Fiction: The Nietzschean

By John Yohe

I

As his health got worse—migraines + already poor eyesight—Nietzsche could only write a page at a time so that his body determined his style—he couldn’t afford to bloviate like Kant into minutiae, nor even like his hero Schopenhauer, so he became my hero for his style, tho he already had w/the Horse Incident in Turin but when I learned about why he wrote in his aphoristic style I too had started to have huge migraines in grad school I swear caused by the overhead florescent lights in the buildings of Michigan State University when his writing was the only comfort among the other existentialist tomes I had to read—wanted to read. He felt—had always felt—fresh like cracking open a cave wall to walk outside. Even if the cave was interesting he was the reason I was there—why I already called myself a Nietzschean—it was just that when I told my advisor at St. John’s College that I wanted to go to grad school + do my PhD on Nietzsche she politely advised me to tell prospective schools + departments that I wanted to study existentialism as what they would consider a more reasonable field of study + she was right but he was the one whose books I would literally hold while I curled up in a fetal ball on my desk in my office while my migraines throbbed.

 

II

There are still people who associate Nietzsche with the nazis amazingly—the fault of his sister who actually was a nazi and controlled his estate + who Nietzsche disliked maybe more than his mother—any reasonable reading of his major works would demonstrate the insanity of him wanting fascism though there are points where he slipped—his love of Napoleon + the Hindu caste system and—I have to be fair—he wasn’t a supporter of the Paris Commune or Marx—far from it—he was complicated + didn't write in a systemic fashion + when I asked my then MSU graduate advisor and thesis committee members if I could write my thesis in his style they all rolled their eyes probably regretting ever agreeing to be on my committee and gently advised me to write something more systematic about him and only for one chapter and to go on to Sartre and Heidegger and—if I must—de Beauvoir. So I did and it was awful—mostly regurgitation of what I/d absorbed from other commentators. But it was enough to show I had knowledge of my topic and could fend for myself, my thesis, or existentialism and philosophy in general—and go on to get a full-time teaching job and not embarrass anyone, especially my students. South Central Washington University—in the high desert on the east side of the Cascades with lots of sunshine even in the winter, with snow just like Nietzsche in Turin. And I lost it all after a few years when the state government mandated that all state employees take an untested and potentially (then for sure proven) dangerous gene therapy technology sold as a vaccine. And I would not. So was fired.

 

III

The Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence was always an ‘as if’ proposition despite the professor I had at MSU who spent a whole class trying to convince us that Nietzsche really meant that we were literally going to repeat our lives because we live limited space and unlimited time when what Nietzsche really meant was live your life so that you’d never regret any action if you had to live it over and over—the only writer I know who really got this was Vonnegut in Timequake but—that said—according to some Nietzsche biographies he really did spend a lot of time looking for the physical (or physics) justification for this idea, which is actually big nowadays—so the prof was sort of right but missed Nietzsche/s point of ‘how to live’—the idea of which haunted me in my decision not to get the jab but not after. At the time the madness seemed crazy—that we/d trust BigPharma with any untested new tech that changes our DNA, all for a virus that wasn’t actually affecting the majority of the population. But what alarmed me (and some of my colleagues)(and some of my students) was how the Narrative changed and was accepted at every change—Democrats against the jab when Trump was president but then for it when they won the election—masks don't work according to Fauci then they do work according to Fauci (now they never worked). Shut down for two weeks to stop the overloaded hospitals  which were really downsized over years by their corporate owners—then the lock down to stop the virus completely, which was never a possibility. My horror when fellow doubting colleagues went along with it to keep their jobs. And other colleagues who used to speak to me until I posted a video of my reasons for saying no, in the form of a letter to my students, which went mildly viral. And when I was labelled a conservative (!) and my knowledge/feeling that I was no longer welcome at my college or—I guess—even in my adopted town. And my feeling I would never teach again, even as emails came in from current and former students thanking me—there were many of us: why did we all feel so alone?

 

IV

Nietzsche/s übermensch was really only his hero Schopenhauer’s idea of self-transcendence or self-enhancement—the person who wanted (willed) to become the best human possible and acted towards that either with creativity (in his early life Nietzsche thought artists were the elite of humankind) or philosophy (after his disillusionment with and humiliation by Wagner he balanced the two—or we need a balance of creativity and science/thinking/philosophy) and I dont know if he ever read the quote from Mark Twain, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect,” (I keep it posted on my office door) but the übermensch is the person who doesn’t go with the herd—not that I’m an overwoman or supergirl (though I did want to be Catwoman when I was younger—robbing the rich to give to the poor while wearing a sexy catsuit and boinking Batman) and the whole superhero genre came from Nietzsche/s übermensch, Batman more of what he had in mind rather than Superman (in my office I have a framed faded picture of the cover of Nietzsche for Beginners featuring the head of Nietzsche superimposed on the body of Superman flying through the air looking all serious. But that’s why Nietzsche liked the caste system—he saw the Brahmins as the übermenschen, striving to make themselves better and therefore everyone better—rather than a system to keep the poors in their place and the rich above them. Though Nietzsche hated the rich—he hated anybody in power whom he thought wasn't a philosopher—back to Plato/s philosopher-king really. I think my point is that in the American Empire idiots are running the government and the media and the majority of idiots believe them. Which is mean. People were scared, I know, and even some of my modern-day philosophy heroes bought into the propaganda—Chomsky and Žižek both saying people like me—one of the dirty unvaccinated—should starve to death. That hurt. And made me re-think their anarchy and communism—they both still want a strong government to be able to control the people they disagree with.

 

V

The Will To Power does sound like a nazi slogan though everything in German sounds like a brown shirt rally—Der Will Zur Macht which Nietzsche eventually dropped as the title of his attempt at a complete philosophy just as he dropped the attempt (according to some biographers, others claim he just went crazy first) but the question is—power over what? or whom? What Nietzsche meant is power—or really control— over oneself, which is what the übermensch attains through creativity and/or philosophy/science though he also meant it in the sense of countries—that a country could will toward/desire control—not over other countries (which would be the nazi interpretation) but over itself—which to me was always the rallying cry of the Commune—of anarchists—either as a desire for control over one/s self, one/s life, one/s body, or self-determination of a group—without rulers. Nietzsche was my pathway to anarchism though he might have been horrified at the thought, but control over my body was my main argument for why I refused the jab—forced medical procedures are a nazi thing. So I was gobsmacked to hear the same liberals who wanted me to starve if I didn't take the jab to turn around and cry when the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade and argue that women have the right (along with the will) to power over their own bodies—not that the overturning was a surprise—we all saw it coming and the Democrats did nothing—they don't care or if they do it's only to use abortion as a way to care people and get money.

 

VI

I loved Nietzsche. I mean, I was in love with him. Still am. Even with his imperfections. That's what love is, yes? Though I may have only been like Lou Salomé—and how awesome a name is that—who saw Nietzsche as if not an equal that at least she was someone who was smart enough to understand him plus she was hot and exotically Russian, and rich (though Nietzsche too was a trustafarian and thus could just quit his university position and travel though he didn't live that great, renting one-room hovels in Nice and Turin. And Lou did what any woman would do, I suppose, with a man she found interesting intellectually but not physically, which is to try to be a friend and ignore his romantic advances and make him therefore dislike women even more than he already did. His one great love and she eventually figured out that his philosophy, his main ideas, were not that deep, so she went on to other men (the poet Rilke was in love with her too!) and studied with Freud and became the first woman psychoanalyst! I fear I may have done the same with any number of philosophy nerd-dudes at St. John’s and MSU while I was busy fawning over the philosophy nerds who didn’t like me. If I had to live my life over this is the part I would despair about even though it never felt like it was a choice—my non-beauty and even the fact that I was never the smartest person in the room. Nietzsche my poor dear virgin—unless he really did get syphilis from a prostitute—hard to believe—seems beneath his dignity but maybe not his loneliness. I’m not proud, I’ve given blowjobs just to be wanted for a little bit.

 

VII

But to be fired mid-semester! Knowing I couldn’t teach in Washington ever again, I guess. And how does one re-invent herself in a government-imposed shutdown. There were no university positions at all, but consulting myhigheredjobs.com I saw that other regions of the country weren’t reacting to the supposed virus response like on the liberal coasts—there were at least community college jobs. So I swallowed my PhD pride and applied and interviewed—online—with a few places, including Western Colorado Community College, which I learned had only gone online at the end of Winter Semester 2020 and were currently holding classes in person. With masks, but when I started they were mask free. This when universities in Boulder were still online. So when they offered I accepted—sold them on my real desire to explore the land, from Dinosaur National Monument down to Canyonlands National Park in nearby Utah, and the Front Range National Forests of the Rocky Mountains. To a school with two campuses 1.5 hours apart with me living in the small town of Strangely, population 1500, with the school population about 300. WCCC survives on its sports teams, giving out partial scholarships to middle-range athletes then getting money from the state and feds for ‘butts in the seats’—the students being lied to, perhaps with their knowledge, that they can still get noticed by scouts and somehow still play professionally even though all the teams always have disastrous losing seasons. Plus, madness: community college instructors teach five classes a semester. Plus have to be on committees. I teach two philosophy classes a semester—Intro to Philosophy I and II, and Environmental Ethics—plus an Intro to Humanities I and II, plus two composition classes with the school paying me to go back and get a composition masters degree as long as I take one class a semester. Crazy. But I have the freedom—nobody cares what happens in a community college class—to run them like philosophy classes, emphasizing existentialism, running them like St. John’s classes—all discussion—making them philosophize.

 

VIII

What haunts me about Nietzsche is the ten years he spent—alive—after his breakdown and/or madness—because some reports in biographies say he was basically a babbling idiot the whole time and/or comatose, while other witnesses say they saw him reading and engaging in some sort of conversation. We know he spent a year or three in various asylums, then his sister took him under her ‘care,’ likewise his mother. What I fear is that after a nervous breakdown he was given some ghastly cure of the time: lobotomies weren’t invented then, but something equally bad. That or again he might have had ‘the syph,’ though no report of his body becoming stiff and losing motor functions. But I fear his great mind was literally destroyed. It just doesn’t make sense that he suddenly and completely went mad—the ‘proof’ some biographers give is the report of his landlady peeking through a keyhole and seeing him dancing naked in his room singing to himself. I mean, I do that every night. But my trust in the medical profession has never been high—they gave Hemingway electroshock therapy and destroyed him too, only about 70 years ago. Many doctors complicit in Pfizer’s fentanyl addiction program targeting the rural poor—Ground Zero in Craig, Colorado where our other campus is. And the push for the general medicating of America—Prozac Nation—lying to us that depression comes from a chemical imbalance in the brain rather than the fact that we live in a shithole country in a shithole world. The idea always being to fix the symptoms not the cause, like US-funded gain-of-function virus lab leaks in Wuhan, China.

 

IX

I take long walks outside of town since in town there’s always an angry dog or two—fenced or unfenced. I go right from campus sometimes, which itself is on a mesa overlooking town. Augustine’s City on the Hill. I wish. Down dirt roads and two-tracks, up and down rocky hills and mesas passing the occasional inert oil pump: Chevron just left the Chevron Oil Fields west of town. Occasional sheep or coyotes or deer. Crows magpies hawks sparrows. Nietzsche walked every day. They all did, all those German philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Schope, claiming its the best way to generate ideas. And theyre right. I never bring my phone. Still processing being let go—fired—for doing nothing wrong. For doing the ethical if not moral thing. Morality coming—as Nietzsche said—from the herd. Though I wonder how big the herd actually is or was or if us herds of naysayers were perhaps bigger, just not allowed to speak. My students here seem to accept everything—the constant nose testing—though everyone seems to understand its a farce—just something we have to do to justify staying open with the beancounters in Denver. The town meanwhile mostly stayed open and, even when the students and faculty had to mask on campus last year, no one wore them in the dorms or in town. I dont fit in here otherwise though—no philosopher ever fits in—so I walk. Or hike, on the weekends. In Dinosaur or down around Grand Junction, where I go for a little civilization. I can sit in a café on 6th street and read a book bought at Out West Books and not be too weird. There’s a small university here. Perhaps theyd hire me. WWND? What would Nietzsche do? He’d mock the system—using his sharper barbs for the friends who betrayed him.

 

X

I met a woman. An English teacher down at the high school, taking my night philosophy class for ‘personal enrichment’—for fun. We started to joke via email. I asked her if she wanted to go for a hike in Dinosaur. We were maybe the only two people in town to have voted for Bernie Sanders in the primaries—the first one before he betrayed us—and we discussed his betrayal and lamented that he would have won against Trump and we wondered who now represents us—if anyone ever did—she invited me up to her apartment. We confessed to each other how unsure we are of living here. She said I won’t last more than two years. We kissed. It/d been so long but it goes ok. Gobsmacked that anyone, much less a woman, would find me attractive. Bury that thought. Let whatever happens happen. Maybe she’s my Lou Salomé. Willing to hang around and pick my brain a bit before going off to grad school so she can get a university job. Maybe we’re using each other. Maybe we’re just enjoying each other. As long as either of us is here. Maybe not even that long. But she’s a person trying to better herself, mostly, when she isnt getting high every night. And I won’t regret this part of my life if I have to live it over again. At least my decisions. I still despair. We can still feel despair over things that happen in life even and especially if we have no control over them but I dont despair about how I acted. I have my dignity mostly. I just despair that many in my country and the world, that they do not. But now we know. We know who they are.

 

XI

After the most productive and happy year of his life—in Turin—Nietzsche saw a man beating a horse in the street. Nietzsche placed himself between the man and horse, embraced the horse, and burst into tears, having the famous breakdown. Reading about his despair at the cruelty of humans is when I fell in love with him and philosophy. What else is philosophy for if not to prevent suffering which is why Nietzsche was attracted to buddhism though couldn't let himself ultimately embrace it. He claimed to dislike compassion—a sign of weakness—yet what else was the Horse Incident but an act of compassion—maybe that was his breakdown—be forced to admit he was wrong—to himself—forced to admit he was a weak old softie—and/or empathizing with the horse—working hard doing its job but unable to please the cruel master—Hegels Master/Slave relationship. Nietzsche didn't want to be a slave but hated the masters—lived as the jester most his life mocking the master but still in the court—artists and philosophers should be the jester-kings but he was just a workhorse being beat in the street—melodramatic as he always was—but he stopped the beating of another creature, which may have been his greatest act of philosophy. Anyways, makes a great story. My students love it.

John Yohe has worked as a wildland firefighter, wilderness ranger and fire lookout. He is a Best of the Net nominee x2 and made the Notable Essay List for Best American Essays 2021, 2022 and 2023.