When Nietzsche proclaimed "God is Dead," he wasn't celebrating atheism or mocking believers. He was diagnosing a crisis, the collapse of absolute moral authority in the West. The Enlightenment had eroded religious certainty, leaving a vacuum where meaning once lived. We killed God with science, reason, and progress, Nietzsche argued. But we haven't faced what comes after: the terrifying freedom of creating our own values. The declaration wasn't triumphant. It was a warning.
We continue living as if the old morality still holds weight. Secular societies cling to Christian ethics without the Christian foundation. Nietzsche saw this hypocrisy clearly: we want the comfort of absolute good and evil without the God who guarantees them. This is what he called nihilism, not the absence of belief, but the hollow performance of values we no longer truly hold.
And here's my take: Nietzsche was right, but incomplete. Yes, we must create our own meaning in a godless cosmos. That's both liberation and burden. But he underestimated our need for community, for shared myths, for something beyond the self. The Übermensch, his ideal of self-overcoming, is a lonely figure. Perhaps the real challenge isn't just creating values, but creating them together. Not nihilism, not nostalgia, but something entirely new.
© 2025 Jony Wijaya