From: Upgrade! (fm1@amug.org)
Date: Fri Sep 01 2000 - 10:48:33 MDT
At 05:55 PM 08/27/2000 +0200, "scerir" <scerir@libero.it> wrote:
>Friedrich W. Nietzsche died in august 1900, the 25th.
<snip>
To me, the essence of Nietzsche is that he was a destroyer
of the boxes within which people are intelligent.
In his attempt to destroy religious boxes, he said "God is dead!"
and got his message onto the cover of Time magazine.
Many religious people are highly intelligent... within their
religious boxes.
Max Stirner ('The Ego and its Own') was, in my opinion, a
more penetrating box-destroyer than Nietzsche. He essentially
said, "You need to go beyond killing God, you need to destroy
the very notion of "god" (so-called), the very idea of "god"; the
word "god" needs to become no more than a nonsense-noise
to you."
Nietzsche also attempted to destroy political boxes:
"There are still peoples and herds somewhere, but not with us,
my brothers: here there are states.
The state? What is that? Well then! Now open your ears, for
now I shall speak to you of the death of peoples.
The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too;
and this lie creeps from its mouth; 'I, the state, am the people.'
It is a lie! It was creators who created peoples and hung a faith
and a love over them: thus they served life.
It is destroyers who set snares for many and call it the state:
they hang a sword and a hundred desires over them.
Where a people still exists, there the people do not understand
the state and hate it as the evil eye and sin against custom and
law.
I offer you this sign: every people speaks its own language of
good and evil: its neighbor does not understand this language.
It invented this language for itself in custom and law.
But the state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever
it says, it lies -- and whatever it has, it has stolen.
Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth. Even its
belly is false.
Confusion of the language of good and evil; I offer you this sign
of the state. Truly, this sign indicates the will to death! Truly,
it beckons to the preachers of death!
Many too many are born: the state was invented for the
superfluous!
Just see how it lures them, the many-too-many! How it devours
them, and chews them, and re-chews them!
...It would like to range heroes and honorable men about it, this
new idol! It likes to sun itself in the sunshine of good consciences
-- this cold monster!
It will give you everything if you worship it, this new idol: thus it
buys for itself the luster of your virtues and the glance of your
proud eyes.
It wants to use you to lure the many-too-many. Yes, a cunning
device of Hell has here been devised, a horse of death jingling
with the trappings of divine honors!
Yes, a death for many has here been devised that glorifies itself
as life: truly a heart-felt service to all preachers of death!
I call it the state where everyone, good and bad, is a poison-drinker:
the state where everyone, good and bad, loses himself: the state
where universal slow suicide is called -- life." [emphasis added]
Stirner went beyond Nietzsche and essentially said, "You need to
go beyond eliminating the State, you need to destroy the very notion
of "state" (so-called), the very idea of "state"; the word "state" needs
to become no more than a nonsense-noise to you."
Max T. O'Connor (now More) made an attempt along this theme
in his DEEP ANARCHY -- AN ELIMINATIVIST VIEW OF "THE STATE"
<http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl07d.shtml>.
Frederick Mann
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