Overall a good answer, some of the points that you raise are challenging and you say a number of things that I agree with.
Now, I have no pretension to change your mind, probably because I know that I have not the “articulation” it takes - and even if I had it, I simply would not…
We clearly differ and will continue to differ. Actually, I guess that I am about to offer you even more “good” reasons to differ.
I still think that your meaning of entropy is a bit peculiar and that you miss the point.
As for the former, you provide a sort of definition and that’s helpful. I can infer (maybe wrongly) that entropy is for you a threat to “order” and that preservation of order is of great value to you.
The latter is more complex to discuss and I am going to try to explain why I think differently – just that.
As others do, I also interpret that destroying refers mainly to ideas, beliefs, mindsets, religions, morality… things that leave no bloodstains. But not exclusively.
N. was not advocating murder, or genocide. Yet, he did not condemn them either. Or, better, he did not condemn those acts as violations of sacred rights.
N. does not values the life of individuals in the way the Judeo-Christian heritage or Enlightment do. Some lives are more expendable than others. Nevertheless, that is not in itself a good reason for killing, or persecuting or other destructive acts – but their lives, or the respect of their “rights”, are no moral restraints.
“Philosophizing with the hammer” maybe requires no direct casualties, yet it’s no surprise if there are some sooner or later.
I guess that this is going to comfort your view of an eternal-hell society «built upon suffering, misery, disease, and death…». All your moral judgements can happily graze on this pasture.
I can guess that parallelisms with Nazism and words like unter- and über-menschen are in order here.
To cut a long story short, as you said, indeed N. was one of the matches used to start the fire. I contend that Nazis made an ideological use of Nietzsche, while their general philosophical interpretation was quite shallow (not to bar that there could have been Nazis deep into N., but I am most sceptical that they could consistently be Nazis because Nietzscheans – they probably deluded themselves in the reverse arrow). I don’t dwell on this specific subject because it would require a long analysis, and this post is already overly long.
You are also right noting that neither the Roman nor the American empires were built by “superior destroyers”. (On the contrary, «destroying Christianity by being good Christians» is excellent – so it happened according to N.).
As long as the scope of destruction is strictly limited to physical annihilation, it’s indeed difficult to detect any superiority (and that explains also why N. is no nihilist). Being creative cannot amount to blowing buildings, or anything else, as its fullest expression. (Btw, being creative, qua being creative, looks for and requires no excuse…). But I still maintain that there may be qualitative differences in destruction, only that you need to extend the scope of the process, destruction can be meaningfully appreciated in a given framework, not in an absolute and narrowed one.
This is where, IMO, you miss N.'s point. You want to miss it. You posit that destruction, social unrest, violence are always and necessarily a mistake (“no matter what one thinks”), and this judgement relies entirely on a moral ground (the golden rule neminem laedere…), because it is always wrong, stupid, even insane to deny the supremacy of morality - even after the death of God.
On this you are right one more time: indeed I am not aware of that.
Worse, I repel any awareness of that. To me this is the denial of the history of mankind - and the denial of its future.
(I wonder what the story could have been like if Jefferson and the others convened in Philadelphia were as adamant as you in this conviction. They were betraying their king, promoting social unrest, even war… it seems pretty destructive, after all – and with little guarantee to withhold control).
One last remark.
You interpret “we must be destroyers” as a suggestion, a program, an order.
It’s open to interpretation, but I don’t think so. I tend to interpret he meant that the time had come when it was necessary to be destroyers, that “necessity itself was at work” (a necessity of fullest and perfected natures).
Actually some followers, like myself, do not really mean to promote a destructive spree, or necessarily rejoice about the idea to bring about chaos and destruction (thou, honestly, that could be – I don’t vouch for anybody else).
We just believe, maybe quite foolishly, that we recognize “necessity at work”.
