Perhaps I may go so far as to suggest that there are times for such moral aphorisms, even if they are by the hand of the master.
One understands to which two births I refer - and that I exaggerate when I say that “we” can boast such births, as persons. What is born like this is our thinking, at least this is the aim. To affirm the splitting headache is to press from it the fruit of the mind; the future.
Does our society arrests ours ambitions?
I think that it prescribes a specific type of ambition. Ambition appeals to what is considered “high” - in our society; I would say that luxury and security are held as the highest goods.
It is only natural then that as these two values begin to escape us, we begin to refer to our situation as “a crisis”.
A truth? What truth is this? The only truth I see is that you have a much over-inflated sense of self-worth.
It sounds like he desires a justifiable over-inflated sense of self-worth, but does not yet have one.
He has not yet achieved his ambitions because he still has them. He holds no illusions that they are actually finally attainable: there is no “end-goal”, as he said.
To have an over-inflated sense of self-worth would be to think they were easily attainable, despite their “superhuman” degree and scope.
As you said, he is just being human.
It’s also human to try and bring unrealistically ambitious people down when one’s own ambitions are modest enough to (at least formerly) fit immediate reality - such as publishing one’s first novel by the time one is 21. There is nothing wrong with such an ambition - I do not wish to bring you down for it, but I’m sure you recognise it as relatively petty and mundane compared to some of the other human feats that have been achieved so far in history. Nevermind compared to those that exceed all that history has so far achieved.
But why must you do this - bring him down?
I see a similar human poverty in each attitude.
In FC’s case, to have such ambition requires one to have or develop an acute sense for discontentment such that there is something huge enough to solve. The never-ending nature of unrealistic ambitions also requires that such an acute sense for discontentment must never end - ensuring a forever discontented life. Resentment is unavoidable to one with such unfettered compulsion to achieve like FC declares he desires to achieve.
In your case, you insult such an attitude. Your reasons are your own but in doing so you insinuate that ambitions ought to be closer to your own to be acceptable (not “over-” inflated). Herein lies a different kind of narcissism, which I see in all humans - not least in myself. But the poverty here lies in detracting from others in order to imply they ought to be more like yourself. This shows a smallness that does not stretch far enough to already relate to people such as FC, already seeing oneself in them.
What an eloquent display of slave-morality, Silhouette!I had not thought you capable of this.
Do you really think in such bleak terms, or are you just trying to say something interesting? I hope for your sake it’s the latter.
No one is being brought down here. The difference between those who want being to be lowly, and those who wish to exalt it, is being made clear.
X and X2 are the first explicit entries here of the type that wants all life to be be (equally) low, and expect it to be so.
Our type does the opposite, it wills all life to be different, and where possible, to exalt it. Beginning of course with ourselves, but not with ourselves as the final aim. This is the affirmation of never-ending striving, which the slave can not understand, and must interpret as rising from discontentment.
I had expected the lowly valuing type to be the first to appear here, but apparently the OP was strong (and perhaps “outrageous”) enough to repel them for a while.
Yes: comfortable self-preservation.
- And this is high, but not the highest;
A culture of knowing, distinguishes between the ultimate they can spiritually, and the form of their moral commandments. Spirituality always exceeds law, but it does not take away the necessity of law for it to be made into meaning, conscious life.
The philosopher allows spirit to become life by inflicting its inner dialectic on the innocent flesh. Not to suffer life and be subject to it but to endure being it and re-create it – the artists love of roughness and creative evil, because one is strong enough to forge ones ways in the chaotic turbulence and create of it, what one pleases -
Such a philosophy can be of the future alone, it is an arrow; No past except what is accumulated as power; – the tension of the bowstring.
So… what exactly is it your ambition to accomplish? I’m intrigued and interested in the details.
I’m capable of many things.
I’ve even been capable of praising and condoning slave morality before on this board - of all the Nietzscheans who have a particular fondness towards the terms of master and slave morality, I don’t think I’ve yet come across one capable of overcoming their vanity in order to bring themselves to do the same.
In many ways I’m through with grandiose proclamations of master morality by those who all too often have no experience, nor ancestry in positions of actual command. At best, there’s probably been one or two brought up by a generation or two of financially privileged family - perhaps slaves to the Capitalist market and owners or managers of some relatively small-time business.
Nietzsche wasn’t kidding when he noticed the liberal mixture of master and slave in modern man. He’s right, we know nothing of the largeness of the men who actually commanded in older civilisations. The mixture of different cultures and their opposing values is a testament to the decadence that can we can afford today - with no specific, strong, single-minded goals to unite any of us into a group that can even be said to be genuinely mastered! Just look at the disintegration on forums such as this.
Having plenty of personal vigour, severity and dominance in character is very little without physical, material, real economic conditions of mastery surrounding us. You can have as much ambition as you like in a society like we have today and you’ll still have much of the slave in you - Nietzsche’s problem is no small one that can be solved just by some individualist with a strong opinion of himself. There is a lot of work to be done.
All this aside, I don’t believe I “displayed” slave morality myself in ascribing it to others.
I too have huge ambition, but I do not suffer for it. Instead I do my damned best to ground it in reality so that it actually has hope of achieving physical fruition - beyond verbose complaints of emotional ailment such as yours, or the impotent resentful protestations of superiority that are so common from readers of Nietzsche other than yourself.
So far, I have to side with amor fati here when he quoted Zarathustra:
Like apaosha, I want to hear the details of your ambition.
I will let you in on a secret. I am not actually called Fixed Cross, and I am not a bronze Zeus. I do this for a purpose - to distinguish those who are repelled by pride and those who are not. To “overcome” this pride — it is your arrogance (which I do not as a whole see as slavish) that makes you think you can decide that this would be an improvement.
Fair enough. But as I described in the OP and as I can tell you now, I am not entirely without experience in such positions and I do pride myself on an ancestry of political leaders and philosophers – you must have read that I deliberately have relinquished power, because I did not value this worlds conception of power greatly enough to attain to it.
I know this may seem to many as a very weak story – it is what you choose it to be.
Indeed, slaves.
I refer to the OP again – I do not value power based on money. I may value money based on true power – which I have come to realize, is only in philosophy.
But we can read. This is my favorite reading-topic; questions of power, perspectives of historical power in science, politics and art. These lives often tell enlightening stories.
Indeed our people is such a mixture – but Nietzsche hailed this mixture for its potential to produce lucky accidents. and indeed, I do instinctively consider myself to be such a thing. Not exclusively – I am no saint or role-model, I have a tough enough life and I have a strong servant-nature in me, but I serve with a sense of honor, and out of free will. (I think that “free will” can only mean the circumstance allowing the individual to make his own choices - a legal rather than a bio/psychological issue). I do not want to rule if those “under” me are not worthy of my attention.
Actually I find this site host to a satisfying integration process. I learn a lot about what honesty about the power you have can bring. It brings out excellence in others, and in no small measure.
Power is difficult to attain because essentially we are inside a system. Many rebel against the very notion that philosophy is an art of power over the system. I have laughed about this notion myself half-heartedly a great deal, especially about the ones who claimed it. I see no harm in this laughter, it is no condemnation.
Theoretically and ethically I am guided by northern European people, colonists, bandits essentially, but who in their shrewd calculations brought under control the notion of objectivity. However the west seems to be on a down-current, where the absolute meaning is no longer attributed to the truth and the good but rather to fear – or, in positive terms – uncertainty.
The accelerating pace of communications and transactions requires of us that we devise new methods of channeling these forces. It wil first require that we value uncertainty as a structural positive, as it is already defined in physics. To define the uncertainty of values, in human terms as well as physical is at hand now that we are to attain to control over our ridiculously incoherent system of “control”.
If you believed you were condescending me from above, then not. From my perspective it came form below, so I may have mistook you for a slave. In any case you were very well disguised.
Here is where you and I differ – I read such complaints in almost all of the posts. Regardless of whatever the topic is, there is always a resentful barking, a regurgitating whining implicit in nearly every assumption. I am explicitly ‘suffering’ this ‘unbearable’ - but at least it is an ambition, not a down-grading resignation and stubborn will to keep unrelated, sceptic, cold. For me that would not even be bearable for a second. if it would I would certainly not write about it, but create and a fucking empire. It is not that hard if one is really cold. But in actuality men are all simply dominated and kept, as once only little girls were kept. Few are brave or shameless enough to admit their true state - master-morality must begin somewhere.
My will is not a monopolizing one - yet.
If you truly want that you will have already begun assimilating them – if you want to hear more details than I would “cast before the swines”, I would first ask you whether you would work with me toward a comprehensive, politically viable affirmative philosophy, away from the blind necessity of the average, the compulsive mediocrity of our unmasked ‘aspirations’.
[edit - this has been here long enough]
In short, horror vacui in which we stand toward the powers that be must be dispelled.
I read it. But it made no sense. I was going to come back to it and try and forge some particulars out of all the abstract, general terminology and artistic eloquence that seemed to substitute clarity and specificity - but now it’s gone. Why so shy/modest about putting yourself out there? - there was enough ambiguity and lack of commitment the first time round.
That is one of my many “arrogances”. It is vulgar and impolite to poke around in places that you are not supposed to go - such as in the “bad” contemptible realms of overcoming pride. But none of this is my ultimate goal, my goal is creativity. One has to look outside the box to excel in this arena. Creativity is its own reward and I have the personality that finds the high I get from it much more rewarding than fitting in. It doesn’t make me particularly masterful or slavelike, but it does take me beyond good and evil.
I understand such weakness. I brought up the notion of disintegration in my last post - where everyone is individualistically atomised from others, nobody is “one of you”. How can you command someone who is not of you? How can you obey someone who is not of you? I understand the intentions of mixing things up - individuals are more harmless, so where they lose out on regimented unity they gain on indiscriminate flexibility and lack of hostility through alienation. The net result is supposed to be more effective… for the materially minded consumer.
It’s not as simple as a master giving up his power through cowardice, it’s more giving up a position where a master can no longer be a master. I suppose it is noble to step “down” in this situation and revaluate - in order to start anew. But the success of this depends on how much power you retain, so that people will actually notice when you rise again in a different situation that actually holds power.
Master morality is compatible when maintaining one’s power, but the whole issue is muddied with so much of the slave in every master.
Interesting use of the word “true”. This condones a certain kind of power over another, which is contrary to my conception of power, which is of all types - whether “in” or outside of philosophy.
Reading is nothing on its own, and perhaps more importantly it is always seen with new eyes - not the eyes of those whose words you are reading. One cannot even know whether one reads the same or differently to someone who lived in completely different circumstances. One can only know that they read with one’s own eyes - so beware: when you read of power and it makes you feel empowered, it is only a reflection of a relative increase in feelings of power to what you feel normally. It becomes an activity of escapism.
Everywhere is my intention to find someone who is “one of me” - with whom to work with toward a comprehensive, politically viable affirmative philosophy.
That you would have to re-read it to reply to it can only mean that you have not registered it. What was there was not an explanation or argument of any kind, just a set of possible aims. I removed them after I had figured you and Aposha would have read it, as it was a response to a favor asked of me. It was not a response to a philosophical challenge, so there is no point in leaving them here.
Then as I considered, this weakness (interpreting as weak of an unknown) is no stranger to you. I have no way to relate to your personal notions of isolation and of disintegration - I rather experience the opposite.
I was trying to draw you into this positive integration, or at least to test if such an undertaking could be successful.
Obviously. Of course it is only noticed by the people who have interest in the values which are being expounded and increased.
It had in my enthusiasm entered my mind that you may be forged into an ally, that you may be moved to think deeper and further, more deliberately, as we are moving ourselves – but your down-valuing automatisms are too deeply ingrained.
Disappointingly, it now seems natural that you would interpret it in this way.
Then it may be an idea to start to reveal at least some of your thinking.
Horror vacui? Powers that must be dispelled?
I suggest you repost.
The horror vacui, existing in the minds of normally rational men when they behold the (masks of) the powers that be, must be dispelled.
Can you understand this sentence? If not, what do you not understand?
Do you not feel like your “set of possible aims” are up to a challenge? If they were not, would an explanation or argument that came from your possible aims be up to a challenge? Or is that just off topic in your opinion?
Not an easy task, for sure. It’s not that I am against integration in my personal life, nor is it that need to be alone all the time - though I need to be by myself a great deal more than most, perhaps anyone I know. My isolation is something I don’t expect others to relate to. On one hand it is something that I choose, and on the other it runs contrary to my ambitions of further unity and sociability in economics and thus society. But the disintegration I see in others is not so much due to my extreme introversion and apparently schizoid characteristics, I see it between others who have very different personalities to me. It mirrors the very intention of Capitalist values, it’s something that is even supposed to be there.
I’m curious about your experiences of the opposite to this. Do tell.
You are hasty to make up your mind. Very well, I don’t require your approval. Personally I don’t think anywhere near enough has been laid out on the table. A symptom of my isolation is an extreme level of discretion as to who has anything to offer me - it takes a lot to be someone who I actually want to ally with, though it also takes a lot of time for me to be sure of the exact depth of each man I come across. One thing I am is patient. I am in no rush to get things done. You are perhaps not so thorough?
Another thing I am is realistic. When one is wrapped up in tales of former greatness that one does not have in one’s own life then this is escapism. The mind is not an ends, it is a means to turn any inspiration from what you read into a reality - and until then it is nothing. By all means, gather information on past figures living in past times and be inspired, but that is “of then”. It must be turned into “of now”, through appropriation, to be significant.
I have a suspicion that Nietzsche was overly individualistic in his thinking, and actually quite reactionary. In contrast, I am progressive - and not quite so fearful of the Last Man. I suspect the Last Man has something up his sleeve that will only be revealed in time - some biological tendency that heads towards a new human physiology such that health won’t be exactly the same as Nietzsche describes.
I think an overwhelmingly siginificant factor in economics is population. Ideas of culling numbers, perhaps refining the gene pool in the process are weak and artificial. I think the future of man lies in its increasing numbers, I believe man’s past is highly related to his growing numbers. I do not think pack nor herd mentality is sufficient to describe man and the future of man - I think swarm is where we are headed. Modern competitive strategies in finding a mate are not a dead end of weakness - I think they head towards something interesting.
But even swarms need “brains”, just as a nervous system and various other organs. An appreciation of who operates best as each organ can forge a new kind of organism out of many humans, in fitting with rising populations and the necessity of increased delegation in human history (through kingdoms, through feudalism, through capitalism… and then?).
My aims to do not lead to aguments, that was why I removed them here. Of course I am very interested in discussing the values that lead to these aims, that is why I am here, and even what is going on between us as we speak. We are identifying each others values, at least, before discussing them in more depth.
Alone-ness is not related to disintegration. I believe in the maintenance of self-unity and increase of power of this unity. Only on these terms do i wish to attract “accomplices”.
In this manner, I have made contact with a couple of thinkers of, what I perceive as significant promise.
You may have forgotten the manner in which you entered this discussion. It was not I who started our correspondence with an already made up mind.
I wonder what power you have accumulated then, to so confidently share this wisdom with me.
Can you be more specific? Which notions of health that Nietzsche proposed would be challenged by the evolution of the Last Man?
I would agree, and so would Nietzsche. The question is: competition on which terms?
The last man has different criteria for success than the philosopher. What for the one is success, for the other may be unbearable. The majority of positions considered success in this world would for me mean degaradation. Therefore it is of the essence to create a new form of position.
As you will have gathered, this must arise from a new conception of the role of art in thought.
In this way I have had my economic and political successes, modest enough, touching the lives of a million or so. I have proven to myself on several occasions that I know how to go about acquiring power, but I am interested in forming alliances, and more importantly, to solidify my philosophical foundation.
I am only interested at this point of creating a new type of organ, one that has the capacity to regulate a new body of understanding. I believe that the future will be host to several philosophical movements, some of which will be violently antagonistic, and the collection of which will be deeply ambiguous. This is a situation I would welcome - but it requires that my own position will be as rooted as I can possibly accomplish.
Hence, my going-down, in search of philosophical friends.