I remember when I was a young adult, I would do or say things for the simple purpose of standing up for a principal. I think that the process of maturity is one where as a child, you don’t stand for anything accept, maybe your friends. Then you learn to stand for principal. This is the first step in adopting an “ideology”. My definition of an ideology is a set of beliefs that are adhered to even in the face of reality that shows them to be fallacious. If you mature further, then you realize that you need to line up with and stand for truth and reality and you discard your ideology if it conflicts with it.
Take for instance a young man, Justin Surber from Arlington, WA who belongs to the high school debate team. He obviously believes in the free exchange of ideas, even to the point of being controversial. He got all the attention he wanted when he showed up for the official debate team photo with the words, “God is dead” emblazoned on is T-shirt. His school refused to put the picture in their yearbook and that is when the notoriety of the issue increased across the Internet.
Of course young Justin Surber is quoting the famous existentialist Friedrich Nietzsche I remember in the 70’s when I was in college, Nietzsche’s claim was widely adopted by radical counter-culture people of the time. It was popular to pick up and run with that ideology. But the thing about ideologies is that they can be undone by the truth, if you allow truth to shatter the walls of your ideology. I know that because this happened to me.
I remember I was at a pub on campus one time and I had to go use the men’s room. In this particular pub, the graffiti on the wall of the men’s room was very different than your typical graffiti you see in the men’s room at the Shell Station. Some people who must have had a lot of time on their hands did some of their best philosophical work in there. But one thing caught my eye. Someone had chiseled into the paint of a stall the words “God is dead!” - Nietzsche. And just below that, in pen, another person wrote, “Nietzsche is dead!” – God.
