My acute unhappiness with the
state of the world, and particularly with the crisis of American society, is hungry for any morsel of optimism I can find. It is
therefore immensely gratifying to me to come across a morsel like this (not
that I had not read it before, but I just had not been ripe for it then) in
Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, Why I Am A Destiny, Section 7:
“This
would still open the possibility that not all humanity is degenerating, but
only that parasitical type of man: the priest, that has used morality to raise
itself to the position of determining human values: finding in Christian
morality the means for coming to power. Indeed, this is my insight: the
teachers, the leaders of humanity, theologians all of them, were also, all of
them, decadents:--- hence, the revaluation of all values into hostility to
life, and hence, my definition of morality as the idiosyncrasy of decadents,
with the ulterior motive of revenging oneself against life, successfully. I
attach value to this definition.”
It is heartwarming how this
diatribe parallels my own against the “Academia” that is ruining this
country’s ability to understand the world’s reality and to be ready to solve
the problems of all sorts to the best of her otherwise healthy and adequate
ability. You can practically see our respective diatribes as almost perfectly
interchangeable, except you change the name of the addressee. So, I can feel
poor Nietzsche’s frustration with the ugliness and the magnitude of the
deception. In a sense, we are in the same boat! I also recognize the validity of
using the words priest and teacher interchangeably. Yet, still, I
said it before and will say it again: he is wrong seeing religion as religion,
and not seeing the national-cultural aspect of it. He does not talk much about
Marx, and, obviously, in his time Marxism must have been a non-event. It is the
ascent of Internationalism, expressing itself most ostensibly in the
American-driven immoral doctrine of Globalism, which, today, is giving
religion, not as it is practiced here, but as a genuine expression of
nationalism and anti-colonialism around the world, a new and positive
significance, and a totally new lease on life.
For better or for worse, religion
is with the world to stay. In sickness or in health, the world is married to
its religions… Till death do us all part…
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