call it what you want
...milar to the man who has found his American dream. He is happy with what he has and is comfortable in his surroundings and will thus not aspire to create more. Nietzche calls these men more apelike than apes themselves because it is the difference of being able to create a culture that separates us from the animals. In Zarathustra’s prologue the Ultimate man says “Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both are too much of a burden.”(46) The Ultimate man is, in context, exactly and only that which he calls himself. The Ultimate, being the highest form of and, embodiment of man and only of man. He can therefore not become anything more than just a man. The ultimate man is contempt but does not like to be called contempt. He is, as Zarathustra puts it, not willing to walk the rope across. Therefore he is on the going-down and not the going-across such as the tight rope walker. The Ultimate man is someone who is not interested in separating themselves from the herds. The man who has separated himself from the herds and who has taking the treacherous journey of the going-across will become the Superman. The Superman is the man who has found rest from the tension that plays itself out on all men and woman. The Apollonian and Dionysian tension. The superman is not weighed down by the symbolic gravity. This gravity is a symbol for the guilt that weighs down the man who is aspiring to be more than just a man. This is the guilt of blasphemy. The Superman has found true release from the tension because he is comfortable that both will play a part in his life. The fact that he shall create something and know it will eventually be destroyed and is not troubled by this fact. This is similar to the child who makes a sand castle and knows that the tide shall soon enough destroy it. Therefore the Superman does not hold on to his possessions to make them last forever but instead he marvels in and enjoys every experience. He enjoys it but knows that it will be repeated over and over through out his life but, to coin the English term, he enjoys every moment as if it were his last. In this part of the essay I shall continue with Zarathustra’s prologue and the three metamorphoses. Namely the land of culture, of scholars and the spirit of gravity. The land of culture is as Zarathustra describes it a place “with fifty mirrors around you, flattering and repeating your opalescence.”(142) this relates to the lecturers in the universities which Nietzche studied at. The lecturers that govern what they thought culture was but as Zarathustra saw it this culture was only the cultures that had been thought of already. Therefore the lecturers were only collecting old information and teaching it to others. These men or lecturers could be assimilated to the superman who is contempt in his surroundings and is too afraid to try and discover a new culture and therefore they hide in their ‘wealth’ of knowledge. They are so scared of burden that they teach their own younger generations only what they know so as not to upset the balance of convenience. They teach this because they can hide. “Truly, you could wear no better masks than your own faces.”(142) “You are unfruitful”(143) says Zarathustra meaning that nothing new or usable shall come from these men unlike a fruit tree that bears new fruit every season and is happy in knowing that its fruit shall be picked or become overripe and fall to the ground. As previously stated this metamorphoses (of the land of culture) is similar to the Ultimate man who is more of Apollonian construct than anything else because they do not desire to create a new culture but revel in the culture’s of others. Of scholars in Zarathustra’s prologue deals with the students that have been taught by these lecturers in the land of culture. They are being taught nothing new, only which which has been taught to their lecturers and in turn is taught to them. Zarathustra says” so they too wait and stare at thoughts that others have thought.”(147) These scholars, because they know of nothing else, therefore defend what they have been told as if it were the only truth, so if one questions them “they involuntarily raise a dust like sacks of flour.”(147) Zarathustra uses this term of a sack of flour as a symbol for the fact that these students take what was original (the wheat in the fields of golden sunshine) and grind it down to its smallest particles (the constituents of any culture). Zarathustra states that when he lived among these students he lived above them therefore “They grew angry with me for that.” This is similar to his story of the tight rope walker who tried to go-across the herds and above them to the superman and was due to this seen as guilty of blasphemy and weighed down by gravity. Gravity that is symbolic for the guilt that is cast by the Ultimate man at anyone who feels they can achieve better then what is accepted. Nietzche believes that men are not equal in the sense that we are all not granted the same opportunities such as education. This made the students angry “so they put dirt and rubbish between their heads and me.” (148) this is once again an example of those who are more Apollo...