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KoKo

(84,711 posts)
Sun Mar 31, 2013, 08:01 PM Mar 2013

The 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



There’s a lot more that could be said about the practical side of a world already feeling the pressures of peak oil, and no doubt I’ll contribute to that conversation again as we go. For now, though, I want to move in a different direction, to talk about what’s probably the most explosive dimension of the crisis of our time. That’s the religious dimension—or, 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 don’t do, in the face of a troubled time.

-snip-



At that time, Nietzsche was almost completely unknown in the worlds of European philosophy and culture. His career had a brilliant beginning—he 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 later—but 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 Nietzsche’s fate, there’s 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. Here’s the passage in question, from The Joyous Science (1882):

“Haven’t you heard of the madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran into the marketplace, and shouted over and over, ‘I’m looking for God! I’m looking for God!’ There were plenty of people standing there who didn’t 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. ‘I’ll tell you. We’ve 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? Aren’t we falling forever, backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions at once? Do up and down even exist any more? Aren’t we wandering in an infinite void? Don’t we feel the breath of empty space? Hasn’t it become colder? Isn’t night coming on more and more all the time? Shouldn’t we light lanterns in the morning? Aren’t we already hearing the sounds of the gravediggers who are coming to bury God? Don’t we smell the stink of a rotting God—for 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

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KoKo

(84,711 posts)
2. Deleted the scary photo of Nietzsche ...Still think it's a good read
Sun Mar 31, 2013, 08:49 PM
Mar 2013

for those who care on Easter Sunday...

dimbear

(6,271 posts)
3. It is a useful lesson to students of history that we don't know the actual cause of Nietzsche's ills
Sun Mar 31, 2013, 08:56 PM
Mar 2013

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)
4. You mean this?
Sun Mar 31, 2013, 10:08 PM
Mar 2013

Dunning–Kruger effect

The Dunning–Kruger 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 expressed–albeit less scientifically–for some time. Dunning and Kruger themselves quote Charles Darwin ("Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge&quot 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.&quot . 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)
6. No, not that really in particular. There are lots of theories about his mental problems,
Mon Apr 1, 2013, 01:14 AM
Apr 2013

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)
5. I Love John Michael Greer
Sun Mar 31, 2013, 11:43 PM
Mar 2013

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)
8. Where is that New "Philosophy Forum" that Skinner Announced in ATA?
Wed Apr 3, 2013, 07:12 PM
Apr 2013

I would post this there...if I could..

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