Nietzsche disparages humanity as that which celebrates the mediocre; the rabble, democracy, and love of your fellow man is a race to the bottom; he sees women as a person whose only cure is pregnancy (she, good or bad, he argues, relies on “the stick”). Despite this elitism and misogyny, many of his arguments, points, and insights into humanity are incredibly clear and ring true. The man of the religious disposition does not want to know; he looks away from “what is.” If “love for your fellow man” within Christianity was actually stronger, there would be a lot more violence, out of anger towards those enemies of happiness who do not coalesce with the mass’s vision of what is great and what life is for. Man’s strivings and hierarchy are, he argues, a will to live. He sees all philosophy as essentially a value judgment, “…physiological demands for the preservation of a particular kind of life. That a certainty is worth more than an uncertainty, for example, or that appearance is worth less than ‘truth’”; thus Nietzsche’s own philosophy contains a value judgment that life ought to be for living and daring, and not for just watching Netflix. (From introduction) “[Religion] has helped humankind to endure an otherwise intolerable existence and has assisted us in constructing a viable social order by demanding that we love each other.” But these “logical fictions” and “continual falsification[s] mean that philosophies that really acknowledge what is go beyond being labeled “good” or “evil”, as “Admitting untruth as a condition of life: that means to resist familiar values in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that dares this has already placed itself beyond good and evil.” Resisting the herd morality is dangerous for the herd for it is nothing without it; so it sticks the non-conformist as “evil.” Philosophers of the past paint their actions as what is moral, a sort of self-justification. “For anyone who scrutinizes the basis human instincts to determine how influential they have been as inspiring spirits (or demons and goblins) will find that all the instincts have practiced philosophy, and that each one of them would like only too well to represent itself as the ultimate aim of existence and as the legitimate master of all other instincts. For every instinct is tyrannical; and as such seeks to philosophize.” Thus, if your instinct is to procreate, it becomes a philosophy that says the goal of existence is to procreate, and all who deviate are sinners. The philosopher, thus, proves via, “his morality which proves decidedly and decisively who he is –that is, in what hierarchy the innermost drives of his nature are arranged.” So, which of his instincts rule him, and in what order. Recalling Dostoevsky in Crime & Punishment and how the typical “progressive” makes a grandstanding production of every “Good” thing they do and believe, “They are all actions, there is nothing genuine about them… [Epicurus] was annoyed at the mannered grandiosity, the theatricality that Plato and his pupils deployed so well, and that Epicurus did not! Epicurus… sat tucked away… and wrote three hundred books—out of fury and ambition against Plato… It took one hundred years for Greece to realize who this garden-god Epicurus had been.” People think that they can know their exact impact and when, and measure it; Tolstoy debunks this in War & Peace. Kafka never knew what his impact would be; he died before any of his books were published or reached fame. “We do not know what is best about ourselves—we cannot know it.” On discrimination, in the literal sense of the word, “Doesn’t life mean weighing, preferring, being unjust, having limits, wanting to be Different?” And, he continues, why bother stating as philosophy something which you could not do otherwise… “Why make a principle out of something that you already are and needs must be?” Philosophy “creates the world according to its own image.” Philosophers who want “a certain Nothing” instead of an “uncertain Something” are the actual nihilists, the “sign of a despairing, mortally weary soul.” Someone who is a stronger thinker, “still thirsty for life” will “take sides against appearance.” Again on the progressive type vs the conservative type, “two completely opposite standpoints… one group will not hear of relinquishing their ‘responsibility,’ their belief in themselves, their person right to take their credit… the other group wants to be responsible for nothing, guilty of nothing, and out of their inner self-contempt they yearn to cast off their own selves… they tend to take up the cause of criminals… it is surprising how much prettier the fatalism of the weak-willed can look when it presents itself as ‘la religion de la souffrance humaine.’” Regarding language and its ability to mask the real issues and prevent critical thinking, “For even if language, in this case as in others, cannot get past its own unwieldiness and continues to speak of oppositions where there are really only degrees and many fine differences of grade; even if we the knowing also find the words in our mouths twisted by the ingrained moral hypocrisy that is now part of our insuperable 'flesh and blood', now and then we understand what has happened, and laugh at how even the very best science would keep us trapped in this simplified, thoroughly artificial, neatly concocted, neatly falsified world, how the best science loves error whether it will or not, because science, being alive, - loves life!” On being proved right or not, “In the end you know very well that it does not matter whether you are proved right, and likewise that no philosopher to date has been proved right, and that there is probably more value for truth in every little question mark that you place at the end of your mottoes and favourite doctrines (and occasionally after your own selves) than in all your dignified gestures and your playing the trump before plaintiffs and lawcourts! Take the side exit instead! Flee to hidden spaces! And wear your mask and your subtlety so that people will not be able to tell you apart!” Capital-T Truth should not need angry defenders. “Every deep spirit needs a mask; not only that, around every deep spirit a mask is continually growing, thanks to the constantly false, that is to say, shallow interpretations of his every word, his every step, every sign of life that he gives.” The independent thinker needs a mask so that he is not burned at the steak like witch. People ought to say they aren’t sure, but instead, the insist they are right; it is better to be a kindly inquisitor, to carefully ask questions, and carry yourself otherwise along like any other member of the herd, escaping unnecessary judgment. “…whenever, in short, someone speaks ‘badly’ about human beings (and not even wickedly), then the lover of knowledge must pay close attention and careful attention—he must keep his ears open in general, whenever people speak without indignation. For the indignant man and whoever else uses his own teeth to mutilate and dismember himself (or God or society in place of himself) may stand higher than the laughing and self-satisfied satyr in moral terms, but in every other sense he represents the more common more inconsequential, more uninstructive case. And only the indignant tell so many lies.---” Thus, if you seek the genuine truth, you carefully consider, you dismiss the possibility of containing capital-T truth, and you listen to people who are not indignant, who are not emotionally vested in proving their “morality” or are attached via some other emotional dependency to not being able to see what is. On these passages, Keith Ansell-Pearson, “The new lovers of knowledge (the gay scientists), therefore, will not become martyrs for the cause of truth; they will not parade themselves as sublime self-torturers who suffer for the sake of it. This is because what guides their love of truth and knowledge is the love of life, especially the superior life, and this life exists, of necessity, outside the social order and the public gaze.” What is a human being? “Only a very few people can be independent; it is a prerogative of the strong… this man is… bold to the point of recklessness. He ventures into a labyrinth, he multiplies life’s inevitable dangers a thousandfold, and not the least among these is the absence of any person to see how and where he is going stray, becoming isolated, being rent apart piece by piece in the cave of some Minotaur of the conscience. Assuming that such a person perishes, he perishes so far away from the understanding of human beings that they do not feel it or feel for him—and he cannot go back again! Not even to the pity of humans!” Thus, to be independent in values, truly independent, is to embrace the fact that one is forsaking society, forsaking “the rabble”, in a sense, and they cast him out, and do not care if he dies alone; this does not bother the strong-of-mind. “What serves to nourish or refresh the higher type of person must be almost poison to a very diverse and inferior type.” Thus, the terrible truth about the nature of existence may be enlightening to one, terrifying to another. On being young, dichotomous thinking, and the process of (actual) maturation, “When we are young, we revere and revile without benefit of the art of the nuance, life’s greatest prize; and it is only fair that we must later repent bitterly for having pounced upon people and things with a Yes or a No. Everything is designed so that the worst of all possible tastes, out taste for the unconditional, is terribly and foolishly abused, until we learn to put some art into our feelings and even take a chance with artifice—as do the real artists of life. Young people, with their characteristic anger and awe, seem to find no peace until they have neatly falsified people and things, so that they can vent their feelings on them; youth by its very nature is something falsifying and deceptive. Later, after our young soul has been tormented by unrelieved disappointments and finally turns suspiciously back upon itself, still hot and wild even in its suspicion and pangs of conscience, then how angry we are, how impatiently we tear ourselves apart, taking vengeance for having deluded ourselves for so long, as if our delusion had been voluntary! When we make this transition, we punish ourselves by distrusting our feelings; we torture our enthusiasm with doubt, indeed we even experience our good conscience as a danger, as if it were veiling us or wearing down our finer honesty; and above all else we take sides, on principle, take sides against ‘youth’. A decade later, and we understand that this whole process too, was—youth!” He says we must question ideologies of sacrifice and doing things for our neighbor; this echoes many others, including Rogers, question if our “devotion” is really such, or if it is just another form of vanity. “’For the aske of others’, ‘not for me’: these are feelings containing so much sorcery and sugar that we must be doubly distrustful of them and ask: ‘Are these not perhaps—seductions?’” People like being sacrificers, so he says we must be cautious towards these feelings, question things which make people feel good, lest it turn into another stick. People are also social creatures; thus, they do what they must, so is “doing something for others” really doing it for others? “Take what has happened recently… with the French Revolution, that gruesome and (judged from close up) superfluous farce: its noble and inspired spectators throughout Europe have been projecting their own rebellious and enthusiastic feelings onto it from afar for so long and with such passion that the text has disappeared underneath the interpretation. A noble posterity might one day misunderstand all of past history in a similar way, and only in so doing make the sight of it bearable. Or rather: hasn’t this already happened? Haven’t we ourselves been this ‘noble posterity’? And since we now recognize what we have been doing, can’t we… stop it?” All the meaning from the French revolution, everything it is meant for, is lost in the enthusiasm, in everyone’s desire to burn it all down and feel something because they cannot feel for themselves. Seeing, now, how ridiculous this was, he asks, can’t we stop behaving this way? People need untruth, “The strength of a person’s spirit would then be measured by how much ‘truth’ he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified. But there can be no doubt that wicked and unhappy people are better suited to discover certain parts of the truth and are more likely to be successful; not to mention the wicked people who are happy—a species that the moralists have kept silent about. Perhaps harshness and cunning furnish conditions more favourable for the development of strong, independent spirits and philosophers than do that gentle, refined, accommodating good nature and skill in taking things lightly which we prize in scholars, and with good reason.” The people who are unhappy may be more likely to see truth because they are not hell-bent on sugarcoating truth to obtain happiness in so doing. Also, the happy “sinner” can see truth, and he gives similar wisdom to Maslow, being able to take thing lightly, and laugh a little at life. “I would actually go so far as to rank philosophers according to the level of their laughter—right up to the ones who are capable of golden laughter. And assuming that gods, too, are able to philosophize, as various of my conclusions force me to believe, then I do not doubt that when they do so, they know how to laugh in a new and superhuman fashion—and at the expense of everything serious! Gods like to jeer; it seems that even at religious observances they cannot keep from laughing. Translated from French, “To be a good philosopher, one must be dry, clear, free of illusions. A banker who has made a fortune has something of the character needed to make philosophical discoveries, that is to say, to see clearly into that which exists.” One cannot fully see what is through a lens of emotional dependence. When one can think independently, they think for themselves, their philosophy is their own, and they are not dogmatic, “’My judgement is my judgement: no one else has a right to it so easily’ as a philosopher of the future might say. We have to rid ourselves of the bad taste of wanting to agree with many others. ‘Good’ is no longer good if our neighbour takes the word into his mouth…” He sees the movement for equality and democracy as a farce, overlooking the perils of authoritarianism, but does have some good insight nonetheless. "... in their basic tendency to see, more or less the cause of all human misery and failures in the structures of society up to now, thus happily managing to turn truth upside down! What they are trying with all their strength to achieve is a common green pasture of happiness for the herd, with safety, security, comfort, ease of life for everyone; their two most often recited tunes and teachings are 'Equal rights' and 'compassion for all suffering'-- and they take suffering itself as something that must be eliminated." These champions of democracy and equality overlook the nature of existence, the human condition, and the fact that suffering cannot be eliminated. They see the structure of society as cause of this misery, and not as inherent to existence or the people within it themselves. In contrast to a Camusian moral imperative to relieve human suffering, he sees “everything evil” as potentially heightening the species human being. “…you want to abolish suffering! And we?—it seems that we want it to be, if anything, worse and greater than before! Wellbeing in your sense of the word—that certainly is no goal, it seems to us to be an end! A condition that would immediately make people ludicrous and contemptible—make us wish their downfall! The discipline of suffering, great suffering—don’t you know that this discipline alone has created all human greatness to date…” The end of suffering would be the end of life, for what else would people use their capacities but to advance something up and to the right; increasing suffering seems a rather harsh imperative, but calls into question what is the purpose of living, of “greatness.” On the fall of Rome, “… it was never faith, but rather the freedom from faith, that half-stoic, smiling lack of concern for the seriousness of faith, which enraged the slaves about their masters, set them against their masters. ‘Enlightenment’ enrages the slave, for he wants what is unconditional; he understands only what is tyrannical, even in morality; he loves as he hates, without nuance, into the very depths of pain, of disease—his manifold hidden suffering rages against that noble sensibility which seems to deny suffering. Indeed, scepticism about suffering, at bottom only an aristocratic moral pose, played no small role in the origins of the last great slave rebellion, which began with the French Revolution.” This quote explains much of Jordan Peterson’s concerns about the disparagement of tradition so prevalent amongst left-leaning types. Ancient Greek religion was, he said, a religion of gratitude, but it was displaced by a religion of fear, Christianity. On the boom-and-bust style of living which gives partial need for “religion,” he says, “…one of the most regular symptoms of religious neurosis in both savage and civilized peoples is a sudden, extravagant voluptuousness, which just as suddenly turns into spasms of penitence and a denial of the world and the will…” Thus, people do something that makes them feel bad, and then they want to repent, and want to deny what it was that led them to feeling bad. Thus, the conversation with Matt about his feeling depraved from watching dirtier and dirtier forms of online content, eventually leading to his discovery that, in fact, Jesus died for our sins and is in heaven watching us. Through religion, the bad person can become good, despite his “conditions of the soul with opposite moral value”; he can become his opposite. And, if someone feels this bad, maybe religion is not such a bad thing; in any event, people are free to choose it. He quotes some French words which says man is most right when he is religious, and he is angry at the words, but then realizes, “…until m final fury actually grew fond of them, these sentences with their upside-down truth. It is so pleasant, such a distinction, to have antipodes of one’s own!” He thus relishes, in his elitist way, the independence of his thought, and does not feel the need to stamp out the wrong opinion. One who renounced theism, “this person may, without really intending it, have opened his eyes to the opposite ideal: to the ideal of the most audacious, lively, and world-affirming human being, one who has learned not only to accept and bear that which has been and is, but who also wants to have it over again, just as it was and is…” On the need for untruths, religion amongst them, “Whoever has looked deeply into the world will surely divine what wisdom there is in human superficiality. It is the instinct of preservation… no one should doubt that a person who so needs the surface must once have made an unfortunate grab underneath it.” Thus, if someone needs this untruth, truth-reversal, so badly, perhaps it is best to let them have it, because they are “sick of life.” Religion usefully places people, he says, in “an illusory higher order of things and thus enable[s] them to remain content with the real order… a harsh… life.” These religions adopt suffering as a dogma, “…all the people who suffer from life as from an illness are in the right, and they would like to ensure that any other experience of life be considered wrong and rendered impossible.”
· “‘I have done that’ says my memory. I cannot have done that—says my pride and remains unshakeable. Finally—memory yields.”
o “The consequences of our actions grab us by the scruff of the neck, oblivious to the fact that we have in the meanwhile ‘mended our ways’.
· “You have been a poor observer of life if you have not also seen the hand that with kindness—kills.”
o “There is a wantonness of goodness that strongly resembles malice.”
· “It is not the strength of his great feelings, but rather their duration that is the mark of a great man.”
· “A person who despises himself still respects himself as a despiser.”
· “Once a matter has been clarified it no longer concerns us.
What might that god have meant who advised: ‘Know thyself!’?
Might he have meant: ‘Don’t be concerned with yourself any more! Become objective!’?
And Socrates?
And ‘the man of science’?”
Thus, in this ancient Greek wisdom, the self-realization process, the letting go of self, and looking at the World with detachment
· “Instinct.—When your house is on fire, you even forget to have dinner.
Yes, but you make up for it later on the ashes.”
· “Dreadful experiences make us wonder whether the person who experiences them may not be something dreadful.” If you are at peace, most experiences, however dreadful, are not so bad. Pierre in War & Peace points out that nothing in this World is so horrible.
· “So cold, so icy, that you burn your fingers on him! Every hand that touches him darts back in fear!
And for that very reason, some think he is aglow.”
People can be attracted to and in awe of those cold, icy people of self-confidence and even of meanness
· “A man’s maturity: having rediscovered the seriousness that he had as a child, at play.” Similar to Maslow. Enjoying the pleasure of life.
· “What’s this? A great man? All I can see is the play-actor of his own ideal.” All is vanity. Very few people truly believe in their own convictions.
· “It is not their brotherly love, but rather the impotence of their brotherly love that keeps today’s Christians from—burning us down.” Thus, due to the not-very-sincere nature of brotherly love of the rabble, they do not burn the world down against those whom they perceive as being the enemies of their brothers.
· “For the free spirit, for the ‘pious man of knowledge’—the pia fraus [pious fraud, false statements of the Church encouraging piety such as ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’] goes even more against the grain (of his ‘piety’) than the impia fraus [impious fraud]. Hence his profound lack of understanding for the Church, proper to the type ‘free spirit’—as his lack of freedom.” Thus, the religious man goes against what he says is right, moreso than the non-religious man. He does not understand his actions, he does not understand his piety, he does not understand the Church, none of it as understands the non-religious man. The church restricts, or attempts to restrict, his freedom. In his freedom, the non-religious man is able to determine his own moral code through experience.
· “Once you resolve to keep your ears closed even to the best counterargument, it shows that you have a strong character. And thus an occasional will to stupidity.”
· “A person who feels himself predestined to observe rather than to believe finds all believers too noisy and insistent: he fends them off.”
· “The will to overcome an emotion is in the last analysis only the will of another or several other emotions.”
· “An aversion to dirt can be so great that it keeps us from cleaning ourselves—from ‘vindicating’ ourselves.”
· “Sensuality often hurries the growth of love too much, so that its roots remain weak and easy to extract.”
· “The more abstract the truth you wish to teach us, the more you must entice our senses into learning it.”
· “The sexes deceive themselves about one another: as a result, they basically honour and love only themselves (or their ideal of themselves, to express it more kindly--) Thus men want women to be peaceful—but women especially are by their very nature unpeaceful, like cats, however well they have learned to give the impression of peacefulness.”
· “Our senses are the first origin of all credibility, all good conscience, all apparent truth.” Everything is what we perceive, thus, all is subjective.
· “Pharisaism is not the degeneracy of a good person: rather, a good portion of it is integral to every sort of goodness.” The sum of all things considered good is not possible (Isaiah Berlin). So, hypocrisy is sometimes necessary. This word originates from Matthew 23:23 where Jesus chastised Pharisees for following the letter of the law instead of its spirit and valuing justice, mercy.
· “One person seeks a midwife for his thoughts, another seeks to act as midwife: the origin of a good conversation.” Not all want to lead.
· “In dealing with scholars and artists, we easily miscalculate in reverse: not infrequently, we find behind a remarkable scholar a mediocre person, and often, in fact, we find behind a mediocre artist—a very remarkable person.” Many artists are driven by their desire for approval, for love, for fame; they might tenaciously pursue this goal, but offer little underneath (i.e. Raff). With the subjective judgment of what “remarkable” is
· “What we do when dreaming, we also do when awake: we first dream up the person we are interacting with—and instantly forget that we have done so.” We make premature judgments.
· “The belly is the reason that man doesn’t readily take himself for a god.”
· “Anyone who fights with monsters should take care that he does not in the process become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes back into you.” Do not become what you say you dislike.
· Italian – “good women and bad women both need the stick” (buona femmina e mala femmina vuol bastone) Do women need “the stick” to get what they want from men?
· “Around a hero everything becomes a tragedy, around a demi-god everything becomes a satyr play; and around God everything becomes—what do you think? Perhaps the ‘world’?” You seek out the things which your vision of yourself can fix.
· “’Where the tree of knowledge stands, you will always find paradise’—that’s what the oldest and the youngest serpents will tell you.” The young, aforementioned as idealistic firebrands, find in “knowledge” an idealistic paradise. People enter middle-age and become scared. By the time they are ready to die, they are willing to acknowledge what is, true knowledge, actual paradise.
· “What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.” If you really feel something, you do not need to consult “the manual” on whether it is good or bad.
· “Objections, evasions, a gay distrust, mockery—all are indications of health; everything absolute comes under pathology.”
· “Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, political parties, nations, epochs, it is the rule.”
· “We no longer love our knowledge enough once we have communicated it.” People care more about knowledge for the sake of vanity than for the sake of knowledge itself
· “It is true that we lie with our mouth; but with the grimace we make when we do so, we still end up telling the truth.” Facial expressions can’t lie.
· “From time to time, we embrace some arbitrary person (because we cannot embrace everybody) for reasons of brotherly love: but that fact above all must be kept from the arbitrary person.” Sometimes people are needy of other people, and clasp onto them, regardless of who they are. Thus, it is not a clasping of respect, but one of necessity. Respect is not arbitrary.
· “You utilitarians, even your love for everything that is utile [useful] is only for the vehicle of your predictions—don’t you really agree that the noise of its wheels is unbearable?” Thus, the utilitarians only love the how of what they want. But, to achieve the how is an awful thing, to do that which is most useful to all. Perhaps this is another elitist dig at the rabble.
· “Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.” People want to be loved more than they love their lovers.
“One sort of moralist would like to exercise his power and creative whims upon mankind; a different sort… uses his moral code to announce: ‘What is honourable about me is that I can obey—and it should be no different for you than for me!’ In short, moral codes too are only a sign language of emotions.” This, for the man who likes duty, and does not like other people who shirk “duty.” Everyone must obey something, in some respect, “But the strange fact is that everything on earth that exists or has existed by way of freedom, subtlety, daring, dance, and perfect sureness, whether it be in ideas, or in governance… has developed only by virtue of the ‘tyranny of such despotic laws’; and seriously, it is very likely that this is what is ‘nature’ and ‘natural’—and not that laisser-aller!” To accomplish anything, there must be discipline and rules. “Whichever moral code we inspect in hat light, its ‘nature’ teaches us to hate the excessive freedom of laisser-aller and instils a need for limited horizons, for immediate tasks—it teaches us to narrow our perspective, and thus, in a certain sense, to be stupid, as a precondition for life and growth. ‘Thou shalt obey, obey somebody, and for a long time: or else you will perish and lose your last remnant of self-respect’—this seems to me to be nature’s moral imperative…” We need to accomplish things to grow, we need to limit our focus in order to be able to accomplish things. If life is a long distraction, there can be no growth, no life. Socrates thought of the other Athenians, “…were men of instinct and never could give enough information about the reasons for their actions… he also laughed at himself… he found the same difficult and incompetence… he argued to himself… We have to help both them and reason come into their own… to lend them a helping hand with good arguments… at bottom he grasped the irrational aspect of moral judgments.” Thus, the “press secretary”, the “bullshit generator”, develops after-the-fact reasons for what has been done. “All of this is to say that we are from time immemorial fundamentally—accustomed to lying. Or, to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, more pleasantly in short: we are all artists much more than we realize.” “All these moral codes that ae addressed to individuals, aimed at their so called ‘happiness’—what are they but behaviorual guides in relation to the degree of precariousness that the individual feels about himself; recipes to counter his passions, his good and bad tendencies…” They are a one-size-fits-all approach for someone who has not yet come into their own. “Human development has been so strangely restricted… because the herd instinct of obedience is inherited best.” The herd man presents himself as, “the only acceptable type of man, glorifying the characteristics that make him dame, docile, and useful to the herd as if they were the true human virtues… people nowadays keep trying to replace commanders with an aggregation of the cleverest herd people… ” On why any form of being better than the herd gets beat down, “When an individual’s highest and strongest instincts break forth with a passion, driving him far above and beyond the average, beyond the lowlands of the herd conscience, the community’s self-regard is destroyed as a result; its belief in itself, its backbone, so to speak, is shattered: and that is why people do well to stigmatize and slander just these instincts above all… everything that raises an individual above the herd and causes his neighbour to fear him is henceforth called evil; a proper, modest, conforming, equalizing mentality, what is average on the scale of desires gains a moral name and respect…” Herd morality says, “I am Morality itself, and nothing else is!” The true philosopher does not live by a code, rather, “lives ‘unphilosophically’ and ‘unwisely’ and above all imprudently and feels the burdensome duty of a hundred tests and temptations in life—he is continually risking himself, he plays that wicked game…” This person is alone, cast off from society in a sense. Regarding the herd-man of learning, “that sunshine of a good name, that enduring seal upon his value and his usefulness that must continually overcome the inner mistrustfulness at the heart’s core of all dependent people and herd animals… he is rich in petty envy and has a lynx-eye for what is base in those other natures whose heights he is unable to reach.” The true philosopher is able to listen to inner dictates, he is separates from “duties and virtues” of the mass, he has a “differing” moral code. “’The greatest person should be the one who can be most lonely, most hidden, most deviant, the man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, abundantly rich in will. This is what greatness should mean…’ nowadays, is---greatness possible?” “It is not easy to learn what a philosopher is, because it cannot be taught you have to ‘know’ it from experience… However the fact that everyone today speaks about things they cannot have experienced is most (and most unfortunately) true about the philosopher… the truly philosophical coexistence of a bold, unrestrained spirituality… an unerring dialectical rigour and necessity is unknown to the experience of most thinkers and scholars…” Everyone is an “expert” on things they have no idea about in the world of “ideas.” When “ordinary minds” try to fix “the greatest problems” they are “mercilessly rebuff[ed]”; thinking that government is the panacea for all problems ensues. On why religion (and “love”) can bind and blind, “…when we love, and particularly when we love most intensely, we learn how to despise—but it all happens unconsciously… without ostentation… or virtuous formula.” Hatred springs from love, but a theatrical production of vanity is not made out of it, as is made of our “love.” But, over time, people resist these affectations, “morality” and “religion”, “It is the music in our conscience, the dance in our spirit that makes all the puritanical litanies, all the philistinism and moral sermons sound so dissonant.” “…deceived about the power of their pity; they would like to believe that love can do anything—that is their true faith. A person with true knowledge of the heart guesses, alas, how poor, stupid, helpless, presumptuous, misguided, more easily destructive than redemptive is even the best, the deepest love!” On Jesus, lack of self-love, and the avoidance of living life here on Earth so one seeks death, life in the everafter, “It is possible that beneath the holy tale and camouflage that is the life of Jesus, lies hidden one of the most painful cases of martyrdom out of knowledge about love; the martyrdom of the most innocent and desirous heart, one that never had enough of any human love, that demanded to love and to be loved and nothing else besides, with harshness, with madness, with frightful outbursts against those who denied him this love. It is the story of a poor man, unsatisfied and insatiable in matters of love, who had to invent hell in order to send there the people who did not want to love him--and who, initiated into human love, finally had to invent a God who was all love, all capacity for love--who takes pity on human love because it is so very paltry, so ignorant! One who feels like that, who knows about love like that--seeks death” Indignation: “Beware of these people who place great value in being considered morally sensitive… If ever we have observed them doing something wrong… they will never forgive us for it…” On giftlessness and hatred, “Those who are limited in spirit prefer to take their revenge on those who are less limited by judging and condemning them morally; this also functions as a kind of indemnity for their not having been well endowed by nature, and finally a chance to acquire spirit and to become refined: malice spiritualizes. In the bottom of their hearts it does them good to think there is a standard that would place at their level even those who have been showered with gifts and privileges of the spirit…” On the difference between types of people, “What we will discover is that most of what interests and attracts people of more refined and discriminating taste, anyone of a higher nature, seems completely ‘uninteresting’ to the average person…” On pity and people who pity, “Wherever pity is being preached these days (and listen carefully, it is the only religion still being preached), the psychologist does well to keep his ears open: through all the vanity, all the noise that typifies these preachers (and all preachers), he will hear a hoarse, groaning, genuine sound of self-contempt… He suffers, and his vanity would have him feel only pity for the suffering of others.” “The hybrid European—a rather ugly plebeian, all in all—simply has to have a costume: he needs history as his costume storeroom. Of course, he notices that no costume quite fits him—he keeps changing and changing them… Their palate, with its very definite Yes and No, their easily ready aversion, their hesitating reserve towards everything foreign, their fear of showing even the bad taste of lively curiosity, and in general that unwillingness of every noble and self-sufficient culture to admit to any new desire, any dissatisfaction of its own, any admiration for the foreign—all this positions them, inclines them to look unfavourably on even the best things in the world, if they are not their property or could not become their plunder.” Thus, the mask, the fixed mindset, that which doesn’t think critically and examine critically due to constantly needing a disguise for the world, fitting everything to the formula. “Isn’t life a hundred times too short to live it—in a state of boredom?” This in answer to every person who has ever told me they are bored; do something, anything. When looking at the harsh nature that is reality, the thinkers, the free spirits, do not bother to brush over and make themselves good with language “sacrifice for knowledge, the heroism of truthfulness”, they have “excessive honesty” which others might call “cruelty”; they want more, think they can do more, knowledge and its pursuit by someone… “…may be a strange and crazy project, but it is a project—who could deny that! Why have we chosen it, this crazy project? Or to ask it anther way ‘Why bother with knowledge?’ Everyone will ask us about it. And we, pressed in this way, we who have asked ourselves just the same thing a hundred times over, we have found and do find no better answer…” Why do you climb the mountain? Because it is there. But, for those whom excessive honesty is distressing, perhaps we could have some compassion? “Learning transforms us; it acts as all nourishment does, doing more than just ‘keeping us going’” It teaches us to be able to see and know ourselves and the human condition. “…such future Europeans will… [be]… handy workers who need a master, a commander, like their daily bread… procreating a type that has been developed in the subtlest sense to be slaves… the democratization of Europe is at the same time an involuntary contrivance for the breeding of tyrants—understanding the word in every sense, even the most spiritual.” More than 100 years later, global Capitalism has bred people on the top and on the bottom, all of whom are slaves to the master of consumption; the minimum wage employee is almost as much a slave as the 70 hour a week investment banker or CEO; the latter might be even more of a slave. Regarding the neurosis and anomie that can infect a people, as it did the Nazis, and as it does so much today, “If a people suffers, wants to suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition, it must be expected that various clouds and disturbances will pass across its spirit, little attacks of acquired stupidity, in short… May I be forgiven that I too, during a short hazardous stay in a very infected area, did not remain entirely spared by the disease and, like everyone, began to think about things that were none of my business: the first sign of political infection.” Recalling Tolstoy and why it is that the people of nations want what they do, also giving rise to what extent do people in an advanced civilization owe things to one another, vs. being busy-bodies in other people’s personal business. “Even that social body… if the body is vital and not moribund… will have to be the will to power incarnate, it will want to grow… gain the upper hand—not out of some morality or immorality, but because it is alive, and because life simply is the will to power… people everywhere are rhapsodizing, even under the guise of science, about future social conditions that will have lost their ‘exploitative character’—to my ears that sounds as if they were promising to invest a life form that would refrain from all organic functions. ‘Exploitation’ is not part of a decadent or imperfect, primitive society: it is part of the fundamental nature of living things, as its fundamental organic function, it is a consequence of the true will to power, which is simply the will to life.” People naturally want to go up and to the right, this is the default setting. People are competitive. Bukowski poem about driving on the 110 and then starting to race a guy, “I don’t know why.” “The noble type of person feels himself as determining value—he does not need approval, he judges that ‘what is harmful to me is harmful per se’, he knows that he is the one who causes things to be revered in the first place, he creates values. Everything that he knows of himself her reveres… a feeling of fullness, of overflowing power, of happiness in great tension, an awareness of a wealth that would like to bestow and share—the noble person will also help the unfortunate, but not, or not entirely, out of pity, but rather from the urgency created by an excess of power.” He who realizes in himself values and trust in the self does not waver, knows what is “right” and “wrong”, and also wants to help the unfortunate because he feels it is possible. “…people of ‘modern ideas’ believe in progress and ‘the future’ almost by instinct… foreign and embarrassing to current taste because of the severity of its fundamental principle: that we have duties only towards our peers, and that we may treat those of lower rank, anything foreign, as we think best or ‘as our heart dictates’ or in any event ‘beyond good and evil’—pity and the like should be thought of in this context.” He questions what it is we really want, that we do things only out of our love for the humanity, in this ideal system; what we really do, when we pity, is place ourselves above those whom we pity, relegating them to a forever inferior status. “It is different with the second type of morality, slave morality. Assuming that the raped, the oppressed ,the suffering… engage in moralizing, what will their moral value judgments have in common? They will probably express a pessimistic suspicion about the whole human condition, and they might condemn the human being along with his condition. The slave’s eye does not readily apprehend the virtues of the powerful: he is sceptical and distrustful… he would like to convince himself that even their happiness is not genuine.” As Sowell points out, someone has to do the work the capitalist performs, for better or for worse; planned economies do not account for the improper allocation of incentives. The endless pessimism about humanity and the inability to see “what results” from the way-of-things (though an ability to see things the other way, which the “powerful” may be blind to, the actual raping, oppression, and suffering which exists). He who suffers mortal wounds of the soul, “The spiritual arrogance and loathing of any person who has suffered deeply… his horrifying certainty, pervading and colouring him completely, that because of his suffering he knows morethan the wisest or most clever people can… requires all forms of disguise to protect it from the touch of intrusive or pitying hands and in general from everything that is not equal to its pain… they want to be misunderstood… they… would like to conceal and contest their possession of hearts that are proud, shattered, irreparable; and at times folly itself becomes the mask for a wretched, all-too-certain knowledge. From which we can conclude that it is a sign of a more subtle humanity to revere ‘the mask’ and not pursue psychology or curiosity in the wrong place.” The truly aware person knows not to go poking those who need something so badly. Your mindset of what and who you are, that terrible thing done to the children of people who hate themselves, telling them they will never be enough, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, “…in every sort of dependent social class, from time immemorial, a common person was only what he was thought to be—completely unused to determining values himself, he also attributed to himself no other value than what his masters attributed to him… the ordinary person first waits for someone else to have an opinion about him, and then instinctively submits to it—and by no means to ‘good’ opinions, but also to bad or improper ones.” What Orwell saw, that the working man feels himself a slave to a million imperceptible forces, to “them”, that “them” that won’t ever let them do anything. “So I repeat: vanity is an atavism.” On tradition and respect for it, “Much has been achieved when the great crowd… has finally been trained to feel that it may not touch everything… the so-called educated people, believers in ‘modern ideas’, stir our revulsion most of all perhaps by their lack of shame, their easy and impertinent eyes and hands that go touching everything, licking, groping; and it is possible that among the common people, the low people, among today’s peasants especially, there is relatively more nobility in taste and sense of reverence than in the newspaper-reading intellectual demi-monde, the educated.” Some traditions exist because they are required; people need to work, or else people will starve. The man of “modern ideas” throws off everything and says that man can survive off of poetry and air. Life is not the sum of all its perceived possible positives, “…as people of an unshakeable and sensitive conscience that blushes at every compromise.” “’The only person we can really respect is one who is not seeking himself.’” -Goethe: this is true is so many ways, people follow those who are, or think they are, sure of themselves. On culture and how people comprehend one another, “Using the same words is not enough to ensure mutual understanding: we must also use the same words for the same category of inner experiences; ultimately, we must have the same experiences in common. That is why the individuals of one single people understand one another better than the members of different peoples do… when people have lived for a long time under similar conditions (of climate, soil, danger, necessities, work), then something comes into being as a result, something that ‘goes without saying’, a people. In all their souls a similar number of often-recurring experiences has prevailed over others less frequent: because of these experiences, they understand one another quickly… (the history of language is the history of a process of abbreviation)… they are connected… The greater the danger, the greater the need to agree quickly and easily about what is necessary… both are doomed as soon as one person discovers that the same words have caused different feelings, thoughts, hunches… in the other person.” Foreshadowing Sowell and how immigrant groups understand and trust one another, and can achieve a common goal in the mist of a different culture, reduce their costs of doing business as a result of this understanding and trust, and achieve a superior result. Something that “goes without saying” for Jack and Americans of many generations but might elude the first generation children of immigrants. Echoing Tolstoy on history, “Success has always been the biggest liar—and the ‘work’ itself is a success; a great statesman, a conqueror, an explorer is disguised to the point of unrecognizability by his creations… ‘Great men’, as others revere them, are poor little tales written after the fact; in the world of historical value, counterfeits predominate.” What is great? Is it great to have something that other people say is great, is a success? “Signs of nobility: never to think of reducing our duties into duties for everyone; not to want to transfer or share our own responsibility; to count our privileges and their exercise among our duties.” One-size-fits-all morality is not necessarily, and we do not put our responsibilities on others; we consider the exercise of our talents and gifts among our own duties, as is self-determined. When we do things, we learn, “After we have finished building our house, we notice that we have inadvertently learned something in the process, something that we absolutely should have known before we---began to build.” “It is not his actions that identify him… There are plenty of artists and scholars these days whose works reveal that they are motivated by a great desire to be noble: but just this very need for nobility is fundamentally different from the needs of the noble soul itself, and virtually the eloquent and dangerous sign of its absence. It is not works, it is faith that is decisive here… some fundamental certainty of a noble soul about itself, something that cannot be sought or found or, perhaps, lost. The noble soul reveres itself.” This is self-respect. It may come about through deeds, the feeling, but once the feeling is there, the need for actions disappears, it is a knowledge that is not made to be wavered. If you feel the need for some sort of superiority, it is the sign that you do not feel your own worth within. If you must go on Quora and ask “How can I be like Elon Musk?” you will never be like Elon Musk because Elon Musk would never pose such a question (regardless of his having self-respect or not). On not digging deeper, as many do not, “Every philosophy is a foreground philosophy… ‘he stopped just here, looked back, looked around, that he did not dig deeper just here, but set down his spade—and there is also something suspicious about it.’ Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy; every opinion is also a hiding place, every word also a mask.” People wanted to reduce everything to a formula so as to make life more possible, “Human beings (complex…) invented the good conscience so that they would begin to enjoy their souls by simplifying them; and all of morality is one long, bold falsification that enables us to take what pleasure we can in observing the soul.”