Ramblings About Nietzsche

Nietzsche's break down of the moral code of his time period seems very difficult to handle. On the surface he seems to simply support the barbaric and animalistic nature early civilizations. He condemns the new Christian morality found across Europe because it makes everyone weaker. Rather than allow the strong to prosper and continually better the society, civilization evolved to protect everyone. Thus, rendering the entire population mediocre.
As disturbing as some people may find this, I believe there is an even deeper issue at work within Nietzsche's conclusions. He demonstrates how morality has evolved over time. This completely destroys our basic concept of morality. Many people believe morality is either natural ingrained in people at birth or it was placed on Earth directly from God. But if we believe Nietzsche's argument then morality can be neither. It removes the sacred nature from morality, reducing it to another social invention. This presents a huge issue. If morality does not have that divine power, then why follow the code. Why not act unjustly, taking advantage of the weak to better yourself? Embracing Nietzsche's concept of "master morality" seems like the smarter option.
Yet, I can't help but wonder what such a decision on a massive level would do to our society. Humanity as we consider it will be transformed into something we currently consider barbaric and unjust. Justice would be eradicated in favor of an attitude of survival of the strongest. As Nietzsche argued this would eliminate the "mediocre" quality of society that has developed, but I cannot concede to the idea that this would better the society.

CIE Movie

In class today Nathan brought up the possiblity that we, as an audience, project our own views about humanity and morality onto representations of nature, like the video we watched. As a collective bod, I believe we had a tendency to root for the lions and wished harm upon the hyenas. Disregarding the biases included within the film, I really believe we can gain a strong understanding about our ideas of justice from this experience. In Plato's Republic one definition of justice he suggests is that justice is simply the rule of the stronger. I believe our willingness to cheer for the lions stems from our natural inclination towards this definition of justice. Lions are naturally stronger, thus we will naturally support their victory. The lion's victory appears just. On the contrary, the successes of the hyenas appears to go against the laws of nature. Even when the young hyena princess is ostracized by her clan, I struggled to sympathize with her situation. I found myself almost happy when she fell from her glory. However, any time one of the lions was harmed it pained me to watch, especially if it was caused by the hyenas. It does not seem like these judgments are conscious decisions, but they are ingrained in our subconscious. Some may argue that we have a tendency to root for the underdog, but that cannot be validated in our consideration of justice. I believe people root for the underdog because they subconsciously believe it is against the natural order for them to win. This still supports my notion that our natural inclination is to believe justice is the rule of the stronger.

The Role Christianity Played in Darwin's Popularity

After reading all of the Darwin pieces and our discussion in class, I really began to think about why the theory of evolution became so influential in such a short period of time. To really consider this point I think it is essential to look at Paley's attempt to defend the doctrine of Creation.

Growing up in the church I always had a tendency to lean towards Creation, since that is what I had always been taught. However, after reading both Darwin's arguments and Paley's arguments there is no way I could subscribe to Paley over Darwin. Paley completely failed to convince his readers of the inaccuracy of Darwin's ideas. Paley used the concept of a watch to disprove Darwin's ideas about animals. Any logical person can see that these two items simply cannot be compared. Paley argued that since an artificer had to create a watch for it to come into existence, Creation must be true as well. All organisms must need a similar artificer for them to exist. However, this argument does not line up. There is no logical connection between an inanimate object like a watch and an animate object like a cat. Why should the method in which one comes into existence have any effect on the way the other comes into existence? To the rational mind it can't.

I believe this may have been one of the reasons why Darwinism caught on so quickly; the religious groups seemed to have failed to provide adequate arguments to convince people of the illegitimacy of evolution. They may have even made themselves look more foolish by creating such illogical arguments are the one present by Paley. Had Christians been able to provide better reasoning to support their own ideas they may have been able to prevent Darwinism from becoming so widely accepted.