God is Dead

To Friedrich Nietzsche there are three wills and stages of being: the primal will, child's will, and will to power. These three wills embody Nietzsche's philosophy on the individual and on society.

The primal will is the instinctive need to survive which sets the basis of the consciousness. The individual must do all that is required to survive and satisfy his or her desires, passions, and needs. Human beings are subject to their unconscious, involuntary, and basic Dionysian instincts. This primal will is ultimately the will to live.
Another aspect of the primal will is the acceptance of life that contains a unity of creation and destruction, joy and sorrow, for that is a truth in existence. With the birth of a child comes the inevitable truth that that child must die, but Nietzsche does not dwell on this truth. Instead, he believes that after an individual has come to this realization of death and acceptance of the primal will then that individual can live every moment in the present and satisfy the most basic necessity of existence.

The child's will is an individual's self-actualization; it is the ability to create an internal moral code. With the child's will, an individual has the ability to doubt, contemplate, accept or reject something; essentially, they have the ability and power to chose.
Nietzsche was a proponent of people creating and living by their own ethics instead of blinding following moral codes that have been impressed upon them. By creating one's own internal morals, an individual separates him or herself from the masses and becomes elevated to an Ubermench (superhuman) through the will to power.

The will to power is the nature of humans to achieve, compete, and gain all power in all situations in order to elevate oneself from all others. Humans that have embraced their Dionysian instincts and internalized their own set of values then accepts the will to power. Nietzsche believes this acceptance of the will to power is the means to success; with this acceptance comes the ability to elevate oneself to the Ubermench, an exceptional individual.

Nietzsche used his interpretation of these three wills of the individual to describe and criticize society. "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him..." Nietzsche criticized Christian society for hypocritically using the name of God to gain power and to continue social stratification. These "Christians" are only Christian in name and not in action. Those in power use the name of God to control the masses and thus have "killed" God because they have spoiled His name. The elites, willing to power, perpetuate a never ending hierarchy with God as their justification.