Nietzsche, Marechera and the herd

Someone wrote: "People who are Abused often become Perpetual Targets especially when they Speak Up. Even the Social Institutions react abusively. Something is wrong here Something Stinks."

To my mind, this points to the way that social organisations form an organic whole. More specifically, it is as if every person is no more than an cellular molecule within the organism of society as a whole. So, when something or someone is signified as "pathological", the whole immune system of society goes into attack mode, to remove that apparent foreign object. The thing is that this seems to be how society's systems of morality work. That which does not fit in is defined as pathological and expelled. Yet the definition of "pathological" is not independent of the way the system functions, but rather very much in relation to the social system works as a whole and, above all, the sorts of values and viewpoints that a particular system should promulgate in order to keep functioning in the same ways that it always does. In other words, systems (as a rule) are inherently conservative and will automatically move to defend themselves against devastating critique.

The subject of my thesis was labelled as schizophrenic, but whether that was a right or wrong label, I do see it as leading to a dismissal of much of his audacity and insights that were critical of various systems. It makes it easier to say: "Well, he was mad -- so his astute critiques were really ravings of a madman: we'll disregard his views so that we can carry on as normal."