Zarathustra Teaches the Americans
Nietzsche for All and None
Famed wise man, Zarathustra, would have had plenty to say to the Americans had he descended from his cave and encountered them. The following is my strictly fictional transformation based on one of Nietzsche’s seminal works, imagining what he might have said. My tale is an adaptation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “The Song of Melancholy” and “Of Science.”
In his cave, Zarathustra had been speaking to the Americans. He went out and drew in the pure night air.
“Where are my animals?” He called to them. “Come here, come here, my eagle and my serpent.”
He spoke to his animals about the Americans.
“The air in there is foul. They don’t smell right; they don’t have a child-like nature, the foundation of wisdom. Not like you animals, you who have no sense of ego about you. You don’t think yourselves superior to anybody else, like the Americans do. Yes, they are capable of thinking, though they often don’t, and they have accomplished much. But though you both have instincts, you animals don’t constantly lie and connive and manipulate and backstab. A lion doesn’t want to be more than a lion. He is content to be a lion. Like him, the Americans need to be simple and pure.”
