“Alas! The time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars. Alas! The time of the most contemptible man is coming, the man who can no longer despise himself. Behold! I shall show you the Last Man. ‘What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?’ Thus asks the Last Man and blinks... ‘We have discovered Happiness,’ say the Last Men and blink” - Nietzsche
With the scientific revolution we invented a new god for ourselves. This was a moment of the profoundest liberation and the profoundest hubris. We have created for ourselves everything we could possibly hope for, and yet nothing is enough. Nothing quenches that deeper thirst that was once there, the thirst of a child full of wonder and longing. Free to create, we create contemptible things. Our buildings are ugly, our culture is lacking in form and substance. Unfree to create, we create beauty. Magnificent monuments to nobility, integrity, and intelligence. The phallus of the Greek statues was depicted as small intentionally; this was a sign of nobility. Now we worship excess.
Social media creates a pernicious dopaminergic feedback loop. We continuously feed the part of ourselves that needs attention and validation, and we fail to feed the part of ourselves that needs quiet and internal validation. The brain is considered to be a use it or lose it system. Connections that are not used are pruned, and vice versa. Underneath all of this is a desire to create chaos; there is a secret longing for that chaos which would give birth to that passion that has been lost. Consider adrenaline junkies, for instance.
The gods punished Tantalus making him perpetually hungry and thirsty, yet when he reached down to drink, the water receded, and he reached for the fruit above him, the branches rose out of reach. The worst of all possible outcomes is not the desperate and despairing groping of Tantalus, but that he shrugs. He loses the desire altogether to quench the thirst. He forgets what it feels like to even be thirsty. And then, and that horrible hour, we will have reached the last man. Humanity will have forgotten what it feels like to be thirsty. While the last man blinks, the first man bled. Prometheus carried the fire, the representation of all human passion and spirit. He sacrificed himself so that others in the future may too carry the fire. "A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit."
For many thousands of years our world was illuminated by the simple warmth of the cave fire and the hearth. We are now illuminated at every moment by our screens, but we are dark inside. And the last man blinks… and scrolls.
But the embers wait.
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