Weird Nerd Moralism

Let's talk about Nietzsche without having read him!

In a long and very fun blog post, Scott Alexander accused me of being a master moralist:

Ozy is very nice and basically never gets compared to barbarian warlords. Still, this essay is a master morality manifesto. Slave morality is goals for dead people. Corpses aren’t greedy. They don’t oppress anyone. They never hurt people. They don’t stand out, or try to be better than anyone else, or express pride. Slave morality is about compulsively making yourself smaller, weaker, less distinctive, and less disruptive to anyone else - which makes corpses the acknowledged experts…

The early Christian saints definitely didn’t want personal glory - if anyone had tried to glorify them, they would have said something very pious like “I am only a humble servant of God, it is He who should be glorified”. They’re remembered primarily for their excellence in ensmallening themselves…

At least the saints had the excuse that they were ensmallening themselves so God could fill them up with His own glory. But if you ensmallen yourself, you’ll just end up anxious, miserable, and devoid of accomplishments.

I own this title with pride:

I went with “the nicest herrenmoralist” because “the nicest master moralist” kind of sounded like I was claiming to have solved ethics.

Scott says:

I’m an expert on Nietzsche (I’ve read some of his books), but not a world-leading expert (I didn’t understand them).

I have read some of Nietzsche’s books, but in senior year English at a Catholic high school and my teacher told me that Nietzsche’s ultimate point was that you should be Christian, so I’m pretty sure I know negative things about Nietzsche. So mostly I’m riffing off Scott here.

Now, what is this master moralist stuff I’m apparently writing manifestos about?

In the beginning (says Nietzsche), the word “good” was synonymous with “noble” - ie the virtues that made the nobility better than the serfs they ruled. This was way back in the Bronze Age, so your model for a noble should be Achilles, Agamemnon, etc.

The excellent noble delights in being strong, healthy, and virile. He lives in a beautiful palace and wears shining golden armor. He may be cultured, sophisticated, or even brilliant. He’s great at everything he does, and harbors ambitions to become even greater, maybe conquer a kingdom or two. He’s powerful, skillful, and awe-inspiring. Life is good!

Value systems naturally flow from elite to commoners. But a commoner can’t do much with this kind of master morality besides conclude “yeah, I suck”. Commoners are poor, sickly, and live in mud huts. They’re unlikely to achieve many goals beyond “not die”, and they’ve probably had their spirits crushed. But “I suck” isn’t a psychologically stable proposition. So sometime around the Iron Age, the slaves started working on a morality of their own, one where they’re the good guys and the masters are the losers.

Slave morality says that the strong are tyrants, the rich are greedy, and the ambitious are puffed-up braggarts. The wisest man is he who admits he knows nothing; the strongest man is he who conquers his own desires; it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle and so on. God loves the humble, the salt of the earth. The worst thing you can do is try to pridefully rise above your fellows (cf. Tall Poppy Syndrome); the best thing you can do is to lessen yourself, through methods sacred (fasting, celibacy, self-flagellation) or mundane (giving to charity, serving your fellow man).

And, sure, I’ve met both of these Types of Guy.

Now, where this all goes off the rails is that someone—I assume those people with Greek statue avatars whose two joys in life are the taste of master moralists’ boot leather and posting long Twitter threads about architecture—has decided that, under the heading of “master morality,” we are going to classify the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of Fine Arts and Art Deco and altars to the Goddess of Reason.

Excuse me?

Did I miss the part of the Iliad where Achilles makes sensible investments in public works? Is there a passage in the Odyssey where Odysseus mourns all of the dams and aqueducts and sewers he would have made in Ithaca if not for the cruel necessities of war? Do the lost books of Homer contain a poem in which Agamemnon declares Infrastructure Week?

Do not tell me that legendary heroes of myth and legend cannot do infrastructure! Chinese legendary heroes of myth and legend are doing infrastructure left right and center! The first thing Yu the Great’s Wikipedia page says is that he’s noted for his efforts at flood control! You guys chose on purpose to valorize the legendary heroes noted for NOT INFRASTRUCTURE!

I’m not saying that barbarian warlords can’t build really cool buildings..

Tianning Temple, which was built by a tribe from Mongolia after they settled in to ruling half of China. BabelStone, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

…but they normally do so after settling down to become Weak Men who create Hard Times.

When the Vikings or the Huns or the Mongols¹ or whomever’s dick you’re sucking this week are doing their sacking and pillaging and burning, do you think that one man grabs his brother across the chest, pulling him back so he can’t toss his torch on a building, saying, “Stop! Look at how beautiful this building is! Look at those Gothic arches! Those fine Neoclassical columns! Can’t you tell that it is of great historical, cultural, or scientific value and thus is part of the common heritage of humanity? I hear there’s a nunnery across the street, let’s go rape some virgins.”

No! No, they fucking didn’t! Barbarian warlords are net destroyers of cool buildings and it is not even fucking close! You might as well say cool buildings are slave moralist. At least Christians could get it together to build a Gothic cathedral for the glory of Christ now and then!