Nietzsche was very interested in how language works. One of his critiques is that language gives us an unexamined metaphysics. In fact, not only does language cause us to conjure up entities that are then presumed to exist in certain ways, but even our very “common sense” is contaminated by this metaphysics.

Consider the way that language insists on there being a subject and an object in every sentence. But in fact our experience of reality is more of a single cloth. When we look back over our own experiences, we are forced to divide the subject from the object in order to “make sense” of what occurred. In other words we reflexively import a “doer”(somebody who “does” something), even in cases where it is not automatically clear that there was a “doer”.

To illustrate this point, Nietzsche suggested we consider the sentence, “Lightning strikes.” In this case the “doer” is lightning and its implied action is that “it strikes”. But, hold on a second. It is enough for us to realize “There is lightning”. The idea that lightning does something in order to strike is redundant.

In the case of human beings, the artificiality of this division into subject and object is not so obvious. But for this very reason, the metaphysics embedded in our use of grammar could be causing us more problems than we know.

For instance, we have very much trained ourselves, perhaps on the basis of the lure of this pattern of grammar, to seek out “doers” in every instance where something dramatic takes place. It is as if, in the case of a lightning strike that damages our roof,, we set up a police crack team to find a certain “Mr lightning”, who can be held responsible. Actually what I am getting at is we seek certain culpable individuals, whom we can blame, in instances where things go wrong. We are on the look out for those who can be held responsible — the alleged “doers”.

No doubt, in life, there really are some actual “doers” in a lot of cases, and in real police work, an action or a crime can be traced back to them. But it is amazing how often we seek to nail the presumed perpetrators when the situation isn’t really like that: for instance there is no particular person who did a particular thing, that brought about a particular outcome. Often our minds don’t stop to realize this, because we in hot pursuit for the responsible “doer”, spurred on by our inurement to grammar.

Just to give you one example of how far this tendency can go, I will relate something from my own experience, as unbelievable as it can be. As I have said, it is unbelievable enough, but the fact that I was born in Africa during the time that a colonial regime had some power, is deemed by some to have been an extraordinary crime that I was atone for. Actually, the event of colonialism is much, much bigger than me. But he idea that there should be someone, somewhere, who atones for an event that one disapproves of would seem to be strongly inbuilt into our human mode of reasoning. By contrast, it is much more difficult, it seems, to say, “these sorts of things just happen!”

It probably is neither. I am coming more and more to Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence, that fundamentally the elements that make up humanity do not change their value. There can, however, be a drop in the level of culture, from higher to lower, which I think is what has actually occurred.

But if we look at this in a Nietzschean way as well, this is just cracking open the kernel of what was already there, revealing human society for what it is. In the past, prior to the Internet, much more of human thoughts and aspirations were cloaked with the ideas that came from a higher strain of culture. It was, for instance, in the same way that the weddings of the common folk even today have the form of allowing them to become aristocrats for just one day.

In a similar sense, people in the near recent past were spoon-fed higher quality dramas and written materials through the regular media and other established sources. It made things look as if people were more cultivated and aware than they actually might have been, since this was the only go-to source, which came from one level higher than average, everyday normality.

It seems we are now seeing things as they actually are, which is that people tend to prefer many things that were once through pedestrian or not altogether sophisticated. The values promulgated over the Internet have various forms of right-wing populism, or left-wing populism.

The majority of people these days are not going to be highly responsive and this is because are currently undergoing a cultural low point, where much of reality, including artistic contributions and constructs are reduced to mere psychological definitions.

As a consequence of too many armchair diagnosticians, the works of art we come across do not have time to really percolate through the society, or in our minds. instead of allowing the art to lead us down as yet unvisited corridors, we pre-empt the entire process by making evaluations on an individual psychological level. Our favorite it to judge those who have something more interesting to say as “grandiose”.

As a consequence of this we are to a large extent in an era of unresponsiveness. All the question marks that philosophy raises, and the mystery that art seeks to evoke already have readymade “answers” (although not actually real answers at all). Psychology and psychiatry provide the stop-gap to the mind, preventing it from questioning, or looking deeper.

How one deals with this is by realizing what has occurred. One must allow what is, in Nietzsche’s terms, a certain degree of “leveling”, whereby those who adopt psychological explanations are left to do so. One yields the ground of “psychological explanations” to them. Over a bit more time, those who have adopted psychological explanations will forge themselves into the lower part of culture. This lower sector will be functional, regulated and highly standardized. It will also have the tendency to self-police anything that isn’t bland, and to raise psychological question marks against it.

After an even longer time, those who can still create art will forge a higher culture. This higher culture will eschew all psychological explanations in favor of much grittier, much more profound, and highly meaningful and colorful take on reality. Entrance to this level of higher culture will come at a premium price.

Very good question!

in his four posthumously published volumes, Nietzsche sets up several outlines as to how some larger chunks of society express themselves in terms of art, politics and social attitudes. He also gives them an outline to modernize their ideas along lines that are no longer theological. That is, he lays out a blueprint for the “modern soul” to express their natures in a manner that is no longer morally squeamish.

The main idea here is to see human relations in the terms he coined, “will to power”, rather than in terms of some kind of mysterious agenda that would require us to morally perfect ourselves (in other words instead of implicit and explicit theological ideologies).

His conflict with the relatively prevailing theological perspective of his time was in the idea that we are not supposed to improve ourselves, because everything that exists has a measure of power that is unchanging, and that we remain, in this sense, true to ourselves despite many cycles of growth and destruction. We are what we are, moving toward a direction that is driven by an underlying agenda that we all have, toward development (increasing our power, not increasing our morality or our “knowledge”). But this growth spurt that we all have a drive to embrace is no more and no less than the quantum of power already within us. (In other words, we merely actualize what is already “there” in its seed form, through seeking our own expansion and design to master what is weaker.)

Now the currently controversial or despised term “weakness” is, in this case, very much a relative term, based in the notion of an underlying sense that we are constantly on the move and trying to master ourselves, and new situations, in order to improve. But there is also an understanding here that human hierarchies implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) are built on the notion that those who gain mastery will in turn dominate those who do not do so.

A point to bear in mind here is that Nietzsche does express a certain revulsion toward a very direct form of “will to power”. He despises militarism and actual physical dominance, but nonetheless he wants to see those who are actually psychologically astute (because of self-mastery) come into a position of obtaining actual social power. It is to this end that he writes in ways that engage with many social perspectives (and sometimes promulgate them), because he wants to find a way through the forest of modern styles of thinking, to the point that “the higher man” will earn his role and place in a more natural style of society.

In all I think Nietzsche finds (as I do) that the “higher man” — one who has more complexity and drive to create “higher culture” is the meat in the sandwich between the earnestly pious masses (who are not so innocent at all in their piety, as they seek scapegoats) and those who employ power crudely and mechanistically (like the bourgeois and the nationalists). In the four volumes, which involve a multidimensional and multifaceted look at how “modern” society is shaping up to be, Nietzsche’s main concern is the suffering of the “higher man” and how it might be vindicated.