Have you not heard of that madman
who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!”—As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?—Thus they yelled and laughed

The madman jumped
into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I.

All of us are his murderers.

But how did we do this?
     How could we drink up the sea?
          Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?
               What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?

Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder?
Is not night continually closing in on us?

Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

How shall we comfort ourselves,..

— excerpt The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.]

You and I live in a brutally secular age.  The term anthropocene has been coined.  It means the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.  Homo Sapiens uber alles.  Many, whether a majority I do not know, acknowledge nothing whatsoever, whether life force, a cosmic presence, or any of the traditional forms of religion as exercising a divine obligation of any kind.  There is no divine canopy, a refuge of solace.  Perhaps this was inevitable.

The question remains, (the elephant in the room):  Now what?  Since “this thing” is our doing, what is this going to cost us? 

It is enough, just enough, that we pause for a while to absorb the weight of the words now famously penned by Nietzsche.  (Do not just read-on-through)  Nietzsche, if he were alive today, would not be pleased to be famous.  The madman is a horrified figure, bearing news that no one desires to hear.  Nevertheless he says it plainly anyway.  The madman is the first to notice, to feel the vertigo, the disorientation of a horizon-less world, the chill of enveloping darkness, the stink of divine decomposition.

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California, is inundated; days of heavy rains, floods, and high winds.  More is to come. 

And the slaughter intensifies in Ukraine.

The parable of the Madman by Nietzsche continues in tomorrow’s post.