Civil Commotion

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: The Moral Ideal

§336   A desire magnifies the thing desired, and by not being realised it grows — the greatest ideas are those which have been created by the strongest and longest desiring. Things grow ever more valuable in our estimation, the more our desire for them increases: if “moral values” have become the highest values, it simply shows that the moral ideal is the one which has been realised least (and thus it represented the Beyond to all suffering, as a road to blessedness). Man, with ever increasing ardour has only been embracing clouds: and ultimately called his desperation and impotence “God”.

After all the brave howling from Columbus about never performing a same-sex wedding — as if the Gestapo were going to drag away pastors who refused — Albert Mohler has frankly acknowledged what everybody with a lick of brains has known all along: You can have any rules you like inside your clubhouse; if you don’t want to do it — fine.

“Look I really don’t fear- It’s really important that you and every other pastor needs to say “I’m not going to perform a same-sex wedding,” but let’s be honest, there’s not really a danger that the sheriff’s gonna show up and say, “you have to do this.” So far as I know, no pastor has been sued successfully for refusing to marry someone on other grounds- that’s not the real danger. The real danger is we’re going to pay an enormous social, cultural price for not doing a same-sex ceremony. We’re going to be considered morally deficient. Let’s admit it. We’re much more accustomed to being accused of being morally superior. They’ve said we’ve been “stand-offish” meaning better than them, now a large part of this culture thinks we are morally deficient. And we’re going to that’s a very different way to do ministry.”

Imagine, if you can, being in a place where Albert Mohler is the smartest man in the room.

Dylann Roof, the alleged Charleston shooter, has been captured near Shelby, North Carolina. The picture below is from his FaceBook page.

Is there anything so shocking as random, summary executions?

It has happened again, this time in Charleston, South Carolina, at a historically black church.

A white man walked into a historic African-American church in Charleston and opened fire during a Bible study class, killing nine people Wednesday evening.

The gunman was still at large early Thursday. And the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest AME church in the South, is being investigated as a hate crime.

It is much too soon to speculate about the cause; the kid could have been spurned by a girl and snapped, he could have lost his job and his car and snapped, he could have been beat-up by a gang of black kids a few hours earlier and snapped. Who knows?

But speculation is rampant, and not without reason, that this is yet another instance of the south’s (and spreading) sick fusion of fundamentalist religion, tribal racism, and extreme right-wing ideology. Recall the perverse imagery used by Promise Keepers to promote its conference:

Those armed and camoed guys advancing through a dystopian bleakscape are the good guys, according to Promise Keepers. As I said then:

That text, in combination with that imagery, is frightening stuff; these people are out of their minds, and it is only a matter of time before some ignorant yahoo, stoked on malice for a world he no longer understands, decides God wants him to go shoot-up a gay bar or who-knows-what.

The recklessness is downright breathtaking.

For the sake of all of us, I hope we learn that the killer is some mentally ill screw-up, like James Holmes, the Aurora theater shooter.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: The Moral Ideal

§335   It is difficult to have sufficient respect for man, when one sees how he understands the art of fighting his way, of enduring, of turning circumstances to his own advantage and of overthrowing opponents; but when he is seen in the light of his desires, he is the most absurd of all animals —

It is just as if he required a playground for his cowardice, his laziness, his feebleness, his sweetness, his submissiveness, where he recovers from his strong virile virtues. Just look at man’s “desiderata” and his “ideals”. Man, when he desires, tries to recover from that which is eternally valuable in him, from his deeds; and then he rushes into nonentity, absurdity, the valueless, childishness. The intellectual indigence and lack of inventive power of this resourceful and inventive animal is simply terrible. The “ideal” is at the same time the penalty man pays for the enormous expenditure which he has to pay in all real and pressing duties. Should reality cease to prevail, there follow dreams, fatigue, weakness: an “ideal” might even be regarded as a form of dream, fatigue, or weakness.

The strongest and the most impotent men become alike when this condition overtakes them: they deify the cessation of work, of war, of passions, of suspense, of contrasts, of “reality” — in short, of the struggle for knowledge and of the trouble of acquiring it.

“Innocence” to them is idealised stultification; “blessedness” is idealised idleness; “love”, the ideal state of the herd animal that will no longer have an enemy. And thus everything that lowers and belittles man is elevated to an ideal.