Tarantulas

This is from Friedrich Nietzsche

You know, of course you probably know that he was the philosopher
Who announced the death of God
What he meant by that was that the fundamental metaphysics
That underly Western culture
Had lost their foundation
And that the consequence of that
Would be the disintegration of the idea of value itself
Especially of value hierarchies
He thought of the inevitable consequence of that
Or one of the consequences of that
A dramatic move towards a doctrine of radical equality
See because if value itself is destroyed
The value distinction between things so that one thing is not any better than another
Then there’s no reason for hierarchies of virtue or of value
And so the equality doctrine is a logical, is a logical outcome
So here’s what he wrote about that:

Behold; this is the hole of the tarantula
Do you want to see the tarantula itself?
Here hangs its web; touch it so that it trembles
There it comes willingly
Welcome, tarantula!
Your triangle and symbol sits black on your back, and I also know what sits in your soul:
Revenge sits in your soul
Wherever you bite, black scabs grow
Your poison makes the soul whirl with revenge
Thus I speak to you in a parable - you who make souls whirl, you preachers of equality
To me you are tarantulas, and secretly vengeful
But I shall bring your secrets to light; therefore I laugh in your faces with my laughter of the heights
Therefore I tear at your webs
That your rage may lure you out of your lie-holes
And your revenge may leap out from behind your word:
Justice
For that man be delivered from revenge
That is for me the bridge to the highest hope
And a rainbow after long storms
The tarantulas, of course, would have it otherwise
"What justice means to us is precisely that the world be filled with the storms of our revenge"
Thus they speak to each other
"We shall wreak vengeance and abuse on all whose equals we are not"
Thus do the tarantula-hearts vow
"And 'will to equality' shall henceforth be the name for virtue;
And against all that has power we want to raise our clamour!"

You preachers of equality
The tyrannomania of impotence clamours thus out of you for equality:
Your most secret ambitions to be tyrants thus shroud themselves in words of virtue!
Aggrieved conceit, repressed envy - perhaps the conceit and envy of your fathers - erupt from you as a flame and as the frenzy of revenge
What was silent in the Father speaks in the Son
And I often found the Son
The unveiled secret of the Father
They’re like enthusiasts
But it is not the heart that fires them
But revenge
And when they become elegant and cold it is not the spirit
But envy
That makes them elegant and cold
Their jealousy leads them even on the paths of thinkers
And this is the sign of their jealousy:
They always go too far
Till their weariness must in the end lie down to sleep in the snow

Tarantulas
Tarantulas
Tarantulas
Tarantulas

Out of every one of their complaints sounds revenge;
In their praise there is always a sting
And to be a judge
Seems bliss to them
But thus I counsel you my friends:
Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
They are people of a low sort and stock;
The hangman and the bloodhound (x4)

Look out of their faces
Mistrust all who talk much of their justice!
Verily, their souls lack more than honey
And when they call themselves “the good and the just”
Do not forget that they would be pharisees
If only they had
Power

My friends, I do not want to be mixed up and confused
With others
Some preach my doctrine of life
And are at the same time preachers of equality, and tarantulas. Although they are sitting in their holes
These poisonous spiders
With their backs turned on life
They speak in favour of life
But only because they wish to hurt
They wish to hurt those who now have power
For among those the preaching of death is still most at home
If it were otherwise
The tarantulas would teach otherwise;
They themselves were once the foremost slanderers of the world
And burners of heretics

I do not wish to be mixed up and confused with these preachers of equality