In the prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, the titular character travels down from the mountains and into a village to preach to the people about the overman. They laugh at him, so he changes up his approach by describing to them the overman’s antithesis: the last man.
And thus spoke Zarathustra to the people: “The time has come for man to set himself a goal. The time has come for man to plant the seed of his highest hope. His soil is still rich enough. But one day this soil will be poor and domesticated, and no tall tree will be able to grow in it. Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to whir!
“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you, you still have chaos in yourselves.
“Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.
“’What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?’ thus asks the last man, and he blinks.
“The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea-beetle; the last man lives longest.
“’We have invented happiness,’ say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one’s neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth.
“Becoming sick and harboring suspicion are sinful to them: one proceeds carefully. A fool, whoever still stumbles over stone or human beings! A little poison now and then: that makes for agreeable dreams. And much poison in the end, for an agreeable death.
“One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion.
“No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
“’Formerly, all the world was mad,’ say the most refined, and they blink.
“One is clever and knows everything that has ever happened: so there is no end of derision. One still quarrels, but one is soon reconciled – else it might spoil the digestion.
“One has one’s little pleasure for the day and one’s little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard for health.
“’We have invented happiness,’ say the last men, and they blink.”
Nietzsche’s prophecy of the last man has come to fruition. This man is known by many names in the modern world: soyboy, beta male, urbanite, bugman. But he perfectly fits Nietzsche’s description of the last man.
As I stated in a previous article, Nietzsche was one of the rare few atheists who understood the logical conclusions of atheism. The last man is one of those logical conclusions. When humanity abandoned God, or “killed” God so to speak, they took all their ancient wisdom and threw it into the abyss. They are now asking questions that were already answered by their ancestors. The last man believes that science is the be all and end all of human knowledge. He sees religion as outdated superstition. He thinks he knows better than his supposedly unenlightened ancestors. But try as he might, the scientific method cannot answer questions pertaining to love or life. He cannot comprehend that which cannot be quantified, so he reduces everything to the material. In doing so, he has made everything small and insignificant.
The last man despises suffering, oblivious to the notion that it makes you stronger. How else did humanity become the dominant form of life on Earth if not by going through the fires of suffering? They escape the suffering inherent in the world by indulging themselves in drugs or other “poisons”. Hard work is anathema to them because it causes them suffering, so they turn it into play. This mindset gave birth to the cringe word “adulting”. The last man craves equality and the abolition of hierarchy because strong leadership and the accumulation of wealth require too much effort. Their end goal is a single uniform mass of humanity with no different ethnicities, cultures, or religions. They can’t stand anyone who is different because that would imply that people are unequal, so they hound them out of society. We can already see this with the concept of “cancel culture”. They believe in the most absurd ideas imaginable, yet they tell themselves their ancestors were the ones who were mad.
Atheism leads to nihilism, and nihilism leads to either suicide or hedonism. The last man chose hedonism. He cares about nothing other than his personal pleasure. Nietzsche knew atheists would become like this and he hated it, which is why he created his concept of the overman. He wanted modern man to transcend the pursuit of material pleasure, transcend mediocrity, and reach for greater heights and greater glory. But modern atheists laugh at Nietzsche by calling him a bigot and an incel, which mirrors how the people laughed at Zarathustra.
But Zarathustra became sad and said to his heart: “They do not understand me: I am not the mouth for these ears. I seem to have lived too long in the mountains; I listened too much to brooks and trees: now I talk to them as to goatherds. My soul is unmoved and bright as the mountains in the morning. But they think I am cold and I jeer and make dreadful jests. And now they look at me and laugh: and as they laugh they even hate me. There is ice in their laughter.”