The subject of Nietzsche’s book Thus Spake Zarathustra, is the Superman (or Overman): the greatest persons the society produces; those who go over society and are the finest examples of what the society bequeaths humanity. Nietzsche himself claimed about his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra, “I allow no one to pass muster as knowing that book, unless every single word therein has at some time wrought in him a profound wound, and at some time exercised on him a profound enchantment”[1]. It is a book in which every line must be “expounded” (a third of the Genealogy of Morals is and example of one phrase in it being expounded) and ruminated (like a cow chewing its cud into its four stomachs).
The Superman is variously described in the prologue to Thus Spake Zarathustra, as the surpasser of man; the meaning of the earth; the sea that can absorb a polluted river without being polluted; the overflowing cup; the never self-satisfied one; the one who will make man a laughing-stock.
To become a Superman, Nietzsche speaks of the three metamorphoses of the spirit that are necessary to the revaluing of values – to the creation of the new and novel. It is through the creation of new values that greatness can be achieved and greatness is always novel because second place is never great compared to first place.
Most people are not Supermen. Most are Last Men, that is utilitarian and perfectly adapted and adjusted to their environment. Utilitarians seek utility, happiness, and pleasure while avoiding pain and discomfort. Nietzsche believed that nothing great could come from following the utilitarian code. Followers of utilitarianism are like animals ruled by negatives such as fear of lack and fear of pain. Supermen self-rule on something positive such as joy and greatness. “If we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how. – Man does not strive after happiness; only the Englishman does that.”[2] A person who has risen above their animal nature, the Overman, seeks greatness perhaps even at the expense of survival. The Englishman Nietzsche refers to is John Stuart Mill who popularized utilitarianism and made way for the Last Man. “‘We have discovered happiness,’ –say the last men, and blink thereby.”[3]
From out of the utilitarian seeking, unquestioning masses of people that make up the vast majority of the system of human society, some’s spirit rise up and become camels. The camel is the first metamorphose of the spirit on the way to becoming a Superman. People whose spirit has risen to the level of the camel are the saints, heroes, and martyrs that are devoted to the system or external ideal they choose to serve. They do not create new value, but they take a principled stance in defense of old values. They develop their moral strength defending and upholding their externally derived values even to the point of sacrificing their life, if need be. For Nietzsche saints, heroes, and martyrs are those who have achieved the lowest level of spiritual development – far above the great majority who never develop their spiritual nature.
Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest longeth its strength…. 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.
Someone whose spirit is a camel does more than just tolerate the system. They identify with, actively support, justify, sacrifice for, and happily bear the weight of the system. The camel takes personal responsibility for the system and is determined to keep the system on track and working. Like the camel that can take up very heavy loads and continue to do so under grueling even painful conditions these people will pay any price, expend every effort, and suffer any cost for their uncritically externally determined good ideal.
However, sometimes, at some point in its loneliest self-reflective moment, the camel metamorphosizes into a lion by willing for itself. Saying “NO!” against the expectations of the system is the lion spirit’s first willful action. It is not a “no” of defeat or of giving up, rather it is a “NO!” that signals new awareness, change, growth and critical examination. These people the system will call heretics, usurpers, traitors, outcasts and they are. They will be maligned, punished, discredited, sidelined, even killed by the system. The individual with the spirit of the lion rejects something, a part of the system or the whole system it formally so wholeheartedly supported. The lion suddenly takes a new and opposite principled stance against the system. The strength of the camel is now again put to the test as the lion must find the courage of its own negative conviction in order to stand against part of the system or more likely as time goes on, the whole system. This “NO!” is a rejection of an imposition of the system, and the system will start responding by imposing increasing severe sanctions on the spirit that opposes it. Where, formally, for the camel the system could do no wrong, for the lion the system can in fact do wrong, and the perceived wrong is spiritually intolerable. The lion refuses the system and thereby summons the attention of the system to a battle of wills.[4] The lion is not a rebel, someone who simply opposes – a rebel merely apes a lion. More often than not a rebel is part of the system; part of an existing system of values – nothing really threatening to the system. The true lion stage cannot be reached without first being a camel for without the strength developed as a camel the lion will lose its battle with the great dragon.
[When], 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 scaled-covered beast; on every scale glittereth golden, “Thou-shalt!”
The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and thus spaketh 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.
Saying “NO!” and realizing that one has to struggle to be free is the task of the lion. The fight for freedom against the system is hard – it must be hard. Not only does one have to reject the perceive wrong or error in the system one will likely have to give up the privilege the system formally granted in order to achieve the necessary freedom. Furthermore, this fight, this rejection of the system is not yet anything new or novel it is just a shift in the existing range of predictable possibilities within the bounds of the system we call society. At this point it is always hard to tell from outside if the system is dealing with a real lion or just a rebel aping the lion.
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.
Freedom is a necessary but in itself insufficient condition. To gain freedom to create, the individual must first say “NO!” to the world, to the prescribed “thou-shalt”. This “NO!” will be expensive. The more meaningful the more expensive. Once the lion defeats the dragon’s system (it will most likely not look like a victory from outside – it will look like defeat for the spirit that is a lion for they will have appeared to lose everything. But, for the rebel it will be capitulation and reintegration into the system – the rebel might even claim a victory; and thus become a laughing-stock), once the lion is free of the constraints of the system, the lion must then become a child to create new value.
According to Nietzsche, in addition to freedom, four more things are necessary to manifest what Schumpeter would later call an uncaused cause: the phenomenon of novelty.
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.
Having developed the strength of a camel by having been willing to pay any price, expend every effort and suffer any cost, having fought the system and earned freedom by staying true to one’s negative convictions, one has grown the spiritual mettle to become a child: a novel value creator. These are the first creators of something new. In time they will come to be called founders, originators, transformative entrepreneurs, the creative or visionary geniuses behind a new invention, discovery, or social force.
The child is innocent and not encumbered by the conceptual limits of a system. The child easily forgets what one has previously learned when it does not seem good, right, or true. The child looks at the world anew, as if for the first time, free of the imposed values of the system. The child makes a game of a new beginning. Maturity is having “reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play.”[5] A child at play in their own world where the child is free to will its own values into existence, with the courage of a lion, and the strength of a camel, this spiritual child has the power to change the trajectory of the world with the strength and courage of his own self-derived convictions.
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.
It is with the mind of a child that one can imagine a new world, a world that is novel and free of the constraints of the adult and popularly presumed practical world. There are infinite possibilities that a child can imagine consequently there are infinite possibilities for novelty. With the strength and courage developed in earlier camel and lion stages each individual with the spirit of a child will create the new world they have imagined.
[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, Preface 8, page 7
[2] Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows, 12, page 33
[3] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra’s Prologue, 5, page 7
[4] Since the death of the single grand meta-narrative and the proliferation of language games, the individual’s spirit still has a vast choice of language games to join. Nietzsche wrote at the end of the grand meta-narrative age and did not appear to see the postmodern world as Lyotard did. If the lion rejects one narrative and in the fight against the dragon simply adopts another then that spirit has regressed, it is a camel again.
[5] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a philosophy of the future, Apophthegms and Interludes, 94