$26. THE HERD. Remember Nietzsche tries to use provocative & vertical terminology in a non-pejorative way to entrap those who are not his readers. So the notion of the Herd should be taken as descriptive and not demeaning. Taken as a whole, his writings are full of praise for the Herd and intimations about the need to overcome our idealistic disdain for mass of humanity. The Overman has no resentment. Actually the word herd is not used often. It has a distinctively mammalian or bovine flavor. We think of the Minotaur (cow-brain, human body) as the opposite of the integral Centaur (fully human consciousness, fully embodied animality). However an insectoid metaphor is also pertinent. We talk of swarm behavior. We talk of the hive. There is a voluntary, primitive and not unintelligent instinct at work in groupthink. My simplified synopsis of ideology is that insect hives are pre-consciously impulsed to preserve the existing resource-control systems of the hive. And in humans (as per Marx) we subconsciously do things that favor the existing material controllers even at our own expense. This is exacerbated in the shift from ethnocentric to worldcentric consciousness. The observation that Herd-morality (simplified neighbor-love, hatred of arrogance, passive-aggressive equality sentiment, special honor for the lest among us, etc.) has become the standard notion of morality should fascinate us. It is only one of several instinct sets trying to empower themselves within us but it has had an impressive historical triumph. In The Geneaology of Morals Nietzsche traces this alongside other evolving lines of moral history. Individuals, up to an including so-called Overmen, are tasked to understand and appropriately serve/govern the folk-herd and the herd of the whole world.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 00:06:06 +0000