By Andrew Carroll
Seeing the trenchant prose of Friedrich Nietzsche disrespectfully spray-painted on a church building, coupled with
anarchy symbols and clichéd atheist mantras, left this particular Nietzschean anarchist with a bad taste in his mouth.
With no actual knowledge of Nietzschean or anarchist philosophy to stop them – and plenty of angst to aid them – the vandals have made nothing but fools of themselves, even amongst fellow anarchists, atheists, and Nietzsche fans.
The famous, and usually misunderstood, quote “God is dead” is not, as our vandals seem to think, a criticism of the concept of God and any ethics derived therefrom, as much as it is a challenge to the atheists of the world, to the godless, whose value system is inherently nihilistic. This nihilism is something that Nietzsche believes must be overcome (and he died trying to do it). He believed the atheist must struggle, in a world without God, to create his own values and find his own meaning. Thus Zarathustra, the character who speaks the famous quote, goes on to say that we, after killing God as a source of value, must “become Gods ourselves…” In other words, we must become the source of our own values.
That is the true meaning of the death of God: the birth of the Overman (in German: Übermensch). I doubt our vandals ever actually read the original source of the statement, or understood it. Instead, in typical pseudo-philosophical fashion, they ripped the quote out of context, lost the meaning, and spray-painted it on the side of a church: an act which ironically shows our vandals’ utter lack of values.
Next, the vandals went on to spray-paint anarchy symbols. As an anarchist, I take offense to this as well. Most anarchists I have ever met have nothing but complete respect for private property, and nothing but tolerance for different belief systems – which is why we are anarchists. The State represents, to me, homogenization, rather than diversity; control, rather than cooperation; theft, rather than respect for ownership; and violence, rather than peace. The vandals represent all of the State’s values, and none of its antithesis – so how can they really call themselves anarchists?
Not only that, but the vandals are clearly ignorant of the many, many Christian anarchists – most notably, Leo Tolstoy. Even our founding fathers, who were religious, had strains of anarchist thought: which is why they never wanted the State to get involved with religion (or much else), so that religion would flourish in all its forms and people would be free to worship God in their own way. So to spray-paint anarchy symbols on a church represents a complete lack of understanding of anarchist and Christian philosophy.
Finally, the vandals did something so ridiculous, something so incredibly indicative of their ignorance, that one can not help but laugh:
They spelled Nietzsche wrong (yes, check out the video: they forgot the “c” every time).
How can we take such immaturity and hypocrisy seriously – especially when contrasted with the calm patience and caring forgiveness of the church members? Seems to me that the members of Hope Chapel know where their values lie, and they take opportunities like this – where pain is forced upon them by an immoral act – to grow stronger in their faith. Nietzsche was right all along:
“That which does not kill you makes you stronger.”
Let’s hope the vandals can grow a little from this, too.
Andrew Carroll
176 Church St.
Keene, NH
Published in the Keene Sentinel
