Man Is a Rope
"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman - a rope over an abyss." - Friedrich Nietzsche.
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The moment I read this pivotal quote in Thus Spake Zarathustra, I knew I'd made a mistake in waiting so long to pick up the book. It sat on my shelf for nearly nine months before I deigned to read it, and even then it was half-hearted, like medicine for the wasteful media I've been consuming lately. The quote I relayed above came from chapter four, just five pages into the novel, and it resonated so deeply with me that I put the book down immediately after the chapter and began contemplating what it meant.
To explain briefly, Thus Spake Zarathustra is a novel about a Persian religious leader, Zarathustra, who speaks to crowds in philosophical tirades. It's not an elegantly packaged version of literary philosophy, but it certainly has its merits over the works of long-winded and beguiling authors. In this chapter and the preceding one, Zarathustra comes before a crowd waiting to watch a man dance on a rope. He all but scoffs at them for being so eager for this act, and he proclaims that he will teach them what the Superman really is. After his first rant, he is met by laughs and one sarcastic remark that he's more entertaining than the dancer. As the rope dancer begins his performance, Zarathustra continues and utters the aforementioned quote, followed by another speech in which he expounds upon his statement.
Zarathustra's point is this: man can be more animal than even the animals he degrades, and man is cognizant of these thoughts in a painful manner - so painful that he often seeks to numb them out. In this way, man is a temporary organism; he is a stepping stone from something he may view as wretched (though he is more-so in many ways), to something so fantastic he can hardly contemplate it with his waking mind. He exists as a bridge of rope which has the unique property of bending when weight is laid upon it. The abyss over which the rope stretches holds its own important meaning; it symbolizes chaos. A complete breakdown of cognition and consciousness. A terrifying prospect akin to Tartarus, such that only those who fall within can truly grasp its darkness. Man exists not only as the rope, but also as one who can cross the rope, and by existing in any form above it he fulfills the duality of order and chaos Zarathustra has been weaving into his discourse from the first chapter. As he crosses, the rope bends deeper and deeper into the abyss, and none so far have made it to the other side either for fear of the chaos below, or an unfortunate physical realization of it.
Zarathustra says that he loves those who seek knowledge tirelessly throughout their lives, without consideration for going down upon the bridge and falling into the abyss. He says he loves those who invent and engineer because they will make the body within which the superhuman will reside. He says he loves those who, even when the cards fall in their favor, do not gloat or succumb to greed but rather question the equity of the game and of their own character. Zarathustra loves a lot of people, with the common thread being that he loves those who have the tenacity and grit to seek their own downfall in hopes they can rise to become the Superman. I have never heard of a person in history who has accomplished all that Zarathustra said he loved, and I have likewise never heard of a person who has become superhuman. The moral constructs in which we live, remnants of the animalistic side of the bridge, are engrained so deeply within us that we don't even know how to begin seeking our own "down-going" upon the rope bridge.
My father once asked me on a walk to swim practice what I thought the next step in human evolution was. I was about thirteen or fourteen at the time, and I answered according to something I had read in a scientific article about losing our pinky toes. He said that the next step for humans was in comprehension; he thought we would grow into a species able to comprehend high concepts like infinity. We were both wrong, but I more-so than he. According to Zarathustra, we will not evolve unless we cross the abyss and move away from our animalistic drives and into a world in which values cannot be created or taught to us. I have spoken extensively about the Fundamental Problem, so much so that if the words never leave my keyboard again it will be too soon, but here again it rears its head as the abyss between the animal and the superhuman. What is chaos but a more mythological term for complexity? Our tribal, animalistic tendencies are a safeguard against our conscious mind having to deal with the complexity (chaos) required to become that which we could be.
Zarathustra calls himself the herald of lightning, but declares that the lightning is the Superman. In saying this, he affirms that to be superhuman is not a possibility, but an inevitability. Those versed in Nietzsche, or even my earlier essays, will recognize that this Superman we speak of is the Übermensch, and it will get its own piece in the future when I've finished, or nearly finished, Thus Spake Zarathustra, but suffice to say the Übermensch (and the Überfrau), are some of the most critical concepts in Western philosophy, and yet the road to discovering them is foggy at best. Zarathustra has not yet outlined a plan for humans to cross the chasm between progress and regress, but the map may exist in our subconscious.
Carl Jung once said that a tree cannot grow with its branches in heaven without its roots in hell. Again, the duality of order and chaos appears, and again there is the symbol of a bridge over the latter and to the former. Jung, who was heavily influenced by Nietzsche, believes that one cannot grasp the breadth of one's magnificence and virtue without first coming into a deep understanding of, and coexistence with, the darkest parts of one's unconscious, where the animal lies. "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your fate," says Jung, and there he lays out the first step in crossing that rope bridge. He also speaks of regressing to the infantile when one abdicates responsibility and forfeits maturity. Well, which one of man's forms is the most animal? An infant is driven only by food and sleep. They learn and are curious, but in the realm of regression that curiosity is extinguished through stubborn ignorance, and thus their drives are purely basal. Here, Jung explains how to leap off of the bridge. If you're lucky, you'll land in a place from which you can begin again, but there are many who are not lucky, and the abyss swallows them whole.
It may be that Zarathustra has a detailed plan for how to ascend into the superhuman evolution of our species, but that has not been made clear to me yet. Perhaps the answer lies in spirituality, the likes of which is abundant in Eastern philosophy. I once had the pleasure of speaking to a monk, and his wisdom was enviable and reminiscent, at least to an animal like myself, of what a superhuman could be like. Yet I understand that the answer "There is no answer, except maybe on a mountain in Tibet.", is disheartening. If Nietzsche has a scheme for feasibly crossing the rope bridge - and by feasibly I mean in a manner one can accomplish in a lifetime, then I'll be sure to relay it in a separate post. Of course, there will be plenty of writing about Thus Spake Zarathustra in the near future, and I fully expect this novel to revitalize the dormant "Reviews" section of my website with a crown upon its head.