Zusi, Peter; (2013) History's loose ends: Imagining the velvet revolution. In: Gafijczuk, Dariusz and Sayer, Derek, (eds.) The Inhabited Ruins of Central Europe: Re-imagining Space, History, and Memory. (pp. 227-245). Palgrave Macmillan: London, UK.

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Abstract

In the prologue to Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Zarathustra stands before an uncomprehending crowd and presents to them the apotropaic image of ‘the last man’: a human type characterized by uncritical contentment, satiated desire, and utter absence of motivation to initiate change or strive towards a goal. The last men represent an end-state precisely because they are so readily satisfied with their lot: ‘“We invented happiness,” say the last men, and they blink.’ This stasis of self-satisfaction represents for Zarathustra a form of live mummification, a movement toward death barely energetic enough to reach that seemingly inevitable destination. Putting words into the last man’s mouth, Zarathustra says: ‘a bit of poison once in a while: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end, for a pleasant death.’ This drawn-out process of death by gradual anaesthetization grants the last man extreme longevity. As Zarathustra says: ‘the last man lives longest.’1

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