Oldal 98 [98]
solipsist attack the philosopher, or they attack each other first. If
one becomes anthropophobic upon learning this, we can almost
understand why. The person of the crowd then calls the rat race
world a civilization and despises those who do not want to “be
civilized.” And this civilization, which is in fact nothing more than
collapse into a foolish, unimaginative, and indifferent boredom,
is set on a pedestal as civic virtue. The person of the crowd insists
that this is the only realistic alternative, and people go to the cor¬
ral proudly and voluntarily to become proud, baaing members of
the uniform flock. Life thus becomes more and more prosaic. The
human world becomes atomized. It narrows in space and time. As
Nietzsche writes, it “shrinks,” and there “jumps up and down on it
the last man” (der letzte Mensch), who dwarfs everything and who
is happy in the knowledge that “the earth has then become small,
and on it there hops the last man who makes everything small.
His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last man lives longest.”
(KSA IV. p. 20. TSZ p. 17.). So writes Nietzsche, as though he were
describing what happened to him.
At this moment, the other, the alien, appears, since they are not
part of the flock. That is enough also for them to be the enemy. In
this way every thinking person becomes an alien to fools. And since
there are more of the latter, the outcome of any conflict between
them cannot be in doubt. In this respect, not only thinking but
also art lose their value. Neo-nomads only have a use for useful
things. What is useless does not interest them. Spengler again:
Rousseau and Socrates to quite primitive instincts and conditi¬
ons, the reappear ance of the panem et circenses in the form of
wage-disputes and football-grounds - all these things betoken the
definite closing-down of the Culture and the opening of a quite new
phase of human existence - anti-provincial, late, futureless, but quite
”
inevitable. ” (Spengler1927. p. 34.)