WILL TO MUTUAL HELPFULNESS. PART II OF 2.

This (Genealogie, 3^rd Essay, #18) has been a splendid multipurpose passage. The first thing which comes to mind is a pertinent comparison with the present day post-Soviet world order. America (as I explained in another place, only as the sum-total of her citizens who explicitly identify themselves as American Citizens, participants in the nation’s majority strength, but not as particles of a minority weakness, or a foreign body keeping residence within the national borders in certain foreigner-friendly communities), meaning the strong, who are “naturally inclined to separate, as the weak are to congregate.” Hence, the healthy (in the Nietzschean sense) tendency toward isolationism, which would have served this nation better, had it been at least consistent, not subverted by the internal contradictions of the weak using the strong on the outside, and therefore opposed to isolationism, while undermining them on the inside by demonizing everything that makes the strong, strong. Yes, America, the strong, not capable of self-isolation and therefore substituting it by an aggressive projection of hegemony, and the rest of the world, the weak, or at least, the weaker, or else the strong pretending not to be all that strong, in order for themselves not to get ostracized, that is, thrown out of the community of nations for the crime of being too strong, dangerously strong for membership in the weak-and-weaker club of nations seeking their strength in numbers and in their aggregate strength. (The pretender, for one, being naturally post-Soviet Russia, who seems to be happy to abandon, or at least to downplay her actual superpower status only as her token membership entrance fee)…

Another observation, which will be incorporated into the Third Rome theme, which follows, is to draw the insightful comparison of Nietzsche’s ascetic priest-ruler with Stalin, both the man and--- even much-much more importantly-- the symbol. This is by no means to be interpreted that I am trying to confuse Stalin with Nietzsche’s… Christ!!! (Curiously, there have been persistent and sincere efforts in modern-day Russia to identify Stalin as a Russian Christian saint, and even icons of Stalin have been painted to that effect, raising some eyebrows, but never condemned as blasphemy…) However, I am free to see what I do see, as long as my image is consistent with his picture, which it is! His priest is certainly less of a God and more of a secular ruler than otherwise, and that is exactly what I have observed, and from which I have drawn my conclusions.

Considering what I am going to say about this, and in connection with this, Nietzsche is very unkind in his description of this Christian type of social organization, where I, however, see a striking parallel with the Christian principles underlying the organization of Soviet (yes!!!) society in Russia, mind you,--- the ideal, the principles, not quite the actual forms of execution in practice. Communism and Christianity, in a sense, are walking hand-in-hand here, and are, as one, made the object of Nietzsche’s contempt. I see the Russian rationale for the Soviet society in this description, but there is nothing wrong with that. I cannot stereotype the Russians as the weak and/or as the sickly, no way, but in the historical retrospect, and also according to plain common sense, all organized societies, all civilized societies contain a certain proportion of the strong and the weak, with the latter, usually, an overwhelming majority, unless eugenics have been introduced and enforced in this society on a scale defying imagination. This Christian principle of organizing the society for the benefit of the weak, so remarkably practiced in Soviet Russia, makes all the sense in the world, because the strong do not like to be organized anyway, according to Nietzsche himself, and any organizing for their benefit is a contradiction in terms. The social task now is how to utilize the strength of the strong, and also how to maximize it for the protection of the community-state, how to make the strong organized, yet keep them happy at the same time. For better or for worse, the Russians have made such an effort, and the main reason why I mentioned Nietzsche’s “unkindness” is that I think that he dismisses or disregards altogether the logic of social organizations in general, too casually, paying no attention to a harmony of sorts existing between such organizations and the Christian communal principles, offered as their model.

It is my strong contention, supported by personal knowledge and experience in Russia, that Russian society, both before and after the Soviet experience, has always gravitated toward this philosophical, strangely, but distinctly, Christian, principle of social organization, making the Russian Orthodox Christianity capable of rising to its stated mission of becoming The Third Rome--- the hope and the future of ‘pure Christianity,’ at least in its own eyes, but this is the only legitimacy, which the Russians ultimately need and seek.