"To call the taming of an animal its "improvement" sounds almost like a joke to our ears. Whoever knows what goes on in kennels doubts that dogs are "improved" there. They are weakened, they are made less harmful, and through the depressive effect of fear, through pain, through wounds, and through hunger, they become sickly beasts. It is no different with the tamed man whom the priest has "improved." In the early Middle Ages, when the church was indeed, above all, a kennel, the most perfect specimens of the "blond beast" were hunted down everywhere; and the noble Teutons, for example, were "improved." But how did such an "improved" Teuton look after he had been drawn into a monastery? Like a caricature of man, a miscarriage: he had become a "sinner," he was stuck in a cage, tormented with all sorts of painful concepts. And there he lay, sick, miserable, hateful to himself, full of evil feelings against the impulses of his own life, full of suspicion against all that was still strong and happy. In short, a "Christian."
"Physiologically speaking: in the struggle with beasts, making them sick may be the only way to make them weak. The church understood this: it sickened and weakened man — and by so doing "improved" him."
--Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
One of the nice things about meeting back up with my friend was it turned out he had brought with him a copy of The Portable Nietzsche, the same copy, in fact, that I had given to him a year or so ago to keep him company in Japan (along with Crime and Punishment, which he quite enjoyed). He told me he hadn't read any of it, but as I didn't have a book, I was able to while away some of the time on buses and such reading through The Antichrist and (re-)reading through Twilight of the Idols. As much as Walter Kaufmann makes of Nietzsche's 'insanity' at the time of his writing of The Antichrist, I believe it to be a powerful critique of Christianity and the rather demeaning effect that it has on the human spirit.
When I read the above quote, I thought about the Phajaan ceremony that goes on in Thailand. Phajaan is loosely translated as 'elephant crushing', and is basically what all elephants have to go through in order to be the servants to mankind that you see during many tourist ventures in Southeast Asia.
But then it is rather interesting that this 'torture' to crush the spirit of an elephant in order that the elephant will do the bidding of their captors is not seen in a more similar light to a lot of the ways in which religion (especially Western religion) has resulted in the 'improvement' of people the world over: improvement in the form of docility, being open to suggestion, and, in general, as Dennett once said, "a gold-plated excuse to stop thinking".
Just like the elephants, they are trained to no longer fight back against conflicting ideologies. The elephant wants to stay with its mother, it wants to eat, drink, and be able to roam free, etc. On the other hand, isn't this what the human wants as well? Or is it simply the fact that the elephant is not conscious of its own metaphysical position in the cosmos and therefore has no idea of the ease and automation with which its post-Phajaan life will be.
No more decision-making, just follow your master. What could be simpler?
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