week 7 blog 1

Nietzsche was a truly interesting philosopher.  The madman was so fascinating. I love the God is Dead concept.  It makes me wonder about world around us.  It gets way deeper because rather than saying god never existed, he made the claim that we killed him.  Acknowledging that he was here makes it so much more meaningful.  God was here for long time but the need for god is dying.  People are starting to realize that they don’t need god.  They just need faith in themselves and passion.  With these two things people can overcome the absurdity of life.  The need for religion is fading away, and being replaced.  But what with? Without religion how will people know right from wrong? All religions teach people a few basic concepts, don’t be an asshole, and just do you.  And without religion, these principles will still exist.  They won’t just vanish.  There’s lots of people out there who aren’t religious, that are still good people.   People spend a lot of time on religious activities.  Imagine what could be accomplished if that time spent on religious practice, was spent on advancing society.  Inventing things, discovering cures for the worst diseases, and going even farther into space.  With god dead, we could change the world around us, we could be our own gods.  But with the herd mentality still raging through society, people still spend their time worshiping god, even if they don’t really believe what they believe.  If people could stop and look into their consciousness, and break free from the mental slavery that is the herd mentality, they could truly find themselves.  I really think I’m starting understand what existentialism is all about.  It’s about recognizing that life is absurd, meaningless and pointless, but we need to bring meaning into our lives through our passions and only then will our lives not be completely in vain.