Modernist Disanthropy It was Friedrich Nietzsche's idea of a good joke to have the end of moral dualism, and of the human alienation from the earth that fol lowed from it, announced by Zarathustra, the very prophet who probably invented it:" I beseech you my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes!... Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go"(1982: 125). Sadly, either no one found it funny or it merely went unnoticed, forcing Nietzsche to clear the matter up, with injured irritation, in his megalomaniac self-commentary Ecce Homo:

I have not been asked, as I should have been asked, what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist: for what constitutes the tremendous historical uniqueness of that Persian is just the opposite of this.... Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it.(1989: 327-328).