God is Dead and we Have Killed Him

This quote of Nietzsche's is perhaps his most well known quote and many people have different (mis)interpretations of it, but mostly used to refer to how the scientific revolution led to increasing secularization and rendered earlier conceptions of god unbelievable. That conception of god in the west had been a source of most ethical and aesthetic judgements so Nietzsche foresaw the 'death of god' (correctly) to have great implications.

This poem is not the explanation I think Nietzsche meant originally, this is a fun idea I had which could be another alternate interpretation which I decided to flesh out. Here I consider the linguistic implications of the phrase 'God is dead' basically meaning 'God' is a dead word, which is pretty much the nature of all words/language or at least in daily parlance where we forget the feeling or phenomenological state that should be associated with words. It also expresses hope for a return to idealist paradigms which is probably coming (something that again seems non-Nietzschean on the surface but would probably warrant a blog post or more to its defense, maybe some time later)*.

God is dead and we have killed him

Crucified in the books and the statues we build him

Accelerating the stagnation which ultimately filled him

The repetition, the conformity, which ossified into authority

The fear, the desire, which became our priority

And built a beautiful fortress, hollow from the inside.

In our hubris, we want to de-fine the infinite

The pure creativity that defies all expectations

Breaks all boundaries

Crosses all barriers

A thousand golden cages

Of self referential chains 

Simultaneously spark in our mind

But the sparrow would rather be free.

Rather than become the perfect savior, for worried little me.

My conceptions and cages are all too human.

He died when we confused the word for the feeling

When we forgot that intellectualizing trauma doesn't cause healing

When learning instead of insight became much more appealing

When we thought we could affect the infinite by possessing and stealing

When we stabbed his heart and saw the love congealing,

When illusion caused resentment so suffering caused squealing 

When we thought our dead corpus of insight could be revealing

Of his true nature.

He is dead, but he isn't really gone,

If you realize that each moment dies and is reborn,

If you again see the colors, the myriad different forms,

If you perceive courageously the intensity of a thousand thunderstorms,

Which will accompany my lightning, Zarathustra informs.

*Though the poem doesn't have to be read bound by or in connection to anyone else's ideas (as I might be dumb in interpretation or not well read enough to know all of what a person has written), it does a good job of expressing itself.