Having recently noted the glorification of Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the ubermensch on the TV show Smallville—in my post Smallville and Friedrich Nietzsche — Superman and the Ubermensch—I was pleased to note that at least there is some true left in pop-culture/media…well…sort of…
Back in the tenth episode, “The Popular Kids,” of season one of Criminal Minds agent Spencer Reid had noticed the murderer, Cory, had been carrying a copy of Frederick Nietzsche’s book Thus Spake Zarathustra. At the end, when Cory is threatening to shoot Reid, the following exchange takes place:
CORY: For the evil is man’s best force. Man must become better and eviler.
REID: That’s what this is about, right? Zarathustra? The superman? There’s no moral obligation for killing someone if you’re superior to them?
But Nietzsche was speaking metaphorically about evolving as a species.
MORGAN: You’re just a horny kid who wanted to get rid of the cheerleader’s boyfriend.
CORY: No.
MORGAN: Yes.
Well, Reid tried to save Nietzsche yet, how does metaphor such as that of the ubermensch translate into real life?
In claiming to understand Nietzsche many may be, unconsciously, admiting to not understand Nietzsche; see Nietzsche, the Death of God, and the Emerging Church Movement.
In any case, you can ask Adolf Hitler and the Nazis: see The Faulty Conclusion and The Deicidal and Misanthropic Prophecies and What Smith and Dawkins Did Not Bother Mentioning
Also consider how art imitates live and live imitates literature as when Steven Kazmierczak murdered students of NIU; one item that he had mailed to his ex-girlfriend was Nietzsche’s book The Antichrist
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