Between Two Noises

Better deaf than deafened.— Formerly, one wished to acquire fame and be spoken of. Now that is no longer enough because the market has grown too large; nothing less than screaming will do. As a consequence, even good voices scream till they are hoarse, and the best goods are offered by cracked voices. Without the screaming of those who want to sell and without hoarseness there no longer is any genius. This is surely an evil age for a thinker. He has to learn how to find his silence between two noises and to pretend to be deaf until he really becomes deaf. Until he has learned this, to be sure, he runs the risk of perishing of impatience and headaches. — Nietzsche, The Gay Science Poor Nietzsche thought David Strauss was a symptom of cultural decay. He thought the public intellectual arena was a fraudulent carnival in the early 1880s. Luckily for him, he never had to see Strauss presented as a thumbnail image: mouth agape, eyebrow raised, with three red arrows pointed at his face,…