“Where has God gone?” he cried.
“I shall tell you.
We have killed him – you and I.
We are his murderers.

But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea?
Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?
What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun?
Whither is it moving now?
Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns?
Are we not perpetually falling?
Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?
Is there any up or down left?
Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?
Do we not feel the breath of empty space?
Has it not become colder?
Is it not more and more night coming on all the time?
Must not lanterns be lit in the morning?

Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves?

That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us?

With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent?

Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us – for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto.”

Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time has not come yet.”

— Excerpt, Parable of the Madman, The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche

and this…

‘The ordinary delusions
that people call “sanity”
are all so unbearably boring.

The luckiest man of them all
was the one that imagined he was
God the father, God the son and
God the Holy Ghost.’

— Excerpt, Daunton’s Death by Georg Buchner

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Imagining oneself to be a god…  I think the uber-wealthy have fallen to that delusion.  What is it like to be Jack Dorsey of Twitter, or Facebook’s founder and chief stockholder Mark Zuckerberg, or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos?  All are driven, with a personal net worth in billions.  Facebook under Zuckerberg’s direction employs an army of lobbyists insuring that the business model of Facebook is not disturbed.  Elon’s Musk’s every tweet is followed by a reported 58 million fans.  Musk is a living human oracle…  

Could this be what it means to be — “the luckiest man of them all?”

“Things” change.  The texture and feel of society, expectations, habits and customs are accelerating in many directions. 

I return to these famous lines written by Nietzsche, a disturbing scene, troubling readers since its publication in 1882.  Nietzsche lived on the cusp of the industrial age, sensitive to the inevitable societal transformation caused by the application of the new knowledge of mechanics, of chemistry and physics.  The railroad and steam power were changing industry.  The discovery of the election by J.J. Thompson awaited in 1897.

You and I live within the cybernetic age, — witness to intractable political divisions enabled by social media, the growing income gap between American citizens, and all are subject to severe weather events due to global warming caused by unprecedented economic growth.  These and other changes could be described, — occurring visibly within the last few years. 

I think that by any and all means possible, we simply must light a lantern in this darkness…