The Death of Enthusiasm: Nietzsche’s Warning to the Modern World
Why modern society kills your inner fire—and what Nietzsche taught about reviving it.
The Death of Enthusiasm
We live in a world that rewards data and punishes passion.
Where enthusiasm is seen as immaturity, and feelings are treated like flaws.
Perhaps I’m just too sceptical, but - isn’t this the world we now live in?
Worse yet - isn’t this the world of the eternal tomorrow?
I thought this is a modern-era problem.
Boy was I wrong.
The whole story started way earlier, during the so-called Industrial Revolution.
This era dates from 1760 to 1840 - meaning 4 years before Nietzsche was born.
Nietzsche was born into the world drunk by the discoveries and inventions like manufacturing, automatization and systems for productivity and efficiency.
Does that ring a bell?
Wait, that's not all. In the years before and partly during the industrial revolution the world went through an immense mental shift also known as the era of “enlightenment”.
Darwin’s theory of evolution and the Big Bang theory replaced, to a great degree, the formerly universal belief in divine creation. The Reason and logical mental faculties stole the spotlight and human feelings and instincts took the back seat.
A world worshipping quantity over quality.
A place where scientific doctrines replaced common sense.
It was these times that marked the beginning of the world as we know it today.
And it was precisely this era that killed what was most unique to the human species - the spring of life called Enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm as Fuel for the Übermensch
Nietzsche possessed a razor-sharp rational intellect—but he never bowed to it.
He taught that one has to embrace the Will to power and be ambitious , shooting sky-high, that one should overcome his lower self that acts on the behalf of its emotions.
This fact, nevertheless, gets often greatly misinterpreted.
Nietzsche didn’t imply a diminishment let alone a complete elimination of Enthusiasm.
Not at all.
Rather he wanted us to master our emotions, to gather them into one monstrous cluster of energy (Think of it like Naruto gathering energy into a Rasengan—intense, focused, explosive) which we then use with controlled precision to the attainment of our highest goals and ambitions.
Nietzsche hated the society he lived in and would hate today's one even more.
He saw the slowly dying Enthusiasm as one of the biggest obstacles on the way to one’s higher Self.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra he says:
"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
— Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue §5)
Tame. Train. Attack!
For Nietzsche there’s no Übermensch without an all-devouring Enthusiasm harnessed into laser-beam drive & focus.
The message is clear:
Don’t kill your inner monster.
Harness it. Tame it. Train it to hunt your goals with you.
Once you go through a rough period of this self-control mastery, you’ll be ready to achieve your wildest dreams and ultimately - to become The Übermensch.
Thank you for reading,
see you soon, fellow thinker!
There comes a moment in every man’s life…
When staying the same becomes more painful than changing.
When the call to become drowns out the comfort of being.
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