Friedrich Nietzsche predicted that the collapse of belief in God wouldn’t liberate man… it would unravel him.
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche writes, “God is dead.”
He saw that once a civilisation loses its highest values, it doesn’t immediately replace them. It forgets how to justify anything at all.
Nietzsche warned that this vacuum would give rise to nihilism… the quiet belief that nothing really matters.
And from that void, two types emerge: the “last man,” who seeks only comfort and safety, and the tyrant, who creates values by force.
The last man avoids suffering, avoids risk, avoids greatness. He lives longer, but smaller.
Nietzsche’s fear was mediocrity: a world where people no longer aim high enough to even fail.
He believed that without a shared moral horizon, man would not rise to freedom. He would sink into triviality, distraction, and soft decay.
And in that world, power doesn’t disappear.
It just finds new hands.