Each culture has their monsters. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, we can find tales about
the chimera, a creature from Asia Minor which had three different animal heads and breathed
fire. Or we could find the minotaur, trapped in a maze and which was satiated with human
sacrifices which it consumed. If we move our search a little further north to Scandinavia,
we can find tales about the Kraken, a squid-like beast that lived off the coasts between Norway
and Greenland. It would hide beneath the waves and wait to capsize a ship with its massive
tentacles, or create a vortex and sink them down to the ocean floor. Or in Britain, we
have stories about the Basilisk, a serpent-like creature which could kill its victims with
only a stare; and the Dragon, a massive lizard-like creature that could breathe fire. These monsters
are just a few mentioned in the European canon, and which leave out innumerable others from
countries the world over. However, as different as they are from one another, they all share
something in common. No matter where in the world we find ourselves, or no matter what
time we find ourselves in; wherever there has been a human civilization or culture,
there are bound to be monsters which exist in the minds of all its members. Whether they
be chimeras, basilisks, fairies, elves, angels, or demons, no culture would be complete without
its canon of mythical monsters. However, most of the time, these monsters
are confined to ancient fantastical beliefs, and the names of these creatures do not strike
us with the same fear that so overcame our ancestors. There are no seafarers who cower
in their cabins at the thought of the Kraken in the depths of the ocean, waiting to ensnare
the boat with its tentacles and sink it below the waves. There are no fabled heroes who
seek the dragon and rescue a damsel in distress from the tallest tower, and claim the treasure
which it is said to safeguard. There are none of the monsters that our ancestors wrote literature
about, and must have told stories about around the fire on a cold winter night. It seems
as though, in our modern age of science and reason, all the stories about monsters have
become mere chimeras, and our fantastical beliefs have been explained with logic. However,
there is still a monster in our modern age, and one more deadly and sinister than any
of the others we have just mentioned. A monster that is not confined to the history books,
but is still alive and breathing. What could such a monster be? That monster, dear friends,
is that we have no monsters at all. That might strike us as for the best. After
all, these civilizations did treat monsters as real, and that there would be consequences
if one did something wrong, or crossed a cultural boundary. Now that we think such monsters
do not exist, or have mostly been relegated to a few fanatics that still hold faith in
the existence of the Loch Ness Monster or the Sasquatch, we can rest safe with the knowledge
that none of them will come for us in the night and drag us away into the darkness.
It’s an easier life, where our security and freedom has been hard won on the battleground
between fanaticism and reason. However, for our moustachioed friend Friedrich Nietzsche,
this is the cause of a sickness with our modern age, and that our greatest weakness as a culture
is that we have no monsters at all. In fact, it could even be said that our distinct lack
of monsters has become something much more monstrous that it has become a monster, and
one that has swept around the world and infected nearly all cultures on Earth. What should
we call such a beast? I think we should content ourselves with the label given by Nietzsche
himself: this monster is the monster of nihilism. Before we can fully discuss the ramifications
of this modern monster, we need some background on Nietzsche. Although Nietzsche often wrote
about nihilism in his works, he was the last human on Earth that could be called a nihilist.
In fact, Nietzsche believed nihilism the single most detestable and corrosive idea that could
infect modern European society. If such a view ever became common in the mind of the
Western man, it would spell the downfall of our culture and civilization, with disastrous
results. But where could such a nihilism originate? For the answer to that, we need to travel
back in time to Nietzsche’s favourite civilization, the ancient Greeks. For all their virtues
of culture and art, it’s fair to assume that Nietzsche didn’t like Socrates all
that much. In The Birth of Tragedy, for example, Nietzsche full-out murders Socrates for heralding
the downfall of the Greek culture, with his views that logic and reason could make even
the most puzzling ideas in the universe intelligible. Socrates condemned Greek tragedy, which Nietzsche
so adored, because it did not tell the truth, and its complex dialogue and metaphor was
just a mere illusion, and nothing more. Tragedy was something to fill our time, when according
to Socrates, we should be spending our limited time on a steadfast search for the truth.
The careful balance between the ordered Appolonian influence and the chaotic Diosynian influence
on tragedy, which had blossomed in such works as Oedipus, Prometheus, and Antigone, was
shattered and broken as Socrates tore down the illusions that surrounded them to find
the truth hidden underneath. Destroyed the film sets and revealed the camera trickery
that was happening in the background. This search for truth has resulted in reason and
logic, and eventually the scientific method itself, placed on a throne that it has retained
ever since Socrates. Socrates, therefore, can be viewed as the
fulcrum on which our modern world turns, and not much has changed since he shook the foundations
of our cosmos over two millennia ago. This continued through the Renaissance and into
the Enlightenment. In Nietzsche’s own time, this seismic ripple had also occurred with
Charles Darwin, and his theory of evolution that had become more accepted. The result
of all these shifts in thought was that traditional Judeo-Christian values, the values that had
ordered and structured human society since Plato, were under intense scrutiny. Eventually,
this tectonic activity meant that some of the Earth’s crust was to be sunk into the
mantle, and with the identity that science had carved into the minds of all Westerners
since the Greeks, it was religion that had to explode. Quite famously, Nietzsche wrote
about God’s death. However, this was not something he took lightly. The death of God
was also the death of all human values, and the stage was set for Europe to be plunged
headfirst into nihilism. If it was not already clear, Nietzsche thought nihilism was a terrible
fate, and even predicted (along with Dostoevsky) that nihilism would herald the most vicious
wars the world had ever seen, and a cursory look back at the last century has proven them
basically correct. For Nietzsche, the ultimate question was: what now?
For Nietzsche, the answer was simple: bugger all. There is nothing that can be done because
our culture has already been infected with the seeds of reason and logic, which have
since grown into the oak tree that is nihilism. The monster that Nietzsche had diagnosed all
that time ago has claimed its victims. However, this is not to say that an answer has not
been found already, in the ancient Greek civilization. Nietzsche found that the Greek gods, such
as Zeus, Ares, and Dionysus, were all ideals to strive towards. Zeus, for example, was
strength. Ares was skilled in wartime. Dionysus was festivity. All these traits were traits
that Nietzsche identified as master morality, and were found in the upper classes in society.
On the other hand, the classes that were oppressed came to be known under the banner of slave
morality. This morality, such as the Christians in ancient Rome, was characterized first and
foremost by a bitter and hateful resentment towards the upper classes, what Nietzsche
called ressentiment. Even though Christianity was valuable in the morality it bestowed on
the West, this morality was fundamentally a slave morality, created to rationalize suffering.
So, our modern civilization is flawed. It is founded upon a slave morality, and this
foundation has eroded and decayed, which has left us with nihilism. All our values have
been destroyed, and there is no hope that we could create them anew. We have battled
with a cruel and evil monster, and we have created a monster ourselves. We have stared
into the abyss, and the abyss has most definitely stared into us. So, what are we to do? Nietzsche
argues that even though our society has been written off, the best we can do is attempt
to create a society in which a master morality could be nurtured. The humans in this society
would have strong wills, and would create their own values according to their wills.
They would make their own meaning, and rise above life to conquer all. In fact, Nietzsche
argues that these would not be humans at all. Rather, they would be Übermensch, or superhumans.
In this new world, there would be no such thing as nihilism, this modern melancholia
that has so infected us all today. The Earth may not be the centre of the universe, but
it would be a centre of meaning and value in an otherwise desolate and dejected void.
Then, and only then, could we finally say that the monster we created has been slain.
Once and for all. The book of nature is one written by the universe,
and it’s also written into you with mathematics and stardust. The fact that we exist (let
alone have conscious experience) in this universe where atoms are desolate and dead, is a fact
that must necessarily transcend the boundaries of reason and science, and demand to be understood
in the language of miracles and magic. To exist is such a weird and wonderful experience,
that in order for one to be a nihilist, one must have read the book of nature with a bad
translation. Of course, science is and will continue to be a useful tool, and one that
can discover knowledge about the universe we find ourselves in; this conundrum in which
we are the enigmas to be solved. However, as Nietzsche reminds us, we must remember
that science is an instrument, and to think that we can apply this instrument to the totality
of existence is to be obsequious to our reason and to make a horrible transgression in our
understanding of the universe. When science works for its intended use, it can provide
a marvellous insight to the inner workings of the world, but when used incorrectly, it
can drain the colour from our lived experience, and render the whole cosmos as something without
meaning or value. We need this colour to thrive as a species, to become the superhumans that
Nietzsche so desperately wants us to become, just as we need the monsters which support
the universe and all our civilizations and cultures upon their backs. So the next time
you are alone in the house, or hear a mysterious noise that you cannot explain, remember this:
we need those monsters a little more than we realize. Thank you very much for watching,
peace and love, and I’ll see you in the next video.