Cultivate literature and art among the first, the fringe of aristocracy, elegant pen ink gel, freed from coarser superstitions. And churches with the pious, the scent of incense and their prayers pleased. They would come to a common mood. It would be a hundred and fifty years. Religion, opium for the people. For these sufferings of pain, humiliation, illness, and serfdom, it promised a reward in the afterlife. And now we are experiencing a transformation. A true opium for the people is the belief in nothingness after death - the immense comfort in thinking that for our betrayal, greed, cowardice, murders, we will not be judged.
It is understandable that those who have nothing love religion better, especially with nationalist baggage (Bosnia, Northern Ireland). There is enough experience to show that men clothe themselves in lofty goals, purity, and the nobility of a grand spiritual domain, pretending they do not know what their hands do.
All great religions - Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam - have a vision of man as condemned after death, with a visible preference for the image of a struggle between the prosecutor and the defender. Sometimes there is a scale, weighing sins and good deeds. In Tibetan Buddhism, the judge is the master of death, and in delivering his judgment, he will be supported by black stones thrown by the accuser and white ones cast by the defender. All religions recognize that our actions are imperishable; in Buddhism, this is called karma.
A prophet, as he called himself, of European nihilism, Nietzsche used proudly: "We, nihilists," saying and defining what would be the "crassest form of nihilism." It would be "a view according to which every belief, every conviction of necessity would be false, simply because there is no true world." He called this "a divine way of thinking." For his master and teacher, Schopenhauer, he had a nickname: "decadent."
He would probably not be very happy with how his work has been used during the 100 years since his death. After all, what he valued was courage. And today, courage is required to contradict his views.
Why should he be the philosopher whose name must at all times produce a genealogy for European nihilism? He does not deserve it. If for no other reason, then because the place his philosophy assigns to sanctity and art.
To the extent that he was influenced by Asian religion, liberation for him meant casting off the burden of karma. Only in coffeehouse folklore is Nirvana identified with nothingness. After Schopenhauer, Nirvana cannot be expressed in the language of Samsara, the illusory world: it implies exactly the opposite.
Up and down... One can question the image of ascent in the New Testament, but the vertical axis dominates everywhere in the noncorporeal world. Thus, the underground Hades of the Greeks and Sheol of the Jews. In Dante, Hell is below, Purgatory somewhere higher, Paradise above...
About: Don't cry for me, Guatemala going back, but not falling downhill all the way.