“Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman - a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“Man is a bridge!” Says good old Friedrich. But bridge to what? The Overman is an idea that captured our imaginations for far longer than Nietzsche’s writings. This transcendent being, in tune with the world yet free in spirit. The remedy for the world's maladies. It cares for real things, not petty delusions of kings and priests, not demands of slaves or orders of masters. It does as it wills, not as it’s expected to do. So enlightened is this being that a man is to it what an ape is to man. And man is a bridge to this thing, this buddha, this sage, this homo deus, this god worthy of old God’s murder.
The exact shape this entity is supposed to take has been interpreted in various ways. For some it is the unchained individual, ideal egoist not constrained by the expectation of society. For others, the aristocrat of modern day, person of ambition and power that can guide society by example. Others yet, to the detriment of all not so half-witted as them, think of it as a racial ideal, a new breed of mankind to rule over and in time replace the other ones. In any case, Overman is supposed to be “the next stage” for humanity. So what is the path to this glorious evolution? How do we cross the bridge of man? See that’s the neat part… we don’t.
Isn’t it rather humorous that once the tumor learned to speak and called itself a “conqueror” it so quickly forgot its mortality? “The world is decadent” claimed our great German thinker. The Overman was to be the escape, but Nietzsche also said that he is too decadent man to know the complete path to it. I am convinced that he was not decadent enough. Still thinking too highly of himself and his brethren to gaze upon the shape of the future. The idea that the Overman shall be humanity’s way out is a ruse. Humanism’s last desperate effort to maintain our feeling of self-importance. But our lack of free spirit is not a problem solvable by “mental evolution”. It is in the very nature of the human organism to be constrained by the realm of intersubjective imaginary. We are a social species, after all. It is in the very nature of the human organism to seek excess of comfort. That is how we evolved. The fate of the Last Men is the only one we can honestly hope for, and no amount of willfulness that does not cross into delusion will return us to our place of significance. Nietzsche expressed sadness at the fact that sciences have come to enjoy tearing man’s importance down. It took him away from the center of the universe. It made his sun merely an average star among billions. It made the human not a peak of life’s creation but merely a link in a chain. Finally, it took away even his free will, replacing it with animalistic urges and an irrational psyche. What was left was nihilism, meaninglessness and the death of values. But was it really the sciences that did this? Let’s not blame the messenger. And should we really be saddened by the fact that the World has not given us truthfully what the Beyond-World lied it could give?
Men could never become Overmen. Nevertheless, that does not yet mean Overman could not come to exist. The bridge cannot cross its own self, but it still connects two points, and it is my belief that Man is indeed tied between the beast and something else. The man is an animal that uses tools, he uses technology, he creates culture, he builds civilization. This is usually the reason we cite to distinguish ourselves from the starting point of other beasts. Civilization is something we tend to think of as simply a sign of our presence, our achievement, but I think it’s something more. Civilization is a marvelous form, brought on by human minds but bending them to its flows through social psychology and environmental conditioning. The growing planetary tumor of technology and capital utilizes the demands of its hosts for comfort to expand further, feeding on our consumption and forcing us into production with promises of repayment. Repayment materialized as its own growth and reproduction we depend upon for comfort, of course. At the same time, it stays unchallenged in face of the resentful. It takes their critiques and accusations and returns them what they want, an illusion, a fleeting feeling of liberation and a moral high ground before it uses that too to grow. The movies they’re watching are the only place where their revolution succeeds. Springing from us is a connection of the animal individuals and an alien planetary intelligence, its thoughts moving in all languages through the market, through the internet, through the television. Free spirited life that cares for the real things, its growth and “conquest”, not petty delusions of kings and priests, nor demands of slaves or orders of masters for their rambling are a nourishment for it and the more they talk and act the more they feed what they created. It does as it wills. The Overman is already here, but it is not human. It gives the Last Man its comfort before devouring him whole. And who are we Last Men to reject it? I think we should rather rejoice for being part of this feast. Isn’t it a wondrous fate, to empathize and be part of this creature, both alien and familiar? To observe this strange sculptor as it works with our hands? And to someday lie in a grave carved by it alongside its corpse? It will certainly be more interesting than to wallow in dirt. Not a way out of decadence perhaps, but what an adventure it could still be.
“Well! The lion hath come, my children are nigh, Zarathustra hath grown ripe, mine our hath come”