Friday, October 2, 2015

Lost modern Man is looking for his way

Ideals, better than reality


Everybody has some ideal, something that he believes in : for some it would be God, for others Science, and for others cars. #Nietzsche asserts that Man loves being deceived : and this, History can prove. Reality being too often cruel, man prefers illusions, to distance himself from it. That's why he likes going to theatre, where he knows he is going to see an artificial show, or to the cinema, or reading some novel. He likes being told some stories, and to believe it, because it's reassuring for him to create such marks, mostly when it's someone else that explains him what he should think, avoiding him a tiring job of thinking by himself. Therefore, Man is himself acting the naif one, pretending he doesn't understand he's being told some ridiculous stories. This is a cooperation, more or less volunteer, between the believer and the one who spreads the belief in question.

Just don't look at this too long

The most frightening things for Man are future, that he can't predict, and death, that he can't know until it comes : fear comes obviously of ignorance. To avoid fear and bad moments in life, he'd prefer finding an answer to all this : and God, or whatever what he believes in, is a pretty good answer. Indeed, one's deeply believer in God should not worry about what happens in his life, and should not get tired looking for the right choices : God has already planed everything for him, and he, humble man, surely won't go against God's will. This is a way, to Nietzsche, for weak people to justify all what is wrong in their life : this is like this, because God wants it to be like this. In this case, the believer just stops trying to lead his existence : he abandons his surd, living one absurd life, according to what #Kierkegaard explains.


In fact, Nietzsche writes in his Genealogy of Moral, Religion, with the virtues it chose as the good ones, creates guilt : a good number of the animal instincts that exist in Man, and elements of his nature, are forbidden, not being virtuous. This leads to what #Freud would call repression of urges, what Nietzsche calls internalization of instincts ; and finally, to frustration. Man is getting to a point that he has trouble with himself, hating what unvirtuous creature he is, disgusted of life itself. Thus, bad conscience emerges in him, because he can't be like he should be, religion putting on him a real pressure, threatening him not to get to salvation. So religion will tell him what is wrong and what is bad, and how he should behave to be a good person. He shouldn't think too much by his own (reading other things than religious texts is out of the question), and he shouldn't listen to his instinct : in fact, he should be a « new man », turned towards God, and forgetting what he feels or thinks as a rational animal, coming to that point that Kierkegaard calls « theological suspension of obligations », forgetting his human life and thinking only of the one that will come afterward. Apparently, according to certain religious representatives, masturbation would even get his hands pregnant in the afterlife.

Sorry, it's in French, but here's the link to the video of the Imam telling that : 

Where is freedom in all this ? 



Music of the movie Django

Today, individual Man is looking for freedom from those kind of morals, according to Nietzsche, and understands that power is where there is no need of it : maybe this is the age of the lion, the first metamorphosis in Thus spoke Zarathoustra, the lion trying to get rid off metaphysics. Phil, in the Groundhog's day, discharges from any responsibility and consequences of his action, by living again and again the same day, everything of what he has done during the day being removed at the end of it : he even beats death, not succeeding in getting suicide : thus he is no man anymore, and calls himself « a god ». He is the most powerful human because his actions are simply not limited by any barriers : not law and not mortality ; and he can totally live according to the « carpe diem » of #Horace. But still, he can't be happy with the aesthetical life he has, enjoying everything in excess, because at the end, he is alone the following day, no one being able to record what he has done the previous day : continuity in life can't exist without others ; to feel one's existence, one needs the others to recognize his existence. 


And this we can also notice in #Kafka's Metamorphosis, where Gregor Samsa, by changing his appearance and becoming useless to his family, is spectator of his family forgetting him : Gregor, that is totally conscious despite his new nature, comes to question what has been certain to him before, not feeling familiar with the furniture of his own bedroom anymore. Phil also needs a real contact with another surd, and for this, he changes his own surd, adopting an ethical life by binding emotionally with Rita. His simulated freedom is in fact an alienation, excluding him from human condition. Thus, freedom cannot be found by disconnecting from others, because, like #Aristote underlined, Man is by definition a social animal.

Humans become more and more strange animals


Modern men, since Nietzsche's time, tend to have a paradoxical purpose : distance themselves from their nature, and Nature in general, that they fear ; thus they fear themselves. The ones that have organized states have, at the same time, stolen freedom from men, because they were the most powerful, so obviously, they were not interested in contract theories that would have taken some power from them. In the lineage of #Hobbes, taking for granded that men are bad and are not able to live peacefully, needing authority and fear to do so, they have promised punishment to those who don't respect their law ; punishment, Nietzsche asserts, is a way to show to others one's power.

Modern men have become, in Nietzsche's words, « valuating animals as such », looking for measuring all aspects of their life. Men live in comparing one to another, trying to always be better than the other : competition is everywhere, in social as economic level. They now live in such a system where there is a creditor and a debtor, and where this debtor has to pay his debt back, no matter how, would it be with his most valuable possessions, as life. This is just the illustration of larger modern society, so called consumption society, where individuals are living to consume, more and faster. We can even notice this aspect in romantic relations : now partners are found on such technological tools like Tinder or Meetic, where it is possible to select what you precisely look for _and to order it. The individual's interests are what really counts, leading to something that is not so much society anymore, because individuals don't want to respect the contract they have implicitly signed for by living in community.




And this, instead of leading to the third metamorphosis, the age of the Child and of creation of new values, can explain a revival of a spiritual research : men are looking for new ideals that have been lost in the emancipation from religion in Western societies. A phenomenon like islamic fundamentalism offers a very rigorous frame, a community, and salvation if the indoctrinated person does his or her duty. Like Phil, islamic fundamentalists are looking for ethical life by binding to other people ; like Abraham, they come to what is for Kierkegaard the madness of faith, not understandable because so irrational. Maybe God is not dead yet, and the Mad Man is still not heard.

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