So, the jester is doing flips over the tightrope walker, while traversing between two towers. The tightroper drops his pole—you can conjecture what this pole represents (God, religion, codes of life, whatever) Nietzsche wrote in short aphorisms; little cryptic word-images—so, dude drops his pole. Grabs at the wire. And falls to his death.
Zarathustra rushes to the dying man’s side. Explains about God’s death, and that there is no reason to fear death, no Hell, no God. Nothing.
Having sufficiently administered the dying man his last rights (at least in Zar’s eyes), Zarathustra exits, and the tightroper is left to contemplate Nothing in his remaining minutes.
https://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu%3A52571/datastream/OBJ/view
Then Zarathustra goes on to spread his message amongst the people—“God is Dead. Now here are the repercussions..”
Those repercussions entail a weakening of the herd, slave mentality, scapegoating of the “masters”, et al.
All of which were misappropriated by the Nazis.
The crux of the matter, when related to White Noise, is the Nothing, the Void, left by the death of God.
The kids threaten their parents with “superior” knowledge of trivia. The parents fight back ineffectively with their own “facts”, but lack the “sharpness” of their children because they’ve long left the information funnel to specialize in their crafts—equally trivial to the children’s general knowledge, but mors specialized.
https://food52.com/blog/20083-the-scientific-10-step-way-to-eat-a-sandwich
Nietzsche’s most contemptible man, the last man before the strike of a Lightning bolt, lives only for comfort. Convenience.
Babette teaches walking, sitting, and eating to old people. Jack teaches about Hitler—expounds on Hitler’s mother, the momentum of the crowds and torches. Murray (Jack’s scholar friend who was inspired by Jack) does the same with Elvis.
Everything is superficial. The proper way to fill a spoon. Hitler and Elvis were momma’s boys, so they became enamored with the crowd. Elvis self-destructed but fullfilled his contract. Hitler did the same.
This superficiality comes into play when the train derails in their small Ohio town, above which an ominous cloud of “Nyodene D”, a toxic chemical is unleashed—glowing, burning, billowing.
The children become occupied with the details of the cloud. The language used by the media. The parents attempt to assuage the children’s fears. Using their own long-held, trivial vagaries.
Procedure becomes the focus of all participants—directed by a faction of government focused on creating disaster simulations.
