Counter-Currents
1,645 words 
In his philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche tells the story of Zarathustra, a man who, after enduring ten years of exile in the mountains, returns to civilization to evangelize his philosophy which years of hardship had revealed to him. Zarathustra preaches that the goal of man ought to be to overcome his worldly limitations and, through his conquest of hardship, advance to a higher state of being which he called the Superman (also known as the Übermensch in the original German). Zarathustra warns of the antithesis of the Superman, which he called the Last Man. In contrast to the Superman, the Last Man does not seek triumph, but comfort. He has forgone the strive for greatness in exchange for a secure and comfortable but ultimately meaningless life.
When Zarathustra attempts to evangelize his philosophy of the Superman to the masses, he is surprised to find that they rebuff him and deride the idea of embracing struggle and hardship in pursuit of higher ideals. Instead, contrary to Zarathustra’s intentions, they are enamored with the concept of the Last Man and demand to know how such a state of being can be attained. From then onwards, Zarathustra decides to preach his philosophy only to a select few disciples, seeing the masses as incapable of ever aspiring to a greater form of existence.
In this parable, Nietzsche illustrates an unfortunate truth about human nature. The existence of the Superman is clearly superior to that of the Last Man and would most certainly yield a more fulfilling life. Why then do the masses reject the ideal of the Superman in favor of the Last Man? The unfortunate truth about mankind is that we are inherently lazy. With the exception of a select few, most won’t pursue the path which brings about fulfillment, but the path of least resistance. Man still desires a greater degree of self-actualization, but if he isn’t forced to muster the effort in order to attain that, he often will not even try.
This reality of human nature has made it such that it is questionable whether the advanced technological state of the modern world is a blessing or a curse. The logic of technological advancement is not to bring about a more fulfilling life, but an easier one. It’s undeniable that we are living an easier life than in centuries past, but the question remains whether easier necessarily means better. Nowhere is this contradiction better exemplified in my observation than in advent of Uber Eats or similar food delivery services. Food delivery has existed for decades but used to be limited to the few fast-food restaurants which employed their own deliverymen. In 2014, the ride sharing company Uber launched a ground-breaking new third-party online food delivery service called Uber Eats which made it possible for almost any restaurant to offer delivery as an option.
Uber Eats operates in 45 different countries and over 6000 cities. Identical services are usually offered by local tech companies in countries not served by Uber. The popularity of online food delivery services skyrocketed in 2020 with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic during which traditional restaurants were closed, and people were confined to their homes for extended periods of time. Global revenue generated by online food delivery services jumped from $90 billion in 2018 to $294 billion in 2021, largely as a result of COVID policies. Despite the end of the pandemic, these food delivery services have continued to rise in popularity, making them a mainstay of modern life with global revenue projected to exceed $466 billion by 2036.
It’s undeniable that such services are in high demand. Why wouldn’t they be? The ability to have almost any meal imaginable delivered to you in the comfort of your home ready-to-eat at the touch of a button on your smartphone screen is a whole new level of convenience which past generation couldn’t have even dreamed of. But referring back to the question which Nietzsche grappled with in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, does more ease, comfort, and convenience necessarily make life better?
What are the implications of this revolution in food consumption habits in recent years? First and foremost, the innovation of food delivery apps threatens to accelerate the decline in overall physical health. Experts have warned that this change in dining habits threatens to exacerbate the already existing obesity epidemic. Such technology encourages overeating at an increased frequency by making calorie-dense restaurant-quality meals easily accessible without the need to put in the effort of cooking or going out to a restaurant. Furthermore, such services facilitate a sedentary lifestyle by eliminating the need to leave one’s home in order to eat, meaning users will inevitably get less physical exercise.
Beyond simply the deleterious effects on health, the rise in popularity of online food delivery services threatens to remove the social elements of dining, making it a much more solitary experience. Restaurants not only offer a culinary experience, but also a social one. Going out to eat is typically done with friends or family and part of the appeal is the social environment restaurants create. Cooking is an extremely useful skill, plays an important part in family life, and can be used to foster friendships and relationships. Online food delivery apps cut out all the aspects of one’s social life associated with dining, making it simply about the consumption and nothing more. It’s also worth noting that these companies are known for employing cheap migrant labour, furthering the demographic third-worldification of Western countries.
The irony of the brand name Uber is that their delivery app is delivering the opposite of Nietzsche’s Übermensch. In the modern world, there is no better embodiment of Nietzsche’s Last Man than the Uber Eats customer. He is too lazy to cook for himself, too apathetic to care about his physical health, and too atomized to go out with friends or family. So, he sits at home alone wallowing in his loneliness, eating fattening slop delivered to him by a foreigner, brought into his country to take his place as a consumer who will live off even lower quality slop.
It goes without saying that such an existence is antithetical to a happy, healthy, and fulfilling life. Then why is such a lifestyle only becoming more and more prevalent in the modern day? It’s not because it makes life happier, but because it makes life easier. The ability to click on a flashy icon on a smartphone screen to order a gargantuan portion of fried Thai noodles drenched in sugar-laced sauce delivered straight to one’s door by a Bangladeshi on a scooter significantly reduces the effort dining requires. However, it deprives the practice of the spiritual affirmation which it has given man throughout human history.
We can see the harmful effects of society’s shift away from the personal towards the digital in other aspects of modern life too. A study into dating trends found that many single men are now approaching women far less frequently, if ever. This is especially true of men in the younger age brackets. This study found the 45% of men between 18 and 25 have never once approached a woman in person in their lives. It’s no coincidence that this generation has had access to Tinder and other such dating apps for their entire adult lives. It goes without saying that sitting at home futilely swiping right though countless selfies is less likely to land a guy a date than approaching a woman in the real world, but the latter actually requires effort and a little courage. Likewise with these food delivery apps, if people are given the ability to be lazy, a sizeable percentage choose to do so, even if it is less likely to yield positive results.
Now it must be said that making a home-cooked meal or going out for dinner and drinks with friends does not make one the Nietzschean ideal of the Superman. In fact, being able to select produce from around the world at a supermarket and bring it home to prepare on an electric stove is a level of comfort and convenience far beyond what anyone in Nietzsche’s time would’ve known. Furthermore, effort alone doesn’t beget self-actualization. I doubt spending two hours handwashing one’s clothes would be a more self-actualizing experience than having a washing machine do it automatically.
I’m no luddite. I reject the idea that the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race, evidenced by the fact that I’m using a computer and the internet to convey this very message. The issue is not with technological advancement in and of itself, but the logic it has followed in the modern world. Rather than the goal of simply increasing efficiency and reducing the amount of human effort put into tasks, the question should be asked as to whether or not new technology enables us to live happier, healthier, and more fulfilling lives. There is no better exemplification that the two are often in contradiction with each other than the recent innovation of Uber Eats.
Associating such mundane tasks as preparing oven-roasted chicken for a family dinner or going to a steakhouse with friends on a Friday evening with Nietzsche’s lofty ideal of the Superman may be a little overdramatic. I have some criticism of Nietzsche’s philosophy beyond the scope of this essay, but the practical wisdom which can be derived from his writings here is that anything which makes existence worthwhile requires effort. Man’s imperfect nature makes it such that we will forgo any amount of effort if given the ability, but in doing so, we often rob ourselves of the self-actualization attained from overcoming. By resisting the ever-present temptation of laziness offered to us the modern world, one might not rise to the higher state of being of the Übermensch, but one can rise above the lowly state of being of the atomized blubbery biomass that is the Uber Eats Mensch.
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17 comments
The movie Wall-E shows a further trajectory of this trend. The Earth is a desolate wasteland, trashed out and destroyed by consumerism. Everyone lives on a cosmic cruise ship, so out of shape they can’t walk. They just float around on lawn chairs, watch videos, and suck milkshakes. The filmmakers would’ve shown them as even more blobby but didn’t want to scare the kids.
The proper name is Unter Eats.
There’s a new service offered to these Uber Eats customers – loans for people who want restaurant food delivered but can’t afford it. Perhaps if you can’t afford restaurant food plus the delivery fee, you shouldn’t be buying it, but I guess the companies believe they can make money on the interest by allowing such desperate customers to go into the red on their Phad Thai. I guess they are effectively competing in the payday loan market. Just when I think we’ve reached peak decline, we break through the floor to a new low.
I really dislike the Uber Eats phenomenon, but I hoped that I could at least ignore it. Unfortunately, it degrades the dining experience even if you don’t use it, because restaurants are backed up with take-out orders so you have to compete with all those people on the internet. It lets them employ fewer servers, too, and generally deprioritize in-person dining.
Make your own sandwiches at home. Or boil an egg. It’s a lot cheaper, tastier, quicker and healthier than anything offered by any food take-out service.
The same holds for coffee. Good instant coffee tastes much better than what Starbucks has to offer. And it costs 25 cents for a large mug, which is less than the five dollars for each cup charged by Starbucks.
Cooking for one is not very cost-effective any way you look at it unless you like monotony (or your hobby is cooking).
When I was a starving student, I could eat pea soup five days a week and then go to a buffet for some variety. (It is not a good plan if you are elderly or are like King Henry VIII and prone to gout from excessive uric acid, however.)
On Sundays, we students used to gather together all the roommates and take turns cooking an old-fashioned communal meal, which was pretty good as nearly everybody had at least one specialty. But it’s hard to replicate for singles who are too young for the Senior Center ─ and nursing home food I can vouch for as being unpalatable after long recovering from a serious accident.
Even in a large metropolitan area like Phoenix with millions of people, there are hardly any of those “Boomer Buffets” left ─ maybe three or four Hometown Buffets or Golden Corrals ─ and the few that do exist are overrun (especially on the weekends) by Mexicans and their irascible Ninos and Ninas.
And another one of the main small businesses that Covid destroyed was the old-fashioned Diner or roadside café where truckers used to gab and drink coffee all day and order the “blue plate special.” Now you have nothing but Mexican Food joints and corporate American chains that mostly suck.
Some corporate franchises are admittedly better than others. Usually you will get a Denny’s waitress that looks like Harley Quinn but can’t tell you how to get back on the Interstate. Other times you will get a snippy middle-aged lady with a Marlboro Man drawl who is used to dealing with obnoxious truckers every single day.
The main problem is that corporatization has produced food not much better than McDonalds and certainly just as expensive if not more so.
I avoided food delivery during Covid as much as possible. I just could not see paying $50 plus $10 tip for what amounts to about $10 worth of fast-food. And then it would be delivered by a Zoomer with a damn Smart Phone who cannot read a basic [expletive deleted] address.
Not long ago, I decided to try McDonalds again just for fun. I like the overpriced Filet O’ Fish and sometimes the McRib when they have them and haven’t been in the freexer since the Pleistocene era. When I was a strapping High School kid I could down four Big Macs or Quarter Pounders w/Cheese without trying. So I ordered a Big Mac recently and after finally getting through the unattentive cashier’s drive-thru queue I found the burger almost unedible.
The same with Korporate KFC. That used to be called Kentucky Fried Chicken (with the Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices, which I like).
Then they gave the Colonel a suntan so that it wasn’t too obvious that he was a Kentucky Cracker and renamed the company KFC. It’s like when they put lettuce on filmmaker Michael Moore’s fish sandwich in Roger & Me. I used to joke that the Colonel’s chicken was in China now, not just General Tso’s.
When I was a kid my Grandfather was babysitting a large tribe of kids for some reason and thought that McDonalds was too expensive and probably not healthy. He was basically a farmer and rancher who operated a few barely-breakeven ice cream stands and things on the side before a heart attack retired him at a fairly ripe age of 70.
Anyway, the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise was the Harmon’s take-home in Murray, Utah (a suburb of Salt Lake City). I think it was on State Street but I don’t know if it is still there today. I won’t bother trying to document this factoid unless you are interested.
So Grandpa thought a bucket of the Colonel’s chicken would be a pretty good bargain for feeding a large bunch of kids, and I remember this as being pretty good in those days. Now the quality of the birds is garbage and I can barely eat KFC, let alone Popeyes. I tried it not long ago after a long time and I could barely choke the chicken down. (I still like the Colonel’s 11 herbs & spice.) The chicken was also undercooked and I have long tried to explain to the youthful persons at the counter that I prefer the Original Recipe over the Crispy but, but, but not with pink in the middle. It does not seem to matter. You can’t tell them nothing. OK Zoomer.
I used to raise a hundred or so chickens when I was a teenager in Idaho and got the Boy Scout merit badge for that. I didn’t have as much success raising cottontail rabbits like in the signature Michael Moore movie, but that is another story. In any case, the factory birds in the supermarkets of today are greasy and almost unedible.
Corporatization has advantages but it also kills everything. More on that later.
The most important thing to remember, however, is that if you are going to a fast-food establishment that is preferred by Darkies or that has too many of them employed there, the food will be crazy-bad. I like curry and Indian food but I can barely do a Popeyes if desperate, but I can also be pleasantly surprised by some franchises.
Some exceptions to the Negro restauranteur rule:
When I was in the Army they employed some local Negroes to do the food in some of the chow halls on the post, and them Niggahs, they knows how to cook. Food was usually pretty good on Air Force Bases too but I don’t think they outsourced. The worst food that I ever had while in the Service was by local Army Reserve cooks who looked like they came out of a Beetle Bailey cartoon and had a different day job.
There used to be an old-fashioned Negro Ribs place not far from the Phoenix airport; it used to be on the desolate part of the old U.S. Highway 60 before all the towns merged into one metropolitan area, and it was really worth the drive. It reminds me of the TV show House of Cards, where the closeted Gay President played by the always-creepy Kevin Spacey frequently has barbecued ribs specially catered to him by a resentful Washington, DC Negro proprietor who hates the Oppression but likes the fat paychecks. I don’t know if he secretly spat in the President’s food or not. Anyway, the Negro rib take-out near Phoenix had nice people working there but I think it went out of business too.
A final word about the cancer of corporatization. I remember people talking about how expensive the Golden Arches were in the 1960s and their non-ice cream shakes not being bad but not anything to write home about either. There is an interesting movie with Michael Keaton about the life of McDonald’s franchise founder Ray Kroc.
It is tempting to dismiss the now ubiquitous fast-food franchise ─ but in the days before the drive-thru you really did not know what you were going to get from some greasy spoon diners along the dark desert highway. My Dad remembers getting a serious bout of food poisoning ordering the Buffalo Burger (probably road kill) on some highway in Montana on his way to an Air Force ROTC summer camp. The senile Flight Surgeon didn’t now the difference between kidney failure and food poisoning, one reason why my Dad hates the military but I digress. (You don’t want to be taking presecriptions for sulfa drugs when you are without water doing survival training.)
So the advantage of a McDonalds was that it was filling, pretty good, and not too expensive ─ and you always knew what you were getting. The Idaho Russet potatoes for the Fredom Fries are just the same in Moscow, Idaho as they are in Moscow, Russia (I am told). But modern McDonalds food that I have found is all dried out and almost emetic.
My understanding is that the first modern Drive-Thru restaurant was built in Sierra Vista, Arizona for soliders from the nearby Fort Huachuca Army base to quickly leave the post for some food and then get back to their jobs and training on the post. I trained there myself and remember going to the McD’s.
From Google:
“The first McDonald’s drive-thru opened on January 24, 1975, in Sierra Vista, Arizona, near Fort Huachuca, inspired by a [dumb] rule preventing soldiers from leaving their vehicles in their uniforms to enter businesses.”
The Drive-Thru concept must have caught on quickly because that is pretty much what I did in High School. “Going for Donuts” was the “Gone Fishin’” catchphrase used for ditching school when they cancelled classes for the afternoon sportsball game or pep rally.
Drive-In movies were fun in the day too.
🙂
Technology allows people to listen to the great compositions of Western classical music at any time they choose. Books in both paper and electronic formats are cheaper than ever, and anyone may order copies of the classics of the Western canon from Homer to Nietzsche for an affordable price. There are endless free lectures on these and other topics available.
And what is technology really used for? For decadence, comfort and mindless entertainment. Last man is truly here. The cult of equality and hedonism are the guiding ethos now. What the Greeks called arete, the idea of excellence and greatness, is only found among us, the hated dissidents.
“The man who has won his freedom, and how much more so, therefore, the spirit that has won its freedom, tramples ruthlessly upon that contemptible kind of comfort which tea-grocers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats worship in their dreams. The free man is a warrior.”
-Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols
Imagine you go back two hundred years in time with an iPhone. You explain to the people you meet that this simple device that fits in your hand is capable of answering nearly every question you can conjure up, can give you every great work of literature and music known to man and take photographs that can be sent to every corner of the world among many other fantastical things. And when they ask you what YOU personally use it for, you tell them “I argue with strangers and watch videos of cats.”
My wife sometimes gets annoyed with me because of how often I read in my spare time. And I’m sure my coworkers think I am some sort of egghead because I spend my breaks with a book instead of staring at my phone. There are so many classic books that I have never bothered to read and I’m on a mission to read as many as I possibly can in my life. Not only for my own enjoyment but also to hopefully influence a love of reading in my two young daughters. Each time I finish one I feel so fulfilled that I finally know what makes a particular classic a classic. I just started my 15th book of 2025 and I hope I can manage to make it to at least 45 before the years end.
I wonder if the jew’s religious center can survive this assault maybe this is the way we finally get them—not with a bang but a plastic spoon. 😛
Notice that the man who pursues comfort above meaning to the max is the “Last Man”. He himself will not last long for there ultimately is no comfort in a meaningless existence. I would love to see Nietzsche beat the shit out of Fukuyama in a cage match.
I think I’ll read Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Eating in restaurants (with or without family and friends) is not all that smart, either – Uber Eats is just the logical progression down the road of considering ourselves effendis who must be waited on hand and foot. In both cases the diners consider themselves oppressed if they have to actually prepare their own food.
Eating at home with guests you like and feel comfortable with is much more pleasant than a trip to the restaurant; everyone can feel at home, yakking, laughing and arguing mightily, too, if it should come to that. I have such happy memories of this. It’s up to the host/hostess to create a good atmosphere, whether it’s one guest or a houseful. This can’t be replicated in a restaurant.
I find the proliferation of restaurants (of all kinds) an ominous sign. Used to be that you went once or twice a year on special occasions, but now – I am not making this up – a good many people actually consider themselves hard done by (“poor”) if they can’t consume restaurant fare regularly.
Don’t forget the hidden reason for services that enable us to not go out and see our fellow man; namely. the diversity parade that is a trip through any modern city or supermarket.
I don’t dip into the decadence of uber eats, but I go to the market fifteen minutes before closing time or bang on opening time. I do this to avoid the pain of being confronted with how slovenly, non-white and uglified our western society is. I enjoy the darkness of winter as it hides more.
This is also why people aren’t going to the cinema anymore, etc. I know that if I go out anywhere then there’ll be something to infuriate me. It’s to avoid pain.
We stay home and order takeout because our streets are swarming with ugly brown people delivering takeout.
A multiracial city in the liberal west is truly an abhorrent sight to one who values the higher things in life. And avoiding the pain of experiencing it is exactly what Nietzsche recommended one should do. From his Ecce Homo:
Our greatest expenditure of strength is made up of those small and most frequent discharges of it. The act of keeping things off, of holding them at a distance, amounts to a discharge of strength,—do not deceive yourselves on this point!—and an expenditure of energy directed at purely negative ends. Simply by being compelled to keep constantly on his guard, a man may grow so weak as to be unable any longer to defend himself. Suppose I were to step out of my house, and, instead of the quiet and aristocratic city of Turin, I were to find a German provincial town, my instinct would have to brace itself together in order to repel all that which would pour in upon it from this crushed-down and cowardly world.
I can buy food at the supermarket or health food store, carry it home & cook it for myself. It’s easy! It’s fun! Growing it would be difficult. Farming is hard work – and fishing too. But I don’t have to produce the food myself. I just have to get it & prepare it. That part I can do.
DIY is cheaper, tastier, healthier – and faster. There is no advantage to Uber Eats. In a healthy society, Uber Eats would be illegal.
And now Uber offers credit. What a scam! Now they give you a new way to get into debt. Unbelievable! Unfortunately, these are the Untermenschen who vote in our elections.
DIY is cheaper, tastier, healthier – and faster.
Friend for life.
But one thing: growing a bit of your own food is not hard at all. You just have to enjoy the outdoors and a bit of exertion. And reading up on soils, etc. You will never feel more like a White person than when you are doing that. None of the b&b (brown & black) deepeeze* have gardens, not that I’ve ever seen in any case. I have even known a young jewess who grew a few things, a real hands-on type.
*in my extended family, everybody who wasn’t born here is called a DP.
Great article. I just always assumed these ethnic bike couriers were delivering drugs.
Come on man! Did you see the growth rate of that top line number? This is undoubtably an easily measurable good for society. That doesn’t even get into all of the electric scooters that Congolese deliverymen will buy with high-interest loans in order to deliver the goods in the sharing economy.
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