Some time ago I was eating dinner with friends in a diner in the city in which I live. It is a small neighborhood diner with both traditional greasy spoon and vegan options, so the people who frequent this diner are as diverse any place I have seen.
My friends and I order food and it comes rather quickly. We offer blessings over the food and begin eating and building when we hear a group of young hipsters building in the booth adjacent to us.
One of the young men in the group was waxing pompous and confident (God bless him, but is there any other way to wax?) about Nietzsche. Rather, he was spouting off well-known, often-used Nietzsche quotes perhaps in an attempt to sound appropriately, but effortlessly well-read. "Nietzsche said 'that which does not kill us'..." and "Nietzsche said that 'all great things must first wear'..." I gave him snaps for knowing that it was Nietzsche who actually said those things. I have heard those quotes attributed to many, many other authors.
This scene was almost so ironic, it wasn't.
I love hipsters. And its not just because of their skinny jeans, their retro gear, or their really cool lingo. I mean really, if it were not for hipsters and their lingo ("dope," "fresh," and "I'm going to get my *insert any verb like run, or freak, or eat made to sound like an adjective here* on), how else would people of color know when their slang is outdated?
I love them because of their ability to make almost everything passe and uncool simply by saying that it is. Even the sublime. Even the things the rest of us degenerates think are kind of cool. Like integration, gentrification, some jazz music, chastity and integrity. Ask Coldplay, The Black Eyed Peas or Matt Lauer who are all victims of hipsters and their wrath about how this all works.
In several of his writings and texts, Nietzsche made his now famous utterance, "God is Dead." Of course, Nietzsche did not make this utterance because he believed in a God and that he killed that God. We know that Nietzsche was a steadfast atheist. Rather, Nietzsche meant that God as Christians understood the concept (as well as the God's underlying ethical system of virtue) was passe, out of style and "unworkable".
Nietzsche was perhaps the first hipster. So, he may not have had the throw back Brewers' jersey and the slightly-bent trucker cap--the uniform of his hipster brethren, but he was able to make God--his arch enemy uncool, simply by saying that God was.
Wouldn't that be cool to banish things like poverty and oppression from our reality, simply by saying they are passe? But, you know, if it were cool, then it would be uncool.
In several of his writings and texts, Nietzsche made his now famous utterance, "God is Dead." Of course, Nietzsche did not make this utterance because he believed in a God and that he killed that God. We know that Nietzsche was a steadfast atheist. Rather, Nietzsche meant that God as Christians understood the concept (as well as the God's underlying ethical system of virtue) was passe, out of style and "unworkable".
Nietzsche was perhaps the first hipster. So, he may not have had the throw back Brewers' jersey and the slightly-bent trucker cap--the uniform of his hipster brethren, but he was able to make God--his arch enemy uncool, simply by saying that God was.
Wouldn't that be cool to banish things like poverty and oppression from our reality, simply by saying they are passe? But, you know, if it were cool, then it would be uncool.
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