[Andromeda] Are the Nietzscheans faithful to Nietzsche?

[Crom]

I recently started the first season of Andromeda and I was almost immediately blown away by it. It's by far one of the better sci-fi shows I've watched recently, and I'm really enjoy the Iain Banks style sci-fi technology and Dylan's struggle to rebuild civilization.

I also like the Nietzscheans, but, not knowing anything about Nietzsche, I was wondering, are they really following Nietzsche's philosophies? There seem to be a few references to Ayn Rand in their backstory and it makes me wonder if they don't follow some kind of corrupted version of Nietzsche.

[Samuel]

Not really. They aim to have as many offspring as possible- propogation of their genes is their primary goal. Why they haven't skiped sexual reproduction and gone to cloning is beyond me.

[Thanas]

I'll respond in detail later, but it is complicated.

[SylasGaunt]

Not really. They aim to have as many offspring as possible- propogation of their genes is their primary goal. Why they haven't skiped sexual reproduction and gone to cloning is beyond me.

Well assuming you're thinking straight cloning without any extra genetic tinkering you get a population with a very low genetic diversity, which they would see as a definite weakness.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

There are practically as many different readings on Neitzsche as there are readers; he was almost as much a poet as a philosopher, and if you actually read Also Sprach Zarathustra, he didn't let even his own theories stand in the way of a good line.

Other works are more serious in tone, and he was a philologist- Professor of Philology in fact- by profession, but his most famous work is practically blank verse.

I actually know more about him than I ever bothered to pick up about Andromeda, but the idea of an organised movement of Neitzscheans is hilarious in a creepy way. Sort of like Emos expressing their individuality by joining an identikit movement.

This is almost certainly going to end up citing chapter and verse at some point, and we can argue why he thought what he did until the kulturkampf comes home (to roost) but general impressions first; he's not a collectivist in any way, shape, style or form.

The entire point of the rantings about the Superman isn't to do with physical strength, about that which doesn't kill you making you stronger is not about physical injury; he served as an ambulanceman during the Franco- Prussian War, and would have seen far more than his fair share of maimed and crippled soldiers.

That, and the Revaluation of All Values, are basically about telling society to shove it; the Superman refuses to bind to the dead word of dead gods or worse yet town- hall tin gods, reflects upon and sets his own moral standards for himself, and acts according to them come what may.

You can't qualify as a Nietzschean superman by hanging out down at the gym, and you certainly don't do it by subscribing to groupthink.

It's extremely doubtful whether he matched up to his own standards, or ever seriously tried to; he was not physically healthy, syphilitic, and he did spend the last eleven years of his life in a lunatic asylum after an amorous encounter with a horse. His own reproductive success was zero.

He did advocate primitivity as a cure to modernity's ills, damaging his own case in the process and going back to practically worshipping the furor teutonicus, but that is just about in line with his general theory that society is the enemy of the individual and the individual is at war with society, and would do well to recgnise that fact and start trying to demolish bits of it.

He is also self- condemned as a misogynist- "Are you visiting women? Then always take your whip!". Bertrand Russell had the last word there, pointing out that "Nine out of ten of them would get the whip away from him, and he knows it."

Basically, he was right wing and at the very least an anarchist, arguably outright nihilist, and proto- postmodernist; "And this, too, is only opinion!"

[speaker-to-trolls]

I know practically nothing about Nietzsche beyond what I've been told, but from what I remember of the show the Nietzscheans seemed to be more concerned with their evolutionary obsessions than with Nietzsche. Every time you had a Nietzschean talking in any level of detail about society or the meaning of life it'd be about proving yourself to be the best, surviving at all costs and maximising the number of your descendants. Their connection to Nietzsche seemed to extend to giving them some nice quotes and a general disdain for things like honour, morality and altruism (on the grounds they're 'slave morality', I suppose, but then their justification might have been that they minimised fitness and tried to put a cramp on peoples evolutionary style).

If memory serves an Andromeda website said the main influences on the Nietzscheans were Nietzsche and the evolutionary theories of Darwin and Dawkins. Ironic since Dawkins has spent a lot of time making a case for societies and altruism (or kin selection at least) being an evolutionary good idea.

Also they were apparently created on Ayn Rand Station, take from that what you will.

[dworkin]

All I know is that, 'There was nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya bout the raising of the wrist'.

Mostly I think 'Nietzschean' was chosen because it sounds cool.

[Thanas]

All I know is that, 'There was nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya bout the raising of the wrist'.

Mostly I think 'Nietzschean' was chosen because it sounds cool.

No.

Here is, in short, the history of the Nietzschean people of the Andromedaverse (which reminds me, I really got to finish those essays about the Andromedaverse and post them here):

(all quotes taken from the Andromeda encyclopedia site allsystems.org)

Homeworld
The Nietzschean subspecies originated at Ayn Rand Station, a colony founded by Human geneticist Paul Museveni in a globular cluster near the Milky Way galaxy. Since then, Nietzscheans have spread throughout known space, reproducing rapidly until they now constitute 8 percent of the overall Human population.

Social Characteristics
The Human philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed that strife and conflict would inevitably reshape men into something better and stronger than what they once were. As a Human subspecies, Nietzscheans took his words to heart and used genetic engineering and nanotechnology to reshape themselves into the ultimate survivors.

Nietzscheans have built their culture on the twin pillars of social Darwinism and Dawkinite genetic competitiveness. Their single-minded devotion to self-improvement and the propagation of their own genes can strike other species (even their non-Nietzschean Human cousins) as selfish and arrogant, yet in practice the Nietzscheans' boundless energy and willpower have made them

8400 CY: Renegade human genetic scientist, Dr. Paul Museveni, founds Ayn Rand Station, the first Nietzschean colony. The Nietzschean gospel of gene-based survivalism and self-improvement quickly gains adherents, until by the present era Nietzscheans make up 8% of the Commonwealth's total human population.

8402 CY: Nietzschean Progenitor Drago Museveni is born at Ayn Rand Station.

8424 CY: Dr. Paul Museveni dies under unexplained circumstances and his son Drago assumes leadership of Ayn Rand Station, the first true Nietzschean to lead his people.

So here we have it - the Nietzscheans are a genetically engineered species created by a mad scientist who believed in both Ayn Rand and Nietzsche (raise your hand if you do not think this is a recipe for disaster?). In other words, we have Nietzschean superhumans with a healthy dose of libertarianism, and the genetic engineering that actually makes them believe they are the homo sapiens invictus.

However, if the Nietzscheans in the show do not measure up to this, that is because they have gone through more than three centuries of barbarism and decline. There is a very striking example of this discrepancy between Commonwealth Nietzcheans and post-fall Nietzcheans. The Nietzcheans before the fall at least were artistic leaders and had a tremendous amount of culture, the Nietzcheans after the fall are barbaric savages. The discrepancy goes so far that a Nietzchean of the pre-fall era immediately disavows those tribes when he wakes up in the post-fall era.

[Zixinus]

And just to ask: is social Darwinism even in Nietzsche?

A brief review of his philosophy tells a clear dislike of the "weak" and that he was quite an egoistical man. However, a "superman" is a moral superman if I understood correctly, not a physical one. That comes with Ayn Rand and other sociopathic literature (although I wonder whether Nietzsche is sociopathic as well).

[Thanas]

And just to ask: is social Darwinism even in Nietzsche?

A brief review of his philosophy tells a clear dislike of the "weak" and that he was quite an egoistical man. However, a "superman" is a moral superman if I understood correctly, not a physical one. That comes with Ayn Rand and other sociopathic literature (although I wonder whether Nietzsche is sociopathic as well).

It depends on what writings you focus. Social Darwinism per se is not really in Nietzsche, at least not word for word. However, Nietzsche does write that one could achieve the Übermensch through breeding techniques and the destruction of non-worthies in one of his writings, iirc. So it is not that far removed per se and fits with the general concept of Nietzsche+Ayn Rand.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I think my favorite Nietzchean would have to be Charlemagne Bolivar. He seemed a fair bit more civilized, and gave us this great quote-

Tyr: What would you like, Jaguar?
Charlemagne: The usual: Hundreds of grandchildren, utter domination of known space, and the pleasure of hearing that all my enemies have died in terrible, highly improbably accidents that cannot be connected to me. And you?
Tyr: The usual.

I don't think anything summed up the practical Nietzchean better.

[Thanas]

^Don't spoil the OP who has not viewed the show that far, Chewie.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I hardly consider an out-of-context quote from a character who appeared in one episode to be a spoiler.

[Thanas]

I hardly consider an out-of-context quote from a character who appeared in one episode to be a spoiler.

Given that the character was heavily discussed in a S1 episode and his mere appearance spoils the result of that discussion, I would.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

It should be noted that the sort of power that Nietzsche espoused in his writings was not political or social power of any sort, but artistic and creative power.

An argument could be made for 'having lots of surviving descendants' being a properly Nietzschean (as in the philosopher) goal, since he excoriated and railed against philosophies which attempted to restrain or sublimate man's instinctual desires.

Finally, Nietzsche was not in any way opposed to altruism, and in his own way very much supported it. He despised the humanism of the Christians and the Utilitarian philosophers (calling them 'dull old English frauds'), but his arguments against 'slave morality' were not against its ideals of doing good work, but that it ultimately proceeded from sublimated resentment, envy, the desire for other-worldly reward or other bad motivations. I should think, knowing as much more about human psychology and our altruistic instincts as we do today (and Nietzsche was nothing if not a philosophical psychologist, and one that holds up today better than many actual psychologists of his era {by which I just mean Freud}) he would likely support it. Master morality isn't about being a dick, it's about morality that proceeds from one's own nobility and honour*, one that affirms one's own self and one's own power**.

*Nietzhce explicitly mentioned honour as a trait of Master morality - however, it is implicit that the honour described must be man's own sense of honour, and not one imposed by society or slave morality.

** Though as mentioned above, Nietzsche had a somewhat unique definition of real Power that has nothing to do with controlling anything material or any other people (or even one's self in some weird Ascetic way), so trying to evaluate it simplistically is pretty self-defeating.

As for the Nietzscheans, though I can't say I watched Andromeda too closely, they obviously lean much closer to 'Rar Ayn Rand Social Darwinism life is about conquest and the ladies and the monies rar rar kaplah' than anything Nietzche would ever touch with a ten-foot pole, but then, it seems like the pretty realistic result if a society explicitly based on Nietzche was ever to be attempted (lots of pseudo-Anarchistic Post-Scarcity societies found in modern sci fi actually do fit what a Nietzschean Utopia might look like, but they don't mention him much).

Overall I think that Nietzsche's philosophy was far too focused on intangible aspects of the Individual, the Self, and the nature of Choice and Human Choice to be extrapolated into any specific socio-economic model, so by that measure I guess Andromeda's creative choices are about as valid as any. You could just as easily throw a couple quotes from Friedrich into Wall Street or Gone With The Wind and they would be just as accurate.

[Omeganian]

One thing that leaves me wondering (a minor point in a fic of mine) is, that with all the Nietzschean talks about perfection and constant improvement, their superperfect Messiah is... the very point where they started.