Well, it’s Yellowstone time again, the modern-day Montana, “shoot’em up”, returns for a fourth season tonight. Over the years we routine and mostly normal viewers have been shocked at the number of violent murders per episode. There appears to be no guilt or regret and least of all, no justice. According to the philosophy of the show, killing is a necessary human condition to protect the life interests of your own folk, self-interest personified and radicalized. The prize always in question, in every episode, is the Yellowstone, a large cattle ranch in Montana that has become extremely valuable today’s market. The ranch is more than a business to the family owner, the ranch is a family legacy and a promise to those who lived on the land before this present hour.
The show
itself gives credit to philosopher Fredrick Nietzsche (1844-1900) for the thinking
behind the chaotic storyline. Most of us recognize him as the God is dead
theologian. This moniker is an absolute
contradict in terms for how can anyone be a theologian if such a person
believes there is no God? The truth is
that Nietzsche was only a philosopher, who espoused a Godless situational ethic
based only on the efficacy of relative human circumstances. According to this ethic, we should ask ourselves when facing a life
decision, how will this decision work out for me and mine? We can expect nothing but chaos if everyone
is guided in their decision making by Nietzsche and we get chaos in Yellowstone.
Nietzsche
was right thinking as well as wrongheaded. The only God he had experienced was the
religious God, the top-down authority personified through the established
church, that thought of God is indeed dead.
However, to assume that there is no other worldly presence available to
we humans is wrongheaded as well as shortsighted. All well rounded thinkers should be aware of the
historical track of the spirit world’s interaction with we humans with varying
results. They are documented in the Bible and secular history books. The only consistent result is
that a spiritual awaking always turns back into a top-down religion within a
few short years but when an awaking happens, the me interests take a back seat
and God is in control.
Yellowstone
struggles at this point by limiting itself to Nietzsche thinking but our modern
cultures are just as vulnerable. The
question comes from every corner, in every circumstance, can violence be a righteous
option? Nietzsche would say “yes” but
every spiritual awakening that has entered our world has entered on the
absolute condition of a “no” answer. If
a spiritual awakening had a voice it would say, “I so believe in God that what
happens to me is of no earthly concern.”
G.Goslaw
Landers, Ca
