The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche invented an astonishing idea—the idea that God is dead. Naturally, many people were deeply disturbed by that idea. I want to propose an equally startling idea—the truth is dead and we have killed it.
This is what Nietzsche said in his book, The Gay Science in his parable of the Madman. The tale went like this:
“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly, “I seek God! I seek God!…”Wither is God! He cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers…But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? …is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?…Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God?…God is dead. God remains dead and we have killed him…What was holiest and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us?”
I want to propose a new parable. It is very much similar. It goes like this:
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly, “I seek the truth! I seek the truth!…”Wither is Truth! He cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed it—you and I. All of us are his murderers…But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? …is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?…Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying Truth?…Truth is dead. Truth remains dead and we have killed him…What was holiest and most powerful of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us?
I found proof of this momentous event about week or so ago.
The war against truth is over and truth lost! It is a sad day. The enemies of truth have won the war decisively. I have long suspected that, but now I know it is absolutely true. I am not trying to exaggerate to make a point. Truth has surrendered and been executedsand we are all doomed.
The final straw in the battle occurred about a week ago when the President of the United States tweeted that Stella Immanuel was “very impressive,” “an important voice,” and, believe it or not “spectacular.” What did she do to warrant such gushing by the President. First, she endorsed the use of “hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 wonder cure.” That of course is plenty enough to secure Trump’s dying devotion in his relentless search for a Hail Mary cure for the virus in order to give him a chance of winning the 2020 US presidential election which he likely sees as slipping through his fingers at this time. I personally do not think he has lost it yet. The devotion of his followers is theologically based and is quite able to overcome innumerably obstacles. Don’t count him out yet as Hillary and her much less rabid followers did prematurely in 2016.
Trump has praised Stella Immanuel on social media and as a direct result millions of his followers have read or heard his direct endorsement of her. Most of those followers believe everything he says, no matter how outrageous, and no matter how much evidence is easily available to contradict him, so it is very likely, if not certain, that tens of millions of Americans believe what she says too.
And what does she say? This is where it gets bizarre. Here is how Andrew Sullivan has described some of her beliefs:
“Will Sommer of the Daily Beast took a deeper look this week into Immanuel’s beliefs. “She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches,” Sommer wrote. “She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by ‘reptilians’ and other aliens.”
Immanuel said in a recent speech in Washington that the power of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment means that protective face masks aren’t necessary. None of this has a basis in fact, but try telling that to the tens of millions who have not only seen it but have been urged to believe it by the President of the United States.
These are views that Trump has endorsed as “spectacular” and has referred to her as “an important voice.” Not only that but since these posts, his popularity among Americans has gone up! As a result of this the conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan has asserted,
“Given this and a few other hideous developments, it’s time to acknowledge the painfully obvious: America has waved the white flag and surrendered.
With nearly 150,000 dead from COVID-19, we’ve not only lost the public-health war, we’ve lost the war for truth. Misinformation and lies.”
I concur.
Remember that millions of people follow Trump and believe in him with theological devotion. They believe this nonsense! The proof that truth is dead is that hardly anyone objects when people believe stuff like this. That would not be possible if truth were still alive. Yes truth is dead and we have killed it. And that has some profound consequences. I wish it were not so, but this subject will be continued.
preach, rev. newfield, preach!
a few comments……
i wonder whether the kind of fantasies you have quoted can be in play because there might be no truth, not even scientific truth. one thinks, perhaps tritely, of quantum mechanics and attempts at quantification/measurement which are foiled because the process of same alters the object in question.
perhaps more germanely, you have the generalized flatness and relativity of post-modernity, all accentuated by digitalization.
we must remember that one of the major issues in the protestant reformation was universal access to the “truth” of the book, heretofore sequestered by the papists. so you have gutenberg and ultimately the computer. “everything” accessible “all the time.”
the digital enthusiasts originally, and still, thought/think this would/will bring “real democracy.” and so the fantasies spin out into infinity.
nevertheless, the fantasies are just stupendous. vaginas/uterii, growths, reptiles, dreams, demons, witches, sex with same/but only in dreams of course, hostile aliens from outer space, genetic materials, and on.
there is fear, there is anxiety, there is rage, there is guilt in the land. this must be transgenerational trauma. the chickens are coming home to roost.
what happened in the new world centuries ago, continuing into the present, is really unspeakable. genocide, slavery, the nuclear bomb, cluster bombs, napalm, mass incarceration, solitary confinement, torture, the amerikan civil war, etc.
the blood shed by the christians with their eschatological death drive, those crazy religion-obsessed puritans who emerged out of that cloudy, foggy, rain-soaked english monarchical delirium and stormed the east coast, is flooding the present. we are drowning in the blood. “reality” has become a phobic dream of drowning. we are freaking.
which leads us to nietzsche of course. nothing like a tortured syphilitic german to explain it all.
your obsessive compulsive and very artistic orchid hunt is an attempt to catalogue, to re/present, to bring to the light of day that beauty before the scorching acidic toxic onslaught of capital and technology finally burns everything down, including the precious orchid.
orangey IS the death drive. the spuk. the alien. he and his christian sycophants are precisely afraid of themselves. they have “unconsciously” seen the enemy and it is them, in their terms the “devil incarnate, the anti-christ.”
nothing more repulsive than racist violent white people, even to themselves.
this, btw, as you know is commonly referred to as projection.
what you might want to entertain more specifically are Qanon and the Boogaloos. the republican “tea party” is actually liberal by now. and those madmen are armed to the teeth.
paramilitary militias are as amerikan as apple pie. a, if not the, primary task of law enforcement originally was to capture escaped slaves. the right to bear arms by “militias” was all about fear of slave revolt.
after all it was only a few years hence when the haitians threw the french off the island. the yanqui were only too aware of the storm brewing in the caribbean.
a constitutional crisis is looming? civil war #2?
the only question is what will the supreme court and the military do.
“you don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind” is blowing.
Talk about preacher Pastor Rample you reveal yourself to have all the tools. I have much more to say about truth, including QAnon and Bugaloo but all in good time. I want to meander through this murky maze. But to suggest that the pursuit of orchids is not the pursuit of truth is pure blasphemy good sir. I strongly suggest you retract your tract. I fear a constitutional crisis or worse may occur in your adopted homeland. The devotion to their leader by Republicans (particularly evangelical Republicans) is incredible. It is nothing less than religious. When Trump said he could stand in Times Square and shoot someone and he would not lose any support is incredible but true. Truth even if it is dead is stranger than any fiction. Trump seems to be setting up his religious followers for a declaration that the upcoming presidential election will be invalid unless he wins, presumably, and one wonders what his zealous disciples will do. Being a prophet what do you think?
read more carefully reverend. and stop schputting.
i made no profession to truth or lack of it with regards to your pursuit of orchidean beauty. unless you are suggesting that all beauty is truth, and that is vey complicated philosophical ground given the difficulty in defining beauty, among other things.
the direction in which the wind is blowing will tell you what the disciples will do.
as for truth and fiction, i would suggest it be more appropriate to state that the real is stranger than fiction, the real being slightly less complicated than the true.
I fear that the concept of reality is just as illusive as truth. Both have bedevilled philosophers for millennia. Being a most humble philosopher at best I do not claim to have solved these immensely difficult philosophical problems. I wish I could. Perhaps you can enlighten me. For what its worth, I do believe in truth but only provisional truth which might have to be retracted or amended (like your tract) when more or better information or reasoning becomes available. I intend to blog about this subject when my meanderings take me there. I read a very interesting article by Jonathan Rauch last year which actually was sent to me by your cousin on the subject that I think comes as close to an acceptable theory of truth as I have found. I also like the idea of Keats that truth is beauty and beauty is truth and that is all we need to know. I actually blogged about it some time ago. Until then you don’t need a weather man or disciple to know which way the wind blows.