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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Sound of the Gravediggers!"..."Where is GOD..He Shouted!"
The Sound of the Gravediggers
by John Michael Greer, originally published by The Archdruid Report | Mar 28, 2013
Theres a lot more that could be said about the practical side of a world already feeling the pressures of peak oil, and no doubt Ill contribute to that conversation again as we go. For now, though, I want to move in a different direction, to talk about whats probably the most explosive dimension of the crisis of our time. Thats the religious dimensionor, if you prefer a different way of speaking, the way that our crisis relates to the fundamental visions of meaning and value that structure everything we do, and dont do, in the face of a troubled time.
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At that time, Nietzsche was almost completely unknown in the worlds of European philosophy and culture. His career had a brilliant beginninghe was hired straight out of college in 1868 to teach classical philology at the University of Basel, and published his first significant work, The Birth of Tragedy, four years laterbut strayed thereafter into territory few academics in his time dared to touch; when he gave up his position in 1879 due to health problems, the university was glad to see him go. His major philosophical works saw print in small editions, mostly paid for by Nietzsche himself, and were roundly ignored by everybody. There were excellent reasons for this, as what Nietzsche was saying in these books was the last thing that anybody in Europe at that time wanted to hear.
Given Nietzsches fate, theres a fierce irony in the fact that the most famous description he wrote of his central message is put in the mouth of a madman. Heres the passage in question, from The Joyous Science (1882):
Havent you heard of the madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran into the marketplace, and shouted over and over, Im looking for God! Im looking for God! There were plenty of people standing there who didnt believe in God, so he caused a great deal of laughter. Did you lose him, then? asked one. Did he wander off like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he scared of us? Has he gone on a voyage, or emigrated? They shouted and laughed in this manner. The madman leapt into their midst and pierced him with his look.
Where is God? he shouted. Ill tell you. Weve killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers. But how could we have done this? How could we gulp down the oceans? Who gave us a sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from the sun? Where is it going now? Where are we going now? Away from all suns? Arent we falling forever, backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions at once? Do up and down even exist any more? Arent we wandering in an infinite void? Dont we feel the breath of empty space? Hasnt it become colder? Isnt night coming on more and more all the time? Shouldnt we light lanterns in the morning? Arent we already hearing the sounds of the gravediggers who are coming to bury God? Dont we smell the stink of a rotting Godfor gods rot too?
God is dead, God remains dead, and we have killed him. How can we, the worst of all murderers, comfort ourselves? The holiest and mightiest thing that the world has yet possessed has bled to death beneath our knives!
MORE AT:
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-03-28/the-sound-of-the-gravediggers
KoKo
(84,711 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)for those who care on Easter Sunday...
dimbear
(6,271 posts)today a scant century later. There are many theories competing to explain his madness. How much less can we know about things that happened thousands of years ago?
KoKo
(84,711 posts)DunningKruger effect
The DunningKruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the perverse situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."
Similar notions have been expressedalbeit less scientificallyfor some time. Dunning and Kruger themselves quote Charles Darwin ("Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" and Bertrand Russell ("One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." . The Dunning-Kruger Effect is not, however, concerned narrowly with high-order cognitive skills (much less their application in the political realm during a particular era, which is what Russell was talking about.) Nor is it specifically limited to the observation that ignorance of a topic is conducive to overconfident assertions about it, which is what Darwin was saying. Indeed, Dunning et al. cite a study saying that 94% of college professors rank their work as "above average" (relative to their peers), to underscore that the highly intelligent and informed are hardly exempt. Rather, the effect is about paradoxical defects in perception of skill, in oneself and others, regardless of the particular skill and its intellectual demands, whether it is chess, playing golf or driving a car.
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More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_eff...
dimbear
(6,271 posts)few credible conclusions. What we really know is that his family treated him very shabbily, and that he wasn't in his right mind toward the last. The why of it is unknown. It was long assumed to be tertiary syphilis, probably wrongly.
This happened only a short time ago, but the whole thing is a mystery. How much more are the events of the distant past unknowable to us.
AnnieBW
(10,350 posts)He's a fascinating guy. I've read a couple of his books, and have seen him at a couple of Pagan events.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)KoKo
(84,711 posts)I would post this there...if I could..