Is it good sometimes to have enemies?
I cant understand how that would be.
In sports having a rival, Bird/Johnson, causes those players to elevate their games. Having a rival or an enemy causes you to challenge yourself.
Theres a difference between rival and enemy.
Without oposition and conflict life would be mundane, it’s good to have rivals and oposition but less so with enemies.
What’s the difference? A rival want something bad for you and likewise does an enemy.
You may say it’s in magnitude. You may say that an enemy wants to do serious harm to you because it’s a personal hate and that a rival just wants something you have and doesn’t intend to do you serious harm.
Still, the effect should be the same. The enemy or rival in either case will cause you to rise to your best ability and is that not a good thing?
I would think rivals would want something good for themselves, while enemies want something bad for you.
Have opponents and as well being in opposition can give us a sense of power, a since of being outside of something or a group of peoples view of what is Right or Wrong.
In Individualist terms having enemies is a necessity - the more the merrier! Particularly if you want to be viewed as an outside, or against the mainstream, or in opposition to society, prominent social trends (feminism, sexual liberalism, green politics.)
Being worthy of enemies - having wrothy enemies: is quite a Nietzschean idea. He was very much Against society, Liberal movments of any kind…he was, to all extent and purposes, Against humankind…an enemy of it…why?
To be in contradiction to everything
can often force a revaluation of
everything we take as Gospel.
No matter what you do someone will eventually make an enemy of you. Even if you act like Ghandi. The more experience you have with enemies, the more prepared you are to deal with them. In most real jobs there is alot of competition. Seeing the competition as the enemy is a good way to win. If you can get people in the workplace to act badly because they’re angry at you, then you come out as the reasonable one, this can be a good thing. I think it’s good to have enemies.
Maybe that speaks to Nietzsche’s psychology? He was not someone who enjoyed the company of others. The philosophy was an attempt to rationalize. I hate people because…