My very first Nietzsche reflection was on a line from Human, All Too Human: “One hears a lot of talk about men, but none at all about man” (§35). As I argued there, Nietzsche spied a distorted interest in the famous and the frivolous, contrast with a disturbing indifference to deep thinking and sustained reflection. Without suggesting that culture is always in decline, our digital age certainly fits Nietzsche’s description. We are a people obsessed with entertainment. We are passive consumers. Our digital diets are hardly thought provoking or profound. To use a Latin phrase that the German championed, the vita contemplativa is not on our minds—contemplative living, Nietzsche’s “psychological observation” or “rumination” has fallen on hard times. This should concern us. For we are more than our eyes and there’s much more to life than entertainment.

Of course, most readers would concur. After all, few would promote a mindless and superficial existence. But our practices suggest otherwise. As I wrote previously, “Just an hour of Netflix per night and an hour of social media strewn throughout each day adds up to 14 hours a week. That’s a part time job.” So it’s not unthinkable that many people spend an entire day out of seven staring at their screens, consuming content. That might not sound like much, until you make the other deductions from those seven days, such as work and sleep. Many of us are spending a third of what’s left over doomscrolling Instagram and binge-watching Netflix.

Be honest. The vast majority of time you spend in front of a screen isn’t intellectually stimulating. It doesn’t move you to ponder reality or appreciate beauty. In my most cynical assessment, it is equal parts vapid and vainglory.

Contemplation Is Critical for Human Flourishing

As far as Nietzsche was concerned, late 19th century Europeans were not living the vita contemplativa either. Like Socrates over two millennia before him, Nietzsche insisted that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. More than this, he opines, “If we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how” (Twilight of the Idols, Maxim §12). So in various ways Nietzsche insisted that we stare into the abyss, confront our existential dread and grapple with the meaning of it all. To do otherwise is worse than merely glutting ourselves on distraction; it is intellectually dishonest and leaves us unprepared for the vicissitudes of human existence. This Nietzschean challenge is perhaps nowhere clearer than in the opening of his Joyous Science.

“Man has gradually become a fanciful animal,” writes Nietzsche, “who has one more condition of existence to fulfil that other animals: from time to time, man must think he knows why he exists” (Joyous Science, §1.1). Why? He continues, “the human race cannot flourish without periodically renewed trust in life.” Nietzsche’s searching statement begs many questions. But primary among them is this: how can one “trust in life” if she never meditates on it? How can we define what it means to be human, if we never ask why we’re here or where we’re going?

Nietzsche goes on, applying more pressure to those of us who glibly guide through life, passively gazing at whatever the studios or a random influencer have recently churned out. “To stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors and all the wonderful uncertainty and ambiguity of life, and not question, not to tremble with curiosity and the passion for enquiry…that is what I feel to be contemptible” (Joyous Science, §1.2).

In this section of The Joyous Science we encounter Nietzsche at his existential best—but also at his sneerful worst. To use his words, how can we not question and tremble with curious enquiry amid the wonder of being? It’s unconscionable. It’s to sell ourselves short. Yet week to week, perhaps owing to exhaustion, we sell our birthright for a stew of digital drivel. Shame on us. But shame on us doubly—and maybe I’m speaking to myself in particular here—if we follow Nietzsche into contempt and hatred.

Contempt Undermines Our Humanity

In conclusion there are two dangers before us. The first is the unexamined and superficial life, a life sated with distraction, the superficial and meaningless. In a word, entertainment. As Nietzsche warned, echoing Socrates from millennia before himself: such a life is barely worth living. Work. Watch. Die. We shouldn’t settle for this. But there’s a second danger, one Nietzsche falls into himself: disdain and contempt, the haughtiness of thought and philosophical reflection. Pride.

Though it demands bearing out, I’m going to leave you with a passage from Stephen Trombley’s, in his Short History of Western Thought: “Socrates and Jesus Christ…had several things in common: both were teachers; both were executed for their beliefs; both left behind schools of followers who would guarantee the longevity of their ideas; and both abided by a one-word commandment. For Socrates it was think; for Christ, love.”