Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you the Last Man.
"What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" -- so asks the Last Man, and blinks.
The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest.
"We have discovered happiness" -- say the Last Men, and they blink.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him; for one needs warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end for a pleasant death.
One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse.
"Formerly all the world was insane," -- say the subtlest of them, and they blink.
They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their derision. People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled -- otherwise it upsets their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.
"We have discovered happiness," -- say the Last Men, and they blink.
And here ended the first discourse of Zarathustra, which is also called "The Prologue," for at this point the shouting and mirth of the multitude interrupted him. "Give us this Last Man, O Zarathustra," -- they called out -- "make us into these Last Men! Then will we make you a gift of the Overman!" And all the people exulted and smacked their lips. Zarathustra, however, turned sad, and said to his heart:
They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for these ears.
Perhaps I have lived too long in the mountains; I have hearkened too much to the brooks and trees: now I speak to them as to the goatherds.
My soul is calm and clear, like the mountains in the morning. But they think I am cold, and a mocker with terrible jests.
Now they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh they hate me too. There is ice in their laughter. (Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra)
After all the turmoil for killing a giraffe of approximately 18 months old, the scientific director of the zoo in Copenhagen, Bengt Holst, has been proclaimed man of the year in Copenhagen. The euthanasia on Marius, the name of the unfortunate giraffe, gave rise to enormous protests by Danish activists and it went viral on the internet. Even more so when Marius was publicly slaughtered after his euthanasia and fed to the lions in the Copenhagen zoo.
The outrage was enormous. Children were present during the dismemberment of Marius! Petitions were made to fire Bengt Holst as a director. The zoo even received death threats. It seemed like Jason (Friday the 13th) or Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elm Street) had just entered Zooland. The peaceful minds of children were in danger and this 'mentally sick man' was about to wind up on the block himself. Off with his head!
What are the cultural a priori of this reaction? We live in an increasingly utopian universe. Animals are just kind.....more kind then humans. Nevermind the fact that a hungry tiger will eat you in an instant. And basically each and every human being is inherently prone to goodness. The fact that we don't succeed in showing our inner goodness all of the time is the fault of circumstances beyond our reach. Nature is kind and.....if not mistreated....mankind is kind too. One could say that the ghost of Rousseau still haunts us up to this day. We don't want to be confronted with horror, pain and the brutality of existence. Like Baudrillard said, but he didn't have this meaning in mind, we have turned our society into Disneyland. Or better still, we like to believe it is Disneyland. Does anyone give a damn that Disneyland-Paris is built on the battlefields of World War I (Marne)? Or is it a symptom of a society that tries hard to forget that life isn't just a fairy-tale?
Forget pain, illness, death and horror. Happiness should be our goal. This is what facebook tells us. This is what tv channels for kids tell our children. We are educating future generations that the world is a happy place. Thank God for news broadcasts. Pretty soon they will be the only ones that still dare to question this Disneyficated version of our worldview. And does it work? Our own private Disneyland?
No. When media, parents, educators....tell you that happiness is the most important goal in your life and you feel like you are living in a Disneyland where all is 'fair', you will end up more hurt, damaged and frustrated than ever before. We all will end up (if this is not already the case) as Nietzsches 'last man' : we will have made everything small, leaving the regions where it is hard to live, leaving behind illness and perfidity as sinful. In our newly discovered happiness we start more and more to look the same, indulging in our (?) little pleasures.
For Nietzsche the overman (Ûbermensch) does not back down from pain, anxiety, hardship, death and loss. He embraces life in its fullness shouting 'da capo' from the top of his lungs. Now I'm not saying that Nietzsches goal is easy. The philosopher with the hammer himself realized this. But maybe an effort is just what we need in stead of shouting with the masses that the world is a place where we should all try to be completely happy.....heading for frustration because we raized the stakes too high.
Dirk De Wachter, a very well known psychiatrist in Belgium, claims that people should learn to be a little bit unhappy again. Not every day can be a highlight, not all pain can be banished. Life has its upside...but also its downside. We should get out of our 'facebook-world', where everything is fun, dynamic and likable and start to realize that not all is 'fair' in Disneyland.
I agree with Dirk De Wachter. But I think he misses a point. How exactly can you learn people to be a bit more unhappy? How do you do this? It seems a bit strange that a philosopher should give a psychiatrist practical advice. But I think I have an answer....not the answer. Just a suggestion. The thing we can practically do is learn people to be more at ease with the prospect of temporality, futility. Basically we want to strive for eternity and find it hard to embrace the facts of loss, death and ephemerality. They will learn in this way to tone down or relativize their longings. It is a path as ancient as the Stoics in the society of ancient Greece. And how can we bring people practically to this point? We have a whole range of products of humanity that tell us this message, confront us with ephemerality. These products are art, movies, music, literature...... So look at the great themes of 'vanitas' in our tradition and in the present. This path will automatically make people more in harmony with the fact that unhappiness is just as great a part of life as happiness. So the thing we really should be adressing is not so much unhappiness, but mortality. The rest that Dirk De Wachter discusses will follow.
So when Bengt Holst claimed that he staged the Marius-affaire in exactly this way because 'children should learn that the world is not Disneyland', Nietzsche would have shed a tear for the giraffe like he did for the horse in Turin.
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