Everything Is F*cked

part-time jobs and is never able to study because she is literally putting food
on  the  table  for  her  brothers  and  sisters.  She  fails  the  same  exam  that  you
passed with flying colors. Is that fair? No, it’s not. You would probably feel
that she deserves some sort of special exception due to her situation—maybe

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a  chance  to  retake  the  test  or  to  take  it  at  a  later  date,  when  she  has  time  to
study  for  it.  She  deserves  this  because  she  is  a  “good”  person  for  her
sacrifices and disadvantages. This is slave morality.
In  Newtonian  terms,  master  morality  is  the  intrinsic  desire  to  create  a
moral separation between ourselves and the world around us. It is the desire
to create moral gaps with us on top. Slave morality is, then, an intrinsic desire
to  equalize,  to  close  the  moral  gap  and  alleviate  suffering.  Both  are
fundamental  components  of  our  Feeling  Brain’s  operating  system.  Both
generate and perpetuate strong emotions. And both give us hope.
Nietzsche  argued  that  the  cultures  of  the  ancient  world  (Greek,  Roman,
Egyptian,  Indian,  and  so  on)  were  master  morality  cultures.  They  were
structured to celebrate strength and excellence even at the expense of millions
of slaves and subjects. They were warrior civilizations; they celebrated guts,
glory, and bloodshed. Nietzsche also argued that the Judeo-Christian ethic of
charity,  pity,  and  compassion  ushered  slave  morality  to  prominence,  and
continued  to  dominate  Western  civilization  up  through  his  own  time.  For
Nietzsche,  these  two  value  hierarchies  were  in  constant  tension  and
opposition.  They  were,  he  believed,  at  the  root  of  all  political  and  social
conflict throughout history.
And, he warned, that conflict was about to get much worse.
Each religion is a faith-based attempt to explain reality in such a way that it
gives  people  a  steady  stream  of  hope.  In  a  kind  of  Darwinian  competition,
those religions that mobilize, coordinate, and inspire their believers the most
are those that win out and spread throughout the world.
8
In the ancient world, pagan religions built on master morality justified the
existence  of  emperors  and  warrior-kings  who  swept  across  the  planet,
expanding and consolidating territory and people. Then, about two thousand
years  ago,  slave  morality  religions  emerged  and  slowly  began  to  take  their
place. These new religions were (usually) monotheistic and were not limited
to one nation, race, or ethnic group. They preached their message to everyone
because their message was one of equality: all people were either born good
and later corrupted or were born sinners and had to be saved. Either way, the
result was the same. Everyone, regardless of nation, race, or creed, had to be
converted in the name of the One True God.
9
Then,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  a  new  religion  began  to  emerge  in
Europe,  a  religion  that  would  unleash  forces  more  powerful  than  anything
seen in human history.
Every  religion  runs  into  the  sticky  problem  of  evidence.  You  can  tell
people all this great stuff about God and spirits and angels and whatnot, but if

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the entire town burns down and your kid loses an arm in a fishing accident,
well, then . . . oops. Where was God?
Throughout  history,  authorities  have  expended  a  lot  of  effort  to  hide  the
lack of evidence supporting their religion and/or to punish anyone who dared
question the validity of their faith-based values. It’s for this reason that, like
most atheists, Nietzsche loathed spiritual religions.
Natural  philosophers,  as  scientists  were  called  in  Isaac  Newton’s  time,
decided that the most reliable faith-based beliefs were those that had the most
evidence  supporting  them.  Evidence  became  the  God  Value,  and  any  belief
that was no longer supported by evidence had to be altered to account for the
new observed reality. This produced a new religion: science.
Science  is  arguably  the  most  effective  religion  because  it  is  the  first
religion that is able to evolve and improve upon itself. It is open to anybody
and everybody. It is not moored to a single book or creed. It is not beholden to
some ancient land or people. It is not tethered to a supernatural spirit whose
existence cannot be proven or disproven. It is an ongoing, ever-changing body
of  evidence-based  beliefs,  one  that  is  free  to  mutate,  grow,  and  shift  as  the
evidence dictates.
The scientific revolution changed the world more than anything before or
since.
10
 It  has  reshaped  the  planet,  lifted  billions  out  of  disease  and  poverty,
and improved every aspect of life.
11
It is not an exaggeration to suggest that
science may be the only demonstrably good thing humanity has ever done for
itself.  (Thank  you,  Francis  Bacon,  thank  you,  Isaac  Newton,  you  fucking
titans.)  Science  is  singularly  responsible  for  all  the  greatest  inventions  and
advances  in  human  history,  from  medicine  and  agriculture  to  education  and
commerce.
But science did something else even more spectacular: it introduced to the
world  the  concept  of  growth.  For  most  of  human  history,  “growth”  wasn’t  a
thing. Change occurred so slowly that everyone died in pretty much the same
economic  condition  they  were  born  in.  The  average  human  from  two
thousand  years  ago  experienced  about  as  much  economic  growth  in  his
lifetime as we experience in six months today.
12
People would live their entire
lives,  and  nothing  changed—no  new  developments,  inventions,  or
technologies.  People  would  live  and  die  on  the  same  land,  among  the  same
people, using the same tools, and nothing ever got better. In fact, things like
plagues and famine and war and dickhead rulers with large armies often made
everything worse. It was a slow, grueling, miserable existence.
And  with  no  prospect  for  change  or  a  better  life  in  this  lifetime,  people
drew  their  hope  from  spiritual  promises  of  a  better  life  in  the  next  lifetime.

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Spiritual  religions  flourished,  and  dominated  daily  life.  Everything  revolved
around the Church (or synagogue or temple or mosque or whatever). Priests
and holy men were the arbiters of social life because they were the arbiters of
hope. They were the only ones who could tell you what God wanted, and God
was  the  only  one  who  could  promise  any  salvation  or  a  better  future.
Therefore, these holy men dictated everything that was of value in society.
Then science happened, and shit got cray-cray. Microscopes and printing
presses  and  internal  combustion  engines  and  cotton  gins  and  thermometers
and, finally, some goddamn medicine that actually worked. Suddenly, life got
better.  More  important,  you  could  see  life  getting  better.  People  used  better
tools, had access to more food, were healthier, and made more money. Finally,
you could look back ten years and say, “Whoa! Can you believe we used to
live like that?”
And  that  ability  to  look  back  and  see  progress,  see  growth  happen,
changed  how  people  viewed  the  future.  It  changed  how  they  viewed
themselves. Forever.
Now, you didn’t have to wait until death to improve your lot. You  could
improve  it  here  and  now.  And  this  implied  all  sorts  of  wonderful  things.
Freedom,  for  one:  How  were  you  going  to  choose  to  grow  today?  But  also
responsibility:  because  you  could  now  control  your  own  destiny,  you  had  to
take  responsibility  for  that  destiny.  And  of  course,  equality:  because  if  a  big
patriarchal God isn’t dictating who deserves what, that must mean that either
no one deserves anything or everyone deserves everything.
These were concepts that had never been voiced before. With the prospect
of so much growth and change in this life, people no longer relied on spiritual
beliefs about the next life to give them hope. Instead, they began to invent and
rely upon the ideological religions of their time.
This changed everything. Church doctrines softened. People stayed home
on Sundays. Monarchs conceded power to their subjects. Philosophers began
to openly question God—and somehow weren’t burned alive for doing so. It
was  a  golden  age  for  human  thought  and  progress.  And  incredibly,  the
progress begun in that age has only accelerated and continues to accelerate to
this day.
The  scientific  revolution  eroded  the  dominance  of  spiritual  religions  and
made  way  for  the  dominance  of  ideological  religions.  And  this  is  what
concerned Nietzsche. Because for all of the progress and wealth and tangible
benefits that ideological religions produce, they lack something that spiritual
religions do not: infallibility.
Once  believed  in,  a  supernatural  deity  is  impervious  to  worldly  affairs.

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Your  town  could  burn  down.  Your  mother  could  make  a  million  dollars  and
then lose it all again. You could watch wars and diseases come and go. None
of  these  experiences  directly  contradicts  a  belief  in  a  deity,  because
supernatural entities are evidence-proof. And while atheists see this as a bug,
it  can  also  be  a  feature.  The  robustness  of  spiritual  religions  means  that  the
shit  could  hit  the  proverbial  fan,  and  your  psychological  stability  would
remain intact. Hope can be preserved because God is always preserved.
13
Not  so  with  ideologies.  If  you  spend  a  decade  of  your  life  lobbying  for
certain governmental reform, and then that reform leads to the deaths of tens
of thousands of people, that’s on you. That piece of hope that sustained you
for years is shattered. Your identity, destroyed. Hello darkness, my old friend.
Ideologies,  because  they’re  constantly  challenged,  changed,  proven,  and
then disproven, offer scant psychological stability upon which to build one’s
hope.  And  when  the  ideological  foundation  of  our  belief  systems  and  value
hierarchies is shaken, it throws us into the maw of the Uncomfortable Truth.
Nietzsche  was  on  top  of  this  before  anybody  else.  He  warned  of  the
coming  existential  malaise  that  technological  growth  would  bring  upon  the
world. In fact, this was the whole point of his “God is dead” proclamation.
“God is dead” was not some obnoxious atheistic gloating, as it is usually
interpreted today. No. It was a lament, a warning, a cry for help. Who are we
to determine the meaning and significance of our own existence? Who are we
to decide what is good and right in the world? How can we bear this burden?
Nietzsche,  understanding  that  existence  is  inherently  chaotic  and
unknowable,  believed  that  we  were  not  psychologically  equipped  to  handle
the  task  of  explaining  our  cosmic  significance.  He  saw  the  spate  of
ideological  religions  that  spewed  forth  in  the  Enlightenment’s  wake
(democracy, nationalism, communism, socialism, colonialism, etc.) as merely
postponing the inevitable existential crisis of mankind. And he hated them all.
He found democracy to be naïve, nationalism stupid, communism appalling,
colonialism offensive.
14
Because, in a kind of backward Buddhist way, Nietzsche believed that any
worldly attachment—to gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, or history—was a
mirage,  a  make-believe  faith-based  construct  designed  to  suspend  us  high
over  the  chasm  of  the  Uncomfortable  Truth  by  a  thin  rope  of  meaning.  And
ultimately, he believed that all these constructs were destined to conflict with
one another and cause far more violence than they solved.
15
Nietzsche  predicted  coming  conflicts  between  the  ideologies  built  on
master  and  slave  moralities.
16
 He  believed  that  these  conflicts  would  wreak

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greater destruction upon the world than anything else seen in human history.
He predicted that this destruction would not be limited to national borders or
different  ethnic  groups.  It  would  transcend  all  borders;  it  would  transcend
country  and  people.  Because  these  conflicts,  these  wars,  would  not  be  for
God. They would be between gods.
And the gods would be us.