Words published in 1881 persuades us that we ought to stop lying to ourselves.

Nietzsche, the philologist compares the epoch of modern humanity, an era marked by reason, and the search for knowledge, by awareness of class differences, of institutional injustice, (a few of the hallmarks of a liberal-democratic society) – a juxtaposition with a more extensive epoch of pre-history, when tradition, divinely sanctioned customs were the rule, a homogeneous society, ruled by a priest-king.

Nietzsche declares and I paraphrase: Stop lying to yourself! Things haven’t changed, at least, so little as to be insignificant.

The default morality of humans, the norm of a people, was set, fixed by countless generations of prehistory when obedience, unquestioned subservience within one’s social status, and blithe acceptance of suffering, of the self-sacrifice which divine approval, as well as the approval of secular authority demanded – such cruelty yet remains bedrock for us.

I have taken editorial latitude to present as an alphabetized list, the texture of life in such a society. Our acquaintance with such an authoritarian ethos is so extended over time, that reversion to this manner of social organization is conceivable. I cannot help but consider that the rhetoric issuing from the Trump-Vance campaign is a mirror of this patriarchal, conflation of religion and state, hate-speech aimed at Haitian immigrants, and a celebration of that ancient cruelty to make women suffer.

In a recent Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania speech former President Obama, succinctly, eloquently sounded the alarm. Normalized lying, hate speech arising from a zone of social approval, is an occasion for taking action. To view Obama’s speech in its entirety: CLICK HERE.

But it is this very pride which makes it almost impossible for us to-day
to be conscious of that enormous lapse of time, preceding the period of “world-history” when “morality of custom” held the field,

   and to consider this lapse of time as
      the real and decisive epoch
         that established the character of mankind:

an epoch when
a. suffering was considered as a virtue,
b. cruelty as a virtue,
c. hypocrisy as a virtue,
d. revenge as a virtue,
e. and the denial of the reason as a virtue,

whereas, on the other hand,
f. well-being was regarded as a danger,
g. longing for knowledge as a danger,
h. peace as a danger,
i. compassion as a danger:

an epoch when
j. being pitied was looked upon as an insult,
k. work as an insult,
l. madness as a divine attribute,
m. and every kind of change as immoral and pregnant with ruin!

You imagine that all this has changed,
and that humanity must likewise have changed its character?

Oh, ye poor psychologists, learn to know yourselves better!

The Dawn of Day by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by J. M. Kennedy, aphorism 18