Friedrich Nietzsche &

Mark Zuckerberg
This essay is dedicated to my beloved Sarah who has been an unfailing inspiration in the writing of it...

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), philosopher, essayist and poet, born in Prussia,
wrote in his Why I Am So Wise the following: The concept politics has then become completely
absorbed into a war of spirits; all the power-structures of the old society have been blown into
the airthey one and all reposed on the lie: there will be wars such as there have never yet been
on Earth. Only after me will there be grand politics on Earth. He was slightly off the mark;
but, are we not coming to the realization that all-out warfare is a no-noa no-no that would level
the treasuries of its participants to noughtif they are not already at zero? Not to mention
perhaps an excessive loss of human lives militaristically referred to as collateral damage?

We have to give credit to this visionary, who spit in the face of History and Morality and who
philosophized with a hammer. (...The concept of 'sin' invented together with the instrument of
torture which goes with it, the concept of 'free will', so as to confuse the instincts, so as to make
mistrust of the instincts into second nature!...Everything hitherto called 'truth' is recognized as
the most harmful, malicious, most subterranean form of the lie; the holy pretext of 'improving'
mankind as the cunning to suck out life itself and to make it anaemic. Morality as
vampirism...) And it is inexpedient that we today do not refer much more to him for his
mistrust of systematizers whom he attempted to stave off believing that the will to a system
constitutes a lack of integrity.

Everywhere we look systematization is the order of the day. There is an obsessional quest for
the order of things. The right number. The exact time. The just-right day. The best place.
There exists tables and graphs and charts to allow you to plan your investments and fix your
pension. The television presenters and news broadcasters are perfectly processed to offer the
most precise information they have chosen for youin an orderly fashion, with their ties
straight and their coiffeurs and coiffeuses at the ready in the studios' back rooms. Organization
is an adage of sorts. Data collection is paramountas if this irrational collection of information
will lead one to a happy hunting ground of perfectionism in all matters including one's personal
life. And worse yet: Learn to think like a computer...Nine things you didn't know about
chronic pain...Are you sick of Brexit limbo?...Check this box if you are a good person...Never
post these things on FaceBook...Women close the gender pay gap...Become a master taking
back your happiness...How to talk to a friend who is suffering...Is this the world's happiest
city?...Five things you didn't know about Jesus...ad infinitum.

(...morbid disturbances of the intellect,...)

(What is certain is that mankind and womankind have been taught only dcadence values as
supreme values. The morality of unselfing is the morality of decline par excellence, the fact 'I
am perishing' translated into the imperative 'you all shall perish...')

Why has this allure taken hold of us so persistently, so forcefully? What is the psychology of
this seemingly counterfeit ebulliencethis psychosis of the normal? What is the source of this
fixation with ever-ready electronic rationalizations? Could it be the greed of human nature?
The inordinate urge to possess more and more to mark some notion of superiority? Self-
preservation? Self-defense? Centuries of morality?

(...in the midst of modern tendermindedness...)

Ever since 1601 when the English East India Company dispatched its first outing to the New
World in search of ill-gotten gainsthus inventing capitalismthere has been a knee-jerk
reaction to the accumulation of wealth as if it were some sanctified system, for the good of all, at
the expense of workers sweating to accrue it for their persons in charge, and an arrangement,
while not perfect, that is the best of all those available. Time and time again this pact has
degenerated systematically into chaos and has caused immeasurable misery for hundreds of
millions hoping to receive some small change from this frequently corrupt, obviously flawed,
unsigned treaty coordinated between employee and employerbut by the employer.

(...I do not count these supposed 'preeminent men' as belonging to mankind at allto me they
are the refuse of mankind, abortive offspring of sickness and vengeful instincts: they are
nothing but pernicious, fundamentally incurable monsters who take revenge on life...)

Yet contemporary economic lines of reasoning, with their rage to spread themselves
throughout the four corners of the world, have ignored the perils of a disproportionate
distribution of wealth injecting a new twist into even the so-called American Dream. And
journalists with their savvy for a level economic playing field, have completely ignored the fact
that globalization's real dilemma is that underdeveloped nations are pilfering as taught them
by developed ones since 1601and even better! Trade wars? World Wars?
The desire to communicate, the desire to advertise oneself, the desire to know more, and the
desire to explore beyond one's own geographical area are just some of the allurements that
suckle us within this vortex of unremitting information and inexhaustible option with the
reckoning to improve one's status, fame, wealth or conceit.

(...whitewashed by education...)

The idealist German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), champion of
religion, the Prussian State, the existing order and a powerful influence on Karl Marx (1818-
1883) and Marxist critics, speculated that by encouraging individuals to seek their own
private interests, this economic system prevents individuals from seeing themselves as part of a
larger community. (Hegel: A Very Short Introduction by Peter Singer; Oxford University
Press.) Expressing this concept in more human terms, the Irish author, Oscar Wilde (1854-
1900), perhaps upstaged the German philosopherone of the key members of Western
Civilization's most prestigious philosophical circles--with this saying expanding on the
Hegelian equation: When Jesus spoke of the poor, he meant to speak about their
personalitiesjust as when he spoke about the rich he meant to speak of those who have not yet
developed theirs.

(...For when truth steps into battle with the lie of millennia we shall have convulsions, an
earthquake spasm, a transposition of valley and mountain such as never been dreamed of...)

Both of these impressions are quite remarkable if we set them in the now on-going twenty-first
century where the run-amuck Judeo-Christian Democratic Turbo-capitalism has supervened
upon, for example, the patrician notions of the Canadian economistnever to have won the
Noble although he ardently sought itJohn Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006). He is noted for
saying, and I paraphrase, this: The rich should not be so stupid as to not give a bit of the
moolah to the poor so as to keep them out of their hair. Panem et circenses? In 1961, the
population of the world was 3,000,000,000. At this writing, 7,500,000,000 people will soon
populate the world. Not even Milton Friedman's (1912-2006) Chicago Boys nor Karl Marx's
socialist revolutionaries had in mind these nonrepresentational figures that are reaping
economic havoc for MNBC and BLOOMBERG's sycophants of the architects of financial
doom. More than moolah is going to be needed to quell the rapacity of these soon-to-be
10,000,000,000. I suppose it is not only a lack of integrity Nietzsche would be referring to
todayif he were alivebut even a lack of common sense needed to survive.

(...One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightfulof a
crisis like no other before on Earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision
evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not
a man, I am dynamite...)

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The Pew Institute estimates there are 2.30 billion admirers of Christianity, 1.8 billion admirers
of the Islamic religion, and FaceBook statistics calculate 1.86 billion monthly active FB users.
Can we say that FB qualifies to be a religion? Is Mark Zuckerberg the pope of still another
religion? He certainly enjoys the numbers of one! But, before we attempt to make up our minds
about FB being a religion, we must first set up for ourselves those components that represent
the constituents of a religion.

(...The goodcannot create, they are always the beginning of the end--...)

According to the 1988 edition of The Hutchinson Encyclopedia, a religion (there are said to
be at least 4000 of them) is a code of belief and behaviour maintained independently of reason,
i.e., by faith, which often involves the worship of a god or gods (Latin religare to bind; perhaps
humans to god). Belief in a supernatural power is not essential (absent in, for example,
Buddhism, Confucianism) but faithful adherence is usually considered to be rewarded, for
example by escape from human existence (Buddhism), by a future existence (Christianity,
Islam). In addition, ceremonies, rules, procedures, dogmas, protocols, and other
characteristics involved with defining the limitlessnesses of the combined 4000 religions,
would be indeed encyclopedic in scope.

(...It is my fate to have to be the first decent human being, to know myself in opposition to the
mendaciousness of millennia...)

In ascertaining whether or not FaceBook is a religion, we may observe that it has many
elements in common with a religion, including a large number of faithful followers, sets of
rules, procedures to follow, protocols, and a dominant leaderPope Mark! But, in reality Pope
Mark is a klutz at forming a religion, and the fact that FB possesses many ingredients that might
confusingly distinguish it as a bona fide religion, it might be these that one day will be the ruin
of FB itself. There are two factors that demonstrate Pope Mark's negligence in forming a
religionassuming he actually had in mind this grandiose mission.

(...God is a crude answer, a piece of indelicacy against us thinkersfundamentally even a

crude prohibition to us: you shall not think!...)
The first is Pope Mark's indifference to how multi-century religions were shaped. The Roman
Catholic religion cleverly set up a vernacular for its flock to follow and live by. For example,
Faith, Hope and Charity are Catholic sound bites known throughout the Roman Catholic
world. Of course, Pope Mark instituted the three FsFriendship, Fame and Fortune.
Nevertheless, a vast difference between the two can be observed. Faith, Hope and Charity are
abstract, abstruse concepts. Friendship, Fame and Fortune are real, material conceptions.
Faith, Hope and Charity enjoy a centuries-old longevity. Will Friendship, Fame and Fortune
last even twenty years after their 2014 inception?

(...the harm the good do is the most harmful harm...)

What will happen to FB and its disciples when hundreds of millions of them come to the
devastating realization that they possess very few genuine friends, that they are as lonely and
alienated as are hoards of other FB members, and most of all, they have not tripped over some
hoped-for fortune? The Age of Suicide? Already many FB users are griping about FB's crowded
marketplace. Worse, while many users are still registered with FB, many of them just don't
utilize FB any longerbored or tired of it but not willing to unfollow it. It's still the fashion!
Pope Mark is racking in billions and billions for himself, but who can he say is equally enjoying
his luck and success? Not one FB user! Will FB be remembered as the Universe's most
gargantuan confidence game?

(...gruesome hybrids of sickness and will to power called founders of religions...)

Pope Mark's benightedness is howling when we consider the fact that he missed, by light years,
the most important particular that has differentiated those religions that have held up for
centuries from those comet-like ones that have rapidly burned out: the promise of an eternal
afterlife of blissful harmony. An existence after death, a later period in one's life. That is what
adorers of a supreme being starve for. To be in blessed harmoniousness with their Maker who
has promised them salvation after a life of suffering and sacrifice on Earth. How could Pope
Mark have been so obtuse? He could have tweeted the Pope in Rome or the Archbishop of
Canterbury in London asking for a bit of professional courtesy, no? He just was not thinking.
Most people crave for a hereafter. If they cannot obtain it from the power-structures of the old
society, they will seek it by other means and in other arenas. Mark Zuckerberg just did not get
it.
What should we expect from a shallow, uneducated Harvard University dropout?

Nitimur in vetitum
 Authored by Anthony St. John
17 April MMXVII
Calenzano, Italy
anthony.st.john1944@gmail.com

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