display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
7506 | God made man in his own image [Anon (Tor)] |
Full Idea: And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. | |
From: Anon (Tor) (01: Book of Genesis [c.750 BCE], 1.26) | |
A reaction: Since we are obviously not identical in every way with God, we can presumably choose in which respects we think of ourselves as being like Him. Reason, understanding, beauty, goodness, consciousness? A troublesome verse, challenged by Darwin. |
23203 | The great question is approaching, of how to govern the earth as a whole [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: It is approaching, irrefutably, hesitatingly, terrible as fate, the great task and fate: how should the earth as a whole be governed? | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 37[08]) | |
A reaction: Two issues have accelerated the question, though we have yet to properly face it. One is the incredible increase in military destructiveness, and other is the damage to the planet caused by the relentless pursuit of wealth. |
23200 | The controlling morality of aristocracy is the desire to resemble their ancestors [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The foundation of all aristocracies …is to resemble the ancestors as much as possible, which serves as the controlling morality: mourning at the thought of change and variation. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[22]) | |
A reaction: This makes sense of the permanent residence of the family, full of portraits and family trees. Aristocrats preserve records of their predecessors, in a way that most of us don't, going back before grandparents. |
23194 | People feel united as a nation by one language, but then want a common ancestry and history [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: People who speak one language and read the same newspapers today call themselves 'nations', and also want much too eagerly to be of common ancestry and history. | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[203]) | |
A reaction: This sort of nationalism is still with us, as white supremacy, and as history as mythology. But we can't just shake off a sense of which gene pools we come from, and which lines of history are our personal inheritance. |