Yes, Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher of “der Ubermensch,” the Superman, and the famous quote, “God is dead,” is not very smart. Of course, that’s probably because he’s been dead since 1900. It is a little difficult to think once you are no longer alive and your brain has turned to stinky muck in your coffin under the ground. And you cannot hope to defend your recorded intelligence in the written works you have left behind if you are totally dead and unaware of how people may be misinterpreting your ideas.
Crazy Fred was born in 1844. He was multi-talented, being a philosopher, poet, musical composer, and a writer of fiction. He was something of a genius for a while. At the age of 24 he became the youngest person ever to hold the prestigious Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, His radical philosophy created a critique of truth that leaned in favor of perspectivism. And as he continued down paths of making ironic aphorisms and exercising his wits to wander into thinking that life is meaningless and the roots of nihilism, he more or less stumbled into the view of his philosophy that there was no hope for the future but the improvement of the self.
I think it could be argued that Crazy Fred did indeed become a monster with the abyss staring back at him. At the age of 44 he had a complete mental breakdown. After that, for the remaining 11 years of his life, he had to be cared for by his mother… until she died in 1897, and then by his sister Elizabeth until he died in 1900. If street stories are to be believed, he escaped from his home, found a horse being beaten by its owner, stepped in to save the horse from the beating, then turned to the horse, hugged its neck, and died.
His writings were inherited by his sister Elizabeth. And she was an ultra-nationalist. Under her management, his writings were edited to fit her agenda for a new Germany, and so his ideas were credited with founding the Nazi movement and the quest for Aryan superiority… eugenics and genocide were to follow.
Ironically, Crazy Fred was radically opposed to anti-Semitism and most of the ideas that Hitler and the Nazis would give him credit for.
Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of good things in Crazy Fred’s philosophical teachings that make him worth reading and studying. He identified two distinct forms of thought that operate in culture. He called them Apollonian and Dionysian styles of thinking. Apollonian is associated with the sun god Apollo, rationalism, logic, order, and clarity. Dionysian is associated with the god of wine and sensuality, Dionysius, emotionality, chaos, intuition, and obscurity. These cultural definitions are very useful for understanding human behavior.
But Crazy Fred is controversial to this day. I am not the only one that thinks he’s a coocoo bird and wrong about a lot of things. And, yet, his work led to very good things as well as the questionable. Much of the philosophy of the 1960’s owes its progress to him, from the Apollonian Bertrand Russel to the Dionysian Albert Camus.
Nietzsche said, “What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.”
Clearly, I believe I myself am proof that Crazy Fred was wrong about that one. After six incurable diseases, surviving skin cancer, and making it most of the way through the Covid Pandemic alive, an awful lot of things didn’t kill me so far. By rights, if what Fred said is true, then I should be stronger than Superman. X-ray vision and the power of flight too. You can tell by the picture that if I am like Superman, then I have seen entirely too much Kryptonite up close.
Catch a Falling Star 
Dancing With Alan Watts
It seems sometimes, in a Judaeo-Christian society, that we are a constantly being scrutinized by a rather harsh all-knowing God who rewards getting the faith-words accurately correct, to the letter, and the faith-based actions perfect, without a single mistake. And He punishes missteps of word or deed with pain and suffering and the potential of an eternity in Sheol or Hell. And that is a tough God to live with. He is like a teacher who uses his or her God-like powers to reward or punish to lead his students all down an exacting, narrow path to a destination that does not have room for everyone when they arrive.
It doesn’t take long in childhood for a highly intelligent person to realize before childhood is over that this cosmology is actually a load of horse pucky. It didn’t even take long for somebody as semi-stupid as me.
What I like about listening on YouTube to Alan Watts’s wisdom is that he gives us an alternative way of seeing the universe and ourselves. This he can offer through his studies of Eastern and Buddhist philosophies. Everything appealing in John Lennon’s signature song, “Imagine,” comes from Lennon’s love of listening to Alan Watts’ lectures. He is obviously a wise guy.
Alan Watts teaches us the pathways that lead to finding yourself, who you truly are, and how you fit into the universe as a whole. When Carl Sagan says that we are all made of star-stuff, he is not only telling us what is literally true, as the elements our bodies were formed from were literally made in the nuclear forges at the centers of stars that later exploded in nova bursts to scatter the elements across the skies of everywhere. He is also telling us that what Alan Watts says is metaphorically true, that everything in the universe is part of the same thing and we are all one in this way.
There is plenty to worry about in my little life. I could easily drop dead at any time from any one of my six incurable diseases or even the return of the skin cancer I beat in 1983. I suffer from the consequences of disease daily, as I have for many years now. My sins are many. I broke my promise the other day to never show you the horrors of my naked body on this blog. I constantly eat the wrong thing and continue to do things that I know are bad for the environment and the health of my body. I am prejudiced against racists, stupidity, and the actions of dedicated Trump-lovers. In many ways I deserve God’s wrath and brutal correction. I have come to truly believe that climate change is going to end life on Earth. I am horrible.
But I have learned from Alan Watts that all of those concerns mean nothing. I don’t believe in Heaven or an afterlife. But I do not fear death. I am one with the universe. And the universe goes on even if I do not. And I will always be a part of it, even after I am no longer alive. The universe has a mind and is intelligent And I take part in that because one small part of that intelligence is me, and lives in my head.
There is comfort to be found in the words of Alan Watts. And living in pain as I do, I really need that comfort most of the time. That is why I have attempted to share a bit of that comfort with you.
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