What do you value more than power? By “power” I mean the ability to accomplish whatever your goal is, to achieve and possess that strength which for you is adequate to your happiness, your purpose, your aim and the reasons for which you act and live. Power does not necessarily imply domination, destruction, tyranny or subjugation of another, although it may mean these things to you. Power is more like your vitality, your being-alive and the nature and need of that living.
So whatever your definition of power, tell us what you value more than it.
Love.
Not that one can completely separate out Power and Love. It’s almost like the Words come from different disciplines, but then also overlapping ones.
Not for me - I set goals in terms of the power that I feel I have. If I have more power, I set greater goals.
I’ve sometimes grown beyond what I thought I was capable of, old goals fell aways as power increased.
Often the meaning of a goal is only that one has had the power to attain it. The whole business of sports is based on this. Consider the arbitrary nature of the actual goals (for example, getting a ball between two poles) and the all importance of who has the greatest power to attain whatever goal happens to be set.
You might argue that the goal is to win and to get rich and famous - the first means only the verification of ones power, and the latter two mean extension of power.
Power is one of the chief attributes of the christian God, but it is said that his love is more prominent than his power.
If we are created from energy, and our father is the universal energy source, becoming more energetic would bring us closer to the divine.
Being energetic does not equate to money or political power, instead it means we be filled with our natural energy, to the point of small miracles.
Even a small increase in energetic power makes someone feel high and wonderful. It is the key factor for creating great men and women, even though multiple things can lead to their virtues.
For me, consciousness, its quality and quantity, which is to say the profound experience of understanding and knowledge, is more valuable than power; while goals are means to power, as FC says, power is means to consciousness— to life.
You just said that consciousness ( experience of understanding and knowledge) is more valuable then power. And then you said that power is the means to consciousness.
Logically, you would not have consciousness without power. Therefore, power must be more valuable.
I’m confused.
It’s really an attempt to rank things which are unrankable.
I would consider it more important than power, and even that which power relies upon. Though one needs power in order to influence good health.
And having power feels better than simply “having health”. Achieving goals is good - an indication of health and influencer of it. But I think I’m still going with health.
I’m not interested in love. Respect is more important and gratefulness more binding.
Power is what people talk about who feel like they don’t have any. People who feel like they do talk about doing the things they want and having the things they wanna have.
OP, if power as you described it is something that’s used as a means to something else…then it’s absurd to even ask what might be more valuable. Jeez dude.
Smears is obsessed with people who talk about power.
He always talks about people who talk about power. What does this mean? Lol.
Power’s only goal is to make itself felt.
Love and war are human means to this.
Life is a comprehensive human experience of power.
The more power, the more alive “you” feel.
This “you” is ambiguous, there’s just power experiencing itself in different states along a continuum which changes its entire physical makeup every 7 years.
To have power means to transform, as Nietzsche called it, to overcome. To constantly become “yourself” - to realize anew the power you are. This is life, the feeling of being alive. Why no dominating human is ever satisfied with satisfaction, why Napoleon and Hitler attacked Russia and why Caesar made himself king. Ultimately power wants to meet its own limit.
If I have accomplished my goal, power is meaningless and useless.
The blind lust for more power merely creates more noise, suffering and death.
And yields nothing in return, but a footnote in history.
Love includes respect and gratefulness. Though I’ll admit that it’s a bit subjective. “Love and power are more easily experienced than defined”.
Also in part for Smears, our favorite philosopher of power says this about health:
“The great health. Being new, nameless, hard to understand, we premature births of an as yet unproven future need for a new goal also a new means—namely a new health, stronger, more seasoned, tougher, more audacious, and gayer than any previousl health. Whoever has a soul that craves to have experienced the whole range of values and desiderata to date, and to have sailed around all the coast of this ideal “mediterranean”; whoever wants to know from the adventures of his own more authentic experience how a discoverer and conqueror of the ideal feels, land also an artist, a saint, a legislator, a sage, a scholar, a pious man, a soothsayer, and one who stands divinely apart in the old style—needs one thing above everything else: the great health—that one does not merely have but also acquires continually, and must acquire because one gives it up again and again, and must give it up.” [GS 382]
It seems to me discussions like this can be a bit like:
1 which organ is the most important?
2 The heart.
1 But without the brain your heart would not function.
2 Oh, yeah, but without the heart the brain would not get blood.
3 I Think the lungs are the most important because breath is Life.
4 I Think DNA is the most important because without that, you body could not manufacture proteins and…(so on).
1 No, it’s definitlly the brain.
5 I Think it is the soul, for without that there is no Life in the matter of the body?
1 The soul is not an organ.
5 You can only say that because your soul is confused.
7 It is cells. Cells are tiny organs. Without them, none of the other organs exist.
8 Mitochondia, without them the cells have no Power.
7 Mitochondria are not organs
8 Hey, you opened the door with cells
7 No, the guy who opened the door was the DNA guy.
8 Well, that opened my door too.
