Tarantulas

This is from Friedrich Nietzsche You know, of course you probably know that he was the philosopher Who announced the death of God What he meant by that was that the fundamental Metaphysics that underly Western culture had lost their foundation And that the consequence of that would be The disintegration of the idea of value itself Especially of value hierarchies He thought of the inevitable consequence of that Or one of the consequences of that A dramatic move towards a doctrine of radical equality See because if value itself is destroyed The value distinction between things So that one thing is not any better than another Then there's no reason for hierarchies of virtue or of value And so the equality doctrine is a logical, is a logical outcome So here's what he wrote about that Behold; this is the hole of the tarantula Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Here hangs its web; touch it so that it trembles There it comes willingly. Welcome, tarantula! Your triangle and symbol sits black on your back And I also know what sits in your soul: revenge sits in your soul Wherever you bite, black scabs grow Your poison makes the soul whirl with revenge Thus I speak to you in a parable - you who make souls whirl You preachers of equality To me you are tarantulas, and secretly vengeful But I shall bring your secrets to light Therefore I laugh in your faces with my laughter of the heights Therefore I tear at your webs That your rage may lure you out of your lie-holes And your revenge may leap out from behind your word: justice For that man be delivered from revenge That is for me the bridge to the highest hope And a rainbow after long storms The tarantulas, of course, would have it otherwise "What justice means to us is precisely that the world be filled With the storms of our revenge" Thus they speak to each other "We shall wreak vengeance and abuse on all whose equals we are not" Thus do the tarantula-hearts vow "And 'will to equality' shall henceforth be the name for virtue And against all that has power we want to raise our clamour!" You preachers of equality The tyrannomania of impotence clamours thus out of you for equality Your most secret ambitions To be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue! Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy Perhaps the conceit and envy of your fathers Erupt from you as a flame and as the frenzy of revenge What was silent in the Father speaks in the Son And I often found the Son the unveiled secret of the Father They're like enthusiasts But it is not the heart that fires them, but revenge And when they become elegant and cold it is not the spirit But envy, that makes them elegant and cold Their jealousy leads them even on the paths of thinkers And this is the sign of their jealousy: they always go too far Till their weariness must in the end lie down to sleep in the snow Tarantulas Tarantulas Tarantulas Tarantulas Out of every one of their complaints sounds revenge In their praise there is always a sting And to be a judge seems bliss to them But thus I counsel you my friends Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! They are people of a low sort and stock The hangman and the bloodhound The hangman and the bloodhound The hangman and the bloodhound The hangman and the bloodhound Look out of their faces Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey And when they call themselves "the good and the just" Do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had power My friends, I do not want to be mixed up and confused with others Some preach my doctrine of life And are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas Although they are sitting in their holes, these poisonous spiders With their backs turned on life, they speak in favour of life But only because they wish to hurt They wish to hurt those who now have power For among those the preaching of death is still most at home If it were otherwise, the tarantulas would teach otherwise They themselves were once the foremost slanderers of the world And burners of heretics I do not wish to be mixed up and confused With these preachers of equality