The Preachers of Equality, Part 1

On the Tarantulas

Behold, this is the hole of the tarantula.
Do you want to see the tarantula itself?
Here hangs its web; touch it, that it tremble!
(Zarathustra II. 7)

Life isn’t fair. That statement is cliche for a reason, but I’m not sure how many people really believe it. The uncomfortable truth is that some people come into the world more attractive, athletic, charismatic, or creative than others. Regardless of the obviousness of this fact, the existence of inequality on a particular dimension doesn’t necessarily stop people from believing in natural equality. Somebody who is unathletic could make up for that with academic talent. An ugly person might be charming or funny. Someone who is unattractive, unathletic, dim-witted, and socially inept might have a “good heart” or something. With enough determination, we can always maintain the illusion of equality.

The truth, however, is that some people just aren’t particularly creative, attractive, charismatic, conscientious, or kind. Others, privileged with good genetics and a supportive environment, seem to spontaneously manifest the total package: intelligence, attractiveness, athleticism, charisma, and (if you didn’t hate them already) warmth and generosity. There is no empirical evidence or compelling theoretical reason to believe that people come into the world with anything resembling equal potential. That idea might generate some warm fuzzy feelings but is totally disconnected from empirical reality.

In fact, there’s good evidence that many of the qualities we judge other people on are correlated with each other (see, e.g., the general factor of intelligence, the general factor of psychopathology, and the general factor of well-being). Smart people tend to be more attractive. Attractive people tend to be more charismatic. Charismatic people tend to be more financially successful. And so on. There are obviously disconnects between these traits in individuals, but at a population level most socially desirable traits correlate with each other. The flip side is that undesirable traits also correlate with each other, meaning that some people will end up below average in most socially desirable traits. Thinking about human behavior from an evolutionary perspective, how might these unfortunate souls promote their own evolutionary interests given that they would not succeed on a level playing field? To begin thinking about this question, let’s try a thought experiment.

Justice and Equality

Imagine that you are somebody who doesn’t have much going for you. In this hypothetical scenario you are not beautiful, charismatic, athletic, or creative. The opposite sex doesn’t pine for you. Nobody respects you. You’ve never really won at anything in your life. And it’s doubtful that things will change much in the future.

At the same time, you look around and see that some people just have it easy. Some people are born into loving families, with beautiful faces, athletic bodies, charming personalities, and intelligence to boot. These people are born winners and life just seems to come easily to them. They didn’t do anything to deserve these privileges, of course. It was just the luck of the draw.

“It’s not fair! Why did I have to be born like this?”, you might think to yourself. And you wouldn’t be the first to think something like that.

You deeply envy these people upon whom life has bestowed its blessings. You crave what they have, but you know that you will never have it.

But you are not just going to sheepishly accept your inferior status. You will find a way to gain some kind of superiority over these born winners without needing to actually be superior. You may never be beautiful, charismatic, athletic, or creative, but maybe there is something else you can be that will allow you to gain some advantage.

In the midst of your brooding, you have an insight. You can be morally superior. To present yourself as morally superior doesn’t require beauty, charisma, athleticism, or creativity. In fact, you don’t really need to do anything. Adopting a veneer of moral superiority merely requires that you believe the right things and pronounce those beliefs to the world. Belief doesn’t require effort or creativity. Anybody can believe. Even a loser like you.

But what should you believe in? You should adopt beliefs that ultimately benefit you, of course, but they can’t sound like they are benefitting you. In order to be morally appealing, your beliefs must sound noble and selfless.

“That’s not fair!” doesn’t sound very noble. But justice, that is a noble-sounding word, and it means the same thing doesn’t it?

“I want what other people have.” This, too, doesn’t sound very noble. But equality is a noble-sounding word, and it means the same thing doesn’t it?

Justice and equality. These will be your new highest values. You will fight to make the world a more just and equal place. How could anyone possibly oppose that?

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This was one of Nietzsche’s great insights about morality. Nietzsche was the first to realize how morality can be used as a tool for born losers to gain a collective advantage over born winners, and how culturally destructive this dynamic could become if it was not properly checked.

Definition of morality: Morality—the idiosyncrasy of decadents, with the ulterior motive of revenging oneself against life—successfully. I attach value to this definition. (Nietzsche, Ecce Homo IV. 7)

The Preachers of Equality

I am not interested in party politics. I have no affinity for the Republican or Democratic party (or any other political party). I’m not convinced that the most important problems affecting Western culture at the moment are primarily political, although they obviously have political manifestations. My thesis in this essay and its sequels may have some political ramifications, but this is only a byproduct.

I believe there is a sickness at the bottom of our artistic and intellectual culture. This sickness has allowed some of the least admirable, most pathetic individuals among us to gain an outsized amount of power and use that power to punish everyone who isn’t quite as miserable and (most especially) conformist as they are. Above all else, the preachers of equality demand conformity to their values.

The problem I want to address in these essays can be summed up as the problem of inequality, but the kind of inequality I am concerned with is not primarily about wealth. It is rather about constitution. It is about the fact that some people come into the world with every natural advantage while others do not, and the resentment generated by this situation.

This problem is not recent. It has been with us from the very beginning, for hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Successful cultures have found ways of suppressing it or harnessing it, but it is always there, under the surface or out in the open. It has posed a threat to the vitality of every civilization, and every civilization must find a way to deal with it. As the Laws of Manu provided a solution for ancient India, so also has Christianity provided Western civilization with a unique solution to this problem. The solution provided by Christianity no doubt contributed to the success of Western culture, but that solution may no longer be viable. At the very least, it has broken down in the last two centuries for reasons I have discussed elsewhere. If that’s the case, we will find a new way to deal with the problem or our civilization as we know it will stagnate or come to an end. If that sounds alarmist, you should keep in mind that putting an end to Western civilization is the explicit, open desire of a non-trivial number of intellectuals and activists.

Sometimes disadvantage spurs people on to greater achievements. Many geniuses, athletes, and moguls have had to overcome natural disadvantages. Other times, however, those whom Nietzsche calls “decadent” (degenerate, declining, deficient, etc.) adopt a more subtle, insidious strategy to gain superiority. They use morality. They adopt a veneer of “noble indignation” at the injustice of society or the world at large. My claim (echoing Nietzsche) is that it is these neurotic individuals who suffer from life and from themselves who pose the greatest danger to the future of humanity. Nietzsche described this phenomenon in The Geneaology of Morals:

Examine the background of every family, every organization, every commonwealth: everywhere the struggle of the sick against the healthy—a silent struggle as a rule, with petty poisons, with pinpricks, with sly long-suffering expressions, but occasionally also with that invalid’s Phariseeism of loud gestures that likes best to pose as “noble indignation.” This hoarse, indignant barking of sick dogs, this rabid mendaciousness and rage of “noble” Pharisees, penetrates even the hallowed halls of science… They are all men of ressentiment, physiologically unfortunate and worm-eaten, a whole tremulous realm of subterranean revenge, inexhaustible and insatiable in outbursts against the fortunate and happy and in masquerades of revenge and pretexts for revenge: when would they achieve the ultimate, subtlest, sublimest triumph of revenge? Undoubtedly if they succeeded in poisoning the consciences of the fortunate with their own misery, with all misery, so that one day the fortunate began to be ashamed of their good fortune and perhaps said one to another: “it is disgraceful to be fortunate: there is too much misery!” (GM, III. 14)

If you want to see an exaggerated example of what this looks like in real life, watch some of the (now infamous) highlights of the 2019 democratic socialist convention.

The Tyranny of the Neurotic

There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with being disadvantaged. There is also nothing wrong with trying to change the world in ways that make life easier for the disadvantaged. The problem occurs when one’s method of (purportedly) making life easier for the disadvantaged simultaneously makes everyone else more miserable and/or keeps everyone else from functioning effectively. In other words, the problem occurs when the disadvantaged play zero-sum games for power in which everyone ends up losing.

The democratic socialist convention of 2019 saw this tyranny of the neurotic taken to the extreme. There was to be no clapping (only jazz hands), no chatting, no gendered language, and no talking without announcing one’s pronouns first. These things are all done in order to avoid offending or causing distress to the most neurotic among us. In the tyranny of the neurotic, everyone is required to walk on eggshells at all times.

These are people who suffer from life and want to make sure that you suffer with them. These types of people aren’t new and they aren’t going away any time soon.

They wish to hurt those who now have power, for among these 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. (Zarathustra II. 7)

The democratic socialist convention was so ridiculous because it brought the most neurotic among us together in one place. These unfortunate souls have always attempted to use morality to achieve their aims.

The Sickness

Although my thesis is not explicitly political, the sickness I am referring to is, in our current political landscape, primarily (though not entirely) associated with the political left. In a post that will be published in a couple weeks¹, I argue that this sickness is also associated with right-wing antisemitism. Luckily, antisemites have little cultural influence. In these essays I am more concerned with intellectual culture than I am with elections, and intellectual culture (e.g., much of academia, education, journalism) is almost entirely captured by left-wing ideologues.

Richard Hanania traced the origins of wokeness to civil rights legislation and, more specifically, the way that legislation has been dishonestly interpreted and enforced by judges and bureaucrats. I don’t think he’s wrong, but my claim is that what he calls “wokeness” is the modern manifestation of a pathology that is much, much older. The question left unanswered by his book is why some people (e.g., the judges and bureaucrats who dishonestly interpreted civil rights law) vehemently promote ideologies that promote equality of outcomes while others oppose them. Civil rights legislation gave too much power to those who promote equality of outcome, but those kinds of people clearly existed before civil rights legislation.

One might think it is merely an issue of self-interest. In other words, it would make sense that those who support equality of results are the ones who would benefit from such policies. But this can’t be the whole story. Plenty of straight white men are involved in the promotion of ideologies that ostensibly paint themselves as privileged oppressors who deserve to be systematically discriminated against. It’s not that self-interest plays no role at all, but whatever role it does play is not exactly straight-forward.

My claim is that “wokeness”, despite its surface-level differences, is motivated by the same psychology that fueled communism and other pathological bids for substantial “equality” (which is not to say that all bids for equality are pathological, but I’ll get to that later). Nietzsche recognized the psychology at play more than 100 years ago, in recognizing that the bid for equality and justice was so often a disguise for revenge.

There will never be a theory that can explain why any particular individual adheres to a moral or political ideology. The underlying motivations of individuals are too complex and diverse. For some, political activism is a status game and the details of the particular ideology they adhere to are almost irrelevant. Others are conformists, for whom local incentives (e.g., family members’ political leanings, the religion they were brought up in) will play a large role. Everyone has multiple incentives driving them towards or away from any particular ideology.

With every moral or political ideology, however, there are true believers who seem to promote the ideology despite the obvious incentives (e.g., despite alienating their co-workers, friends, and family members). My goal here is to explain the origins of the true believers in the substantial kind of equality and justice that has become the ideal of many Western intellectuals. While many in academia give lip service to the ideology because it’s a good career move, the true believers are more likely to enthusiastically organize and promote the ideology in addition to punishing and excluding heretics. The true believers of any ideology are usually a small minority, but they can exercise a huge amount of influence in the circles in which that ideology has influence (in this case, academia, education, journalism, etc.). It is this minority of activists that I want to explain.

Do these kinds of activists have a common profile? The fact is that we do not have good data on the psychological makeup of left-wing activists. Almost all research in psychology and political science focuses on explaining right-wing ideologues (e.g., right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, etc.). This is undoubtedly because pretty much everyone doing this kind of research is on the political left. Nevertheless, we have enough information to piece together a decent picture of who is most likely to adopt radical left-wing ideologies.

In this introductory post I simply want to establish that people who identify with the political left are, on average, more unhappy, more physically unhealthy, shorter/weaker (if they are men), less attractive, and have higher rates of mental illness than their right-wing counterparts. This latter finding is dose-dependent, meaning that the highest levels of mental illness can be found among those who identify as far left, with more moderate liberals being closer to average.

Here is a table with some relevant findings. I am not an expert in this area and this is not an exhaustive review. I don’t think there is any real controversy about the validity of these findings, but if there is feel free to let me know in the comments.

Conservatives are happier, healthier, taller, and more physically attractive than left-liberals, in addition to being physically stronger and less prone to mental illness.

In part 2 of this series I will expand on the meaning of this pattern while providing a plausible genetic/evolutionary explanation for it. For now, it’s enough to say that the farther left you go on the political spectrum, the more likely you are to have serious problems in life, many of which (e.g., being unattractive, physically ill, or short) are largely outside of your control. Somewhat paradoxically, people on the political left are also more highly educated than right-wingers. This means that the prototypical left-wing activist is unhappy, unattractive, unhealthy, short/weak (if they are a man), but also relatively smart and highly educated.

These are the “preachers of equality”. They are smart enough to realize that the only way they can get what they want out of life is to live in a world that despises the qualities they lack: beauty, health, strength, cheerfulness, and competence — in a word, power. Their ideologies are designed to bring about such a world. Glorifying victimhood, challenging beauty standards, denigrating masculinity (e.g., strength and stoicism), and opposing meritocracy are strategies meant to bring about a world that is more favorable towards people who lack socially desirable traits.

And 'will to equality' shall henceforth be the name for virtue; and against all that has power we want to raise our clamor! (Zarathustra II. 7)

But Isn’t Equality a Good Thing?

It took me a long time to learn that some people have a concept of “fairness” which is totally antithetical to my own. It always seemed obvious to me that fairness is achieved when the process by which people are judged is equally applied. For example, fairness in college admissions is achieved when everyone is judged according to the same standards. Fairness in hiring and promotion is achieved when everyone is judged according to the same standards. The same is true of the criminal justice system.

It turns out that some people have a very different conception of fairness and equality. They believe that applying processes equally is not fair because people come into the world under different circumstances. In this view, processes of selection and judgement need to be altered so that disadvantaged people have the same probability of achieving favorable outcomes as their more advantaged counterparts. For example, in the Harvard case that was recently decided by the supreme court, admissions data showed that a particular set of scores, grades, and qualifications which would give a Black applicant a 100 percent chance of acceptance would have given an Asian applicant a twenty percent chance and a white applicant about a thirty percent chance. Harvard was correcting its process of selection so that a historically disadvantaged minority (African Americans) would have a leg up. Oddly enough, another historically disadvantaged minority (Asians) was being punished under the same policy.

Thomas Sowell referred to this kind of policy as a “quest for cosmic justice”. For those who seek cosmic justice, fairness is only achieved when every individual has an equal chance of getting the desired outcome. This means that any genetic, cultural, or historical differences that could lead to different odds of success must be accounted for (though genetic and cultural differences are often denied). Processes of selection and judgement must account for any disadvantage in order to be “fair”.

For example, in Delgado & Stefancic’s 2017 Critical Race Theory textbook the authors suggest that many critical race theorists are suspicious of the liberal conception of “rights” because they apply only to processes and not outcomes.

[Critical race theorists] are also highly suspicious of another liberal mainstay, namely, rights… Rights are almost always procedural (for example, to a fair process) rather than substantive (for example, to food, housing, or education). Think how our system applauds affording everyone equality of opportunity, but resists programs that assure equality of results. (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017 p. 23)

In other words, many critical race theorists (CRTs) believe that rights are an impediment to equality because they guarantee equality of the process rather than equality of results.

My point is that there are two competing and mutually exclusive conceptions of equality within Western culture. As Delgado and Stefancic rightly point out, equality of the process is totally incompatible with equality of results. If the process is equal, results will never be equal. For example, if Harvard university applied its admission standards equally (i.e., equality of process), Asian students would probably be massively over-represented at Harvard (i.e., inequality of results), an outcome that would offend the sensibilities of its progressive bureaucracy. In order for there to be an equal representation of racial/ethnic categories at Harvard, the process of selection had to give large advantages to African Americans while discriminating against Asian Americans and whites. When I refer to the “preachers of equality” I am only referring to those who advocate for equality of results at the expense of an equally applied process.

Burn the Heretics

But what is so wrong with seeking cosmic justice (equality of results), as opposed to traditional justice (equality of process)? Perhaps the main problem with cosmic justice is that it is imposible to achieve, and any sincere attempt to achieve it will require nothing less than totalitarian control over every aspect of a society. The attempt to implement cosmic justice has always required sacrificing freedom of association, freedom of expression, and the rule of law as it is normally understood. Traditional justice, on the other hand, is comparatively easy to achieve and allows for the kinds of freedoms we expect in a modern liberal democracy.

Not only does cosmic justice differ from traditional justice, and conflict with it, more momentously cosmic justice is irreconcilable with personal freedom based on the rule of law. Traditional justice can be mass-produced by impersonal prospective rules governing the interactions of flesh-and-blood human beings, but cosmic justice must be hand-made by holders of power who impose their own decisions on how these flesh-and-blood individuals should be categorized into abstractions and how these abstractions should then be forcibly configured to fit the vision of the power-holders. (Sowell, 1999 pp. 45-46)

Time and again, we have seen the purveyors of cosmic justice attempt to suppress the speech of those who disagree with their vision. When they have the institutional or legal means to suppress speech, they will use those means. Software engineer James Damore, for example, was fired from Google for expressing the idea that differences between men and women would result in more male engineers than female. His memo was well supported by the relevant scientific literature, and (in my opinion) his main thesis was obviously correct. Barring massive interventions, men will always be over-represented in technical fields like engineering because a larger subset of men are interested in highly precise systems (probably due to higher rates of high-functioning autism in men). Nevertheless, Damore’s ideas were heretical to the ideology of “equality” that has pervaded the culture of Google. He violated the sacred value that men and women must be equal on all socially valued domains (e.g., interest and aptitude in STEM subjects) and therefore he had to be punished. The recent Gemini debacle, in which Google’s chatbot refused to provide historically accurate images because it refused to depict white people, provided more evidence of Google’s cultural takeover by the preachers of equality.

Purveyors of cosmic justice will socially ostracize and tar the reputation of anyone who disagrees with their sacred values. Try, for example, expressing any opposition to affirmative action policies on a college campus. The idea that “the most qualified person ought to get the job” is a clear expression of traditional justice as opposed to cosmic justice (in which a person’s race, gender, sexuality, disability, etc., must be factored into any hiring decision). There have been multiple stories of professors facing social and professional consequences for having the wrong opinion about affirmative action (e.g., here and here).

Conservatives will also ostracize people who do not share their sacred values when they have the power to do so. History is clear about that fact. Nevertheless, in Western intellectual culture it is simply the case that the political left holds all of the power to censure people who disagree with their sacred values. I do not fear saying out loud that I think Donald Trump is a buffoon. The only people who will be mad at me for saying that are people with no power whatsoever to do anything about it (except to say mean things about me on the internet). On the other hand, making the factually accurate claim that men and women do not have equal interest or aptitude in most STEM subjects could have serious social and career repercussions in a number of contexts (e.g., academia, education, mainstream journalism, etc.).

Reflecting this fact, a 2017 CATO Institute poll showed that liberals are far less likely to self-censor their views than moderates or conservatives. The most liberal people feel the least amount of pressure to self-censor and vice-versa for conservatives. This would obviously not have been the case during the McCarthy era, but in the 21^st century progressive liberals have won the culture war within mainstream institutions.

I want to be clear that I don’t think expressing resentment towards high status groups in the name of “justice” and “equality” is a specifically left-wing phenomenon. Much of right-wing antisemitism seems to have been driven by resentment about the fact that European Jews are an extremely successful minority group. There are still antisemites who openly promote white identity politics, but as of now they are politically and culturally irrelevant. Moral and political ideologues of all stripes have often used the word “justice” to describe what is more accurately understood as the desire for revenge against anyone more successful than they are. In the current cultural climate, it is more socially and morally acceptable to direct that desire for revenge against the proverbial “straight white male” than Jews or other successful minority groups, but the underlying motives are the same.

Conclusion

In this series of posts I am going to attempt to explain why the “preachers of equality” have gained so much cultural influence in the last century. This will involve discussions of genetics, the hunter-gatherer egalitarian ethos, cultural evolution, and the influence of Judaism and Christianity on Western culture. By the time I’m done, I hope to have put forward a novel argument about where ideologies that promote equality of outcomes came from, why they became particularly successful in the 20th century, and why they pose a threat to the longevity of Western civilization.

As with the other series I am working on (the “Revaluation of All Values”), I consider this project to be an extension and update of insights had by the 19^th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. I will refer to his work throughout this series. In his poetic masterpiece Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche described the preachers of equality along with his intentions to expose the real motivations that lay behind their promotion of “equality” and “justice”. This project can be thought of as a commentary on Nietzsche’s words below.

On the Tarantulas

Behold, this is the hole of the tarantula. Do you want to see the tarantula itself? Here hangs its web; touch it, that it tremble!

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 clamor!"

You preachers of equality, the tyrannomania of impotence clamors 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 often I found the son the unveiled secret of the father.

They are like [religious] enthusiasts, yet 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. 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 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 favor of life, but only because they wish to hurt. They wish to hurt those who now have power, for among these 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. For, to me justice speaks thus: "Men are not equal." Nor shall they become equal! What would my love of the Superman be if I spoke otherwise?

On a thousand bridges and paths they shall throng to the future, and ever more war and inequality shall divide them: thus does my great love make me speak. In their hostilities they shall become inventors of images and ghosts, and with their images and ghosts they shall yet fight the highest fight against one another. Good and evil, and rich and poor, and high and low, and all the names of values—arms shall they be and clattering signs that life must overcome itself again and again.

Life wants to build itself up into the heights with pillars and steps; it wants to look into vast distances and out toward stirring beauties: therefore it requires height. And because it requires height, it requires steps and contradiction among the steps and the climbers. Life wants to climb and to overcome itself climbing.

And behold, my friends: here where the tarantula has its hole, the ruins of an ancient temple rise; behold it with enlightened eyes! Verily, the man who once piled his thoughts to the sky in these stones—he, like the wisest, knew the secret of all life. That struggle and inequality are present even in beauty, and also war for power and more power: that is what he teaches us here in the plainest parable. How divinely vault and arches break through each other in a wrestling match; how they strive against each other with light and shade, the godlike strivers—with such assurance and beauty let us be enemies too, my friends! Let us strive against one another like gods.

Alas, then the tarantula, my old enemy, but me. With godlike assurance and beauty it bit my finger. "Punishment there must be and justice," it thinks; "and here he shall not sing songs in honor of enmity in vain."

Indeed, it has avenged itself. And alas, now it will make my soul, too, whirl with revenge. But to keep me from whirling, my friends, tie me tight to this column. Rather would I be a stylite even, than a whirl of revenge.

Verily, Zarathustra is no cyclone or whirlwind; and if he is a dancer, he will never dance the tarantella.

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

1. I’ll update this with the link when it’s published.