It implies, for me, that Nietzsche’s philosophy is also, and probably a manifestation of the same, hysteria of sexual deprivation. which is not at all far fetched, considering.
Editors; please move this if this is not a philosophical enough matter for this section of the site - mundane babble? But for me, this little clip opens up such a vista of contempt for facism that I can’t but share it, or at least try. WTF? And why was this man incarcerated?
Maybe he masturbated a lot. He did have poor eyesight. I’d even reckon that he was a little gay; I mean, common, ever read his stuff on Wagner?
It is all speculation without any definitive end to try to understand where someone’s philosophy or writing came from. Stick to the text itself. I’m starting to see the value in taking a person’s text, as the English deptartments are raving these days, as a body, in-itself. What is of value, and de-value, is in his work.
Nietzsche’s work is still of the value, regardless what caused it. Indeed, one can never be sure of that, the only thing to judge by is the work itself.
But as I have been thinking about the woirld and it’s powers along the lines of Nietzsche’s writings for about ten years now, it is highly interesting to me to see the big gap in his writing so harshly illuminated.
Jakob I was only being facetious. I’m not familiar with Reich, but you have suddenly aroused my curiousity, if you’ll pardon the pun. Would you recommend a work of his to start with?
Oh, and you are right; masturbation is no real comparison to the real shebang. (I’m two for two!) Now if only I could have come up with an adequate analogy: a leaky shower and a first class spa? English food compared to French? (Or any other food for that matter.) Mcdonald’s burgers to a five-star, medium cooked, soft, melt-in-your-mouth, steak? I’m sure Reich would have thought of something better. Hmm… maybe, it’s like watching the Travel channel! (Or would that fit better for pornography?) I just don’t know.
(Edit: I Stand Corrected!)
This morning, experience spat in the face of theory as I learned masturbation can exceed a sexual encounter. I experienced this morning, due to a completly open heart, something that can only be compared to the endolphin rush Ecstacy induces. Literally, I came to the point of tears.
I read some articles about Reich a half year ago when Dan recommended him to me. Yes, to the extent it is explained on the net, I do know what orgone is - it’s the organizing principle Reich proposed to compensate entropy - to explain the self organizaiton of cells, matter. But I did not know about his sexual explanation of Facism, which makes a lot of sense to me. Facism as cancer, hysteria of cells condemned to death, of energy being able to flow freely. I expect you can understand that I can easily fit Nietzsche into this picture.
The sexuality of the Germans. It must have been completely frustrated.
Not non stop, I don’t have that kind of encyclopedic knowledge of Nietzsche, and Im most likely ignorant of more than one thing in his writing - but I do have a good idea of what caused the tension in his work.
Your precious Einstein investigated Reich’s claims, and the results were negative, of course. You can read about it in the Wikipedia article on Reich.
One can see in what way communism’s in agreement with free sex: everyone can propagate with everyone, resulting in a brown mishmash - the last man. Though the film mentions nothing about the procreatory effects of sex, of course - only about the pleasure!
National Socialism, like Nietzsche, is very restrictive in matters of sex: for the sake of the offspring. Only the highest orders may indulge in free sex: I’m thinking of the Lebensborn project, in which the most elite soldiers of the SS could copulate freely with the highest exemplars of Aryan womanhood.
It betrays simplistic (or wishful?) thinking to interpret such restrictiveness as frustration, and liberalism in this domain as health. The greatest events in human history, as well as the greatest men, were the result of stressful circumstances, not of relaxation.
Fascism is quite the opposite of cancer: all individuals, all “cells” are organised into a healthy unity; it tries, first to cure, then to excise, the cancerous cells in its structure: those individuals who serve only their own needs. Thus Nietzsche writes:
“If there should exist men, who as it were through birth are placed outside the national- and State-instincts, who consequently have to esteem the State only in so far as they conceive that it coincides with their own interest, then such men will necessarily imagine as the ultimate political aim the most undisturbed collateral existence of great political communities possible, in which they might be permitted to pursue their own purposes without restriction. With this idea in their heads they will promote that policy which will offer the greatest security to these purposes; whereas it is unthinkable, that they, against their intentions, guided perhaps by an unconscious instinct, should sacrifice themselves for the State-tendency, unthinkable because they lack that very instinct. All other citizens of the State are in the dark about what Nature intends with her State-instinct within them, and they follow blindly; only those who stand outside this instinct know what they want from the State and what the State is to grant them. Therefore it is almost unavoidable that such men should gain great influence in the State because they are allowed to consider it as a means, whereas all the others under the sway of those unconscious purposes of the State are themselves only means for the fulfilment of the State-purpose. In order now to attain, through the medium of the State, the highest furtherance of their selfish aims, it is above all necessary that the State be wholly freed from those awfully incalculable war-convulsions, so that it may be used rationally; and thereby they strive with all their might for a condition of things in which war is an impossibility. For that purpose the thing to do is first to curtail and to enfeeble the political separatisms and factions and through the establishment of large equipoised State-bodies and the mutual safeguarding of them to make the successful result of an aggressive war and consequently war itself the greatest improbability; as on the other hand they will endeavour to wrest the question of war and peace from the decision of individual lords, in order to be able rather to appeal to the egoism of the masses or their representatives; for which purpose they again need slowly to dissolve the monarchic instincts of the nations. This purpose they attain best through the most general promulgation of the liberal optimistic view of the world, which has its roots in the doctrines of French Rationalism and the French Revolution, ie., in a wholly un-Germanic, genuinely Romanically shallow and unmetaphysical philosophy. I cannot help seeing in the prevailing international movements of the present day, and the simultaneous promulgation of universal suffrage, the effects of the fear of war above everything else, yea I behold behind these movements those truly international homeless money-hermits, as the really alarmed who, with their natural lack of the State-instinct, have learnt to abuse politics as a means of the Exchange, and State and Society as an apparatus for their own enrichment.”
[The Greek State.]
It is evident who Nietzsche means here. Around the same time, he wrote:
“I am more courageous than ever: for everything has not yet perished under French-Jewish shallowness [Verflachung] and “elegance” and under the edacious goings of the “present time”.”
[Letter to Gersdorff, June 21, 1871.]
It is these “cells”, these truly international homeless money-hermits, of course, that the Third Reich excised from itself as cancerous.
Einstein helped test oen of Reich’s aparatuses. He did not ‘investigate his claims’.
The beneficient effects of sex on the health of the body are numerous and well documented. You might not be interested in them, but most people are.
From what I read , the bordello’s in Norway they had to fulfill this urge seem to have been temples of horror and suffering - much like anything the nazi’s created.
The great events you speak of are relaxation after accumulation of stress. Nation Socialism had no effective way of relaxing the stress except it’s self desctruction.
You have aparently never heard or read any account of someone who lived in Nazi Germany. The dominating feeling among the masses were paranoia and acceptance of doom, on rare occasions shifting to short bouts of hysteria.
Yes, guard us from anything unmetaphysical and optimistic.
And then it went on prospering ever after… right? Oh no - it rotted away from the inside.
“In his attempt to replicate Reich’s findings, Einstein observed a rise in temperature, which according to Reich was the result of a novel form of energy—orgone energy—that had accumulated inside the Faraday cage. However, one of Einstein’s assistants pointed out that the temperature was lower at the floor than that on the ceiling. Following that remark, Einstein modified the experiment and, as a result, convinced himself that the effect was simply due to the temperature gradient inside the room. He then wrote back to Reich, describing his experiments and expressing the hope that Reich would develop a more skeptical approach.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Re … h_Einstein
Oh, I do not deny that; and I am interested in them. But National Socialism is not against any of the effects of sex; just against free sex for consenting adults (cf. The World’s Smallest Political Quiz, third issue).
Those were soldiers away from home. Stuff like that still happens today - with soldiers of the “Allied” Forces!
Nothing is a quicker route to fascism than the descent into orgiastic practise of sexual “liberation.” The antidote to the fascistic impulse is to use your mind, not your crotch, something that clip studiously avoided. If dionysian sexual excess brought liberty the US would be a fulgent temple unto the nations instead of the imperial wreck of lunatics and fools it now is.
Here’s some real psychiatry an alternative to Freudian-era debasement:
Jakob does have a point though. The sexual enery is among the strongest forces of the human body. Every self respecting fascist regime would love to tame that force and use it. In 1984 George Orwell explains how the State is trying to do exactly this. He even argues that using the crotch is the right way to fight it. The last and strongest way of having the feeling of being a human.
The Nazi theory that only the “aryans” should reproduce may be simple propaganda to prevent the masses from indulging in sex in order to redirect that energy to the war effort.
Feeling being a rutting boar, you mean. Control of sex is animalistic control; dragging the human down from the level of the human to the animal level. Those who “fight” on such a level have already lost, they are ahistorical and easily manipulated. The world doesn’t need such “fighters” but the Iraq effort might.
The human mind may be the most distinctive feature of humans, but certainly not the only one. Sex is an important part of life and a powerful tool (apart from its function of reproduction obviously). If there is a frustration in a humans “natural” sexual behaviour it will have consequences for other aspects of the human.
About the example from Orwell you are right. The person is already lost , ahistorical and easily manipulated. Its just the only thing he can do to at least feel something. I also agree that the world we are living in needs alot more then people who are “fighting” by having sex. What I said was in the context of the fictive world of Orwell’s 1984, not very unlike the ideals of National Socialism that were discussed earlier in this thread.
Now if only I could have come up with an adequate analogy: a leaky shower and a first class spa? English food compared to French? (Or any other food for that matter.) Mcdonald’s burgers to a five-star, medium cooked, soft, melt-in-your-mouth, steak? I’m sure Reich would have thought of something better. Hmm… maybe, it’s like watching the Travel channel! (Or would that fit better for pornography?) I just don’t know.