In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche meticulously describes the “master morality” and the “slave morality.” He isn’t speaking of those roles in an American sense of the word, rather, Nietzsche is writing to the hearts of all human beings, and dissecting the very essence of who we are, and from which perspective our beliefs and judgments of the world spring.
The master is one who views the world as if what is offensive to him is offensive to everything which is good. To the master, all things are noble, and the pettiness of details, and daily, ordinary things are to be discarded. To be “good” is to be strong-willed, and powerful, though she may have other sentiments, they are secondary to what is “good” and what is “right.”
The slave, according to Nietzsche, is born of ressentiment, or frustration. She views the world as a petty response to those who have power, and justify her actions based upon the “good” of the many. Further, the slave also believes that one can only control the world by way of those who have power. All things “good” come from working to gain this power from those who posses it. They may have ambitions of their own, and desires for personal gain, but all these things are secondary in the light of coveted subservience to the master.
How a man like Nietzsche could consider the world from this revolutionary and polarizing perspective in the late 18th century and not go mad sooner than he did is beyond me. To dangle the notions of a “master morality” between the eyes of men who would seek to usurp the world’s power structure, attain a status beyond god, and transcend all known order for their own gain is in a sense criminal. While these visions are the ideals which drove the Marxist Red Army to destroy the Czars, and raise up the worker to the top of the social order, it was the Bolsheviks with their “master” morality who were more realistic about the war, and saw a situation in which power might be seized, and a status beyond god achieved.
Yet, truly Nietzsche was speaking on behalf of more than a hundred years of horror to come. From the Kaisers, to Pol Pot, until today as the President of the United States declares that what he believes to be “good” and “right” shall be true for all people. By any means required, this will be accomplished. And so it shall.
I have never known an instance of the people to rise from the fields and storm the terraces of the ballet, and turn over the coffers of the banks, or seize the heads of state and discard their “master’s morality” in favor of Neitzsche’s “slave morality” and there by offering the power back to the people, and freely redistribute wealth, and order and peace. Many have tried, all of whom either crumbled into the wrath of genocide, or failed utterly to accomplish their ends. In the end, the dominant paradigm will write these epitaphs, and what may have been a spark of Nietzchean inspiration in the skin huts of squalor, a truthful gnashing of desire to topple the empire and free the souls, and the minds of the people will be re written as a million dead for nothing. Nothing we could ever understand. Horror and genocide are simply that, nothing more, and no cause could be applied which could ever justify this action. No matter who you are, what you believe, or how “good” you imagine yourself to be.
I have never seen a shining, noble heart rise from the dust bin of their era, and forge a path forward for all in the light of day, and with reception that did not titillate or profit the elites. We tend to endure these prophets of love, rage, truth, faith, and light while they are still amusing and then slash their throats in the night, nail them up, assassinate them, or simply arrest them for tax evasion and let television do the rest.
This thinking may have been better left as a Humanist’s observation of tendency, or perhaps a post modern world’s view of self destruction. We who give the power so freely to those who oppress us, like the shaking wives of stupid and brutal men, we shiver in our trailers, nursing our wounds and refusing to tell the authorities where he has run off to this time. As we climb from the sewers of our times, we stand in the light, shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters and immediately feel that we must be more appropriately groomed in order to be taken seriously. We accept mediocrity as a destination, and there we die. Never knowing we were even treading water, losing our way in the mists of morning, and inhaling the salt water, slipping quietly under.
