What aren't you doing?

I’m okay with you not trusting me either. I still think you’re 90% full of shit.

Magnus, I don’t see how femininity is life denying.

I gave up some of the whole masculinity/femininity dichotomy myself, a bit tiring on the brain because there are so many glaring inconsistencies with it. Still, there are some things about it which are true, such as femininity being more loving and sensitive.

I don’t see life process, in itself, having a fundamental dualism. How does dualism even fit in life? Let’s look at life through a bigger picture. Life on earth has existed for 3.4 billion years, and big part of it has been asexual. Sexual reproduction (I’m assuming this is the early basis of male/female dichotomy) has evolved as a competitive survival strategy (one of many). So now we have dualism (male/female), but for how long we still don’t know. Mammalian life, despite being more differentiated and complex, composes only a small part of history of life process on Earth. It’s possible that life might be reduced back to cloning strategy in the future since many strategies, if looking at geologic time scale, have ended in evolutionary dead ends. So, in a larger perspective, making a cosmological model based on some ying/yang dichotomy is a very anthropomorphic view of life as a whole. The only unique quality of life that is fundamental, in my view, is a quality of negative entropy.

I take a different view to all this. I see the human brain, and the whole body, as an ongoing chemical ‘experiment’ of sorts, always changing, because conditions are always changing and change is the basic constant. I think chemicals, drugs of all kinds, medicines, vitamins, minerals, cocktails of all sorts of molecules that we experiment with in cooking, are all natural elements to the human process.

LSD has proven to yield incredible scientific results, whereas alcohol is almost completely meritless…alcohol numbs the brain, LSD makes it incredibly sensitive. I simply absolutely disagree with our societies approach to these drugs. Ive done acid twice, it was, if anything, very sobering. Alcohol is the really problematic drug, no doubt.

This response is also addressed at Turd.
(You can not deny, Turd, that all sorts of drugs have been used by all sorts of scientists, philosophers, poets and politicians that have made the world a richer place)

Also making a person more impressionable, vulnerable, and defenseless. The defenses and filters that a human body/mind has in it, have evolved for a reason.

Liberalism also makes people more sensitive and makes them lower their natural defenses. And look where it’s gotten Europe?

Because it’s form-diluting. Form is life. Whatever strengthens form is life-affirming, whatever weakens it is life-denying.

When I speak of man/woman what I mean is concentration/decentration or quite simply seriousness/frivolty. You cannot disagree that women are by and large frivolous creatures.

There is no need for cosmology.

The question is which one of the two dualisms that we are aware of is more fundamental.

The two dualisms are man/woman (= power/weakness = concentration/decentration) and harmony/disharmony (= pleasure/pain = good/evil.)

If man/woman is more fundamental, this would mean that people who believe that harmony/disharmony is more fundamental are feminized (i.e. they are no longer concentrating properly.)

If harmony/disharmony is more fundamental, this would mean that people who believe that man/woman is more fundamental are imbalanced (i.e. they are either too much of a man or too much of a woman.)

If you are a Nietzschean and you ascribe to the egoist theory of how the body operates via reflexes, without necessary aid of the mind, then you are not a Nietzschean. You are most likely someone like Laughing Man/Joker/HaHaHa.

To surrender to your drives is to decentrate. When you surrender to your drives, you lose form. Your drives lose form. They become deformed. Think of Batman’s Joker and how deformed he is.

There must be a resistance to your drives in order to keep them in shape, and this resistance, how is it administrated? It is administrated through will.

Will is the force of concentration.

It is religious people, such as Christians and Buddhists, who surrender to drives, not Nietzsche. Nietzsche spoke against such a surrender. Indeed, his entire philosophy is directed against these reactive people.

The difference with Eastern thinkers is that their decentration – their reactivity – is feminine, which means, it is soft and silent, rather than hard and loud. (Though in certain cases, such as that of Osho, it is not exactly silent, since these people still take part in worldly affairs.)

Indeed, Nietzsche also spoke against those who spoke against drives, such as for example Christians, but only because they promoted repression, not control.

Repression is decentered concentration. It is not proper concentration. It occurs when one tries hard to concentrate in another direction in order to avoid facing unpleasant stimulus.

Nietzsche did not preach “return to our animal nature”. Rather, he preached mastery of our nature, which really amounts to nothing other than to concentration of our energies.

It is useful to think of a man as composed of multiple flows of energy. Man’s entire body should be thought of as nothing but a multiplicity of energy flows. This is what defines his being.

What we call drives refers to a subset of these energy flows. Namely, it refers to psychological flows.

Breathing, heartbeat, digestion, blood circulation and all other biological and psychological processess can each be identified by the common denominator that is energy flow. (This is also consistent with the notion that the universe is nothing but motion.)

These energy flows are our biological inheritance. They are given to us, and thus, they are separate from our will.

The process of growing up is the process of becoming aware of these energy flows. These energy flows are introduced in a disorganized manner, and thus, the process of growing up must also a process of learning how to master these flows.

This period of immaturity is characterized, or should be characterized, by preponderance of will (nurture) over instinct (nature.)

Children must restrain themselves a lot in order to master their randomly occuring energy flows.

Will is sort of like a commander who is mobilizing instincts that are his army.

Then at some point comes the peak of maturity when all of one’s energy flows are properly mobilized thus reducing the need for will (i.e. restraint) and increasing the efficiency of instinctive action. (There is still the involvement of the will, it’s just that one becomes less dependent on it.)

This is what the phrase “power over oneself” means: to concentrate one’s motion, not to decentrate it.

Mystics are masters at substituting one form of decentration (masculine hard-and-loud form of decentration) with another form of decentration (feminine soft-and-silent form of decentration.)

Finally, one becomes old, and the period of decline of willpower kicks in, leading to complete surrender to instincts.

It’s useful to learn to make a difference between centrifugal will (which is instinct-driven will) and centripetal will (which is will-driven instinct.) The former is egoistic, the latter is not.

Nietzsche was not an egoist.

Christians are. Buddhists are. Mystics are. Women are.

But not Nietzsche.

I think we already had this conversation before but I will note (again?) that will-driven instinct sounds like a dangerous way to go. I am referring to indoctrination to the point where the behavior becomes unconscious (automatic behavior). It may include people like suicide-bombers, kamikazes, war-mongering patriots, and other ideologically indoctrinated groups (useful idiots, in other words). This will thing is often manipulated. Who guides the will? And how? My point was that once it becomes automatic, you cannot (at least easily) control it. Just have a conversation with a devout Christian believer and you’ll see it for yourself.

Manipulation targets instinct, not will.

The more you are hungry and thus in need of food, the easier for others to manipulate you.

They can set up a trap, and you will fall for it, because you cannot help yourself, you cannot control yourself.

Will is not that which eliminates instinct, it is that which preserves its form.

Will is the force of concentration. What does it concentrate? It concentrates instincts. More generally, it concentrates motion within our body.

Will does not overcome instincts. It overcomes their deformed expression, but not instincts themselves. It actually preserves them.

Instincts require adequate circumstances in order so that they can be expressed without losing their form. What do you do when such circumstances are lacking? You restrain yourself. This is because everything else would make them deformed.

Well, manipulation can target both. Will is still dependent on choices and choices can be manipulated. Modern day politics, and advertising in general, is a good example.

Not a fair comparison I think. Drugs are often used in war, and cocaine is heavily used by many businesspeople, increasingly so weed - and Joost may know what politicians are on.

Acid isnt like mushrooms. These will make you vulnerable. LSD is far cleaner, largely cognitive in effect.

Still, I wont deny that a broader consciousness possibly makes one less effective in this world. That is not wholly an argument against it.

Indoctrination can only work if ego can be bypassed. What makes it easy to bypass the ego? Inability to concentrate, or lack of will. Need too.

Will is by definition that which resists manipulation of any kind, unless we speak of centrifugal will, which isn’t proper will.

I was referring to hallucinogenic drugs, mainly, which directly alter a person’s perception of reality. I was not talking about nervous system stimulants, many of which put the nervous system in overdrive - although, generally, I am against these also. Thinking faster doesn’t always mean thinking better. A stupid person thinking faster, will only think stupid thoughts - only faster.
As far as effectiveness in the real world is concerned, the main danger in a person using hallucinogens, in my view, is that a person may come to give more validity to the hallucinatory world over the real one, eventually pushing him into a complete psychosis. When you tinker with your own brain with perception altering drugs, hallucinatory-real is still real to the person, and that’s what makes it dangerous.

Yes, that’s why most indoctrination happens in childhood, and most of the manipulated mobs are made up of young people - trying to be somebody, and prove something.

It does have a lasting impact on how the world is perceived.
One generally becomes more altruistic and patient with other types of creatures.
In some cases hallucinatory patterns emerge, and sometimes it goes really wrong. But not as regularly as with alcohol.
Still, I am in favor of drugs in general. I dont think humankind is worth much if it doesn investigate itself very rigorously from within.

To this end some of us must stay sober too. I will grant that but not more. I would rather that psychomauts are in principle lauded and somewhat protected by common ethics. In many cities this is increasingly the case. Such humans are hopefully taking over the role of the priests of the vanished god. LSD makes it very clear that there is no creator god, because it becomes evident that all that exists stands in perfect logical relation to all other things. It would simply not make sense if things werent permanently as they are.

Common Earthy knowledge predicates a much more somber view; in my view this is the real cause of drug users psychoses.

He who wills power must take a negative stance towards any kind of drugs, including alcohol, caffeine and nicotine, but also natural drugs such as meditation, sex, food, leisure activities and so on.

There is absolutely no room for them.

You are not investigating your true self when taking drugs. Rather, you are investigating your false self.

When you take a drug, your true self is dissolved and then randomly rearranged to create a false self. This gives pleasure but at the cost of power.

No one gives a shit about Nietzsche. You’re supposed to grow out of that by the time you’re in your 20s. Jesus man.

What is the real self and false self?

And food and sex is part of our real selves, it is part of Nature and the Natural way.
Personally, I think meditation is for silly and delusional hippies though.