BELL RINGER

1. BELL RINGER • CREATE THE PERFECT SUPERHERO: • What powers do they have? • What weaknesses? • What’s their origin story? • What do they fight/stand for? • Qualities,? • What do they represent, if anything? • Costume? • Secret Identity? • Hero’s name? • Anything else you think this hero needs.

2. Übermensch Adapted from Kelly Perez

3. Life -Bio • Grew up in a time ofgreat religious division • Traveled down the rabbit hole and could not find his way back, died at 56; Frontotemporal Dementia or Neurosyphilis • Question the implications of having freewill andmaterialism

4. WHYLOVE HIM?? • Plays the ‘what if’game • Doesn't have hard fast ideas • Willing to change theory on thedime • Lives in the black, the white, andthe grey • Tragically, that game was taken too seriously

5. What if… • we have individual meaning <~>Nihilism • we settle in life too early <~> Leads toa loss ofpotential • I have freewill <~> creator of my ownworld • These are the questions he explores inhis novel Thus SpokeZarathustra

7. Nihilism Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless & that nothing can be known or communicated. The idea is that life is meaningless and has no intrinsic value.

8. Core Beliefs It is often associated with extreme pessimism & the radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, & no purpose other than the impulse to destroy.

9. Origins "Nihilism" comes from the Latin “nihil”, or nothing. It appears in the verb "annihilate," meaning to bring to nothing, to destroy completely.

10. “nihil” nothing "annihilate"

11. Nihilism • There is often a distinction made between ontological nihilism (the metaphysical claim about the nothingness of reality) and existential nihilism (makes claims about the lack of meaning in human existence). • It is guided by the rejection of objective moral values and the hope of the eternal. Essentially, it is guided by the rejection of PLATO’s Idealism!

12. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

13. Nietzsche & Nihilism While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, the movement is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious & metaphysical convictions, precipitating the greatest crisis in human history.

14. “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.“ Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-1885)

15. The death of God is a way of saying that humans are no longer able to believe in any such cosmic order since they themselves no longer recognize it. • The death of God will lead, Nietzsche says, not only to the rejection of a belief of cosmic or physical order but also to a rejection of absolute values themselves — to the rejection of belief in an objective and universal moral law, binding upon all individuals. • In this manner, the loss of an absolute basis for morality leads to nihilism. • This nihilism is what Nietzsche worked to find a solution for by re-evaluating the foundations of human values. This meant, to Nietzsche, looking for foundations that went deeper than Christian values. He would find a basis in the "will to power" that he described as "the essence of reality.“

16. Nihilism • Others are the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Albert Camus (1913-1960). • Both Sartre and Camus were affected by the catastrophic world wars.

17. Nihilism • The two of them proposed the utter hopelessness of life. • Camus compared life to the Greek myth of Sisyphus who was eternally condemned by the gods to push a heavy ball up a slope, only to have them kick back down... rendering all of Sisyphus’s actions pointless and useless… a quintessential Nihilist point of view. • Sartre suggested that there was no purpose to the “accident” of human existence.

18. Passive Nihilist • This is the nihilist that has quit trying to push the rock up the hill. • Life has continued to give him lemons, and spat out his lemonade. • So, the passive nihilist “floats” through life, doing nothing, because…what’s the point? • Life is random: it doles out bad things to good people and good things to bad people. = ABSURDISM

19. According to Nietzsche: Believing in Nothing = FREEDOM & POWER

20. Parable: Rope and the Man Man is a rope, fastenedbetween animal andÜbermensch – a rope over anabyss Thus Spoke Zarathustra,Prologue

22. Lookingat the world…. • Saw Nihilism • Loss of a potentialjourney • Picking aside • Which one do Ipick?

23. BUT… what ifstory…. • He looked out into theworld and asked a fewquestions • And wrote a tragic storyabout a man who escapes it all and how he didit

24. Cosmic order Work Morality SocialOrder YOU Family Friends

25. How did we loseobjectiveness? • Implications of the rejection of objectiveness and universal meaning; If we are allsubjective, what does that reallymean? • Enter the death of God* andkinship • While a materialist himself, he respects the principle’s of a higher being; the unifying aspects of kinship andobjectiveness

26. Why did we settle soearly? • How did we become so arrogant toassume we understand life at such an earlyage? • ‘This works for me’ but you onlyhave experience a fraction of thejourney • Process of Life was to be supposed a process; you aren't supposed to haveharden ideals until oldage

27. Journeykiller! • Philosophy andinexperience • Self-doubt leads to passiveideas • Passive ideas leads tocomplicacy • Pleasure killed thejourney

28. The journey leadsto potential? • If you fail to grasp the nature ofsuffering, you fall short of your potential…the potential to be the master ofyourself • Hunger for life and fulfillment out of the mediocre, and sake of the journeyneeds to berestored

29. Why did we give up on the journey? • Spirit ofGravity • What is the monkey on yourback? • The dripping hot lead in your ear pouringinto your brain? • How do we break free~>>>

30. How do we avoid itall? • PureAutonomy • Disregard theherd& the moralitytrap • IF you want total subjective freewill-- embrace it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

31. Evoke theWanderer!! • Escape currentlife • Remove the shackles you have placedon yourself • Wander your mind for your trueself • Zarathustra discovered a treewith • exposedroots • Man lives in the roots, not theleaves

33. Path to PureFreewill: • Spend time at war withyourself • Forceful reconstruction of yourthoughts • “Live dangerously”~Zarathustra • Suffering leads toHealing • Leads toSelf-determination

35. How do we avoid itall? • You will find good things and bad things but most of all, you find the Self-Determination needed to overcome andcreate • Moral order cannot be imposed onthe unwilling • No such thing as divine authority or cosmic order; only yourauthority

36. Cosmic order Work Morality SocialOrder YOU Family Friends

37. YOU Cosmicorder Work Morality Social Order Family Friends

38. Master of your ownfate; • “He has overcome his animal nature, organized the chaos ofhis • passions, controlled hisimpulses”1 • You become the Self-destroyer and creator of your own being; living in botin the conscious andsubconscious • Reject theworm

39. What if… • we have individual meaning &total freedom • I live as the creator of my ownworld • Full Responsibility rejection ofexcuses

40. Live for the Übermensch inyou

41. TheÜbermensch….. Is thispossible? No….. We have doomed ourselves to a world ofsubjectiveness

44. Misconceptions • Nazi party– Yes, Hitler did use the Übermensch as an example of Aryan supremacy • Value destroyer – never wanted fall of State, still believe in moral values of society.

45. The Übermensch “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” "I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? "All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape. "Whoever is the wisest among you is also a mere conflict and cross between plant and ghost. But do I bid you become ghosts or plants? "Behold, I teach you the overman! The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go! Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, p. 3, trans. Walter Kaufmann

46. Man (As “bridge”) ↓ Death of God ↓ Nihilistic Vacuum ↓ Re-Evaluation of Values ↓ ↓ Ape Overman Concept of Traditional Western God as Purpose Supernatural “Other-Worldly” Life-Denying Escapist Concept of Übermensch As Purpose Natural “This-Worldly” Life-Affirming Realistic

47. EXIT SLIP • What is right and wrong?  • Who defines that?  • Where is the line drawn between what is right and wrong? • Can you ever do the wrong thing for the right reason or vice versa? How? Why? • What makes one a hero or a villain?