or an anti-corporate stance, which is a relatively common thing to do among undergraduates. What do you do when you hold that belief system?
[4:52]You view the world as it lays itself out, and you explain the manner in which it manifests itself in terms of the axioms of that belief system. And you may note that you can do it, right?
[5:05]You can tell a credible story about why the world is the way it is by adopting, say, an anti-corporate perspective, because there are all sorts of terrible things about the world that are a consequence, say, of corporate maneuvering.
[5:18]And you might also say that, and Piaget would say this, that it's a necessary developmental stage to acquire allegiance to a given belief system.
[5:28]Why? Well, any up is better than none. That might be the first observation. So, even if your belief system is relatively insufficient and easily challenged on intellectual grounds and perhaps not very complete anyways, the fact that it does lay out a moral structure for you and tell you good from evil and right from wrong, that's a that's a plus, that's an advantage.
[5:48]Now, its relative intellectual weakness and its incoherence, assuming it it is incoherent to some degree, that's a flaw. But that doesn't mean that the effort to establish a system like that is worthless.
[6:02]It's worthwhile. And Nietzsche said, say, with regards to Christianity and Europe, he said, well, the errors, intellectual and moral of institutional Christianity are essentially beyond count.
[6:20]But there's one thing you have to remember. First of all, an ordering of that sort is necessary, because the alternative, which is always hidden from you insofar as you're inside a moral system, the alternative is far worse. Chaos, that's worse.
