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Notes -
Culture War or not, I don't know.
I've finished watching the Good Friday service from the Vatican and I want to quote this part of the service, sections of Psalm 21 (which includes the famous "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" quotation which is part of the Seven Last Words from the Cross).
Something which Nietzsche would despise, at least going by the discussions about this we've had on here before. The triumph of the weak. Slave morality. "I am a worm and no man" is not what the Strong, the Aristoi, say of themselves, such types are the ones trampled underfoot and rightfully so, pity being wasted on them.
And yet. And yet. This is the God of all Creation, the Maker of the Universe, the ground of all being, the Power beyond power, the True, the Beautiful and the Good who emptied Himself out, who became a slave and lower than a slave, to die a criminal's death.
Maybe true power is not trampling all others underfoot. The wretch who died the slave's death is venerated and remembered in the most gorgeous, opulent setting. Maybe the Strong look tawdry by comparison in their tinsel crowns.
Something, something. Tickling at my brain, to think about it.
If you read the Iliad or any other of the great texts of "master morality", they all have their "Masters" indulge in great fits of weeping emotion. "I am a worm and no man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people" is the exact sort of thing they could cry - before picking up and going on to get their victory. In the Christian case, the ultimate victory. Christ is not purely a figure of slave morality in Nietzsche (that would be the Disciples, Paul, the Martyrs, etc.); he is, like Socrates, a complex figure who has traits of the best of both. Even in The Antichrist, his most vicious polemic against Christianity, Christ is barely mentioned except to say how incomprehensible his followers clearly found him.
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