Nietzsche and the New Atheists
Nothing makes me sound like an aging hipster quite like talking about New Atheism. This never works because, more often than not, most people aren’t aware that older, different notions of atheism even exist. The term “new atheist” itself implies that there was an older atheism, that it was somehow different than New Atheism, and that it has been somehow overcome.
I reject this conceit and claim that Nietzsche had the New Atheists’ number and anticipated their movement as far back as 1882 when he wrote The Gay Science.
Nietzsche of course is notorious for famously proclaiming in The Gay Science that:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
In Nietzsche’s view the decline of Christianity’s absolute moral authority meant nothing less than the shattering of western civilization’s entire ideological edifice. Nietzsche understood that to proclaim Christianity dead was to call into question everything that Christianity had touched and informed in its near two thousand year history. If we join Nietzsche in accepting God’s death we abandon the basis of nearly two thousand years of values and assumptions so deeply ingrained into us ideologically that we’re often not even aware of their christian roots at all.
The death of God was not a moment for atheists to declare victory, but the beginning of a radical shift in public consciousness that was unable to fall back on past moral certitudes. For Nietzsche distancing oneself from Christianity was a heroicly difficult undertaking fraught with danger of descending into madness or nihilism. There were no more guarantees. Rejecting christianity wasn’t something one could do with the flip of a switch. It required a serious and honest interrogation of our highest values.
“After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave-a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. -And we-we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.”
Compared to Nietzsche’s atheism the New Atheism, with its fixation on supernaturalism and the authority of traditional religious institutions, is interesting but ultimately superficial because it paradoxically doesn’t take the implications of a post god world seriously. Instead of accepting Nietzsche’s challenge and radically reimagining what a post christian world might be like New Atheism assumes that the post christian world will just be a more progressed version of our own ruled by benevolent technocratic elites. Instead of ruthlessly interrogating society’s morals the New Atheists largely accept secularized versions of christian morality. Instead of seeking new authorities in a post god world New Atheists resort to a positivist materialism that owes its very existence to the christian materialist tradition.
Responding to the death of God with a mere rejection of strawman supernaturalism is insufficient. By failing to rise to Nietzsche’s challenge to undertake the transvaluation of all values New Atheism has thus far proven itself incapable or unwilling to rise above the level of projecting Christianity’s shadow on a cave wall. If we are to proceed bravely into a new post god world we will ultimately have to vanquish the New Atheism as well.
Lesser Evilism
If I hear one more otherwise intelligent progressive say that Obama sucks, but they’re going to vote for him anyways because choosing a lesser evil is their best and only pragmatic and moral choice, I might just lose it.
In the spirit of starting a new blog on the right foot I’m going to start the party with a good old fashioned grenade. Lesser evilism in electoral politics is immoral and counterproductive and I’m going to lay out an argument explaining why.
The argument for lesser evilism usually goes like this: Democrats are consistently disappointing, but whatever their faults may be their policies are usually a little better for the county than those of Republicans. Because Republicans are a little worse than Democrats on issues of importance to progressives it makes sense for them to try to influence the system in what little ways they can. A related argument is that little differences in policy actually make a very big difference in a country of three hundred million people. Corruption in politics is a fact of life, but if a few more people get good healthcare and funding for their school programs voting will have been worth it.
There is some truth in this, but this outlook is problematic for two reasons.
The biggest problem with lesser evilism is that it encourages Democratic politicians to ignore their base in favor of potential votes that require more effort to capture, and the lobbying pressure of monied interests. By refusing to make their votes for Democratic candidates conditional on supporting progressive goals progressives reinforce a dysfunctional relationship that makes it safe for their concerns and goals to be ignored. By refusing to withhold their votes they participate in the cyclical machinery of their own class exploitation.
Secondly, the surrender of the progressive base’s goals to “pragmatism” requires an enormous opportunity cost of misdirected activism. In 2008 thousands of activists who would otherwise have donated their labor and capital towards traditionally left social movements and causes unwittingly directed their energies towards a presidency that would betray the very causes the activists thought they were supporting.
I am putting forward the economic argument that the small victories to be gained by supporting the Democratic status quo are not worth the price being paid for them. Occupy Wallstreet has proved that direct activism unaligned with traditional powers can have an enormous impact on national politics. I would also argue that Democratic loyalists need to stop fancying themselves as hard nosed pragmatists and recognize the naivete of their stubbornness to recognize what everybody else has long known.
Your party is just not that into you.
