tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15064852.post-55890125348375691152008-04-10T21:20:00.002-04:002008-04-10T21:40:32.948-04:00<ul>“At these turning points in history we behold beside one another, and often mutually involved and entangled, a splendid, manifold, junglelike growth and upward striving, a kind of <i>tropical</i> tempo in the competition to grow, and a tremendous ruin and self-ruination, as the savage egoisms that have turned, almost exploded, against one another wrestle ‘for sun and light’ and can no longer derive any limit, restraint, or consideration from their previous morality. It was this morality itself that dammed up such enormous strength and bent the bow in such a threatening manner; now it is ‘outlived.’ The dangerous and uncanny point has been reached where the greater, more manifold, more comprehensive life transcends and <i>lives beyond</i> the old morality; the ‘individual’ appears, obliged to give himself laws and to develop his own arts and wiles for self-preservation, self-enhancement, self-redemption. . . .<br /><br />“These acute observers and loiterers discover that the end is approaching fast, that everything around them is corrupted and corrupts, that nothing will stand the day after tomorrow, except <i>one</i> type of man, the incurably <i>mediocre</i>. The mediocre alone have a chance of continuing their type and propagating—they are the men of the future, the only survivors: ‘Be like them! Become mediocre!’ is now the only morality that still makes sense, that still gets a hearing.<br /><br />“But this morality of mediocrity is hard to preach: after all, it may never admit what it is and what it wants. It must speak of measure and dignity and duty and neighbor love—it will find it difficult <i>to conceal its irony</i>.—”</ul><br /><br />From <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>, part nine (“What is Noble”), section 262.José P.http://www.blogger.com/profile/01084692426449152317noreply@blogger.com