Better or worse?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I read Nietzsche’s last books in “Why I’m So Wise” along with Wittgenstein’s last work on color commentary. I’ll separate my reviews but it’s interesting how I noticed that they both showed a bold disposition regarding their extent of knowledge in their old age.

Nietzche reflected on his life like he hadn’t in any other of his writings, as did Witty.

It was personal for him. I wonder if he got frustrated for not having the amount of readers he wished for at the time. He was also lonely. Though he claims that this manifested his quality rather than quantity and that it was only right for a philosopher to be alone, he must’ve been curious of what it would’ve been like to still have his father around, or wife, or close friend.

So with the illnesses he battled and emotional distress he suffered, I also wonder whether it was the breeding ground for his brilliance; his escape of the common boundaries we’re captured by in health and happiness.

Speaking of which, Witty kept going on about these hypothetical colorblind tribes. What we would define as a disability, he would say was an evolutionary astoundment. His full message was something like there being an infinite number of ways matter may appear but we only explain a few and inaccurately at that because they simply cannot be explained.

Here are questions for you.

Is it better to be unhappy and changing, chaotic, growing, reaching for more, becoming, or satisfaction in idleness, an unawakening, peace, decline, death? Or is it beneficial to have a mixture of both? Not just beneficial, but necessary? But is it better to live like you’re dead so you’ll strive for life, what you can’t have, or live like you are, what you are, and what you won’t become?

Crazy, crazy.

2

A balance between two extremes has always been helpful for me.

3

I’d argue that we’re always engaged in a process of human becoming (to borrow a turn of phrase from Rodger Ames) and that to be authentically human we have to engage ourselves in that process.

Change is ultimately the only constant element to our lives, so those times of imagined stability are really just the breaks between changes: our being lies in change whereas stability is actually becoming.

Either being in the process or waiting to be re-engaged in the process are both, to some extent, necessary, but I’d argue that we spend far more time in the former than we often realize. I can’t view it as a “better/worse” situation since I take it simply to be an “is” situation. The dichotomy doesn’t work for me since I couldn’t be otherwise if I tried.

4

Another thing Witty wrote about was how when we see something from far away we consider it its normal size but at a distance instead of it being small, like it appears. Or how when white paper is under red glass it appears gray. We may call green a color but it’s really a description of a visualization. With all the ways things may appear and the few definitions we have for the average eye’s perception, why not have definitions for the not so average circumstances our eyes are put in? Like when the lights are out or colored or dimmed or brightened or angled, what then? Why are they not considered their own defined substance instead of the unknown mixture of light and unsaid other factor?

5

Or when I take my glasses off things appear blurry. Can this not be a desirable or correct way of seeing just because it’s not what it used to be or should be in comparison to the 20/20 eye?

I think they should make blurry glasses for the said “healthy” eye so that they can see like I do without their eye sight.

6

As I’m sure you’re aware, Foucault argued along similar lines.

I think the trick is that there is a two-pronged response to this sort of thing. This first is simply social consensus: things are the way they are because most people agree they are that way. The second is an argument from utility – it is more useful for people to see the world in a manner that accords with what we’ve defined as 20/20 as opposed to my 20/70 vision which sucks balls.

7

Ha, well what if I want to see the world like you do? What if I want to be deaf, blind, and dumb?

I’d be considered insane, that’s for sure. But what if I just want to experience?

…or, ironically, not experience.

8

Well, clearly you’d be considered sick, mad, and in needing of fixing!

Like anything else, I think the difference is between permanent and temporary adjustments that one makes to reality. I like drinking, and occasionally I like getting properly drunk. In terms of the dominant social paradigm, that’s all good. But if I started doing that sort of thing all the time, and showing up to work totally wasted, well, the efficiency angle starts to suffer. With that, most people would agree that I had a problem.

Not that either is necessarily “right”. Terrible things have been done in the name of efficiency and if everyone went along with the dominant social paradigm, there wouldn’t be any progress what-so-ever. It’s about balance between those factors as well as more ethereal ones that tend to fall under that ambiguous heading “quality of life”.

9

Extremities get things done, and fast; balance does too, only way too ass slow, and likely not in one life time. That’s why I prefer them, not that it makes a difference.

What’s the point of questions at all when each and every is none?

10

“Order of the Discourse” (don’t know if that’s the title in english, merely translating it from my language) is probably one of the best books I’ve ever red. Don’t know why Foucault isn’t one of the top philosophers on this forum.

11

I have always said, what is the point of understanding creation if one has no knowledge of destruction?

I believe we are saying the same thing.