Livin Your Best Life

First topic message reminder :

“Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.”

—Robert Frost

Writers write.

It is a magical act.

Each letter a sigil.

The Age of the Stupid

I would argue that myself, an observer, coming here to OMF and observing it, I have helped change its direction due to the observer effect.

Some physicists cheat and say this is only true when you shine some atoms from a measuring device at the double slit experiment.

Nope.

"Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the openings in double slit experient, the picture changes dramatically: if a particle can be seen going through one opening, then it's clear it didn't go through another.

...

The answer, disconcertingly, is that we cannot conclude whether nature is deterministic or not, local or non-local, or whether the wavefunction is real. What the double slit experiment reveals is as complete a description of reality as you're ever going to get. To know the results of any experiment we can perform is as far as physics can take us. The rest is just an interpretation.

If your interpretation of quantum physics can successfully explain what the experiments reveal to us, it is valid; all the ones that cannot are invalid. Everything else is aesthetics, and while people are free to argue over their favorite interpretation, none can lay any more claim to being "real" than any other. But the heart of quantum physics can be found in these experimental results. We impose our preferences on the Universe at our own peril. The only path to understanding is to listen to what the Universe tells us about itself."

Will seems to change matter.

We obviously have some holes in our theories, ha!

The observer must be before matter.

I am not a physicist, though I am a poet, same thing

I don't use abstract numbers, I use words and feelings and the world as it appears around me at the time of the writing.

There is no 0 or 1 or 2 in nature, they are not real.

I am a poet and artist, in between all things.

Will narrows and focuses the probabilities.

We can see with other senses other than just our eyes.

Is this non-material focuser spirt?

Don't know.

We only have hints.

This is the land of synchronicity.

This is the land of mystery.

Nothing can be completely grasped.

When you speak or write a word, you demonstrate consciousness.

Is this force beyond space and time?

It manifests in space and time.

We can take no one thing or fact absolutely.

There is no objective reality I could know.

We are all mixed up in this stuff together.

Is it all conscious, seems best to act so to live your best life.

Everything is a sign.

Everything is a vibration.

Nothing we can sense or know is absolute.

So many hints that this is the way things are.

When you flow with this, you can know this, but only in the moment.

You can't tell anyone else or show them.

This leaves a mark on you, a smell.

I do not claim special access, I only see the nose in front of me.

I am not so arrogant or super intelligent to claim absolutes.

One must treat all as temporary and fleeting.

Is awareness fleeting?

We can never know.

Does it matter what we do?

To matter maybe.

A form of will?

None of my questions are real, and no answer is.

I had a strange dream last night.

I remember it so vividly.

I met woman in a new town.

I saw a shadow moving a few times in the corner of my eye.

I suspected nothing I saw was real.

With personalism, people are primary, not laws.

I concur.

For us, consciousness is primary.

What comes first, my experience hints consciousness exists beyond the body and time and space maybe.

But I certainly couldn’t prove it and must act accordingly to circumstances.

Situational ethics are helpful here.

As an ethical doctrine, the goal of Stoicism is freedom from passion (in the ancient sense of "anguish" or "suffering") through the pursuit of reason and "apatheia" (apathy, in its ancient sense of being objective, unemotional and having clear judgment).

I use a hybrid stoic approach.

Will and passion cannot and shouldn’t be muted and ignored, but directed.

You have the power to do so.

Some have lost this.

Some are just stupid and can’t do better than they are.

What are the connections between consciousness and personalism, well, personalism happens in consciousness.

Moral Absolutism is the ethical belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act.

I am not a moral absolutist.

I’m pragmatic about ethics.

I am not a nihilist or any other kind of ist.

Can’t nail me down.

Do what is needed now.

Zen helps you to act appropriately now.

How do you find the truth?

Let’s not ask what truth is: let us ask instead how we can recognize it reliably when it appears. Four factors determine the truthfulness of a theory or explanation: congruence, consistency, coherence, and usefulness. A true theory is congruent with our experience – meaning, it fits the facts.

“Dorpat personalism school starts its metaphysical inquiry with the question of existence and analyzes the concept of subject through immediate self-consciousness as the basis of existence. As representatives of a school of critically-oriented thinkers, personalists develop new insights based on critical evaluation of preceding philosophical systems, emphasizing the importance of the history of philosophy. Therefore, to determine what is understood by the immediate self-consciousness as the basis of personality in metaphysics of personalism.

At the center of Dorpat personalism metaphysics is the concept of
personality, understood as the basis of existence. The essence of personality is immediate self-consciousness.

Dorpat personalism school was formed in the late 19' and the beginning of the 20 century in the University of Dorpat. Many well-known european scientists worked at the time in Dorpart.”

I agree with Dan on personalism generally as central to our experience.

“Although it was only in the first half of the twentieth century that the term ‘personalism’ became known as a designation of philosophical schools and systems, personalist thought had developed throughout the nineteenth century as a reaction to perceived depersonalizing elements in Enlightenment rationalism, pantheism, Hegelian absolute idealism, individualism as well as collectivism in politics, and materialist, psychological, and evolutionary determinism. In its various strains, personalism always underscores the centrality of the person as the primary locus of investigation for philosophical, theological, and humanistic studies. It is an approach or system of thought which regards or tends to regard the person as the ultimate explanatory, epistemological, ontological, and axiological principle of all reality, although these areas of thought are not stressed equally by all personalists and there is tension between idealist, phenomenological, existentialist, and Thomist versions of personalism.”

Zen is not nihilism.

Buddha was not a nihilist.

There are nihilistic sects though.

“The concept of nihilism was discussed by the Buddha (563 B.C. to 483 B.C.), as recorded in the Theravada and Mahayana Tripiṭaka. The Tripiṭaka, originally written in Pali, refers to nihilism as natthikavāda and the nihilist view as micchādiṭṭhi. Various sutras within it describe a multiplicity of views held by different sects of ascetics while the Buddha was alive, some of which were viewed by him to be morally nihilistic. In the "Doctrine of Nihilism" in the Apannaka Sutta, the Buddha describes moral nihilists as holding the following views:

- Giving produces no beneficial results;
- Good and bad actions produce no results;
- After death, beings are not reborn into the present world or into another world; and
- There is no one in the world who, through direct knowledge, can confirm that beings are reborn into this world or into another world

The Buddha further states that those who hold these views will fail to see the virtue in good mental, verbal, and bodily conduct and the corresponding dangers in misconduct, and will therefore tend towards the latter.”

I agree with the Buddha about nihilism, it’s a dead end.

I disagree with Christians and other religions about moral absolutism.

Moral absolutism: The belief that right and wrong are unchanging, not determined by the individual or the culture.

Stay frosty in the moment, trust your awareness, check desire and you will do the best thing for the situation.

Go with the flow, not just what you know.

As finite creatures who will die, how could you do anything else?

Any kind of fixed view is not going to serve anyone well, only cause pain and suffering.

All are my relations.

Consider personalism in context of family, work, city, nation, race.

All the connections make a complex web.

The web of being.

It is not just what happens to you and what you want and do.

I lean towards existential personalism and the tensions I have raised with Dan over the years I can better elucidate now than I could before.

I am educating myself on most of the fundamentals and been able to map my awareness and experience to existential personalism.

"In the eastern Mediterranean among the Jews, the Hebrew word, nephesh is sometimes translated as “person.” However, in ancient Hebrew life and culture no word analogous to prosopon or persona appears. Nephesh is more often translated as soul, life, creature, or self. Nephesh can refer to the animating principle of a physical entity or the existential quality or state of life."

Here, my experience and rationality crosses over into mystery.

And so it must be for any authentic seeker and knower of thyself.

We are confronted with this placeholder for mystery; soul, spirit, all inadequate words to express what is us in essence.

And this essence is likely connected to something around us and connects us as well.

Primary or attribute?

This is what I was confronted with 8-10 years ago and I am only now better at pointing at it.

I went through many phases astonishment, denial, anger, dread, nihilism to come to my current state of mind, wonderment.

Wonderment seems best.

I cannot bound it.

There is no question to answer.

There simply is what is.

It took my mind and nephesh, a decade to embrace. A better way to say this, it took me a decade for my mind to meet and probe my nephesh.

It appears to have heat and moves like fire.

It is cold as well.

This is why I am not a nihilist, because of the the will and interaction with this nephesh, one and the same, hard to explain if not impossible to work out.

The mystery is self evident.

Most ignore and deny it.

They seek comfort in numbers or laws or conspiracies.

Conspiracy is true cynicism.

Cynicism in its modern form is toxic, but you can redeem your eyes.

It takes courage to work with your essence or irreducible element.

If you don't have the courage now, I assure you, it can be developed if you focus here.

I could not and cannot nor will not adequately express my essence, it has many states.

This is where Dan and I must part, while he tries to formulate this essence in word or number, I know it is beyond formulation.

Physics clumsily says now, oh, all matter must be conscious or have information.

Nephesh then are nodes in the network of consciousness.

This is the secret place the poets write about and from.

Essence is indistinguishable.

Not material or immaterial, both at once.

To align the opposites within using psychological alchemy, opens a gateway.

Carl Jung gave as clear a view as he could what he saw through it.

He crossed over.

I will not speak of my own contact with the gateway any longer, my particular view is mine and no one else can use or see through it, god knows I have tried to describe it.

Those who have not crossed over, can come to hate ones who have.

This evokes the worst jealousy in muppets who seek to grasp what in not graspable.

They will kill you if you are not careful.

The best you can do is a detente, to exist in an indeterminate state.

That's when the real magic can be seen and worked with.

"Usually referring to a human being as a unified entity, no distinction is made between immaterial and material aspects. Nephesh as a whole is created by God; nephesh is not an attribute of a substance. The form/matter and substance attribute distinctions are foreign to ancient Hebrew thinking. However, beginning with Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE and continuing through the Roman period, the Eastern Mediterranean was Hellenized. New Testament writers, St. Paul for example, would have known nephesh, prosopon, and persona, likely aware of semantic tensions that later found their way in theological debates within the Christian church.

The different Greek and Hebrew-Christian understandings of person moved into focus in the 4th and 5th centuries CE as the Christian church attempted to work out a satisfactory understanding of the Trinity and the individual personhood of Jesus the Christ. The details of the controversies that arose are beyond the limits here. However, central to the controversy was the understanding of the individual person. During the time of Origen (185-254 CE) under the influence of Plotinus (204-269 CE), personae lacked ontological content. Is an individual person an attribute of being; or is an individual person being who, having been created by the free and independent God and who bears God’s image, is free and dependent? If the former, the Greek metaphysical word, ousia, expresses the Trinity, as in una substantia (God) and tres personae, where Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are understood as three independent Gods. If the latter, person is not an attribute of ousia, but upostasis. Earlier both ousia and upostasis meant substance. Eventually, they were used separately, ousia referring to substance and upostasis referring to individual person. This means that persona is no longer a kind of mask worn by an ontological substrate, ousia. The Greek Fathers, particularly the Cappadocians, led by Gregory of Nazianus (c. 329 – 389 or 390) understood that individual persons are ontologically ultimate, the central thesis of Personalism. However, an understanding of the interior life of persons lay beyond their metaphysical interests."

So, one can come to a resolution of sorts, yes, they can, but it is a counter-intuitive state, walking backwards is required.

Training is required.

Focus is required.

Humility is required.

If you are fortunate, you will see your true self and not be able to tell another soul about it.

Haha, kinda beautiful and imperfectly perfect if you ask a smelly goat.

No one can cheat, you can only go to the mountain yourself and know, not know, do, not do.

All absolutists are absolutely wrong!

You can know this and thus avoid many mind traps.

You can know what it isn't, which opens you to what is.

This state is bliss, nirvana, true seeing, wonderment.

It brings you face to face with love and grace is being able to experience it.

You will find the courage of a god.

You will burn and burn others until you learn to handle yourself better, poise.

You will pierce all lies.

Not a bad a deal if you ask me.

I have experimented with cynicism quite a bit the last 5 years.

OMF was my cynical training ground.

If I have slapped you and your beliefs and convictions around, this was why.

Awww, did I hurt your feelings and threaten your precious convictions

Good!

I was only talking to one person really, Dan, I pushed him to delete all my posts.

I gave it my own spin.

People often use the word “cynic”, for someone bitter, distrustful, and pessimistic. However, in ancient Greece, cynicism was an important school of thought that promoted an anti-materialistic way of life.

One of my heroes is Diogenes, he lived with the dogs, as I do.

"The Cynic School was founded by Antisthenes (445–360 or 444–368), son of an Athenian and a slave from Thrace, who was a distinguished warrior and a student of the sophist Gorgias. The school was founded in Kynosarges of Athens, and it was the only school in the city that accepted non-Athenian citizens.

A lot of philosophers, such as Aristotle (in Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics), Homer, Plato, and Socrates, considered Virtue (Αρετή) to be an important factor to be happy.

For cynics, (Kyon, meaning dog in ancient Greek, κύων), virtue is considered to be the ultimate goal, and to achieve this, you have to neglect anything that doesn’t help you gain virtue and happiness. Cynicism has been also characterized as an anti-philosophy, which mocks intellectualism, and tries to prove that common sense beats complex theories.

Goods were distinguished into two categories, the external (property, physical pleasure, luxury) and the internal. To the latter belongs the pre-eminent demand of the philosophers, that is, the secure knowledge of Truth and Self. However, “Virtue” doesn’t depend on knowledge, but it is a result of practice and dedication."

I concur mostly and have practiced the old Cynicism and developing personal virtue.

"Diogenes of Sinope (400-325 BC) was a student of Antisthenes and he is, without a doubt, the most popular cynic. His opinion was that true virtue would be revealed by one’s actions and not his theories. He was against materialism, he lived in a large ceramic jar(πυθάρι), and his goal was to provoke people to get closer with their nature.

Diogenes often criticized social values and believed that society was corrupted, confused, and alienated from its nature. He was the first person to declare himself as a “cosmopolitan” and a citizen of the world, instead of claiming allegiance to just one place — for example, Sinope or Athens, where he lived as a free man."

There are no known writings of Diogenes. The only details from his life are taken from some anecdotes, for example, the famous meeting with Alexander the Great in Corinth.

When Alexander the Great met Diogenes, who was resting in his ceramic jar, he asked him if there was anything he could do for him. Diogenes responded, “Αποσκότησόν με,” which means “ Stand out of my sunlight”.

Alexander then said,

“If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes.”

Another known fact about Diogenes is that he despised Plato, and he believed that Antisthenes was the real successor of Socrates. When Plato defined the human as “featherless bipeds”, Diogenes plucked a rooster, showed it to Plato, and screamed

“Behold! I brought you a human!”

Diogenes lived as he pleased, and believed in human’s independence and self-sufficiency (αυτάρκεια). He acted as he pleased, but also he spoke with free will, honesty, and courage (παρρησία), and was willing to forgo personal pleasures in the pursuit of finding inner peace and virtue.

The true goal of the cynic is to know their nature better.

And this is why I adopted this practice and have found that it works quite well.

It doesn't make you many friends.

I have no nation or group, I am a human being.

Diogenes was looking for human beings, not right wingers or left wingers, human beings.

My religion is being a human being.  

I think I have kept quite well to the Cynic intent.

This age needs Cynics, not critics, Cynics.

"Cynicism in its true meaning didn’t disappear after Diogenes’ death, but lived throughout the philosophical school of Stoicism. Stoicism’s core idea is to live a life where you have self-control.

Through self-control, people can tame their destructive emotions — like anger, or even hope. Hope for Stoicism is a terrible feeling, because people have to be ready to face the worst scenario and be pessimistic, instead of hoping for the best."

I can't say I agree here with the stoics, I think we have to live in between dread and hope.

"The reason why we have two ears and only one mouth is so we might listen more and talk less — Zeno of Citium.

Stoicism and Cynicism are both based on practice. To live a virtuous life, you have to live according to nature. However, there are some main differences. Stoics don’t necessarily agree with the intentional refusal of obeying social conventions, even if those are irrelevant to finding virtue. They tend to live a more easy-going life than cynics, who attack materialism by denying anything unnecessary in bonding with nature."

I like the more easy going approach myself, so I am not a true cynic I guess. Go with the flow, sometimes you are up, sometimes down, accept it all.

Love it all.

"Cynic philosophy has been a point of interest for many philosophers. Modern philosopher Michel Foucault had written about the ancient cynics in his topic

“Le courage de la vérité.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein has also referred to cynics, while Slavoj Zizek has been considered to be influenced by Diogenes’ cynicism.

Friedrich Nietzsche is another philosopher that has been heavily influenced by cynicism, following a philosophy of skepticism and self-discipline.

However, we can surely say that no other philosopher in modern society has ever practiced cynicism in the sense that Diogenes of Sinope practiced it. The journey to find true virtue by ignoring every materialistic value has been toned down, but it still exists."

You don't know the true cynics, our culture has made sure their voices are not heard, or it would undermine the greed of materialism that gives others power over us.

Once you are part of the elite, your cynical tools are blunted.

One must live with little to practice this lost art.

I'll add, one does not need to deny themselves please, just learn to live on what they need, which doesn't mean a pure ascetic life.

This still gives you some credibility in the materialist system. You show you can take care of yourself and be a benefit to others and maintain your cynical edge to challenge the elite with.

Dan is of the elites and I eviscerated him with great glee.

But all things in moderation I say.

One must take time to remove their masks or we risk anger and hatred and violence.

"Nevertheless, some of the eccentric actions of Diogenes (for example, pissing all over some man he did not like, or masturbating in public) would get him arrested in today’s society. But that’s another topic.

By the 16th century, renaissance writers were emphasizing the negative aspects of Cynic philosophy. This was one of the main reasons that led to the modern understanding of cynicism.

Nowadays, a cynic is a person who has a distrust of people’s apparent motives and ambitions or has a pessimistic approach to life, and sarcastic, offensive behavior."

Smelly is certainly offensive and sarcastic, though I have toned him a down a bit.

"In today’s world, the word “cynic” is used to describe a hypocritical and negative person, proving that the word has completely lost its original meaning. In the last thirty years, the word cynic has been used by a lot of journalists to describe politicians who use manipulative and shady tactics.

According to William Chaloupka, writer of “Everybody Knows: Cynicism in America”, the solution to bad cynicism is politics. Good cynics provoke us to vote, contribute money, and participate in politics in unselfish ways. Democracy requires cynics to challenge and make fun of the elite. Therefore, the notorious negativity of modern cynicism can be used as a valuable tool."

The comic today is possibly a true cynic I feel, if they are smart enough and disciplined enough to realize themselves.

This is why they are so vulgar, it is part of the cynical act, but to forget this is just being vulgar.

There is an art and skill to good cynicism.

How many comics of great promise flamed out due to self destruction?

It is a hard road.

George Carlin was an excellent Cynic and born for his time.

Hopeful idealists must become Cynics imho in our day and age.

The elite are getting away with terrible abuses of the common human.

The Cynic stands up for nature in the face of evil naked materialism.

Smelly Goat is my Cynical act, but I mostly perform my act here on OMF.

My sword that can cut through any intellectual knot.

You all are sick of me, I'm sure, but I feel I have been a good natured cynic really.

If I have cussed you, it was only for emphasis.

I wasn't being a clown, well, a good clown is a good cynic.

I don't think anyone really got my joke.

Well, a few did, who are friends now.

I am a Disclosure cynic to be sure.

I suppose that was part of my learning the art and skill of good cynicism.

I still and will always have a cynical thread and will bash the intellectual when I can.

I practice my cynicism on myself first and most.

All the forces the conservative and elite see eroding order, are ultimately a check against moving too far from nature.

We become decadent and sick when we say too far from our nature, our will.

It will correct you.

It could be argued, if nature made us, anything we do, is based on the evolution that created us.

But we are not just muppets with no will.

How great if it was that simple.

Life would be absurd if so.

Life is not absurd, what we make of it often is.

We have the power to reflect and choose.

This makes you god in a way.

This skill must be practiced and honed.

Essence and existence battle it out here.

The Zen are excellent cynics, which is why I practice Zen.

This is why this is the best of all possible worlds.

So we can learn to choose.

For what ultimate end?

I would only be speculating to say, though I have hints of why this is the way it is.

One of the paradoxes of life is that to be happier you don’t have to get more stuff or do new things. You only have to live the life you already have and be more fully present in it.

Once you master this, have it all, for then you will know what is really valuable and meaningful in life.

I live a modest life with a few luxuries.

I don't have to blow my or anyone else's life up to practice my art.

When I was reborn into my life, it was as a cynic of conspiracy and politics and religiosity.

What you do matters, not so much what you think. It is so easy to think nonsense, like eating candy, so one should spend time with human beings, who are always close to nature, who learn that candy is really a poison. Everything has positive and negative aspects, amplified by the nature of one's choice.

Master yourself and make yourself great.

Practice the ancient art of Cynicism on yourself and the flood of nonsense in the world to know the real world and your nature.

Another arrow in your quiver.

A very good article imho. You can verify the historical points if you like, I have.

Now you have a little more insight into the modern Cynic, Smelly Goat.

I may take my act on the road yet.

I have just been warming up.

https://medium.com/exploring-history/diogenes-and-cynicism-in-modern-society-49acac80a81e

BTW, I have never been spirited on OMF, though it may have come off as such, ever.

Not one fool has really moved me or beaten me.

They could only join me or resist.

Resistance is futile.

To resist me is to resist nature and you can't really resist it.

Cause none of us are getting out of here alive, going to live in space pods or upload ourselves into machines or escape into the future or past through wormholes or getting beamed up by this or that faction of being.

That's just all more resistance.

The cynic is the antidote to the eschatologist.

"There are four reasons why the Cynics are so named. First because of the indifference of their way of life, for they make a cult of indifference and, like dogs, eat and make love in public, go barefoot, and sleep in tubs and at crossroads. The second reason is that the dog is a shameless animal, and they make a cult of shamelessness, not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to it. The third reason is that the dog is a good guard, and they guard the tenets of their philosophy. The fourth reason is that the dog is a discriminating animal which can distinguish between its friends and enemies. So do they recognize as friends those who are suited to philosophy, and receive them kindly, while those unfitted they drive away, like dogs, by barking at them."

Bark

Bark

Bark

None of this meant that a Cynic would retreat from society. Cynics were in fact to live in the full glare of the public’s gaze and be quite indifferent in the face of any insults which might result from their unconventional behaviour. The Cynics are said to have invented the idea of cosmopolitanism: when he was asked where he came from, Diogenes replied that he was “a citizen of the world, (kosmopolitês).”

The ideal Cynic would evangelise; as the watchdog of humanity, they thought it their duty to hound people about the error of their ways. The example of the Cynic’s life (and the use of the Cynic’s biting satire) would dig up and expose the pretensions which lay at the root of everyday conventions.

Although Cynicism concentrated primarily on ethics, some Cynics, such as Monimus, addressed epistemology with regard to tuphos (τῦφος) expressing skeptical views.

Cynic philosophy had a major impact on the Hellenistic world, ultimately becoming an important influence for Stoicism. The Stoic Apollodorus, writing in the 2nd century BC, stated that “Cynicism is the short path to virtue.”

The Treachery of Images



This is not a Pipe

Things are the way they are.

I for one am not trying to answer any questions.

One continues to be curious.

I don't see or experience any problems.

These are free flowing days and nights.

Still strange to think about not being here.

I have been meditating on my death.

I see myself on the table and see the body was just a vessel.

Sobering realization, enjoy the time you have.

Mystery upon mystery.

Who claims anything?

Fools and muppets.

In vino veritas.

smelly da goat wrote:In vino veritas.

Like automatic writing.

U wrote:

smelly da goat wrote:In vino veritas.

Like automatic writing.

Scribo ergo sum

XXIII

The everyday mind: that is the way.
Buried in vines and rock-bound caves,
Here it’s wild, here I am free,
Idling with the white clouds, my friends.
Tracks here never reach the world;
No-mind, so what can shift my thought?
I sit the night through on a bed of stone,
While the moon climbs Cold Mountain.

—Hanshan

http://www.hrtx.tv The heretics are stirring.

HRTX wrote:http://www.hrtx.tv The heretics are stirring.

Good for them.

I’m sitting right here…still…calm…quiet.

I fought my gorilla war here on OMF over last 5 years.

I was only fighting myself.

I won

There are many levels beyond hrtx.

There are unbelievable states of mind.

But I can’t show you.

Have fun stormin the castle.

Everyone does the best they can in the best possible world.

We all just have our perspective.

I've written about perspective recently, but I feel to revisit it.

I have been reading a lot of Nietzsche recently, my cynical brother.

We each are the sum of our choices.

But our experience is only in the present as far as we can perceive it.

From The Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1895

ATTEMPT AT A CRITIQUE OF CHRISTIANITY  

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322-h/19322-h.htm

FN detested happy resignation.

FN on Christianity.

"What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.

What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.

What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome.

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).
The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it.

What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity...."

"The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living creatures (—man is an end—): but what type of man must be bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future.

This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately willed. Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of terrors;—and out of that terror the  contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick brute-man—the Christian...."

"As you probably surmise, I understand rottenness in the sense of décadence: my argument is that all the values on which mankind now fixes its highest aspirations are décadence-values."

"I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is injurious to it. A history of the “higher feelings,” the “ideals of humanity”—and it is possible that I’ll have to write it—would almost explain why man is so degenerate. Life itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power: whenever the will to power fails there is disaster. My contention is that all the highest values of humanity have been emptied of this will—that the values of décadence, of nihilism, now prevail under the holiest names."

"Aristotle, as every one knows, saw in pity a sickly and dangerous  state of mind, the remedy for which was an occasional purgative: he regarded tragedy as that purgative. The instinct of life should prompt us to seek some means of puncturing any such pathological and dangerous accumulation of pity as that appearing in Schopenhauer’s case (and also, alack, in that of our whole literary décadence, from St. Petersburg to Paris, from Tolstoi to Wagner), that it may burst and be discharged.... Nothing is more unhealthy, amid all our unhealthy modernism, than Christian pity. To be the doctors here, to be unmerciful here, to wield the knife here—all this is our business, all this is our sort of humanity, by this sign we are philosophers, we Hyperboreans!—"

Sounds like the Nazis!

No mercy.

"The pure soul is a pure lie.... So long as the priest, that professional denier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is accepted as a higher variety of man, there can be no answer to the question, What is truth? Truth has already been stood on its head when the obvious attorney of  mere emptiness is mistaken for its representative...."

"Upon this theological instinct I make war: I find the tracks of it everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is shifty and dishonourable in all things. The pathetic thing that grows out of this condition is called faith: in other words, closing one’s eyes upon one’s self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable falsehood. People erect a concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness upon this false view of all things; they ground good conscience upon faulty vision; they argue that no other sort of vision has value any more, once they have made theirs sacrosanct with the names of “God,” “salvation” and “eternity.” I unearth this theological instinct in all directions: it is the most widespread and the most subterranean form of falsehood to be found on earth. Whatever a theologian regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth. His profound instinct of self-preservation stands against truth ever coming into honour in any way, or even getting stated. Wherever the in fluence of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of values, and the concepts “true” and “false” are forced to change places: whatever is most damaging to life is there called “true,” and whatever exalts it, intensifies it, approves it, justifies it and makes it triumphant is there called “false.”... When theologians, working through the “consciences” of princes (or of peoples—), stretch out their hands for power, there is never any doubt as to the fundamental issue: the will to make an end, the nihilistic will exerts that power...."

Those that would seen an end, the nihilists. Hated most by FN.

"Reason, the prerogative of reason, does not go so far.... Out of reality there had been made “appearance”; an absolutely false world, that of being, had been turned into reality.... The success of Kant is merely a theological success; he was, like Luther and Leibnitz, but one more impediment to German integrity, already far from steady.—"

This next passage is quite powerful and insightful.

"A word now against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be our invention; it must spring out  of our personal need and defence. In every other case it is a source of danger. That which does not belong to our life menaces it; a virtue which has its roots in mere respect for the concept of “virtue,” as Kant would have it, is pernicious. “Virtue,” “duty,” “good for its own sake,” goodness grounded upon impersonality or a notion of universal validity—these are all chimeras, and in them one finds only an expression of the decay, the last collapse of life, the Chinese spirit of Königsberg. Quite the contrary is demanded by the most profound laws of self-preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man find his own virtue, his own categorical imperative. A nation goes to pieces when it confounds its duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing works a more complete and penetrating disaster than every “impersonal” duty, every sacrifice before the Moloch of abstraction.—To think that no one has thought of Kant’s categorical imperative as dangerous to life!... The theological instinct alone took it under protection!—An action prompted by the life-instinct proves that it is a right action by the amount of pleasure that goes with it: and yet that Nihilist, with his bowels  of Christian dogmatism, regarded pleasure as an objection.... What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure—as a mere automaton of duty? That is the recipe for décadence, and no less for idiocy.... Kant became an idiot.—And such a man was the contemporary of Goethe! This calamitous spinner of cobwebs passed for the German philosopher—still passes today!... I forbid myself to say what I think of the Germans.... Didn’t Kant see in the French Revolution the transformation of the state from the inorganic form to the organic? Didn’t he ask himself if there was a single event that could be explained save on the assumption of a moral faculty in man, so that on the basis of it, “the tendency of mankind toward the good” could be explained, once and for all time? Kant’s answer: “That is revolution.” Instinct at fault in everything and anything, instinct as a revolt against nature, German décadence as a philosophy—that is Kant! —"

In no way does Nietzsche imply that belief in the notion of universal morality was the cause of the decline of China; he's merely using the situation of 19th century China as a metaphor for the same kind of decline that one would face if one adopted universal morality.

So this is really what Nietzsche railed against, universal morality, I have as well.

"A virtue must be our invention; it must spring out of our personal need and defence."

This is the stuff right there, YES!

Dan is a nihilist you see, at least by Nietzsche's definition.

"What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure—as a mere automaton of duty?"

This is why quality is its own reward.

Work with no pleasure is abstract worship of Moloch, the destroyer of children. Ironic that QAnon corrupted the destroyers of children by imagining phantoms doing this evil, when it was themselves they hated most.

How many families has child abuse destroyed?

"Protestantism itself is its peccatum originale. Definition of Protestantism: hemiplegic paralysis of Christianity—and of reason...."

This is what has possessed the trumpets.

They serve Moloch most perhaps, they were hollowed out and their own self hatred spews into the world out of the ass of Moloch.

They are nihilists!

Denying the reality of nature around and within themselves.

"When a man feels that he has a divine mission, say to lift up, to save or to liberate mankind—when a man feels the divine spark in his heart and believes that he is the mouthpiece of super natural imperatives—when such a mission inflames him, it is only natural that he should stand beyond all merely reasonable standards of judgment. He feels that he is himself sanctified by this mission, that he is himself a type of a higher order!... What has a priest to do with philosophy! He stands far above it!—And hitherto the priest has ruled!—He has determined the meaning of “true” and “not true”!..."

Let us not underestimate this fact: that we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a “transvaluation of all values,” a visualized declaration of war and victory against all the old concepts of “true” and “not true.” The most valuable intuitions are the last to be attained; the most valuable of all are those which determine methods. All the methods, all the principles of the scientific spirit of today, were the targets for thousands of years of the most profound contempt; if a man inclined to them he was excluded from the society of “decent” people—he passed as “an enemy of God,” as a scoffer at the truth, as one “possessed.” As  a man of science, he belonged to the Chandala[2].... We have had the whole pathetic stupidity of mankind against us—their every notion of what the truth ought to be, of what the service of the truth ought to be—their every “thou shalt” was launched against us.... Our objectives, our methods, our quiet, cautious, distrustful manner—all appeared to them as absolutely discreditable and contemptible.—Looking back, one may almost ask one’s self with reason if it was not actually an aesthetic sense that kept men blind so long: what they demanded of the truth was picturesque effectiveness, and of the learned a strong appeal to their senses. It was our modesty that stood out longest against their taste.... How well they guessed that, these turkey-cocks of God!"

A good line..."these turkey-cocks of God!"

"We have unlearned something. We have become more modest in every way. We no longer derive man from the “spirit,” from the “godhead”; we have dropped him back among the beasts. We regard him as the strongest of the beasts because he is the craftiest; one of the re sults thereof is his intellectuality. On the other hand, we guard ourselves against a conceit which would assert itself even here: that man is the great second thought in the process of organic evolution. He is, in truth, anything but the crown of creation: beside him stand many other animals, all at similar stages of development.... And even when we say that we say a bit too much, for man, relatively speaking, is the most botched of all the animals and the sickliest, and he has wandered the most dangerously from his instincts—though for all that, to be sure, he remains the most interesting!—As regards the lower animals, it was Descartes who first had the really admirable daring to describe them as machina; the whole of our physiology is directed toward proving the truth of this doctrine. Moreover, it is illogical to set man apart, as Descartes did: what we know of man today is limited precisely by the extent to which we have regarded him, too, as a machine. Formerly we accorded to man, as his inheritance from some higher order of beings, what was called “free will”; now we have taken even this will from him, for the term no longer describes anything that we can understand. The old word  “will” now connotes only a sort of result, an individual reaction, that follows inevitably upon a series of partly discordant and partly harmonious stimuli—the will no longer “acts,” or “moves.”... Formerly it was thought that man’s consciousness, his “spirit,” offered evidence of his high origin, his divinity. That he might be perfected, he was advised, tortoise-like, to draw his senses in, to have no traffic with earthly things, to shuffle off his mortal coil—then only the important part of him, the “pure spirit,” would remain. Here again we have thought out the thing better: to us consciousness, or “the spirit,” appears as a symptom of a relative imperfection of the organism, as an experiment, a groping, a misunderstanding, as an affliction which uses up nervous force unnecessarily—we deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as it is done consciously. The “pure spirit” is a piece of pure stupidity: take away the nervous system and the senses, the so-called “mortal shell,” and the rest is miscalculation—that is all!..."

HA!

My opinion is connecting to or deepest instinct will, is the source of our power.

To try to tame the beast of nature is to destroy it.

This is I feel is the theme of Nietzsche's project and great insight.

"Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary causes (“God,” “soul,” “ego,” “spirit,” “free will”—or even “unfree”), and purely imaginary effects (“sin,” “salvation,” “grace,” “punishment,” “forgiveness of sins”). Intercourse between imaginary beings (“God,” “spirits,” “souls”); an imaginary natural history (anthropocentric; a total denial of the concept of natural causes); an imaginary psychology (misunderstandings of self, misinterpretations of agreeable or disagreeable general feelings—for example, of the states of the nervus sympathicus with the help of the sign-language of religio-ethical balderdash—, “repentance,” “pangs of conscience,” “temptation by the devil,” “the presence of God”); an imaginary teleology (the “kingdom of God,” “the last judgment,” “eternal life”).—This purely fictitious world, greatly to its disadvantage, is to be differentiated from the world of dreams; the latter at least reflects reality, whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and denies it."

The inner world and dreams are the true reflection of reality.

The outward myths and stories are imagination.

Yes, there is a depth in us that clears away all of that outward confusion, that runs rampant as a mind virus across zombie minds, nodes of Moloch.

"Once the concept of “nature” had  been opposed to the concept of “God,” the word “natural” necessarily took on the meaning of “abominable”—the whole of that fictitious world has its sources in hatred of the natural (—the real!—), and is no more than evidence of a profound uneasiness in the presence of reality.... This explains everything. Who alone has any reason for living his way out of reality? The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality one must be a botched reality.... The preponderance of pains over pleasures is the cause of this fictitious morality and religion: but such a preponderance also supplies the formula for décadence...."

Touche, ouch!

I feel so much closer to reality with Nietzsche than most any other modern philosopher.

"A criticism of the Christian concept of God leads inevitably to the same conclusion.—A nation that still believes in itself holds fast to its own god. In him it does honour to the conditions which enable it to survive, to its virtues—it projects its joy in itself, its feeling of power, into a being to whom one may offer thanks. He who is rich will give of his riches; a proud people need a god to whom they can make sacrifices.... Religion, within these  limits, is a form of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence: to that end he needs a god.—Such a god must be able to work both benefits and injuries; he must be able to play either friend or foe—he is wondered at for the good he does as well as for the evil he does. But the castration, against all nature, of such a god, making him a god of goodness alone, would be contrary to human inclination. Mankind has just as much need for an evil god as for a good god; it doesn’t have to thank mere tolerance and humanitarianism for its own existence.... What would be the value of a god who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn, cunning, violence? who had perhaps never experienced the rapturous ardeurs of victory and of destruction? No one would understand such a god: why should any one want him?—True enough, when a nation is on the downward path, when it feels its belief in its own future, its hope of freedom slipping from it, when it begins to see submission as a first necessity and the virtues of submission as measures of self-preservation, then it must overhaul its god. He then becomes a hypocrite, timorous and demure; he counsels “peace of  soul,” hate-no-more, leniency, “love” of friend and foe. He moralizes endlessly; he creeps into every private virtue; he becomes the god of every man; he becomes a private citizen, a cosmopolitan.... Formerly he represented a people, the strength of a people, everything aggressive and thirsty for power in the soul of a people; now he is simply the good god.... The truth is that there is no other alternative for gods: either they are the will to power—in which case they are national gods—or incapacity for power—in which case they have to be good...."

"Wherever the will to power begins to decline, in whatever form, there is always an accompanying decline physiologically, a décadence. The divinity of this décadence, shorn of its masculine virtues and passions, is converted perforce into a god of the physiologically degraded, of the weak. Of course, they do not call themselves the weak; they call themselves “the good.”... No hint is needed to indicate the moments in history at which the dualistic fiction of a good and an evil god first became  possible. The same instinct which prompts the inferior to reduce their own god to “goodness-in-itself” also prompts them to eliminate all good qualities from the god of their superiors; they make revenge on their masters by making a devil of the latter’s god.—The good god, and the devil like him—both are abortions of décadence.—How can we be so tolerant of the naïveté of Christian theologians as to join in their doctrine that the evolution of the concept of god from “the god of Israel,” the god of a people, to the Christian god, the essence of all goodness, is to be described as progress?"

"They spun their webs around him for so long that finally he was hypnotized, and began to spin himself, and became another metaphysician. Thereafter he resumed once more his old busi ness of spinning the world out of his inmost being sub specie Spinozae; thereafter he became ever thinner and paler—became the “ideal,” became “pure spirit,” became “the absolute,” became “the thing-in-itself.”... The collapse of a god: he became a 'thing-in-itself.'"

Nietzsche doesn't like Dan at all, he hates in fact all he represents!

I think Nietzsche is correct in his assessment generally of this making of a pure false god.

"The Christian concept of a god—the god as the patron of the sick, the god as a spinner of cobwebs, the god as a spirit—is one of the most corrupt concepts that has ever been set up in the world: it probably touches low-water mark in the ebbing evolution of the god-type. God degenerated into the contradiction of life. Instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yea! In him war is declared on life, on nature, on the will to live! God becomes the formula for every slander upon the “here and now,” and for every lie about the “beyond”! In him nothingness is deified, and the will to nothingness is made holy!..."

"The fact that the strong races of northern Europe did not repudiate this Christian god does  little credit to their gift for religion—and not much more to their taste. They ought to have been able to make an end of such a moribund and worn-out product of the décadence. A curse lies upon them because they were not equal to it; they made illness, decrepitude and contradiction a part of their instincts—and since then they have not managed to create any more gods. Two thousand years have come and gone—and not a single new god! Instead, there still exists, and as if by some intrinsic right,—as if he were the ultimatum and maximum of the power to create gods, of the creator spiritus in mankind—this pitiful god of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid image of decay, conjured up out of emptiness, contradiction and vain imagining, in which all the instincts of décadence, all the cowardices and wearinesses of the soul find their sanction!—"

I believe Aleister Crowley helped here.

He birthed a new God, finally, to counter the dying decadent democratic God.

He grew close to his will and became superhuman.

The true nihilist is the one claiming divine right.

FN felt Buddhism the result of a long evolution, 100 times better than Christianity, but a denial of ego as well and impersonal.

"—With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of its “humanitarian” blessings! Its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal.... For example, the worm of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this misery!—The “equality of souls before God”—this fraud, this pretext for the rancunes of all the base-minded—this explosive concept, ending in revolution, the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing the whole social order —this is Christian dynamite.... The “humanitarian” blessings of Christianity forsooth! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all good and honest instincts! All this, to me, is the “humanitarianism” of Christianity!—Parasitism as the only practice of the church; with its anæmic and “holy” ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross as the distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever heard of,—against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, kindness of soul—against life itself....
This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found—I have letters that even the blind will be able to see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,—I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race....

And mankind reckons time from the dies nefastus when this fatality befell—from the first  day of Christianity!—Why not rather from its last?—From today?—The transvaluation of all values!..."

Well ok then, thanks FN!

FN encourages you to go ALL IN on being Human and embrace your nature, dark and light.

He resists duality, well, he smashes it.

His is an extreme view to be sure.

I have my own perceptive and opinions, but find much agreement with FN, more so than Dan Smith.

"Here it becomes necessary to call up a memory that must be a hundred times more painful to Germans. The Germans have destroyed for Europe the last great harvest of civilization that Europe was ever to reap—the Renaissance. Is it understood at last, will it ever be understood, what the Renaissance was? The transvaluation of Christian values,—an attempt with all available means, all instincts and all the resources of genius to bring about a triumph of the opposite values, the more noble values.... This has been the one great war of the past; there has never been a more critical question than that of the Renaissance—it is my question too—; there has never been a form of attack more fundamental, more direct, or more violently delivered by a whole front upon the center of the enemy! To attack at the critical place, at the very seat of Christianity, and there enthrone the more noble values—that is to say, to insinuate them into the  instincts, into the most fundamental needs and appetites of those sitting there...."

"Ah, these Germans, what they have not cost us! Futility—that has always been the work of the Germans.—The Reformation; Leibnitz; Kant and so-called German philosophy; the war of “liberation”; the empire—every time a futile substitute for something that once existed, for something irrecoverable.... These Germans, I confess, are my enemies: I despise all their uncleanliness in concept and valuation, their cowardice before every honest yea and nay. For nearly a thousand years they have tangled and confused everything their fingers have touched; they have on their conscience all the half-way measures, all the three-eighths-way measures, that Europe is sick of,—they also have on their conscience the uncleanest variety of Christianity that exists, and the most incurable and indestructible—Protestantism.... If man kind never manages to get rid of Christianity the Germans will be to blame...."

--

Walt Whitman, my other cynical brother may seem an opposite of Nietzsche to those that have not engaged him.

“Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems”

From Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself.

“These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me, / If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing."

“The facts are useful and real….they are not my dwelling….I enter by them to an area of the dwelling.”

How does Whitman prepare the reader to realize his truths, to anticipate them before they are revealed? The first is his simple, accessible prose.

Whitman serves as a counter to dense writing, as proof that simple language and readily accessible words can transmit equally profound meaning. Whitman’s poetry certainly allows for deep analysis, but the experience of reading it is not analytic. It is an ecstatic rush. “Song of Myself” is a continuous replay of the moment a dam bursts.

It is a written testament to the “Urge and urge and urge, / Always the procreant urge of the world.”

I feel Whitman's ecstasy.

Emerson complains of mystical writers (e.g. Swedenborg) that their truth is obscured because they do not recognize that temporal nature of their symbols. Those symbols are true for a time but not eternally, and not for everybody. Each person may dress their truth in different symbols, those that reveal the truth to that specific person. Symbols are to be discarded rapidly the moment their well is dry. Whitman is explicitly aware of this limitation of the written word, of the tendency of poetry to poetrify symbols and deprive them of their life, and is dutiful in his avoidance of this.

Symbols are temporal and are not immortal.

It is our tendency to immortalize old symbols that has trapped us.

Any one image will do to make the point; no image is essential. They could be replaced: they are the images Whitman has chosen and they make his point, but Whitman could have made it with others. And thus Whitman avoids forcing just these images on others. They are examples only, exactly the right examples but not exclusive. Second, Whitman takes a single image and probes it in depth

“I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name, / And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.”

All of this, then, builds to revelation of the prophet’s conclusions, a revelation that we have been primed to receive as a voice within our own heads, as truths that justify themselves in their relation to us.

There is a deep connection between portions of Whitman’s revelations and Nietzsche’s incisive philosophy. One of Whitman’s core claims is that an indelible part of the world’s “procreant urge” is miscreant. Whitman at several points expresses his affinity with the wicked, e.g. “It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous….I make appointments with all,” There is very much a sense of Whitman feeling he is “beyond good and evil”, as in one of the better lines of “A Song for Occupations”: “The learned and virtuous and benevolent, and the usual terms; / A man like me, and never the usual terms.” This is intimately connected with his celebration of the body (most prominent, of course, in “I Sing the Body Electric”), a celebration that gives sensuous detail to the same thought that Nietzsche expressed in his quote to the effect...

...the body possesses greater wisdom than the deepest philosophy.

Whitman shows, like Nietzsche, disdain for the notion of guilt: “I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,” and “They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, / They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,”  

Lastly, Whitman hints at a theme that would centrally occupy Nietzsche: the reality and terribleness of pain. “The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me, / The first I graft and increase upon myself….the latter I translate into a new tongue.”  and “Agonies are one of my changes of garments;” Like Nietzsche, Whitman sees that something must be done with pain, and his response is creative, to “translate [it] into a new tongue.”

Nietzsche, on the other hand, has severed ties with the notion of goodness or badness “on the whole”, independently of what we make good or bad. Pain is real and awful, pain is a necessary precondition of our existence and our happiness, but there is no guarantee that this will work itself out. The creative task of overcoming the painfulness of living is a task at which most people will fail, and it is against that failure that Nietzsche fights tooth and nail. Nietzsche is spurred on to rigorous living by the very fear of failure, of succumbing to the abyss. Whitman, on the other hand, can seem complacent. Perhaps, wrapped up in the sense of omnipotence said to accompany mystical experiences, Whitman felt assured of success. The problem of failure did not even occur to him.

I am sure of nothing myself, but I feel the Nietzsche’s fear and I know Whitman's ecstasy.

Fear, pain, ecstasy.

I think this comes out in Whitman’s and Nietzsche’s differing views on immortality. Whitman conceives of living thousands of lives across which one makes spiritual progress: death is not permanent, the next life will be different (and the life after that).

Nietzsche, on the other hand, offers this thought experiment: imagine a demon who comes in the middle of the night and tells you that every moment of your life will be repeated, with perfect exactness, in an eternal recurrence. Any pain, any action that you do not “translate into a new tongue” will become an endless torture. The consequences of failure are terrible, and infinite.

Obviously neither of these visions is what actually happens in life. Bodies decompose, are “bequeath[ed] to the dirt to grow from the grass I love” Neither Whitman nor Nietzsche has presented an empirical truth, a fact Nietzsche recognized and Whitman likely did not maybe. The mood that Nietzsche’s thought experiment inspires if you take it seriously is right, whereas the mood that Whitman’s vision inspires if you take it seriously can lead to a dangerous complacency.

This leaves Whitman’s poems as inspiring visions presented “incomparably well”, visions that are deeply right in a very real sense, but which do not serve that essential function whose importance Nietzsche grasped: indelibly stamping his reader with a sense of the dreadful consequences and reality of failure.

Whitman was a greater poet, but maybe Nietzsche is the greater prophet.

What is a muppet to do confronted by such power visions?

Look at the symbols around you now, what do they say?

But take nothing as final.

Live!

My perspective and experience is to always be challenging your understanding.

No cure for this…



Oh the echoes in my mind
From ancient times to midnight row
What a distance the golden bird has flown
I’m running with the wolves tonight
I dream of being alive
Will we ever speak again
Can I have back what I broke
I have born the scorn of the forlorn
I sit here on a sunken boat

Nietzsche was pretty monstrous.

He hated women.

There is a lot of pain and fear in his views.

Compassion and kindness, weaknesses he felt.

I’m definitely more with Walt.

He believed in the individual hero.

It’s complicated to unravel and one could spend a lifetime digging into his thoughts.

He’s tough to read and engage and contradictory.

But Nietzsche’s predictions have been more accurate than the idealists.

Power uses religion to suppress the power of polis.

Much evidence of this.

And they should win in his view.

Why despise compassion so?

Because he received so little of it?

I sing the body electric.

I do not wish to see blood in the streets.

I think Frank Herbert’s dune realizes what a god emperor might be.

Paul ends up being the tyrant we need, to prepare us for the fight against great forces to come in Dune.

https://www.academia.edu/26048638/Friedrich_Nietzsche_Goes_to_Space

Nietzsche and Herbert both agree that we should beware of demagogues, institutions, and religious superstitions.  Future human development requires humans to invent novel moral codes that are not inherited from existing institutions.  It is dangerous to place our faith in would-be heroes or to expect deliverance from authority figures.

Nietzsche predicted trump of course.

When Herbert talks about the danger inherent in 'heroes' he means those people who claim to be able to solve all of our problems.  The danger is in someone who claims to be helping us but then leads to a cult of personality, demagoguery, or other forms of oppression.  He wants us to avoid the kind of hero who claims he will Make Arrakis Great Again.

Trump is for the idiot masses, Dan has said as much.

I agree.

The Übermensch is a person who can create a wholly novel moral system without being dependent on existing religions or institutions.  Nietzche claims that this is a good thing and we should all aspire to the ideal, and so by conventional definitions the Übermensch does sound heroic.  But the Übermensch is not an object of worship.  If a demagogue came along and said, "Our society has problems and only I can fix it" the Übermensch would not be fooled.

What of the Nazarene?

It appears Nietzsche was back and forth on the fable of Jesus.

The Anti-Christ goes into a lot of detail.

He felt Jesus immature. I have felt this way too.

He felt he died too young.

What might a wisened Jesus have been like?

We are the ones I feel invited to find out in ourselves.

Zarathustra tells his disciples:

“Truly, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honor: and that he died too early has since been a fatality for many. As yet he knew only tears and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and the just - the Hebrew Jesus: then the longing for death seized him. Had he only remained in the desert and far from the good and the just! Perhaps he would have learned to live and learned to love the earth – and laughter as well!

Believe it, my brothers! He died too early; he himself would have recanted his teaching had he lived to my age! He was noble enough to recant! But he was still immature. The youth loves immaturely.”

— FN (Thus  Spake Zarathustra- 1, 21)

It seems FN saw Jesus’ death as an example of the practice of provocation.

“This “bringer of glad tidings” died as he lived, as he taught – not to “redeem mankind” but to demonstrate how one ought to live. What he bequeathed to mankind is his practice: his bearing before the judges, before the guards, before the accusers and every kind of calumny and mockery – his bearing on the Cross. He does not defend his rights, he takes no steps to avert the worst that can happen to him – more, he provokes it… And he entreats, he suffers, he loves with those, in those who are doing evil to him. His words to the thief on the cross next to him contain the whole Evangel. ‘That was verily a divine man, a child of God’ – says the thief. ‘If thou feelest this’ — answers the redeemer — ‘thou art in Paradise, thou art a child of God.’ Not to defend oneself, not to grow angry, not to make responsible… But not to resist even the evil man to love him.”

—FN - Anti-Christ 35

I think he is onto something here.

I tend to concur with this view of Jesus.

Instilling faith was not his mission.

Jesus demonstrated how to live and die.

He demonstrated an extreme way of living, to love the evil men who could and would destroy him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer embodied this too.

A hero of mine from my Christian days.

FN felt Socrates was tired of living and saw life as illness and death as the cure.

In Anti-Christ 35 Jesus tells the thief — “If thou feelest this … thou art in Paradise” —the philosopher clearly challenges convention by installing the matter of feeling, of subjective experience, at the very center of the proceedings. This is crucial, for, as Nietzsche makes explicit at Antichrist 33: Subjective experience is “the psychological reality of redemption”. The “redemption” embodied by Jesus is real enough for the later Nietzsche, but strictly in terms of inner experience, as a psychological salvation.

Perhaps Jesus was demonstrating an inner redemption.

“The ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ is a condition of the heart – not something that comes ‘upon the earth’ or ‘after death’…[it] is not something one waits for; it has no yesterday or tomorrow, it does not come ‘in a thousand years’ – it is an experience within a heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere…” —FN - Anti-christ 34

I have always felt this way and Nag Hamadhi writings seem to support this view as well.

“ Only now did the chasm open up: ‘Who killed him? Who was his natural enemy?’ – this question came like a flash of lightening. Answer: ruling Judaism, its upper class. From this moment one felt oneself in mutiny against the social order, one subsequently understood Jesus as having been in mutiny against the social order. Up till then this warlike trait, this negative trait in word and deed, was lacking in his image; more, he was the contradiction of it. Clearly the little community had failed to understand precisely the main thing, the exemplary element in his manner of dying, the freedom from, the superiority over every feeling of ressentiment: – a sign of how little they understood of him at all! Jesus himself would have desired nothing by his death but publicly to offer the sternest test, the proof of his teaching…But his disciples were far from forgiving his death – which would have been evangelic in the highest sense…Precisely the most unevangelic of feelings, revengefulness, again came uppermost… But with this everything is misunderstood: the ‘kingdom of God’ as a last act, as a promise! For the Evangel had been precisely the existence, the fulfillment, the actuality of this ‘kingdom’. Such a death was precisely this ‘kingdom of God’.” —FN - Anti-Christ 40

The Antichrist reveals the Christ.

It was not the world to come he brought that was later sold and used to suppress the people with sin and guilt.

Bonhoeffer saw through this when he said when Christ bids you come, he bids you come and die.

“As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. ... When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

You have to give it to Dietrich, he lived what he felt.

That is real power.

I am in a bloody fight with Nietzsche.

He is beating the fucking hell out of me.

One blow after another.

I’m down on the ground crawling and he steps on my hand and stomps it and digs his heel into it.

Damn, that hurts.

I felt like an idiot reading his words.

He screams at me, “You cockroach, you would understand my words!”

“They are not for you, give it up you worthless mongrel slug!”

“Who is this madman?” I think regretfully in my mind.

He shouts at me, “No one can build the bridge of your life for you!”

He yells, “You want paradise?!”

“Here is your paradise.” He sneers as he picks me up, and he smashes my nose with his stiff arm.

I beg him to stop.

“Please…please.” I groan while spitting blood into the dirt.

Why won’t he leave me alone?

“To make a man out of you my boy!”

He lifts me up and bounces my head off his knee, Rowdy Roddy Piper style.

“You loved Jesus, huh?” I look over and see Jesus sitting up in a chair smiling as I am savaged by this caterpillar mustached German.

He just shakes his head, no, before I can say anything.

This beating is a long time coming I feel.

“You want more?!”

I shake my head, please god, no more.

“God?!”

“Oh, now you are really gonna get it you little piece of shit. You thought heaven was gonna open to you?”

“You are not going anywhere.”

“Save me Jesus!” I beg.

“Give up!” Jesus yells in unison with the madman.

“No, I’m not giving up.” I squeak out.

“You think you are the thief who saw Paradise?” Jesus taunts.

He laughs, “Not even close.”

I look over at Dan. He’s in the corner laughing his ass off.

“Don’t look at me Chivo.”

Surely the work of the postmodern human is to free yourself from the great slave religions that turn one into a receptive zombie.

The tyranny of the polis is dangerous to the individual.

The Will led individual is a danger to the elite and to the polis.

We live in this tension.

In the BPW, the polis is mind controlled in the best way they can be.

The individuals are the best counter to the zombie.

When an individual rises, they join the ranks of the elite.

Nietzsche would say the zombified polis is irrelevant.

It is the Queen bees who are valuable.

He has a point.

But the awakened individual awakens to love.

Our culture suppresses the rise of the free radical.

They are tolerated within limits.

I don’t feel as radical as Nietzsche but I think I understand what he was trying to free us from.

He became antichrist.

I dabble as an antichrist.

He actually had some respect for the essence of the Jesus fable.

I think if Nietzsche had a dog to care for, that might have tempered him a bit.

But he was a needed corrective and he did predict this age of relativism and rising nihilism better than most.

One must wrestle and fight with Nietzsche.

He can’t be avoided and he will rock you to your core.

To have an animal totally dependent on you will change you.

Compassion is not a weakness.

An ubermensch would laugh at me and accuse me of being a sentimental fool.

No, I don’t agree.

There is a lot of conspiracy talk about mind control and the CIA weaponizing the right brain.

The exoteric war reflects the esoteric war.

Our Will reflects reality.

One can gird themselves against such mind control, if one can find their way, which is no way.

It’s hard enough to be a human being who will die, we must also contend with fiends and tyrants and demagogues and priests!

Our Will to power must be reckoned with.

Life has pain, but I would not say life is defined by pain alone, it is partly though.

Look how Trump and Nietzsche have been damaged by the loss of love in aspects of their lives.

They demonstrate terrible pain in their female relationships and have great anger at women.

Is life a disease that death is the cure for?

The deep state nor mind control is our problem to worry about.

Being an anti-mind control warrior I think is another trap.

Being a great mind is the best response.

Be a great human being measuring yourself against yourself.

If you are weak minded, you will be controlled and directed in one direction or another.

As you are weak minded, you won’t realize you are being manipulated.

Ultimately one must contend with the Great Lie, nihilism.

I think this is what the real war over reality is about.

The Abyss is not pure nihilism.

It is everything.

We are each the matrix.

Creative power and force of will characterize the magician.

I have no advice, but the magician advises, master thyself.

Look inside, which is reflected outside, for your best guidance.

Don’t look to objective moral systems or demagogues or nations or secret groups or culture or abstract gods.

You are a manifestation of reality and I feel to be your best in the world, is letting that rise in the world.

Make your mark is what my will pushes me to do.

What others do, shrug.

Chivo,

I thank you for copying this post from my section over to here.  

I almost always read what you post here, and I have been responding usually in my BPW section, as you have noticed.

I would like to respond to this post here.  

It would be good if we could keep most of our dialogue here, if you don’t mind, please.  
………..

You represent most persons…….. they believe that the fate of persons is a personal matter.  

For instance, what may happen when we die?  

There is virtually no place where one may discuss this with other interested persons in a neutral venue.  

If situation with personal eschatology is fraught and not open to discussion, then consider the problem with global eschatology.  

The situation is much, much worse……..

And you, Chivo, you have not been helping this situation.

Well, you have been helping, whether you wanted to or not, but generally not.

Why is it that not only are you refusing to discuss, but you are doing your best to prevent others from coming on here and discussing it with me?

Anyway, if you wish to bring anything to my attention, or to the attention of others interested in eschatology, please try to get our attention from over here.

If that doesn’t succeed then you are welcome to make brief statements in the BPW section.

Thank your, please…….
.

All good.

I’m not looking to muddy your water or splash in your puddle.

No response is needed.

As you like.

In response to you, no I do not embody most people’s view.

I don’t assume anything happens after I die.

Not my problem, I only deal in the present.

How could I know one way or another?

I don’t.

I’m honest about it.

The priests are liars and cons.

I only have my experience and perspective.

Everyone else is welcome to theirs.

And that’s just fine.

We are all doing the best we can.

I do not seek your or anyone’s attention.

I do not need you to moderate me.

I just do what I do.

Cy can ban me, that’s fine.

You can delete anything I say in your space, even better.

I do not think eschatology is anything other than imagination and delusions of a slave religion and distraction from the present and some thoughtful human beings stand with me.

Persons can have different opinions and perspectives.

Likely no fruitful conversation can be had with me.

This is before thought.

There isn’t anything to resolve.

This is happening.

You and I need have no more conversation.

I think we have both been clear about our experience and opinions, well, at least I have.

Any problem you have with me, is entirely yours.

At this point, you are just a silent interlocutor for me.

Whether I have been of help or not, is irrelevant to me.

There are no problems accept folks thinking there are problems.

No one can stop anyone else discussing anything.

They can simply ignore my thread.

Any impediment is only in the mind of the other.

I can’t impede anyone.

Actually, the feeling of anyone being impeded, is the way.

Straight on.

Have fun!

The end times are not here.

There is no katechon.

There is anger and pain and suffering and stupidity in great supply.

Nothing ends, they just keep changing.

No, portals aren’t going to help.

You can help.

I have made my own way through the mess and it ain’t Dan’s way or his friends’.

It can be done.

One can right their own ship.

This is on each of us.

This is not the end times, it is the age of taking responsibility.

This is happening in the people.

It doesn’t seem governments are losing their minds too badly.

What we could do without is all the propaganda and mind control bullshit.

Maybe a resurgence of a new religion could help.

The people need a vision or they will kill each other, no doubt.

I want a stable simulation myself.

The invisible hand will only continue to make things worse.

That Dan can’t see this is a tragedy, but he nor any muppet will deter us ultimately.

There is no messiah or savior.

You aren’t going to heaven or hell.

The time is now.

The place is here.

The way is through your own life.

Watched Man from Snowy River tonight with the wife.

She loved it.

She looks so much like the girl.

I loved this movie as a kid.

Lot of wisdom in it.

If life wasn’t a challenge, it would be no fun.

You have to treat life and your woman, like a strong spirited horse.

Man, is that true.

A woman is fire.

Man have I had a lot to learn about loving and being loved by such a force of nature.

Sometimes it’s like Zeus is chucking lightening bolts this way and that.

Other times, it’s like the most amazing sunset.

Really, without my wife, I’d be lost and life wouldn’t be nearly as hard or fun.

I found the gold.

I’m sorry, she’s all mine and no one will ever know my time with the Goddess but myself and her.