Cruelty. And I don’t even mean the cruelty of robbing people of what matters to them. Getting the point across, even if it does not educate them, suffices. Indeed, only feeling or even dreaming that the point gets across suffices!
“[E]ven when he who strives after distinction makes and wants to make a joyful, elevating or cheering impression, he nonetheless enjoys this success not inasmuch as he has given joy to the next man or elevated or cheered him, but inasmuch as he has impressed himself on the soul of the other, changed its shape and ruled over it at his own sweet will. The striving for distinction is the striving to overpower the next man, though it be a very indirect overpowering and only felt or even dreamed. There is a long scale of degrees of this secretly desired overpowering, and a complete catalogue of them would be almost the same thing as a history of culture[.]” (Nietzsche, Dawn of Day, aphorism 113.)
No one will lose any sleep over knowing that you think nothing matters. But if it makes you feel/dream good, thats great.
Of course this means that things do matter to you. But that was already obvious.
There is humor in a man calling out to others: ‘nothing matters!’
The fact that he feels the need to call it out is so obviously contradicting his message, and the fact that no one cares, that it matters to no one that he thinks nothing matters, makes it doubly ironic/comical. I wonder if you can see that.
It’s not so much absolute perspectivality which makes reality nothing. Rather, it’s absolute transience. Perspectives come and go. And likewise, it’s not so much fancying a meal which makes (human) animals bigoted. Fancies—fantasies!—likewise come and go. Rather, it’s when it’s more than a fancy: when it’s a faith that it’s better “to be” than “not to be” (or vice versa, as in the case of the efilist).
I’ve already explained to you why things “matter” to me:
Eros and the striving for distinction are the two things I’ve found which most bring about a state of fullness and lust for life in me. This is not to say that they are rational, of course; just that they are very deeply ingrained in me. The alternative would have to be some kind of death drive. What “matters” is that it’s something to make me either want to maintain myself or to end myself!
If you hadn’t noticed, striving for distinction is striving to be valued, eros is valuing.
WtP comes close but isn’t as accurate. Power is really a means to being valued and attaining values.
Self-lightening by contrast doesn’t correspond to reality (from quark to stars and life, self-heavying), and doesn’t work as an interpretative logic (which I consider to be the most accomplished, most powerful kind of philosophy).
And really, your philosophy of nothing matters isn’t absolved by the fact that you are basically forced by nature to care, that being necessarily matters to you. On the contrary. It shows that ‘mattering’ is necessary to being. Yes, whatever doesn’t exist/matter/care doesn’t exist/matter/care.
It depends on what you mean. What I meant by eros was the sexual drive and its sublimation, romantic love. And yes, that too is much deeper than my person (just as the sexual drive is much deeper than romantic love). Yet it’s still very much transient. Now if you meant eros as a metaphor for a universal force, like in Plato’s Symposium, then yes, not only is that much deeper still, but it may even be intransient (as the universe or the whole is intransient—as a whole). What does that matter to my person, though?
I mean it (valuing) as the nature of nature. And I see that as deeper, more fundamental than the universe, I see it as its foundation. That of which every possible universe must arise. (I don’t know that the current universe is eternal, for all I know it is the breath of Brahma and will be absorbed in him - I cant know such things)
To my person it means a great deal, as my nature is not separate from my person.
Nope! Already wrong on the first thing you say (and “noticed” is a weasel word there). In the first place, the word “valued” is misleading, as it suggests a considerable positive judgment; but as I told your friend the beginner recently, ‘It doesn’t have to be a big positive distinction, it may very well be a being-disvalued.’ And in the second place, and more importantly, the whole point is that being (dis)valued is not the purpose of the striving after distinction: it’s a form of cruelty, after all… The purpose is the feeling or even just the dream of “ruling” (walten, “holding sway”) at one’s own sweet will… It’s about the feeling of power, the feeling of freedom, the (feeling of) will…
No. Eros as “the nature of nature is universal process, a becoming that is an internal drive to fulfill itself whose product is an internal drive to fulfill itself.” (Lampert, How Socrates Became Socrates.) As such, it’s the same as the self-lightening will to power:
“[F]orce is the drive to discharge itself within a field of forces enacting the same necessity. […W]ill to power has no aim but discharge of the total quanta of its force at every moment; such discharge is always an event within a relatively unstable field of such impulses to discharge, the relation among them being simply that of greater or lesser; all beings are ultimately more or less stable collections of such impulses and themselves express the fundamental quality of impulse, will to power.” (Lampert, Becoming Nietzsche.)’
If you hadn’t noticed it, it’s precisely the other way round:
“Values and their changes are related to increases in the power of those positing the values.
The measure of unbelief, of permitted ‘freedom of the spirit’ as an expression of an increase in power.
‘Nihilism’ an ideal of the highest degree of powerfulness of spirit, the over-richest life—partly destructive, partly ironic.” (Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 14 whole.)
Of course self-lightenings may become heavier temporarily and locally; I’ve pointed that out from the beginning. This is because self-lightenings may well lighten themselves on each other… And as for interpretive logic, why exactly were you absent from ILP for three weeks straight immediately following these posts?:
…
No, you’re still not getting it. It’s not being that necessarily matters to me; it might as well be non-being. It’s just that being and non-being are completely equal to me (note: I’m saying ‘equal’ here, not ‘the same’; that’s another discussion)… So yes, caring is necessary to being, and I happen to be. (By the way, that thing about a death drive was an afterthought. It would have to be something that really brought about a lust for death in me, so to say. But such a thing would probably not have survival value, but at most be a fitness indicator for sexual selection. And in any case, I’ve already been nonexistent for an eternity, and will soon be nonexistent for the other eternity, anyway, so why race towards death?)
I like and respect the livelihood of animals as well, but even still their consciousness doesn’t come close to that of a human being.
I am however certainly very fond of animals as well having pets of my own. I believe we should respect nature and all of its many variety of lifeforms.
So considering we are not the highest level of personhood, but/and come from the highest level of personhood, how should we treat lower levels of personhood, since the highest level of personhood allows us to at least exist?
Maybe the death drive is actually a drive to transform into something greater and kill something lesser in ourselves? Maybe you could interpret the cocoon, or shedding of skin, or maturation, or hibernation, or sleep, as a kind of coffin to a lower self that makes the greater self possible? But the coffin of rebirth while biologically alive is… choosing other (no, greater) than … well, a lack of recognition of the image of original personhood in every other, including self.
And if someone has not yet gone through that transformation, how should we relate with them to help them along the way?
Obviously valuing is both negative and positive. Did you not get that from vo, that it is about selecting? For an entity to survive it must value the vast majority of things negatively.
You want to have distinction. You want to matter. But your philosophy is that nothing matters. Dreaming of your sweet will is what your life is all about. But your philosophy says there is no will.
Seems legit.
Your philosophy self lightening is contradicted by the evolution of the universe. From the Big Bang till now things got heavier. But ‘that is just temporary’.
Eventually the universe will start behaving in the opposite way and prove your point.
We’ll just have to believe you, I suppose.
I can see you wanted to move back from VO, as appropriating, selecting, to the directer idea of discharge. Thats valid. But you should’ve just gone back to the WtP, like Pezer. Your own theory just doesn’t have any bearing on this world. It lacks what makes the world a world. E.g. lightning is discharge toward an electrical value (i.e. a valuing). Nuclear fusion discharges energy because selfvaluing integrities get broken. Sexual discharge happens toward an arousing (valued) object. Etc etc.
I don’t respond to that stuff about ‘roundness’ because I can’t stand the Platonism.
It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say “this is good, this is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process.
I agree with Osho.. my personal preference of ‘being’.
Yes, that is most pleasant, though this means that silently witnessing is (feels) good, judging is bad. So there is still a value distinction, a form of judgment.
Or not at all… But you only got the word ‘positive’, not the words ‘big’ and ‘considerable’ that I used. “To disvalue” doesn’t just mean to value negatively, it can also mean to value little—almost nothing, even (presque rien)…
Also, my point was that your word “valuing” is badly chosen. After all, first and foremost it means “to consider or rate highly: prize, esteem”; and only secondarily “to rate or scale in usefulness, importance, or general worth: evaluate”. So “VO” should rather be EO.
Yes, my philosophy is that there is no will—i.e., no free will—or, in other words, that the will is an illusion. And yes, I do need that illusion: every being, i.e. every sentient being, does. And I’ve found that the will to truth can be preserved in the teeth of that truth as the cruel will to distinction.
No, that’s just nonsense. The backward limit called “the Big Bang” or “the initial singularity” was the heaviest “thing” ever, because it was the entire universe…
Self-lightening or self-discharging is the will to power—the will to power rightly understood. To be sure, though:
Sure, it lacks Nietzsche’s exotericism of strong effects—Nietzscheanism for the “noble” (e.g., the word “will”, and “power”)…
“The passion of Hatred is thus really directed against oneself; it is the expression of the pain and shame of separateness; and it only appears to be directed against the opposite by psychological transference. This thesis the School of Freud has made sufficiently clear.” (Crowley, Little Essays toward Truth.)
You’re just repressing the pain and shame of your own Platonism or common sense.
“Strauss is at pains to point out that the moralists did not themselves originate the morality stemming from fearfulness, for that is the morality of ‘the large majority of men.’ […] The moralists simply endorsed and grounded the already present prejudice of the majority”. (Lampert, Leo Strauss and Nietzsche, page 72.)
So much for abstraction, indeed… What is it you concretely fear?
Great job ignoring my main point, about discharge.
Which clearly proves that spasm is not the nature of nature.
I don’t believe in singularity, it certainly hasn’t been proven - certainly its break-up would be illogical - I think the Big Bang was likely just two colliding black holes.
You don’t seem to understand that ‘power’ in ‘will to power’ refers to structural integrity, and increase. You think it is just there for kicks. But it is necessary for the ontology to have any bearing on existence.
All I dread about your thinking, always have, is how conceited it is in its smallness, and self-deceit.
No, you don’t seem to want to understand that the will-to-power is not a will to power:
“[According to Nietzsche,] power is not primarily something an organism wants or needs but something an organism is or has and must exercise. Will to power, then, is not a teleological principle but a dynamic force, like a stretched spring or a dammed river. The “willing” of will to power, Nietzsche writes, “is not ‘desiring,’ striving, demanding”; rather, it is “[t]hat state of tension by virtue of which a force seeks to discharge itself” (WP 668).” (Cox, Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation, page 230.)
Now to be sure, in WP 668 it says: “That state of tension by virtue of which a force seeks to discharge itself—is not [an example of] ‘willing’.” But note the quotation marks: Nietzsche is arguing that “[t]here is no such thing as ‘willing’, but only a willing something: one must not remove the aim [Ziel, “goal”] from the total condition—as epistemologists do. ‘Willing’ as they understand it is as little a reality as ‘thinking’: it is a pure fiction.” (ibid.)
This comparison to thinking is helpful. It can help us understand that the goal Nietzsche mentions is not your “value”: it is not the goal which arouses the willing, but the “goal” is implicit in the willing—to power—, just as the thought is implicit in the thinking: it’s not that there’s a “thought” which arouses the “thinking”, but thinking is nothing else than thinking thoughts, just as willing is nothing else than willing a “goal”, willing-to-power, a force trying and discharging itself…
"Goal setting itself is a pleasure—in means and ends thinking, a mass of force of the intellect expends itself!
“Willing[:] a pressing feeling[,] very agreeable! It is the accompaniment of every effusion of force.
[L]ikewise, all wishing in itself already (wholly regardless of attaining)[.]”
(Nietzsche, workbook Spring-Summer 1883 7 [225-26] whole, my translation. Cf. Is the Will to Power also a Feeling (like the "feeling of free will")? - #2 by Zeroeth_Nature)
