The opportunity for individual courage is diminished
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2025 4:55 am
Paradoxically, the will to conquer nature may be seen as supremely natural, empire building nothing more nor less than the impulse to live. On the other hand, the "other worldly" notion of the supreme value of each and every human life in contrast to the life of entire animal species has had the unnatural effect of domesticating the world and as the world is increasingly domesticated, At the simplest level, the green areas of the world are rapidly vanishing. Indeed, the one fact common to all cultures and nations of the world, as pointed out already in Issue 11 of this magazine, and far too rarely pointed out,
The expansion of buildings and roads at the expense of green spaces and the not unrelated increase in the human population-the squeezing out of the wilderness and the confinement of wildlife to parks and phone number list socially designated areas. The human individual is no longer called upon to compete with nature as an individual but with the technics which he has created to ensure that nature can be effectively exploited to meet the demands of a rising population, itself the consequence of human technical and medical success. The wilderness has been conquered on this planet, distance no longer a factor in this world which costs significant time and cultures no longer sealed off from each other. Old forms of imperialism are being replaced by new, mainly occult forms with more power to them than glory.
There is a good case for saying that Nietzsche's belief is widely accepted in our society, the belief namely that ambition is a sign of virtue and resentment a sign of psychological problems. To argue that for all cases the will to power is "good" and a lack of it "bad" is to remove from the notion of morality all religious, idealistic or metaphysical preconceptions, which is what Nietzsche did. But modern society has retained a crucial element of Christian teaching which Nietzsche entirely rejected, and that is belief in the sacredness of individual human life.
The expansion of buildings and roads at the expense of green spaces and the not unrelated increase in the human population-the squeezing out of the wilderness and the confinement of wildlife to parks and phone number list socially designated areas. The human individual is no longer called upon to compete with nature as an individual but with the technics which he has created to ensure that nature can be effectively exploited to meet the demands of a rising population, itself the consequence of human technical and medical success. The wilderness has been conquered on this planet, distance no longer a factor in this world which costs significant time and cultures no longer sealed off from each other. Old forms of imperialism are being replaced by new, mainly occult forms with more power to them than glory.
There is a good case for saying that Nietzsche's belief is widely accepted in our society, the belief namely that ambition is a sign of virtue and resentment a sign of psychological problems. To argue that for all cases the will to power is "good" and a lack of it "bad" is to remove from the notion of morality all religious, idealistic or metaphysical preconceptions, which is what Nietzsche did. But modern society has retained a crucial element of Christian teaching which Nietzsche entirely rejected, and that is belief in the sacredness of individual human life.