Nietzsche II

Nietzsche II

I think that Friedrich Nietzsche is the most beautiful person there ever lived. He was incredible! I love Nietzsche. He was very peculiar, so out the box, so passionate. There’s so much meaning in a Nietzsche sentence; he was so skilled at painting a picture with words. You could feel the passion in the words – he used exclamation marks like they were full stops. And with every sentence you feel your spirit getting uplifted, you feel yourself becoming a better person. He is such a gift to humankind. “What doesn’t kill you, will only make you stronger” oh my goodness! That is so Nietzsche. He believed to really exist is to manifest your talents and virtues – “Becoming the person you really are.” It’s so amazing that he had all these thoughts considering that he lived in isolation most of his life. He was cheerful and upbeat for a person who suffered so much. He lived alone and was beastly sick throughout his adult life. He was rejected by the woman he loved after he proposed after an equivalence of 2 dates. He was an observer of human nature and a big reader. In fact doctors warned Nietzsche that his excessive reading and writing would make him blind. One of the philosophers he loved reading was Arthur Schopenhauer – a German philosopher who was so dull. Schopenhauer’s philosophy in my opinion has no end goal, no practical usage or element that can transform your life. It’s basically “Life is suffering” or “Why bother doing anything at all”. Here is a passage from the philosophy of Schopenhauer: “But you could just as well call this mode of life the greatest folly: for that which in a moment ceases to exist, which vanishes as completely as a dream cannot be worth any serious effort.” Not that his philosophy isn’t useful, I read and enjoy his work so did Nietzsche. I am just surprised that it didn’t depress Nietzsche like it depresses me. He had the most remarkable spirit. He recycled Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy and made it better, made it practical.

He also read Socrates and Plato. He didn’t agree with their ideas at all. In his very own writings he would viciously attack and disregard their theories. In his philosophical works Plato once stated: “The purpose of this earthly existence is to liberate one’s soul from the confines of the body and have it return to the reality of forms.” You see Nietzsche didn’t believe in “True World Destinations”. A true world destination is to enter a state of eternal bliss, a heaven, paradise or utopia. Hence true world philosophies give meaning to life by representing it as a journey, a journey towards redemption, towards an arrival that will more than make up for the stress and discomfort of the travelling. Socrates believed that the world was metaphysical and that it was more than this world of senses. Nietzsche believed that this notion devalued the world that we live in – that it was an excuse, an order to retain no goal, no reason, no task for our earthy reality – an attempt to try and escape the suffering that’s imminent in the world.

Because life is suffering. That’s the irrefutable truth. It’s clear. It’s basically what God tells Adam and Eve, immediately after he kicks them out of paradise. “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:16-19. KJV)”

All the religions and philosophies of the world are in unison when it comes to this. Hence the inventions of “True World Destinations” to nullify nihilism. However, Nietzsche doesn’t believe in true world destinations – he believes in holding your destiny in your own hands by molding it and creating it to what you desire it to be. In a scathing attack to Plato on one of his books he said “Plato is a coward before reality, consequently he flees into the ideal.” Nietzsche believes the metaphysical world or true world destinations is a world fabricated solely from psychological needs. He believes to imagine another, more valuable world is an expression of hatred for the world that makes one suffer. Nietzsche believes in the idea of self-actualization –the concept of becoming who you are and that requires truth and self-inspection. For one to remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak to you of other worldly hopes. Interestingly, Nietzsche doesn’t completely refute the existence of the metaphysical world – his on the fence on this one. He simply states that we should make the best out of the apparent world. A fair and justified point because no one has ever returned from heaven to tell the tale.

Nietzsche also loved art! He appreciated it. On one of his books “The birth of tragedy” he stated “The truly serious task of art is to save the eye from gazing into the horrors of the night and deliver the subject by the healing balm of illusion from the spasms of the agitations of the will.” My goodness! Another quote “For there to be art, for there to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological precondition is indispensable; Rausch! Rausch must first have enhanced the excitability of the whole machine: else there is no art! Rausch is a German world that means Intoxication and it basically means two things. Namely Rausch is the feeling of increased strength and fullness and the great stimulus to life! My goodness Nietzsche, you kill me every time. His words were so animated and full with life and passion!

Since Nietzsche believed in the concept of self-actualization and becoming the person you are meant to be. He had this beautiful phrase namely “Amor Fathi” which translates to “The love of fate” which means to accept the past with enthusiasm! To embrace the past, for it contained the building blocks that helped to create the person today – to move forward with a courageous spirit and great zeal. Nietzsche believed in individualism – for it is individuals who act! In one of his books he stated: Nobody can build the bridge for you to walk across the river of life, no one but you yourself alone. There are, to be sure, countless paths and bridges and demi-gods which would carry you across this river: but only at the cost of yourself; you would pawn yourself and lose. There is in the world only one way, on which nobody can go, except you: Where does it lead?” Nietzsche was provocative, he forced you to think and make decisions that benefited you as an individual. His philosophy taught you how to live as an individual in the world.

Nietzsche beautiful Friedrich Nietzsche predicted the Western world in the 21st Century. He predicted the death of God and the end of Christianity on his classic work “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”. “The end of Christianity – at the hands of its own morality which turns against the Christian God. The sense of truthfulness and mendaciousness of all Christian interpretations of the world and of history; rebounded from “God is truth” to the fanatical faith “All is false””. Oh Nietzsche you killing me! The start of widespread nihilism and trend of false prophets. He also talked about the herd in the 21st century where everybody wants the same thing, everyone is the same: whoever thinks otherwise goes voluntarily into the madhouse. And he gets around to “The Last Man” – “The condition of a people which has lost faith in its ancient history and has fallen into a restless and constant search for novelty after novelty”. Oh my goodness! Shocking! He perceived our world exactly. He hit the nail on top of the head. I mean the rife and outrageous consumerism, the inability of people to control their impulses and resort to instant gratification – the freely available pornography on the internet, Apps that enable us to get sex on the go, internet shopping, junk food on the go and a people who just want to be entertained all the time be it by Television, Social Media or Partying and excessive alcohol consumption because they want to be distracted.

Nietzsche described the last man as someone with no goals and no direction. An individual who is uncultured and has no sense of identity. A couch potato who has everything at a touch of a button. A person who is drowned out by the herd’s ideals and opinions. A useless person who’s life revolves around being entertained, excessive consumerism and watching online porn. A person who is merely born without roots. He states “The sense of well-being of a tree for its roots, the happiness to know oneself in a manner not entirely arbitrary and accidental, but someone who has grown out of a past as an heir, flower and fruit.” It’s incredible to read considering we are already there. So many people are passive in their activities that they don’t realize the destructive consequences they have. Internet companies like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are all vying for our attention. Our attention spans decreased from 15 seconds to a lousy 6 seconds in a period of 10 years. This is due to the fact that there’s too much information that we are trying to break down. Every time we are on the internet, data is extracted from us. Algorithms know us better than we know ourselves. We spend an average of 4 hours on the internet every day bombarded by people’s thoughts and opinions that we lose sense of who we are. We lose our voice like we are in a stadium with the final of the world at play. Everything is readily available on the internet. Seduction has become a dead art. Nihilism is at a highest as religious institutions are losing their grip as a number of charismatics are forming their own cults and religious entities. The age of AI (Artificial Intelligence) is gaining momentum relieving humans of their daily tasks – the effect is felt worldwide. The last man epidemic is becoming rife by the minute. In his works Nietzsche stated: “When an individual no longer feels like they are the collaborator, let alone the center of becoming nihilism becomes a very real possibility.” With the emergence of AI humanity is in trouble in more ways than one.

Luckily Friedrich Nietzsche has a solution for this by becoming the “Übermensch” which translates to Superman or overman. “I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All gods are dead: now we want the Superman to live.” Übermensch or Superman is an ideal to aspire for – it is the hero in your soul that you have to keep holly. It is the will to want to do something, to be something! It requires direct self-observation and honest self-appraisal, it requires history for the past flows on within us in a hundred waves. It needs bravery. It requires being individualistic in your actions. Located in every single person is a seed of unrealized potential. It requires greatness. The concept of greatness entails being noble, wanting to be by oneself, being different, standing alone and having to live independently. It can be shown that every living thing does everything it can not to preserve itself but to become more! Being the “Übermensch” entails being MORE! Protect your mind! Improve your mind! Write down your goals and get busy with them – live, be content with who you are, strive, flourish! Our most primal inclinations are to be Gods – be God! Human existence is a curiosity – explore! Nietzsche stated in his book: “For the heights that one scales when one is able to look into the dreadful abysses of life, to experiment with the most painful thoughts and the most extreme form of nihilism and still be able to emerge from such depths and affirm life – saying YES to it in its totality is arguably the highest state a human being can attain!