Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are

by John Kaag

Nietzsche’s existential hero terrifies and inspires in equal measure. The Übermensch stands as a challenge to imagine ourselves otherwise, above the societal conventions and self-imposed constraints that quietly govern modern life. Above the steady, unstoppable march of the everyday. Above the anxiety and depression that accompany our daily pursuits. Above the fear and self-doubt that keep our freedom in check.

According to Nietzsche and Emerson, modernity had fallen out of rhythm with life.

A few stars kept me temporary company but then vanished behind clouds that blanketed the mountains. I was finally, as I’d often suspected, perfectly alone.

There it was: utter blackness—the “nothing” that I was afraid of. In the beginning, according to Nietzsche, man “was surrounded by a fearful void—he did not know how to justify, to account for, to affirm himself; he suffered from the problem of his meaning.”

I would have to return to the room soon, to make a good showing of living on the surface.

God’s been dying for a long time. Our faith in the Divine has been eroded by a steady onslaught of forces: the advances in science, the age of reason, the birth of modern capital, the distraction of consumerism, the deification of the state. God didn’t stand a chance. His death is no cause for celebration; at best it has created a vacuum that needs to be filled.

One’s attraction to manifest certainty is not the outcome of reasonable argumentation but rather the outgrowth of primal fear.

Within the Frankfurt School, Adorno joined Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse in espousing what has come to be known as “critical theory.” It was, at least at first, a neo-Marxist movement, one that held that culture itself could be, and was being, used as a force of oppression. This might seem like a stretch. Culture—entertainment, consumerism, the arts—doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that can imprison a people. This intuition, however, Adorno argues, is precisely the thought that lowers one’s defenses. Popular culture shapes a people’s preferences, delimiting the scope of human activity and desire. Our consumer culture might give us choices, might give us the semblance of being free to choose, but this liberty amounts to pitifully little if everyone is given the same circumscribed options.

Like Nietzsche, Adorno both abhorred and was riveted by herd mentality. Unlike many psychologists, Adorno asserted that this mentality wasn’t a natural social impulse but a grand performance orchestrated by a priestly master (he came of age in Nazi Germany and wrote against fascism in all its forms). The sheep that comprised the herd could, at any time, opt out of the performance, but the theatrics of culture combined with the necessities of capitalism had given it an almost irresistible draw. Still, Adorno wrote in 1951, “If they would stop to reason for a second, the whole performance would go to pieces, and they would be left to panic.”

A cloud passed across the sun, and as the ridge fell into darkness, its top and bottom edge vibrated and gave off an almost audible pitch, the sound of clenching one’s teeth. Freedom against the backdrop of nothingness.

I told Carol all about them, with the self-assured pride that only a middle-aged male philosopher could muster.

Privilege and leisure did nothing to mitigate the effects of existential crisis but rather heightened the sense that despite one’s best attempts, life was still largely unfulfilling. Most of modern life is geared toward achieving material success, but only after it is attained is its hollowness painfully apparent.

I wiped my eyes. Nothing—not the valley, not the trail, not the river, not the sheep, not loving, not living, not dying—had changed in seventeen years. It never would. Or rather, it would change in exactly the same way. Love and strife remained.

life does not change, but the attitude you bring to it might. And this is not a trivial adjustment. In fact, it may be the only meaningful adjustment that is possible. For a moment, I was happy, genuinely happy, happier than I’ve ever been, that I was still here. Right here, not somewhere else.

“when we dream about those who are long since forgotten or dead, it is a sign that we have undergone a radical transformation and that the ground on which we live has been completely dug up: then the dead rise up, and our antiquity becomes modernity.”

“One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.”