'In Emergency, Break Glass' by Nate Anderson
In recent years, several younger writers have tried to put Nietzsche’s best foot forward. While it’s true that you can’t always chose your fans (Hitler was among Nietzsche’s infamous admirers), it’s hard to justify the German philosopher’s sustained assault on compassion and other values that make a common life sustainable.
Nate Anderson makes one of the more interesting cases for Nietzsche with In Emergency, Break Glass. Writing with self-deprecating humor, the Ars Technica editor puts his own experience at the heart of his brief. He finds himself imprisoned in a world of screens, forever at arm’s length from actual social (as opposed to social media) experience. And that’s not his only problem! The technology of abundant data is overwhelming the human capacity for focus and concentration. “My life demanded little physical exertion, it required no risks, and it piped endless information and amusement right to my eyeballs,” Anderson complains.
Nietzsche was already wrestling with the problem in analogue. “As a professor, Nietzsche felt crushed beneath the weight of information overload” and, resigning from academia, “broke free of the regimented interiority of so much knowledge work. He engaged the world with his body and not just his rational mind.” In Untimely Meditations (1876), he “argued passionately that knowledge was not good in itself; it was only good if it helped us live,” Anderson writes, adding, “This was relevant, as my browser history reminded me that I had spent half an hour that morning clicking through articles on myxomatosis. I have never owned a rabbit.”
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So, with our brains overstuffed from binge-watching multi-season shows, and the incessant interruptions from buzzing cellphones, pinging text messages, “Friend” updates and gushing streams of email, what time is left to reflect on reality? Anderson imagines Wordsworth trying to compose a poem on the sublimity of nature while his tablet autocorrect his verses and his phone screen continuously lights up.
Anderson concedes that reading Nietzsche “can veer quickly from ‘productive’ to ‘unsettling.’” At the same time, Nietzsche’s aphorisms can be valuable for calling to question a life of complacency whose overriding goals are comfort and the easy pursuit of happiness. “Nietzsche pushes us toward a goal-driven life of creative excellence, the use of attention to foster deep wisdom rather than superficial ‘knowledge,’ and embodied life at play in the world.” And compared to the pantheon of German philosophers—Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer—Nietzsche can be a kick to read—the Lester Bans of deep thought, skeptical of everything foolish and shoddy.
