Sprach Zarathustra

Sprach Zarathustra is a musical piece written by Richard Strauss in 1896. It's a very recognizable piece of music with it's distinct crescendo of horns and a timpani climax. It's a classic, one I know mostly because it was used in a salad dressing commercial in the 1970's. It was also the theme song for a popular1968 science fiction movie by Stanley Kubrick, called
2001 A Space Odyssey.

2001 is an interesting film, one that I think really worked to promote the idea of man's evolutionary origins and his future as a being leaving earth to go beyond... into space! Space travel was relatively new, and computer technology a thing of the future when the movie was produced.

2001, was a movie that lasted 139 minutes, but it only had 40 minutes of dialog. I watched a you-tube video by Rob Ager who likes to critique films. He says the film 2001 is filled with symbolism, and that it was intended to speak into the subconscious mind of the viewers through the various symbols, which is probably why there was not so much dialogue; it was supposed to affect your psyche and make the viewer think. People are still thinking about the film and it's contents today.

You can watch Ager's video to see what kinds of symbolism he thinks it contains and what it means @: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P95NWAHWLrc&feature=related

I think it's interesting that the piece by Strauss, as well as the film, 2001 A Space Odyssey, was inspired by a book written by the German philosopher, poet, and scholar, Friedrich Nietzsche, titled, Thus Spake Zarathustra, (subtitled, A Book for All and None.

Thus Spake Zarathustra is a philosophical work, and it speaks to the reader the athiet philosophy of it's author.. Nietzsche. Through Zarathustra, (a philosopher of life, Sge and guru sort of teacher, Nietzsche taught his readers that old religious ideas (moralistic religion) no longer had power over humanity. He promoted the notion that is was time for people to become what he called "overman," and believed the time had come for humans to step out intellectually from all the previous understandings of God and become the essence of divinity themselves.

Zarathustra informs the reader... "Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing"
(125).

"'The earth,' [Zarathustra] said, 'has a skin, and this skin has a disease. One of these diseases, for example, is called man'" (242).

Nietzsche believed that instead of being concerned with thoughts of G0d, mankind should be concerned with people and ecology. He also advocated that they give thought to the notion that time is not linear, but rather, circular... and the events of life simply happen over and over again, something he called "eternal reccurance." Eternal reccurence is not a belief in reincarnation, butmore like the concept of a fractal, or a repeated pattern, it's a belief that beings return to the same bodies, and situations then happen over... and over again. Dismissing belief in God, rejecting moral commandments and the dismissing the concept of a place called hell, Nietzsche called himself an "immoralist" and believed men should be ruled by their own instincts and intelligence without the fear of God.

The movie 2001 begins somewhere on the continent of Africa we watch as some apes have an encounter with a monolith, a rock sticking out of the ground, and from this rock they gain something they did not have before... knowledge of somekind, intelligence perhaps. Then we see evolution of ham as the apes over time, become human.

The human then creates a computer with a personality, named HAL who can talk and think. We learn about morality as a man named Dave Bowman wrestles with what does and does not constitute life, in particular, regarding the computer named HAL who basically pleads with him not to pull the plug, but Dave eventually terminates the program that gave "life" to the machine. He has killed his own creation.

Then Dave is last seen reaching out for a monolith, and then he is transformed into a fetus-like being, “the Star Child.” a He is last seen floating in space trapped in a transparent orb of light gazing at Earth.

"da..... da..... da....... da-da..." (Sprach Zarathustra plays)

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWnmCu3U09w)

He is Bowman, Davb Bowman... a starchild. We see him "brooding" over the earth in space, hovering, wondering what he will do next...

The eternal return of man. Deja Vu. No death, no meaning to existence. Life, can simply be unplugged.

What is man?

Who is God?

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6umxthz1Ys&feature=related