Thus Spoke Zarathustra

This set of reading presented Zoroastrianism
Overall it seems to be a religion based off the duality and struggle of Order and Chaos, good and evil respectively.
A supporter of the order thinks good thoughts, speaks good speech, and does good deeds while a chaos supporter thinks bad thoughts, speaks bad speech, and does bad deeds.
At death a form of the soul leaves the body to be judged, if the good outweighs the bad the soul continues to heaven if not, to hell. However, at the end of the world all are cleansed and everyone lives in paradise. Perhaps this is because the end of the world is complete chaos that no one can be judged?

I had some trouble focusing on this piece because of the Nietzsche connection to Zarathustra. My mind constantly went back to my previous reading of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and it shed some new light.
In Thus Spoke, Nietzsche presents his nihilistic death of god theory in the form of Zarathustra, the original fighter between good and evil. Zarathustra is almost disgusted by the mediocrity of humanity as depicted with nausea, especially the recurring existence which is also seen in the reading for this class. In short, through Zarathustra Nietzsche says god cannot serve as our morality and until we accept this and lose all faith we will be animalistic in nature. Those who reject faith are called 'the overman' or 'ubermensch' meaning one who finds all meaning in themselves.

What I struggled with in the reading was the hypocritical discussion on success. Those with many cows were seen as blessed or favored by the gods but at the same time possessed by The Lie. In the strife for what seems to be socialism is there no advancement?