Harbal wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 11:25 pm
You don't paint a pretty picture, IC.
It is, and it isn't.
So long as Atheists continue to, in some measure,"behave Judeo-Christianly," so to speak (and to adopt Nietzsche's language) -- to believe in human rights, to believe in some objective good and evil, to regard laws as reflective of some deeper moral truth, and so on -- the world should continue pretty much as it has done up to now.
But what when they finally process the fact that there's nothing behind that? What if they realize that morality is backed by less than bitcoin? How do things play out then?
It's anybody's guess.
Is this inevitable, do you think, or can you see any way in which a society of atheists could take steps to avoid the dystopia you describe?
Hmmm...
Good question.
Well, one thing seems obvious: that unless morality has some real facts behind it, it's probably only a matter of time until people figure out they've been had. Nietzsche thought that was true: for him, morality was just an inauthentic language used by some people to keep others in line, a language of the weak to keep the strong from eating them, so to speak. It really hid "the will to power," (his term) not an objective truth. And Nietzsche saw himself as the very first of those to realize this situation, and to call it out.
But as with his famous "Parable of the Madman," Nietzsche also thought people were not going to realize this truth for awhile. His "madman" casts down his lantern, smashing it, and declares,
"I have come too early, [...] my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard." (Kauffman translation) It was going to be a considerable time, he thought, before the actual belief in the death of God was going to reach most people, and then that the implications of that loss were going to sink in, and then people were going to start to live in the light of that new realization (or rather, "in the
dark of it," one might say), and then finally the effects of that would be witnessed.
What could anybody do to reverse what Nietzsche predicted? Well, they could, of course, believe in God again, and then in objective morality grounded in the authority of God. But is that the trend we're witnessing? Perhaps not. So what else could they do...hmmm...perhaps invent their own moral framework, and then propagandize everybody into thinking it was objective and right, and live off that? Would that work? Maybe, but maybe not for long...
But I don't know that there's another alternative. Nietzsche, I think, believed we were inevitably going to end up living "beyond good and evil."
On the subject of Nietzsche and his inheritors, one Jewish journalist has written:
"Nietzsche questioned the idea that there is a body of unchanging moral principles that guide all human conduct. He argued there were no overarching moral principles, and that morality wrongly deprived the powerful of their “natural right” to rule over the weak and ignore their wellbeing.
You can see why the Nazis liked that idea and took it to an extreme the philosopher never could have imagined. Hitler infamously wrote that “conscience is a Jewish invention,” and years later said, “I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience, morality … We will train young people before whom the whole world will tremble. I want young people capable of violence, imperious, relentless, cruel.”
The Nazis interpreted freedom as the liberty of the Aryan race to expand its power unchecked. In their view, justice was served when the strong realized their destiny of dominating the weak. They needed freedom from morality and desired a system of law protecting their privileges as a master race.
For the Nazis, Judaism had to be eliminated because it was a permanent reminder that freedom, justice, and law are all counter to Nazi philosophy.
And in his depraved way, Hitler was right, because for Jews, law and morality are inextricably linked. Freedom is meaningless if not framed in a system of values and laws that defends the weak, protect the basic rights of all people, and tempers the excesses of the powerful. Morality is the bedrock of law, and morality is, by definition, a limitation of power."
But is he right that Nietzsche "could never have imagined" where his philosophy could go? I don't think so. Though he could not have foreseen the 3rd Reich and all it entailed, obviously, what's important about Nietzsche is that there is nothing in his description of morality that offers any resistance at all to the kind of interpretation that Hitler made of it -- even though Nietzsche himself was not a Nazi, of course. He opened a Pandora's Box of possible interpretations of what it could mean to live "beyond good and evil"; and if Hitler took it in an extreme way, then it still wasn't, by the lights Nietzsche offers, a
wrong way. Because there
are no "wrong" ways, to Nietzsche.
Hitler's gone, and the Nazis are now really no more than a historical artifact. They're not coming back. But that Pandora's Box is still open, so long as we have no grounded basis for objective morality. What can come out of it next? There's no telling. But without a way to close that box, it's bound to be something...new
ubermenschen of some kind, another "elite class" of tyrants? Unrestricted governmental manipulation and social engineering of the populace, uninhibited by moral qualms? Maybe.
But that's as far as I can speculate.
That would rather seem highly anti-intellectual, in the sense that it denies any value to intellection. I can't imagine anybody educating themselves if they've been convinced there's nothing to know, or nothing worth learning.