The Herd, The Fallen.

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“Our highest insights must – and should – sound like follies and sometimes like crimes when they are heard without permission by those who are not predisposed and predestined for them”

Nietzsche , Beyond Good and Evil.

I wonder at the sense in writing on this topic, but since this blog exists for everyone and no-one why not? It is on my mind.

I am not going to catalogue Nietzsche’s references to ‘the Herd’ and ‘Herd mentality’ – that would be an academic exercise – you would be better off reading them in the original.

Many of us worry about right & wrong, good & evil – but for Nietzsche morality itself is a distraction from a more profound struggle – that between ‘the Herd’ and ‘Higher Humans’. Herd thinking – whether morality or philosophy – is for Nietzsche often little more than sublimated resentment, a set of rules that promote conformity and prevent progress. 'Good and Evil' is a puppet-show.

Heidegger makes a similar point, instead he uses the expression ‘fallen’. What both the Herd and the Fallen have in common is that they are a type of life that lacks a unifying purpose – that is to say: a purpose which connects them to history. History, for Heidegger, is the unfolding of Being (destiny if you prefer). For example, we are living out the unfolding of technology as we speak – one way in which Being reveals itself. Alan Turing might be an example of someone with a connection to that destiny; someone with a historical role to play. Not everyone with a historical role makes it into the history books.

By contrast the Herd/the Fallen are consumed by the everyday – by trivialities. For the Herd, technology is something we fall into - it consumes us, occupies us. The writer Charles Bukowski describes this mentality as follows:

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”

The Fallen are flotsam not fish – for example caught up in the unfolding of technology, rather than connected to its history. For the Herd, technology is something we fall into - it consumes us, occupies us. You would be forgiven for thinking that ‘the Herd’ describes the Instagram generation, but really it describes a much broader group, one we might call ‘conventionals’, people who are characteristically obedient, always in search of an Authority – someone marked by the herd as a guardian of conventions. 

It is characteristic of the Herd not to have a higher (historical) sense of purpose, and so they necessarily rely on Authority and obedience as a means to navigate the world. Authorities are marked variously by qualification or by popularity – the Herd will listen to celebrities or people with doctorates, it makes no difference. What matters is that the herd have validated these Authorities in some fashion; since the Herd have no connection to destiny they have no other means to orient their responses to things they encounter.

It is easy to read Nietzsche’s perspective as elitist – certainly that is a common emotional reaction – but perhaps a good metaphor would be that of the sheep and the sheepdog. Sheep fear sheepdogs. Sheep want only to graze, whilst the sheepdog provides a bridge to a grander scheme.

Who is to say the sheepdog is not merely a wolf? A sociopath perhaps? Precisely because of this connection to destiny, to history, a higher human is not merely someone who flaunts rules for their own ends - indeed it is their calling to lay down their life in pursuit of destiny, in the name of progress. They are profoundly selfless, rather than selfish. This kind of selflessness is unlike a religious sense of selflessness, in which one sacrifices oneself for one’s neighbour; for the higher human the sacrifice is made for Being, for a higher purpose.

A higher human is unlikely to be celebrated – quite the contrary. In return for their efforts they can expect to be ridiculed, excluded, ignored and attacked. Were it not for their ‘calling’ they would have no motivation to act as they do; they expect no reward, neither do they seek to persuade. They live in the face of marketing. Where marketing is the mechanism used to drive consensus amongst the Herd, they remain untimely, unpopular and uncompromised. For them, all humans are equally significant.

Today, Herd mentality is marked by constant references to ‘Authorities’, “I use such-and-such model” people will say or “have you read so-and-so’s book?”. For me, the most sinister development has been the popularisation of science – or as Nietzsche describes it ‘scientism’.

You might think that the collapse of popular religion would lead to more enlightenment and progress - far from it. ‘Scientism’ has filled the vacuum. Scientism is not true science. It lacks critical thought – instead Nietzsche uses this term to describe the masquerading of beliefs and prejudices as absolutes, via the Authority of ‘Evidence’. Scientism is more dangerous that religious fanaticism since – unlike religion – it involves an element of duplicity. It pretends that beliefs are objective truths; people go in search of evidence to support whatever prejudice they bear – then present it as objective fact, as indisputable.

By contrast science makes no claims to certainty, science is always theory, since for a scientist evidence is always for or against a theoretical position – and every theory is provisional, a piece of critical thought.

And so it is that the Herd have taken to scientism, swapping ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ every bit as ferociously as their forebears traded religious beliefs, only now in ‘bad faith’.

Ironically, in that light the higher human looks almost religious – people wonder whether their sense of connection to destiny is akin to a correspondence with God. It’s not, for the simple reason that destiny never listens, destiny never cares. Humans are merely one of Being’s expressions.

At this point we can see some things more clearly: the play of good and evil, of right and wrong - whether that is the latest Marvel movie or the battle between leavers and remainers over Brexit - is merely theatre for the Herd, a distraction for the Fallen. This is why Nietzsche writes Beyond Good and Evil: good and evil are merely a veil, they are not ultimately a historical articulation.

Consider Alan Turing: his work represents the articulation of Being – as technology. He ‘opened up the space’ in which computers could come into being and entrepreneurs like Jobs and Musk could play. In a sense the war was incidental – the expression of technology was the real historical movement; and that was bound to happen regardless of the outcome. Though he is undoubtedly one of the heroes of the war, his real passion lay beyond it.

This helps us to see a second point: the ‘higher human’ is not really much of a human at all. In fact, it would be more accurate to describe them as ‘inhuman’: they serve History, not humanity. In acting as ‘spokespeople’ for Being they are as likely to harm humanity as they are to help it. Take technology for example – technology is a historical articulation of Being that treats humans like dust in a whirlwind – sweeping us up, re-organising us, ultimately perhaps destroying us. The higher human cares for destiny, not humanity.