Often the irony of my situation slaps me in the face, a wake up call! Good news is bad news is good news, etc., etc.. Who would choose to be bitten by snake, in the neck while napping?! The scream, the shock subsides, and you recognize that it was time to wake up anyway. Today’s to-do list is long, but there’s the matter of the poison involved with the bite. “Hey, Mr. Snake! Do you know who I am? you’ve got to take that back,” you insist. And so the snake does.

That’s how things can go in a tall tale.

Often with the backward look, we come to understand the hand we were dealt by fate, an excruciating season of depression, or even a cancer diagnosis – turns, becoming a pivot point for unexpected change, important outcomes. Irony, the twist of fate. Who would choose to “be bitten”? And yet…

What is the purpose of this tall tale? “Take care to never nap under a fig tree on a hot day?” I’m sure that’s not it. Some points that “jump out” for me are:

1. Zarathustra as the mouth piece for Nietzsche freely admits his purpose is to undermine, to destroy “morality” as we understand it. You know, the recipe for our comportment in society, which promises (implies) neat satisfying outcomes. Nietzsche is frankly contrarian, “my story is immoral”
2. “When the adder bites” story is a “heads up” criticism of The Beatitudes in The Gospel of Matthew chapter 5. You know, the core idea that injustice will be rectified by a higher power; the injunction to respond to injury, to loss by meekness, no matter what “be nice”. Zarathustra says, that manner of response only confuses the perpetrator. Rather, anger, pushing back demonstrates one’s understanding of “what’s gone down.” An enemy merits being treated as an enemy.

When, however, you have an enemy,
then return him not good for evil:
for that would abash (confuse) him…

And rather be angry than abash (confuse) any one!

3. Take full responsibility for engaging a response to the injustices you’ve received. That’s humanizing, frankly taking the measure of injury, action that says, “I get it.” A punishing response. “A small revenge is more human than no revenge at all.”

And when you are cursed,
it doesn’t please me that you should then desire to bless.
Rather curse a little also!

And should a great injustice befall you,
then do quickly five small ones besides.

4. Note what is written about deferring to the authorities, the state, – “to make things right”. Nietzsche says about cold, dispassionate justice: “out of the eye of your judges there always glances the executioner and his cold steel.” Absolving myself of doing justice, satisfied to allow “the state” (which is a cold abstraction) to achieve justice, case by case, results in faux justice, and gimlet eyed officers of the court. Justice is a form of love, love with eyes-wide-open.

I do not like your cold justice;
out of the eye of your judges
there always glances the executioner and his cold steel.

Tell me: where find we justice,
which is love with seeing eyes?

…the love which not only
bears all punishment,
but also all guilt!

Without question this is a high bar standard for the dissemination of justice, much beyond our adversarial system. A jury of one’s “peers” massaged emotionally by professional protagonists each believing that “a win” is all that matters. We call this “justice.” But Nietzsche is dead serious.

Hideous to behold is he on whom injustice presses alone.
Did you ever know this?

          Shared injustice is half justice.

And he who
can bear it, shall take the injustice upon himself!
A small revenge is more human than no revenge at all.

Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Thomas Common, The Bite of the Adder No. 19