Nietzsche

 

he likes the contemplation of pain,

he erects conceit into a duty,

 the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die

 

 

Sometimes we need to lose something to understand its value

 

 if all the apples are bad… maybe it’s the tree that’s the problem

two enemies

 

Two twins, inseparably fused:

The hunger of the hungry

 and the fullness of the full.

There are so many kinds of time

 

. The time by which we measure our lives. Months and years. 

Or the big time, the time that raises mountains and makes stars.

Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next. 

Its hard to live in all those kinds of times.

 Easy to forget that you live in all of them.

 

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. 

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

 

there isn't a culvert in the world that remembers the water flowed through it once the rain has stopped.

 

Sometimes you can't help people. 

Sometimes it's better not even to try.

 

Like some dogs: kick them once and they never trust you again, no matter how nice you are to them.

 

Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.

 Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. 

Sometimes we find others in that darkness, 

and sometimes we lose them there again.

 

each of you has his or her own death, 

you carry it with you in a secret place from the moment you're born,

 it belongs to you and you belong to it

 

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self;

 but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; 

and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.

 

Where do one's fears come from? 

Where do they shape themselves? 

Where do they hide before coming out into the open?

 

When a youth was giving himself airs in the Theatre and saying, 'I am wise, for I have conversed with many wise men,' Epictetus replied, 'I too have conversed with many rich men, yet I am not rich!’

 

So you think that money is the root of all evil? 

Have you ever asked what is the root of money? 

Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them.

 Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. 

Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. 

Money is made possible only by the men who produce.

 Is this what you consider evil?

 

the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

 

Ownership is not limited to material things. 

It can also apply to points of view. 

Once we take ownership of an idea — whether it’s about politics or sports — what do we do? 

We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. 

And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss.

 What are we left with then? 

An ideology — rigid and unyielding.

Anhedonia

 

Masochism is more widespread than we realize because it takes an attenuated form. 

The basic dynamism is as follows:

 a human being sees something bad which is coming as inevitable. There is no way he can halt the process; he is helpless. This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over the impending pain -- any kind of control will do. 

This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery.

 So the person seizes control over the situation in the only way open to him: he connives to bring on the impending misery; he hastens it. 

This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain. Not so. It is simply that he cannot any longer endure the helplessness or the supposed helplessness. 

But in the process of gaining control over the inevitable misery he becomes, automatically, anhedonic. 

Anhedonia sets in stealthily. 

Over the years it takes control of him. For example, he learns to defer gratification; this is a step in the dismal process of anhedonia. 

In learning to defer he gratification he experiences a sense of self-mastery; he has become stoic, disciplined; he does not give way to impulse. He has "control".

 Control over himself in terms of his impulses and control over the external situation. He is a controlled and controlling person. 

Pretty soon he has branched out and is controlling other people, as part of the situation. He becomes a manipulator. 

Of course, he is not consciousily aware of this; all he intends to do is lessen his own sense of impotence.

 But in his task of lessening this sense, he insidiously overpowers the freedom of others.

 Yet, he derives no pleasure from this, no positive psychological gain; all his gains are essential negative.

 

Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, 

when thoroughly explored, it dispels it

Existentialism

 

a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the issue of human existence.

 Existentialist philosophers explore questions related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence.

 Common concepts in existentialist thought include 

existential crisis, 

dread, 

and anxiety in the face of an absurd world,

 as well as authenticity, courage, and virtue.

critiqued rationalism and concerned themselves with the problem of meaning

Søren Kierkegaard 

Friedrich Nietzsche 

 Fyodor Dostoevsky, 

 Jean-Paul Sartre, 

 Simone de Beauvoir, 

Sartre posits the idea that

 "what all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence

 Sartre described existentialism as 

"the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism."

For others, existentialism need not involve the rejection of God, but rather 

"examines mortal man's search for meaning in a meaningless universe," 

considering less "What is the good life?" (to feel, be, or do, good), 

instead asking "What is life good for?

individuals shape themselves by existing and cannot be perceived through preconceived and a priori categories, an "essence".

 Human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life

in contradiction to Aristotle and Aquinas who taught that essence precedes individual existence

the subjective thinker has only one setting—existence—and has nothing to do with localities and such things

people are defined only insofar as they act and that they are responsible for their actions

Someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, defined as a cruel person. Such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity (cruel persons). This is opposed to their genes, or human nature, bearing the blame.

"Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards." The more positive, therapeutic aspect of this is also implied: a person can choose to act in a different way, and to be a good person instead of a cruel person

 it belongs to the essence of a house to keep the bad weather out, which is why it has walls and a roof. Humans are different from houses because—unlike houses—they do not have an inbuilt purpose: they are free to choose their own purpose and thereby shape their essence; thus, their existence precedes their essence

an essence is the relational property of having a set of parts ordered in such a way as to collectively perform some activity

freedom: nothing fixes our purpose but we ourselves, our projects have no weight or inertia except for our endorsement of them

Simone de Beauvoir, holds that there are various factors, grouped together under the term sedimentation, that offer resistance to attempts to change our direction in life. Sedimentations are themselves products of past choices and can be changed by choosing differently in the present, but such changes happen slowly. They are a force of inertia that shapes the agent's evaluative outlook on the world until the transition is complete

The notion of the absurd contains the idea that there is no meaning in the world beyond what meaning we give it. This meaninglessness also encompasses the amorality or "unfairness" of the world.

opposes the traditional Abrahamic religious perspective, which establishes that life's purpose is the fulfillment of God's commandments. This is what gives meaning to people's lives

 To live the life of the absurd means rejecting a life that finds or pursues specific meaning for man's existence since there is nothing to be discovered.

life becomes absurd due to the incompatibility between human beings and the world they inhabit

absurdity is limited to actions and choices of human beings. These are considered absurd since they issue from human freedom, undermining their foundation outside of themselves

The absurd contrasts with the claim that "bad things don't happen to good people"; to the world, metaphorically speaking, there is no such thing as a good person or a bad person; what happens happens, and it may just as well happen to a "good" person as to a "bad" person

 Because of the world's absurdity, anything can happen to anyone at any time and a tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the absurd

helping people avoid living their lives in ways that put them in the perpetual danger of having everything meaningful break down is common to most existentialist philosophers. 

The possibility of having everything meaningful break down poses a threat of quietism, which is inherently against the existentialist philosophy

It has been said that the possibility of suicide makes all humans existentialists. 

The ultimate hero of absurdism lives without meaning and faces suicide without succumbing to it

Facticity is a limitation and a condition of freedom. It is a limitation in that a large part of one's facticity consists of things one did not choose (birthplace, etc.), but a condition of freedom in the sense that one's values most likely depend on it. 

the value ascribed to one's facticity is still ascribed to it freely by that person

to disregard one's facticity during the continual process of self-making, projecting oneself into the future, would be to put oneself in denial of oneself and would be inauthentic.

Authenticity involves the idea that one has to "create oneself" and live in accordance with this self. 

For an authentic existence, one should act as oneself, not as "one's acts" or as "one's genes" or as any other essence requires.

 The authentic act is one in accordance with one's freedom

 The Other is the experience of another free subject who inhabits the same world as a person does

The world is constituted as objective in that it is something that is "there" as identical for both of the subjects; a person experiences the other person as experiencing the same things. 

This experience of the Other's look is what is termed the Look

In Sartre's example of a man peeping at someone through a keyhole, the man is entirely caught up in the situation he is in. 

He is in a pre-reflexive state where his entire consciousness is directed at what goes on in the room.

 Suddenly, he hears a creaking floorboard behind him and he becomes aware of himself as seen by the Other. 

He is then filled with shame for he perceives himself as he would perceive someone else doing what he was doing—as a Peeping Tom.

 For Sartre, this phenomenological experience of shame establishes proof for the existence of other minds and defeats the problem of solipsism. 

For the conscious state of shame to be experienced, one has to become aware of oneself as an object of another look, proving a priori, that other minds exist.

The Look is then co-constitutive of one's facticity.

Another characteristic feature of the Look is that no Other really needs to have been there: It is possible that the creaking floorboard was simply the movement of an old house; the Look is not some kind of mystical telepathic experience of the actual way the Other sees one (there may have been someone there, but he could have not noticed that person). 

It is only one's perception of the way another might perceive him

"Existential angst", sometimes called existential dread, anxiety, or anguish

negative feeling arising from the experience of human freedom and responsibility. 

The archetypal example is the experience one has when standing on a cliff where one not only fears falling off it, but also dreads the possibility of throwing oneself off. 

In this experience that "nothing is holding me back", one senses the lack of anything that predetermines one to either throw oneself off or to stand still, and one experiences one's own freedom.

angst is before nothing, and this is what sets it apart from fear that has an object.

 While one can take measures to remove an object of fear, for angst no such "constructive" measures are possible. 

The use of the word "nothing" in this context relates to the inherent insecurity about the consequences of one's actions and to the fact that, in experiencing freedom as angst, one also realizes that one is fully responsible for these consequences.

Despair is generally defined as a loss of hope.

In existentialism, it is more specifically a loss of hope in reaction to a breakdown in one or more of the defining qualities of one's self or identity.

What sets the existentialist notion of despair apart from the conventional definition is that existentialist despair is a state one is in even when they are not overtly in despair. So long as a person's identity depends on qualities that can crumble, they are in perpetual despair

Hercules

 

What would have become of Hercules do you think if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar - and no savage criminals to rid the world of? 

What would he have done in the absence of such challenges?

Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. 

So by snoring his life away in luxury and comfort he never would have developed into the mighty Hercules.

And even if he had, what good would it have done him? 

What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir into him action?

 

Stick and carrot 

 

The businessman's tool is values;

 the bureaucrat's tool is fear.

 

Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; 

political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. 

The businessman's tool is values;

 the bureaucrat's tool is fear.

 

Where would Jesus be if nobody had written the Gospels?

 

And although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a white crow. 

Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. 

You might almost say that hunting for 'the white crow' is science's principal task.

 

Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. 

It is often a kind of innocent pride, 

and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics 

because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.

 

Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. 

When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely;

 if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. 

And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes.

 Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. 

Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. 

That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine

Scepticism

 

Scepticism is a resting-place for human reason,

 where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings and make survey of the region in which it finds itself, 

so that for the future it may be able to choose its path with more certainty. 

But it is no dwelling-place for permanent settlement. 

Such can be obtained only through perfect certainty in our knowledge,

alike of the objects themselves 

and of the limits within which all our knowledge of objects is enclosed

 

If we wish to draw philosophical conclusions about our own existence, our significance, and the significance of the universe itself, our conclusions should be based on empirical knowledge.

 A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa,

 whether or not we like the implications.

The Master's power

He lets all things come and go
effortlessly, without desire.

He never expects results;
thus he is never disappointed.

He is never disappointed;
thus his spirit never grows old.

 

He who is in harmony with the Tao
is like a newborn child.

Its bones are soft, its muscles are weak,
but its grip is powerful.

It doesn't know about the union
of male and female,
yet its penis can stand erect,
so intense is its vital power.

It can scream its head off all day,
yet it never becomes hoarse,
so complete is its harmony.


The Master's power is like this.

He lets all things come and go
effortlessly, without desire.

He never expects results;
thus he is never disappointed.

He is never disappointed;
thus his spirit never grows old.

 

Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking, this world has gradually become so marvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired color

 - but we have been the colorists: 

it is the human intellect that has made appearances appear 

and transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things

 

Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.

 

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; 

and this is a form of consolation open to every one.

 But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole!

 We are like lambs in a field,

 disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, 

who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.

 

I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, 

and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, 

even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.

 

How much evil throughout history could have been avoided had people exercised their moral acuity with convictional courage and said to the powers that be, 

No, I will not. 

This is wrong, 

and I don't care if you fire me,

 shoot me, 

pass me over for promotion,

 or call my mother, 

I will not participate in this unsavory activity.' 

Wouldn't world history be rewritten if just a few people had actually acted like individual free agents rather than mindless lemmings?

 

 it is better to be a diamond with a flaw 

than a pebble without

 

We become so absorbed in our flaws and faults that we forget that it is better to be a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without. 

To have flaws is beauty in itself, 

a fact so frightening that we hurry to hide them from sight

 and tarnish the whole in the process of comparing ourselves to others.

 

When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. 

If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. 

Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them.

 Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. 

In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. 

Is that so hard?

 

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. 

It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, 

but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. 

He always has hope. 

He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. 

Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.

Eccentricity

 

In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. 

Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. 

Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded;

 and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. 

That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time

 

Nothing important is learned; 

it is simply remembered

 

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. 

It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. 

Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up. 

It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. 

It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: 

when the sun comes up, 

you’d better be running.

 

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. 

To be prepared for surprise is to be educated

 

Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: 

withered hearts, 

or empty skulls?

 

We have negative mental habits that come up over and over again. 

One of the most significant negative habits we should be aware of is that of constantly allowing our mind to run off into the future. 

Perhaps we got this from our parents. 

Carried away by our worries, we're unable to live fully and happily in the present.

 Deep down, we believe we can't really be happy just yet—that we still have a few more boxes to be checked off before we can really enjoy life. 

We speculate, dream, strategize, and plan for these "conditions of happiness" we want to have in the future;

 and we continually chase after that future, even while we sleep. 

We may have fears about the future because we don't know how it's going to turn out, and these worries and anxieties keep us from enjoying being here now.

 

Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. 

Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic

 

I do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and I do not live in chronic dread of disaster. 

It is not happiness, but suffering that I consider unnatural.

 It is not success, but calamity that I regard as the abnormal exception in Human Life

 

What then is truth? 

A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms:

 in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. 

Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions 

— they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.

 

Many leaves but few blossoms 

That is the work of Heaven 

Many words but few deeds 

That is the fault of Man 

 

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. 

But for us, it's different. 

Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. 

On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. 

The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. 

Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

 Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

 Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

 In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. 

There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet.

 Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. 

There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world 

it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, 

and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, 

the only home we've ever known.