The Perfect Murder

In Praise of the Most Notorious Criminal in Human History

Note to reader: I considered breaking up this article into two parts. I decided to go ahead and publish it as one piece and advise the reader to read it in two parts, which you will see I have laid out below in Part One and Part Two. I’m pretty sure doing this probably violates at least three best practices for writing Substack articles and I hope to be spared the wrath of the Substack gods. I apologize if the length of this article is traumatizing. The good news is that there’s French Silk Pie and Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream in the middle.

The Perfect Murder: Part One

So, I admit it. I got hooked on Dateline. I’ve always been fond of who-done-it crime shows, real-life mysteries, and investigative reporting. There are 32 seasons of Dateline, starting in 1992. I’d say that more than half of the episodes involve either love triangles or life insurance policies.

I’m amazed by how many people in the world view murder as a reasonable way of solving a problem. I will never understand this. In virtually every Dateline episode, I can think of at least five alternatives a person could have chosen without resulting to committing murder.

All the Dateline correspondents are compelling but the white-haired Keith Morrison guy puts me in a trance. There’s just something about his voice, tone, vocal inflections and story-telling knack that keeps me on the hook. If you’ve watched Dateline, you pretty much know that the first three suspects presented in an episode, that you are convinced did it, didn’t. That's what makes Dateline interesting - there are so many twists and turns. Just when you’re convinced the husband did it, turns out it was the super-nice-but-secretly-psychotic-and-broke handyman.

I’m dumbfounded by how many people think they can commit murder AND get away with it. This is entirely irrational. I realize there are exceptions, but if you kill someone you will be caught, sooner or later. No amount of bleach used to clean a crime scene is going to change this. The lengths a person will go to carry out a premeditated plan to kill someone are absurd and rarely work. There is no perfect murder.

Or is there?

In today’s article I want to introduce you to someone who got away with the biggest murder in human history. You could argue he is history’s most notorious criminal. No, it’s not El Chapo, who was responsible for the deaths of over 34,000 people. The criminal I’m referring to didn’t actually kill a human being. It was much worse than that. This person took down the Almighty. It wasn’t done with a gun or a knife. It was his philosophy that caused the death of God. Or at least the death of certain conceptions of God.

This divine homicide occurred in 1882. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was found guilty. He argued that he should not be held solely responsible and claimed others were involved. In fact, he said we all are accessories to the crime.

Who was Friedrich Nietzsche?

When discussing Friedrich Nietzsche, it’s important to spell and speak his name properly. Remember that in both his first and last name, the ‘i’ comes before the ‘e.’ You pronounce Nietzsche as knee-cha. That ‘zsc’ in the middle is silent.

It would have perhaps made sense to discuss Nietzsche in my previous series on philosophy, titled, Philosophers You have Never Heard Of. But since most people have in fact heard of Friedrich Nietzsche, he didn’t seem to fit there. The last few weeks he has come up often in my writing about “death of God theology” and “Christian atheism”, and this compelled me to write this article. Not covering Friedrich Nietzsche in such discussions would be like covering the history of NBA basketball and leaving out Michael Jordan.

Limitations of covering Nietzsche

One cannot adequately cover even the broadest strokes of Friedrich Nietzsche’s life and philosophical thinking in one short article. It might be grossly overstating the point to even consider this article a Nietzschean “primer”. There are Nietzsche scholars who have devoted their academic career to being experts on this German philosopher. This made writing this article difficult.

[Please pause and feel my pain, and resume reading.]

Friedrich Nietzsche is considered one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. The history of philosophy, theology, and psychology since the early 20th century is unintelligible without Nietzsche. An entire article (or book) could be written, solely covering his impact and influence. A very long list of many of the greatest German and French philosophers labored in his debt. Nietzsche is a towering figure in the movements of existentialism and deconstruction.

Theologian Paul Tillich acknowledged his debt to Nietzsche, and Martin Buber, Judaism’s greatest 20th-century thinker, counted Nietzsche among the three most-important influences in his life. Psychologist Carl Jung was deeply influenced by him, as was Sigmund Freud, who said of Nietzsche: “The degree of introspection achieved by Nietzsche had never been achieved by anyone, nor is it ever likely to be achieved again.”

Novelists such as Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse were inspired by Nietzsche and wrote about him, as did poets and playwrights such as George Bernard Shaw, Rainer Maria Rilke, and William Butler Yeats. Nietzsche’s great influence is due not only to his originality but also to the fact that he was one of the German language’s most-brilliant prose writers.

It was quite fortuitous that early on in my leaving-religion deconstruction process, I stumbled into Friedrich Nietzsche in a used bookstore, and proceeded to read all his major works, which include (listed in the order I would suggest reading them):

• The Birth of Tragedy

• The Gay Science

• Beyond Good and Evil

• On the Genealogy of Morals

• Thus Spoke Zarathustra

• Ecce Homo

Some of Nietzsche’s writing requires robust intellectual labor. For a useful overview I would suggest reading: Walter Kaufmann’s Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist or Alexander Nehamas’ Nietzsche: Life as Literature. You might even consider reading these before tackling the works by Nietzsche himself.

Nietzsche background

One can peruse the Nietzsche Wikipedia page for a summation of Nietzsche’s background. It’s his religious upbringing and leaving-religion journey that especially connected with me.

Nietzsche was German, born into a family that was religious and Christian, which he would later denounce. His father was a Lutheran pastor and there had been hopes Friedrich would have followed in his footsteps. For a season, Nietzsche pursued this course and studied theology academically, but ultimately abandoned his interests in religion. Many of you may be able to relate to Nietzsche’s leaving-religion journey:

• Raised in religion

• Had doubts

• Deconstructed his beliefs

• Underwent a process of deconversion

• Became a critic of institutional Christianity and denounced orthodox Christian theology

• Cultivated a post-religion or non-religious spirituality

Any of this sound familiar?

Notwithstanding Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche may have been one of the harshest critics of the Christian religion among the greatest philosophers. He wrote:

“I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worse possible corruption. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul.”

Ouch!

Nietzsche had a great love of science and art, and of course, philosophical thought. In his time, he was not known to the masses, and considered a loose cannon by most. Nietzsche’s brilliant thinking was largely discovered posthumously. During his lifetime he was just this guy in 19th century Germany – born to a preacher, and trying to figure it out.

When studying legendary thinkers of the past, don’t put them on pedestals or lose sight of the fact that they were human beings just like you and me, with their own struggles, fears, dreams, desires, difficulties, disappointments, tragedies and triumphs. In my investigation of Nietzsche, I not only appreciated his insights but I also came to love and understand him as a human being, and at times saw myself in him. Perhaps there is a little of Nietzsche in all of us.

Nietzsche as an academic

Nietzsche pursued the field of philology, which is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics. Nietzsche knew several languages, and was a Latin and Greek scholar, and then gave his time, energy and vigor to philosophical study and thought. He had an academic career as a professor. There are major English translations of 15 of his most notable writings. He wrote poetry and composed music. It would be safe to refer to him as a polymath. His work is considered to have had a profound influence on modern intellectual history.

One insight to take from Nietzsche’s intellectual growth and development is how he explored a variety of fields of knowledge and experience, including: history, literature, science, philosophy, linguistics, theology and the arts.

Historical events during Nietzsche’s life

Every person is influenced and shaped by their historical times, cultural milieu, and life experiences. It's useful to be aware of the events that took place over the course of Nietzsche's life (1844-1900), some of which had a profound impact upon his thinking, including:

• Marx’s Communist Manifesto is published (Marx dies)

• Darwin publishes, Origin of the Species

• Abraham Lincoln becomes President (Civil War ends)

• Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is published

• The Prussia-France War takes place

• Germany small-pox epidemic

• Bell invents the telephone

• Van Gough commits suicide

• Otto von Bismarck appointed the first Chancellor of the German Empire

• Hitler is born

Darwin's The Origin of the Species proved to be quite significant in Nietzschean thought, which we will touch upon later.

Nietzsche’s mental health struggles

When Nietzsche was 44 years-of-age he had a physical and mental breakdown, which he never fully recovered from.

There is quite a bit of conjecture about Nietzsche’s mental health status, especially in his later years. The story goes that on the morning of January 3, 1889, while Nietzsche was taking a long walk through the city streets, he saw a horse being whipped by its owner. The merchant apparently had difficulty getting his stubborn horse to move, so in frustration began to flog the animal. Distraught at the sight, Nietzsche rushed toward him in a flight of rage, threw his arms around the horse’s neck in order to defend it from the vicious blows, only to break into tears and collapse to the ground right after. Nearly arrested for this unexpected outburst, the philosopher was quickly ushered away by his friend and landlord, David Fino, who took him home. He spent the next two days on a couch in a complete vegetative state.

Soon after, he suffered at least two strokes, which partially paralyzed him, leaving him unable to speak or walk. He experienced a complete loss of his mental faculties, and lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister until he died in 1900 at 55 years-of-age.

The human journey is both beautiful and tragic, and Nietzsche's life is a reminder of this. Throughout history some of the most brilliant people had mental health struggles, such as Vincent van Gogh, Ludwig van Beethoven, Isaac Newton, Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, and Sylvia Plath.

Nietzschean Concepts

The central philosophical ideas of Nietzsche include:

• Death of God (debunking the existence of “God”)

• Übermensch (evolutionary self-actualization/transcendence)

• Beyond Good and Evil (refutation of traditional morality)

• Will to power (latent desire and energy, driving evolution)

• Lion, Camel, Child (deconstruction process for liberation)

• Eternal recurrence (thought experiment about life eternal)

• Amor fati (resolute acceptance of everything that happens in one’s life)

These themes are especially prominent in his two books: The Gay Science, and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I can’t cover all these Nietzschean ideas, but I chose a few that most relate to the religious deconstruction process.

God is Dead

Nietzsche came to believe that religion (particularly Christianity) and the religious conception of God were the greatest obstacles to human liberation and self-actualization. He wrote, “Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.” Friedrich wasn’t the type to mince words.

In his book, The Gay Science (which is also translated, The Joyful Wisdom), Nietzsche introduces the idea of the “death of God” in a section commonly referred to as “The Parable of the Madman”. A portion of the parable reads:

“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 am looking for God! I am looking for God!"

As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers…

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out…

It has been further related that on that same day the madman entered divers churches and there sang a requiem. Led out and quietened, he is said to have retorted each time: "what are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

Nietzsche’s idea about the “death of God” is not meant to be taken literally, as though he believed that the God of Christianity existed and then died. Nietzsche did not hold a belief in such a God. He wrote, “The Christian conception of God is one of the most corrupt conceptions of God arrived at on earth.”

About the death of God, Nietzsche wrote, “The greatest recent event in history is that God is dead – the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable.” The progress of science (Darwinian evolution) and the triumph of reason (advanced by philosophers such as Spinoza, Hume and Voltaire), took religion out at the knees, in Nietzsche’s estimation. He believed that God died in the hearts and minds of his own generation of modern men - killed by an indifference that was itself directly related to a pronounced cultural shift away from faith and towards rationalism and science.

Despite Nietzsche’s pronouncement of the death of “God”, I have discussed in previous articles that it’s a false choice to say that the options are either the Christian God or no God. Another alternative, for example, would be Baruch Spinoza’s monistic conception of God, which I detail in this article. More recently, I’ve written about “Christian Atheism” as a post-religion pathway for conceiving “God”.

Such a radical paradigm shift often leaves an existential void in the lives of many people. For some, the death of God is a trap door into the black hole of nihilism.

Every person who has left their religion, deconstructed their belief-system, and disavowed their former theology, knows the impact of the "God is dead" reality. Most people attach their entire sense of self to their religious persona. Their fundamental existential security is based upon their religious beliefs, which supply answers to all the big questions such as God, existence, purpose, and afterlife. A person’s religious group and sub-culture is also the hub of their relationships, community, social life and support system. When a person leaves religion, everything that “God” represented - identity, security, community - comes crashing to the ground. When a person comes to see that their Christian God has become unbelievable, the fall-out of this realization is often volatile and destabilizing.

I have addressed this in a few articles such as:

• The 5 Cold Hard Truths of Leaving Religion

• How Atheism Fails Religion-Leavers

• Are there absolutes?

• The Leaving-Religion Do and Don't List

Though it was the cultural and societal glue that held Western Civilization together, Nietzsche despised religion and the Christian worldview, having been raised in an intensely devout and pietistic family atmosphere, which he saw as having been unduly restrictive. Nietzsche viewed Christian Morality as harmfully repressive. He would have agreed with the ideas of the late noteworthy atheist, Christopher Hitchens, as elucidated in the book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Nietzsche came to see religion as a poison that made individuals and society, sick.

For Nietzsche, the recognition that “God is Dead” should have been considered by the men and women of his generation, as his book title suggests, a Joyous Wisdom. The death of God allowed people to lead less guilt-ridden lives in a world that was no longer to be seen as inherently sinful. He believed that earthly lives could become more joyful, meaningful and healthy, unshackled from faith-related fears for the state of an one’s eternal soul.

But one does not etch the name of God on a tombstone easily. This same God, before death, was the foundation of a Christian morality and worldview, which defined and unified our approach to life as a shared cultural set of beliefs and outlook upon life. As discussed in my article, The Case For (and Against) Cultural Christianity: Did Richard Dawkins Renege His Atheism?, even notable atheist Richard Dawkins praises “cultural Christianity” out of concern for a loss of moral mores in an un-Christian West.

Nietzsche understood the dire ramifications of God’s death. He alluded to it in, “The Parable of the Madman”:

“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 the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time?”

Or as Carl Jung put it, “The religious myth is one of man’s greatest and most significant achievements, giving him the security and inner strength not to be crushed by the monstrousness of the universe.”

Nietzsche understood that a universe without God could quickly feel random, meaningless, empty, dreadful, lonely, directionless, pointless, purposeless, hopeless, and terrifying., (yes, that was 10 adjectives). Virtually every shed of Western civilization has been tied to the idea and belief in God. Kill off God, and there’s not much left!

Shakespeare’s words seem fitting:

“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

So, now what do we do?

Now that God’s dead, along with all our explanations about the universe, about ourselves, about what it all means, about why we are here, about morality and good and evil, about the afterlife, gone... now what? How do we live post-God?

On Monday, the whole universe, our lives and everything that matters and makes sense, is predicated upon God. Then you wake up Tuesday morning and you’re reading God’s obituary! How do you cope with a godless universe, without barricading yourself in the closet in a fetal position or binge-watching Dateline episodes with French Silk Pie, covered with Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream?

Pie and ice cream can only do so much, we need a new way of making sense of the universe and our place in it. Paul Kurtz, often called the father of secular humanism wrote, “The skeptic has no illusions about life, nor a vain belief in the promise of immortality. Since this life here and now is all we can know, our most reasonable option is to live it fully.”

Nietzsche to the rescue!

The Perfect Murder: Part Two

Übermensch

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is an important philosophical novel written by Nietzsche, which expresses many of his central philosophical ideas. One of them is Übermensch, which is a concept that merges scientific evolution with a spirituality of human transcendence and self-actualization.

Nietzsche wrote in the Prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra,

“Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Übermensch – a rope over an abyss.”

The translation of Übermensch is “overman” or “superman” or “superhuman.” Not “superman” in terms of a caped hero (despite the above picture), but as a fully actualized human being. What’s frustrating is that Nietzsche doesn’t ever straight away define what he means by the term.

Let’s take Nietzsche’s statement: “Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Übermensch – a rope over an abyss.” There are a few things we could reasonably extract from these words:

1. Nietzsche understands the human being, not as a static thing, but an ever-evolving process. The human being, Nietzsche says, is like a rope. Essentially, a rope is a length of strong cord made by twisting together strands of natural fibers. To Nietzsche, the human being is a long and never-ending chord – a process of twisting together natural selection, evolutionary advancement, metabolization of life experiences, actualization of one’s potentialities, and so on.

2. Nietzsche says that this rope – that process of becoming a human being – is an evolutionary journey from “animal” to “Übermensch.” It’s the transformation from a very rudimentary being (animal) to a highly developed being (Übermensch). If one were to apply Simone de Beauvoir’s point, “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” to all human beings, you might understand this idea of becoming more clearly.

3. The process is unfolding, according to Nietzsche, “over an abyss.” What is this “abyss”? He doesn’t define it. One possibility is that he’s referring to the nature of the process as a challenging, formidable, daunting, perhaps even frightening, journey. He could also be referring to death. The evolutionary process is always unfolding in the shadows of our mortality. You could take that in a despairing way, or it could be used for inspiration to embrace the process more urgently, vigorously and courageously.

To Nietzsche, being transformed into this Übermensch, was the ultimate goal of civilized existence. The sources of this Nietzschean idea were several. Darwin’s theory of evolution suggested to Nietzsche the notion of humanity as an evolving species. Although Nietzsche emphatically rejected the concept of the superhuman as the outcome of a biological process; in a sense, the Übermensch is a self-determining form of Darwinism.

The German prefix über has connotations of transcendence. Mensch refers to a human being. The adjective übermenschlich translates to superhuman. In a nutshell, the “Übermensch” is one who has superseded the limitations or bondage of the human condition and reached a liberated state. It’s a self-actualizing process, unencumbered from the influences and authorities of society, and other people. This person wills their own destiny, creates their own values, and lives to the tune of their own spirit and highest truth.

In a passage from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, there is a story of a tightrope walker. Nietzsche writes:

“When Zarathustra came into the next town, which lies on the edge of the forest, he found many people gathered together in the market place; for it had been promised that there would be a tightrope walker. And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people:

"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

"All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.

"Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.

"Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth.”

“Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman—a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping.

“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.

“I love those who do not know how to live, except by going under, for they are those who cross over.”

Three things we can infer from this passage:

• Nietzsche believed our current status in our evolutionary trajectory is still quite rudimentary and we have a lot of evolving still to do.

• The process of self-actualization is a tandem endeavor of deconstruction (“going under”) and transcendence (“overture”).

• The death of God is central to Nietzsche’s idea of the emergence of the superhuman.

Darwin's theory of evolution, Jung’s archetype of the Hero, Maslow’s highest human achievement of self-actualization, Jesus as human and divine, Nietzsche's Übermensch - these all point to a deep human narrative about becoming more fully what we are and can be.

Nietzsche’s Übermensch is an aspect of how he constructed the post-God meaning of life. He wrote:

“Behold, I teach you the overman. The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes!”

Nietzsche regarded most people as being trapped in a slave-mentality (especially propagated by religion), whereby their inner spirit is crushed by external powers telling them what they “should” and “shouldn’t do”, what is “good” and “bad”. Nietzsche argued this slave-mentality hinders what he called the “will to power,” which he believed was the driving force in human development.

One interpretation of the Nietzschean idea of the “will to power” is that it is the nucleus of perpetual becoming - the actualizing process whereby one realizes their fullest potentialities in traveling the tightrope from animal to Übermensch. The Übermensch is that person who has overcome their social slavery and harnesses their “will to power” into independence, creativity, and originality. Nietzsche’s Übermensch was a symbol of self-actualization.

Nietzsche saw these ideas as the answer to the nihilism that could be the consequence of the widespread acceptance that God is dead. Carl Jung, in a series of lectures he gave about Nietzsche, said that Nietzsche had essentially created a new “God” or ultimate referent for a life of meaning.

Nietzsche took the position that to shed the chains of slavery, it is necessary to kill the slave master - to “kill” God. Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian revolutionary anarchist, 30 years Nietzsche’s senior, wrote: “As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.”

In “killing” God, Nietzsche believed we could transcend dogma, superstition, conformity and fear. He argued that we are deceiving ourselves as long as we held to the idea that there was some superior external deity we must answer to and depend upon. In it’s place, Nietzsche wrote,

“The Übermensch shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes.”

What does “faithful to the earth” mean? It could possibly mean being faithful to:

• Becoming fully what we are

• Actualizing our highest potentialities and possibilities

• Preventing and alleviating human and planetary suffering

• Aiding human and planetary flourishing

• Honoring the gift of life by embracing it wholly

What are the “otherworldly hopes” we should leave behind? Possibly…

• Afterlife fantasy about heaven

• Return of Jesus to save the world

• Magical thinking about supernatural powers

• Religious devotion to curry God’s favor

• Expectation of divine intervention

Nietzsche's “God is dead” idea is that the human being is no longer a plaything in the hands of God, but a master of his own fate. In self-destroying (deconstruction) and self-creating (reconstruction), Nietzsche wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, that the human being “becomes what he is”, a symbol in which “the creator and the creature are united.” In the process of perpetual self-overcoming, the Übermensch transcends the limits of human existence.

Nietzsche’s Übermensch idea holds some similarities to Jung’s hero archetype. Jung believed that the archetype of a hero is the oldest and the most powerful of all archetypes, and considered religious figures such as Buddha and Jesus to be its various personifications in humankind’s collective unconscious. The hero’s journey is ultimately a journey towards self-integration. The final destination, which Jung called “individuation”, is a state of wholeness.

Think about Nietzsche’s Übermensch idea as the hero’s journey:

• the human being is thrust into the drama and saga of human existence and the struggle to survive

• there is a dragon to be slain, in this case, religion and religion’s God

• the hero emerges triumphant as the Übermensch

With my theological background, it's not lost on me that Jesus could be considered a symbol of the Übermensch. Neither did it escape my attention that the death of Jesus was enacting the death of God, which is the central point of “death of God theology”.

Many people of Jesus’ day wanted and hoped that he would be their liberator and savior. They conferred a supernatural, divine and kingly quality upon Jesus as part of their cherished narrative about who he was and what he would do. And yet, Jesus dashed their hopes when he died on the cross. The message was “God is dead.” In other words, the “God” that Jesus represented to the people - a superior external deity that would liberate and save them and fix everything - was killed and dead.

Despite the fact that Christianity raised Jesus from the grave and kept the narrative going, Jesus himself insisted that he had to go away, lest people continue in the Jesus-savior story. Instead, Jesus said that the spirit (the will to power, the latent potential of the Übermensch, the spirit of self-actualization), which was within him, was also inside each of us. Jesus taught that one could find the power and authority (“kingdom of God”) to liberate themselves and the world, within themselves.

Marianne Williamson wrote, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.” Nietzsche’s point is that we must kill off what we allowed “God” to represent, and live like the only "God" there is, is that spirit, will, life and power of becoming that is at the heart of all things, including each of us.

Nietzsche saw his concepts of Übermensch and will to power as a couple building blocks for constructing a life of meaning outside the framework of God and religion.

So, what is the process of evolving from an animal to the Übermensch? How do we consciously participate in our evolutionary journey of becoming fully what we are? How do we harness the “will to power” to actualize our highest potentialities and possibilities?

Nietzsche lays out the process in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He does this by describing a metamorphosis that is symbolized by a camel, lion, and a child.

Metamorphosis: Camel, Lion, Child

What is the process of evolving from an animal to the Übermensch? How do we consciously participate in our evolutionary journey of becoming fully what we are? How do we harness the “will to power” to actualize our highest potentialities and possibilities?

Nietzsche lays out the process in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He does this by describing a metamorphosis that is symbolized by a camel, a lion, and a child. Through the character of Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes, “Three metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.”

Camel, Lion, Child

Nietzsche says that the first metamorphosis is when the “spirit becometh a camel.” The first stage of our journey of self-actualization is when we become camels.

Nietzsche writes,

“What is difficult? asks the spirit that would bear much, and kneels down like a camel wanting to be well loaded. What is most difficult, O heroes, asks the spirit that would bear much, that I may take it upon myself and exult in my strength?”

Camel

Nietzsche represents the first level of living that is common to the masses with a camel. Just as a camel is a beast of burden, fated to haul around heavy loads strapped to its back by others, so we as human beings carry around all the expectations, demands, pressures, rules, beliefs, shoulds, thou shalts, laws, regulations, creeds and burdens loaded on our backs by family, culture, society, education, religion and so on. Nietzsche said that most people will regrettably die as camels, having spent the entirety of their lives carrying the loads placed upon their backs.

Which is why we need the second metamorphosis – the spirit becoming a camel, must now become a lion.

Zarathustra says:

“All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself: and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness.

But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its own wilderness.

Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to its last God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon.

What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call Lord and God? "Thou-shalt," is the great dragon called. But the spirit of the lion saith, "I will."

"Thou-shalt," lieth in its path, sparkling with gold- a scale-covered beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, "Thou shalt!"

The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: "All the values of things- glitter on me.

All values have already been created, and all created values- do I represent. Verily, there shall be no 'I will' any more. Thus speaketh the dragon.

My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent?

To create new values- that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to create itself freedom for new creating- that can the might of the lion do.

To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that, my brethren, there is need of the lion.”

Lion

In the lonely wilderness the second metamorphosis happens. To fulfil its destiny, the spirit must rule over the wild and become lord of the wilderness in order to capture freedom. In order to do so, the lion, Nietzsche tells us, must struggle with the existing lord. The existing lord is a dragon called “thou shalt”, and that dragon is the great barrier to true freedom.

“Thou shalt” is permission; it’s all the moral laws and societal values that have come before that tell us who we are and how we should act. The dragon is seductive, it sparkles with golden scales and on each scale glitters a “thou shalt”.

The thousands of scales represent thousands of years of the “thou shalts” that have come before us, the centuries of codes of how you ought to think and act. The dragon is the enemy of true self-mastery.

The “sacred No” represents the utter rejection of external control and all traditional values. Everything imposed by other individuals, society, churches, governments, families, and all forms of propaganda must be denied in an empowered roar.

The lion is the “king of the beasts.” The lion courageously and fiercely rises up and slays the dragon, which are all the rules, limitations and shoulds. In this moment, the individual realizes that there is nothing to forbid them from creating their own life and values. They are free to impose their own will upon the world. This metamorphosis evokes the spirit of the lion to defeat the law of “Thou Shalt” and affirm the conditions of one’s own flourishing.

This is not the final stage, however. There is no happiness in fighting dragons all one’s life.

Nietzsche identified the third metamorphosis as a transformation of the spirit to the “camel”, to the “lion”, and finally to the "child".

Child

Zarathustra says:

“But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?

Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.

Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea unto life: its own will, willeth now the spirit; his own world winneth the world's outcast.”

Imagine a state of the pure individual who is unburdened of the rules, customs and conventions of society. Imagine the person who wills their own destiny, creates their own values, and exists in a liberated state of free creativity and play. What does that state resemble that is right under our noses? Of course, it’s the child. Nietzsche wrote, “The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes.”

Nietzsche believed that the truly free spirit will resemble children at play, who discover the world for the first time, unburdened by what came before (hence the “forgetting”). The child is curious and filled with wonder. The child is not weighed down by rules and values, the child discovers for themselves the meaning in things.

Having uttered the “sacred No” to reject everything that came before, the child shouts the “sacred Yes” that affirms life. We can create our own values, and take the risks to find what we want from life. The sacred Yes, Nietzsche tells us, is for the game of creation. The spirit becomes its own will, it wins its own world.

Life is no longer a reactive struggle to defeat other forces. Life is a celebration of one’s powers – a sustained act of pure affirmation and self-actualization. The child-like spirit knows the joy of life and the innocence of perpetual creation and flourishing.

In my work with people who have left religion, I see a lot of people getting stuck in the lion stage. For many years of their lives, they are the camels who are hauling around all the demands, expectations, doctrines rules and thou shalts of religion. They rise up and slay the dragon by leaving religion but the energy of their daily lives is perpetually fighting and slaying the religion dragon over and over and over again. In either case, religion is their central life reference point; they only shifted from being for religion to being against it. The critical stage they never get to is the “child” - celebrating and using their powers to be a free and whole person.

Nietzsche believed that life's meaning and purpose is closely tied to the evolutionary process of self-actualization from an animal to Übermensch. In Nietzsche's view, the "death of God" is a volatile but necessary milestone in our evolutionary journey. The Nietzschean concept of camel, lion, child describes the metamorphosis involved in realizing our fullest potentialities and possibilities in life.

There is something redeeming about both the “camel” (it’s strength) and the “lion” (slaying the dragon), but the “child” represents complete metamorphosis. The child represents a person with a “beginner’s mind” who sees the world as play, a fresh start, and perpetual motion. Children are innocent and forgetful, and represent a new beginning.

In a nutshell, Nietzsche believed that consciously engaging the evolutionary process from animal to Übermensch was the ultimate opportunity, responsibility and purpose of human beings in life. To Nietzsche, religion and orthodox Christian theology, prevented people from living truly liberated and meaningful lives.

Putting it all together

Though Nietzsche believed that science and rationalism made the idea of God unbelievable and thus rendering "God is dead", he also knew this destabilized society and could lead to Nihilism.

Nietzsche claimed the exemplary human being must craft his/her own identity through self-realization and do so without relying on anything transcending that life—such as God or a soul.

There are three stages of metamorphosis that lead to liberation and Übermensch, which he represented in a camel, lion, and child. Rather than pinning one’s hopes on the afterlife and being rescued from human suffering, Nietzsche used the idea of eternal recurrence and amor fati to challenge people to consider the current state of their lives, and embrace life fully and courageously, both the good and the suffering. Nietzsche wrote, “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful.”

I doubt there will ever be a Friedrich Nietzsche Dateline episode. He might be the most notorious criminal in human history, having pulled off the perfect murder in the death of God. Nietzsche wrote, “I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” The religious deconstruction process is often chaos, but can also be the pathway to the greatest liberation.

In Summary

• We often get French Silk Pie and Chocolate Peanut Butter ice cream from the Grocery Store Outlet down the street.

• I’m always happy to work in a Michael Jordan reference in a Substack article, having lived in Chicago during the MJ and Bulls dynasty.

• I need a vacation after attempting to consolidate Nietzsche into one article.

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• Friedrich Nietzsche was right - life can be affirmed as beautiful in spite of everything.

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche