But Zarathustra didn’t come to say
to all those liars and fools:

“What do you know of virtue!
What could you know of virtue!”

–But that you, my friends,
might become weary of the old words
which you have learned from the fools and liars:

That you might become weary of the words
   “reward,”
      “retribution,”
         “punishment,”
            “righteous vengeance.”

–That you might become weary of saying:
“That an action is good
   is because it is
      unselfish.”

Ah! my friends!
      That your very Self
      be in your action,
      as the mother is in the child:
let that be your formula of virtue!

Truly, I have taken from you
a hundred formulae
and your virtue’s favorite playthings;
and now you upbraid me, as children upbraid.

They played by the sea
— then came there a wave
and swept their playthings into the deep:
and now do they cry.

But the same wave
shall bring them new playthings,
and spread before
them new speckled shells!

Thus they will be comforted;
and like them you also shall, my friends,
have your comforting
— and new speckled shells!

–Thus spoke Zarathustra.

This Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Thomas Common, The Virtuous Part 2 No. 27

That America is overdue for a “reset” seems more clear, day by day. I read yesterday Stephen Miller, White House Deputy chief of Staff is exploring how the administration might “do away” with habeas corpus. The administration regards the presence of immigrants here as an “invasion.” They’d like to suspend the principle that hard evidence is requisite to being incarcerated, or worse, — exiled…

Such a report sharpens Nietzsche/Zarathustra’s blunt observation of how absurd to think fools would learn virtue/value/goodness from fools and prevaricators… Indeed, the dividing line between good and evil, the fork-in-the road with no sign, one path leading to thriving and fulfillment the other to dis-ease, is something learned. You and I are become liars and fools!

The old way of thinking, that Law N’ Order mindset, Charlton Heston or Clint Eastwood perhaps, authority icon with a star and a Peacemaker Colt 44, — we know so well ‘reward and punishment’ according to the law, has not served any of us in the long run. Nor has the opposite extreme, to imagine that any action could possibly be pure, absent of self-interest, — worked out as virtue’s principle.

Be done with any and all of that advises Zarathustra! Aspire to dialog with yourself, so that you are able to inscribe your soul into every action, as the unheard but real voice of a mother echoes within every child!

Children playing by the sea always will have his/her toys taken by the sea. The sea will provide the reset, a removing of the familiar, the ‘loved too much’ toys so that new, intricate and interesting shells, gem-like are presented so that a better chapter can be written, a more apt principle of goodness, a better tool…

Stop it, just stop all of the complaining and crying! Better tools are available that we may build a future together!