Nietzsche criticizing GMG

[Henk]

Let's post one more aphorism and then close this topic.

This helped me out together with a few other aphorisms:

'79.
A Proposal.—If, according to the arguments of Pascal and Christianity, our ego is always hateful, how can we permit and suppose other people, whether God or men, to love it? It would be contrary to all good principles to let ourselves be loved when we know very well that we deserve nothing but hatred—not to speak of other repugnant feelings. "But this is the very Kingdom of Grace." Then you look upon your love for your neighbour as a grace? Your pity as a grace? Well, then, if you can do all this, there is no reason why you should not go a step further: love yourselves through grace, and then you will no longer find your God necessary, and the entire drama of the Fall and Redemption of mankind will reach its last act in yourselves!' (from: 'Dawn')

Ordered Pascal's 'Pensées' in Dutch translation.

[foxandpeng]

Sounds a bit like clutching at straws to find meaning, bud. Such wide wobbles make me hope that you are OK and have good support around you.

[Henk]

Sounds a bit like clutching at straws to find meaning, bud. Such wide wobbles make me hope that you are OK and have good support around you.

I have some contacts, but live quite isolated. I'm OK. Thanks for your attention. I've lived my life for the greatest part, I'm not very much into things anymore, besides music, Nietzsche and some other philosophy books. I try to care for my health and brain, try to enjoy my garden. I have my philosophy, to maintain mental and social health, and my hopes and dreams.

There's so much meaninglessness in this world. GMG is also quite meaningless to me, so this makes me doubt of staying or leaving.

One more aphorism by Nietzsche then, because this is about the meaning of our world to me:
'186. The Cult of Culture.—On great minds is bestowed the terrifying all-too-human of their natures, their blindnesses, deformities, and extravagances, so that their more powerful, easily all-too-powerful influence may be continually held within bounds through the distrust aroused by such qualities. For the sum-total of all that humanity needs for its continued existence is so comprehensive, and demands powers so diverse and so numerous, that for every one-sided predilection, whether in science or politics or art or commerce, to which such natures would persuade us, mankind as a whole has to pay a heavy price. It has always been a great disaster to culture when human beings are worshipped. In this sense we may understand the precept of Mosaic law which forbids us to have any other gods but God.—Side by side with the cult of genius and violence we must always place, as its complement and remedy, the cult of culture. This cult can find an intelligent appreciation even for the material, the inferior, the mean, the misunderstood, the weak, the imperfect, the one-sided, the incomplete, the untrue, the apparent, even the wicked and horrible, and can grant them the concession that all this is necessary. For the continued harmony of all things human, attained by amazing toil and strokes of luck, and just as much the work of Cyclopes and ants as of geniuses, shall never be lost. How, indeed, could we dispense with that deep, universal, and often uncanny bass, without which, after all, melody cannot be melody?' (from: 'Human, all too human')

[foxandpeng]

I have some contacts, but live quite isolated. I'm OK. Thanks for your attention. I've lived my life for the greatest part, I'm not very much into things anymore, besides music, Nietzsche and some other philosophy books. I try to care for my health and brain, try to enjoy my garden. I have my philosophy, to maintain mental and social health, and my hopes and dreams.

One more aphorism by Nietzsche then:
'186. The Cult of Culture.—On great minds is bestowed the terrifying all-too-human of their natures, their blindnesses, deformities, and extravagances, so that their more powerful, easily all-too-powerful influence may be continually held within bounds through the distrust aroused by such qualities. For the sum-total of all that humanity needs for its continued existence is so comprehensive, and demands powers so diverse and so numerous, that for every one-sided predilection, whether in science or politics or art or commerce, to which such natures would persuade us, mankind as a whole has to pay a heavy price. It has always been a great disaster to culture when human beings are worshipped. In this sense we may understand the precept of Mosaic law which forbids us to have any other gods but God.—Side by side with the cult of genius and violence we must always place, as its complement and remedy, the cult of culture. This cult can find an intelligent appreciation even for the material, the inferior, the mean, the misunderstood, the weak, the imperfect, the one-sided, the incomplete, the untrue, the apparent, even the wicked and horrible, and can grant them the concession that all this is necessary. For the continued harmony of all things human, attained by amazing toil and strokes of luck, and just as much the work of Cyclopes and ants as of geniuses, shall never be lost. How, indeed, could we dispense with that deep, universal, and often uncanny bass, without which, after all, melody cannot be melody?' (from: 'Human, all too human')

Keep on, buddy. Shout up if you want a listening ear.

[Henk]

Keep on, buddy. Shout up if you want a listening ear.

Thank you.

[Cato]

I have some contacts, but live quite isolated. I'm OK. Thanks for your attention. I've lived my life for the greatest part, I'm not very much into things anymore, besides music, Nietzsche and some other philosophy books. I try to care for my health and brain, try to enjoy my garden. I have my philosophy, to maintain mental and social health, and my hopes and dreams.

There's so much meaninglessness * in this world. GMG is also quite meaningless to me, so this makes me doubt of staying or leaving.

Greetings Henk!

Allow me to recommend the books of Jacques Barzun to you!

You might enjoy Darwin, Marx, and Wagner (SIC!), The Culture We Deserve, and The Use and Abuse of Art.


An American philosopher, whose works I have always enjoyed, since I first discovered them 60 years ago or so, is Albert Jay Nock.

Not a book, but a long essay, which I can recommend is The Anarchist's Progress, available online:

The Anarchist's Progress by Albert Jay Nock

* As a septuagenarian, allow me to observe that it has been my experience that the simplest events, when seen as a part of Life's concatenation, can contain - or lead to - immense meaning after all!

But at times one must stand back and search for it!  At other times, it slaps you in the face!    😇

Best Wishes!

Cato

[Henk]

Greetings Henk!

Allow me to recommend the books of Jacques Barzun to you!

You might enjoy Darwin, Marx, and Wagner (SIC!), The Culture We Deserve, and The Use and Abuse of Art.


An American philosopher, whose works I have always enjoyed, since I first discovered them 60 years ago or so, is Albert Jay Nock.

Not a book, but a long essay, which I can recommend is The Anarchist's Progress, available online:

The Anarchist's Progress by Albert Jay Nock

* As a septuagenarian, allow me to observe that it has been my experience that the simplest events, when seen as a part of Life's concatenation, can contain - or lead to - immense meaning after all!

But at times one must stand back and search for it!  At other times, it slaps you in the face!    😇

Best Wishes!

Cato

Thanks, Leo.

I have searched up your suggestions. I'm not so much interested, in all honestly.

I experience meaning in my daily life, just not so much in the world outside.
I recognize what you say. Sometimes things get together, sometimes things cause me to move, altering my philosophy, sometimes I'm upset and feel more alive. Just some instances of meaning.
I think my philosophy makes me perceive meaning.

[steve ridgway]

From Dawn:
'117.
In Prison.—My eye, whether it be keen or weak, can only see a certain distance, and it is within this space that I live and move: this horizon is my immediate fate, greater or lesser, from which I cannot escape. Thus, a concentric circle is drawn round every being, which has a centre and is peculiar to himself. In the same way our ear encloses us in a small space, and so likewise does our touch. We measure the world by these horizons within which our senses confine each of us within prison walls. We say that this is near and that is far distant, that this is large and that is small, that one thing is hard and another soft; and this appreciation of things we call sensation—but it is all an error per se! According to the number of events and emotions which it is on an average possible for us to experience in a given space of time, we measure our lives; we call them short or long, rich or poor, full or empty; and according to the average of human life we estimate that of other beings,—and all this is an error per se!

If we had eyes a hundred times more piercing to examine the things that surround us, men would seem to us to be enormously tall; we can even imagine organs by means of which men would appear to us to be of immeasurable stature. On the other hand, certain organs could be so formed as to permit us to view entire solar systems as if they were contracted and brought close together like a single cell: and to beings of an inverse order a single cell of the human body could be made to appear in its construction, movement, and harmony as if it were a solar system in itself. The habits of our senses have wrapped us up in a tissue of lying sensations which in their turn lie at the base of all our judgments and our "knowledge,"—there are no means of exit or escape to the real world! We are like spiders in our own webs, and, whatever we may catch in them, it will only be something that our web is capable of catching.'

This is a great observation; thank you for reminding me of it @Henk  .

I think of it as like looking into one facet of a diamond or being located at one point in an enormous web. We are each unique, exist in our own particular portion of spacetime, and understand the universe from our own perspective. It sometimes feels to me as if in following ideas I'm moving along a strand of a web only to get further away from my home position; what I need to do is identify how the world works for me. You may occupy a philosophical position very close to that of Nietzsche, however it may not be identical, it's a matter of how just how much aligns with your own experience and which parts differ.

[Florestan]

Henk, allow me to recommend you --- no, definitely not another philosopher, because imho philosophy is part of your problems and not a solution --- a poet, William Wordsworth, and more specifically three of his poems.

Expostulation and Reply

The Tables Turned

I Wandered Lonely

[Henk]

This is a great observation; thank you for reminding me of it @Henk  .

I think of it as like looking into one facet of a diamond or being located at one point in an enormous web. We are each unique, exist in our own particular portion of spacetime, and understand the universe from our own perspective. It sometimes feels to me as if in following ideas I'm moving along a strand of a web only to get further away from my home position; what I need to do is identify how the world works for me. You may occupy a philosophical position very close to that of Nietzsche, however it may not be identical, it's a matter of how just how much aligns with your own experience and which parts differ.

Yes, I should not give in. I should take my time and gather myself back.

[Henk]

Henk, allow me to recommend you --- no, definitely not another philosopher, because imho philosophy is part of your problems and not a solution --- a poet, William Wordsworth, and more specifically three of his poems.

Expostulation and Reply

The Tables Turned

I Wandered Lonely

Thanks, Florestan. I should read the first poem more closely, since I miss the clue.
Poetry is an excellent idea indeed. Good for concentration and soul food. I have some good poetry books also Dutch.
But perhaps a better thing for me is art as food for the soul and reflection. Visual stimulation. Making art myself, and being an autodidact, my experience and know-how, is an advantage. This indeed would be a great way of living my own life.

[steve ridgway]

So from my point in the web I could follow the strand of number 6 and science to element 6 - Carbon which is shown in the Elements iPad app as a rotating sample..

[steve ridgway]

..or I might look for the corresponding card in some decks of themed playing cards to see if they spark any ideas - and find the top card in the first deck I pick up is indeed the 6 of Spades   .

[steve ridgway]

LOL I don't think I'll be following this road any further today .

[Papy Oli]

LOL I don't think I'll be following this road any further today .

Full of holes anyway...that's what I read in the news today, oh boy...

[steve ridgway]

 That will have been due to the boring beetles .

[Papy Oli]

That will have been due to the boring beetles .

  

No p(l)ot holes in this story   

[Iota]

I have some contacts, but live quite isolated. I'm OK. Thanks for your attention. I've lived my life for the greatest part, I'm not very much into things anymore, besides music, Nietzsche and some other philosophy books. I try to care for my health and brain, try to enjoy my garden. I have my philosophy, to maintain mental and social health, and my hopes and dreams.

There's so much meaninglessness in this world. GMG is also quite meaningless to me, so this makes me doubt of staying or leaving.

Seeing as nobody else has mentioned it I will, and you may be well aware of it already, but some people go the other route and find enlightenment/peace stepping away from their minds, turning off thought and just being in the present moment, fully aware but free of thought or at least involvement in it. One uses the mind only as a tool as and when it is required (which of course it often is in most people's lives). The present moment is a place we can spend surprisingly little time, as many of us habitually look forward, strategising etc, or look back trying to make sense of things, trying to construct meaning and sense rather than letting it come to us.
But if you are interested in any of this I'm really not the person to ask, I know very little, but a book like The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle for instance covers it well I think, though there are many others.

And actually all I came on to say before I launched into my Janet & John explanation of spirituality, was that you seem a genuine, questing and honest sort of person, and whatever transpires from your searches I wish you the best of luck with it all.   

[Henk]

Seeing as nobody else has mentioned it I will, and you may be well aware of it already, but some people go the other route and find enlightenment/peace stepping away from their minds, turning off thought and just being in the present moment, fully aware but free of thought or at least involvement in it. One uses the mind only as a tool as and when it is required (which of course it often is in most people's lives). The present moment is a place we can spend surprisingly little time, as many of us habitually look forward, strategising etc, or look back trying to make sense of things, trying to construct meaning and sense rather than letting it come to us.
But if you are interested in any of this I'm really not the person to ask, I know very little, but a book like The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle for instance covers it well I think, though there are many others.

And actually all I came on to say before I launched into my Janet & John explanation of spirituality, was that you seem a genuine, questing and honest sort of person, and whatever transpires from your searches I wish you the best of luck with it all.   

Thank you, Iota. The attention I get in this thread is doing me well. I was out of balance. Too much Nietzsche. I lost the grip on my own life, with bad concentration not helping in this. The cure for my concentration and thinking by reading Nietzsche worked, but worked not for my life.

I now started to read a book by art historian Ad de Visser. This seems to work well. I'm very happy with it. So I find balance.
I figured out a much more simplified philosophy, tackling in a better way my problems, doing away with a lot of mass. Still Nietzsche, but in a light sense.

Good suggestion about thinking less. I have some books on Buddhism, some by Osho. In any way I try to do away with bad thinking. Bad thinking (such as caused by paranoia) can, with emotional, social and spiritual stress lead to psychosis. So I try to think and reason well and fill my mind with good thoughts and a philosophy that works for me. It's indeed nice if the mind is just quiet, I'm sometimes in that state, maybe I can try to silence my mind more, maybe I stress it too much.
I'm indeed very questing. I think I'm honest too.

I'm flattered. The kindness I received is something to be thankful for and something to remember. I think I just keep hanging around here and silence the critical voice of Nietzsche. Some human touch is important. It's my life that I'm living.

[DavidW]

To quote Red Green, "Remember I'm pulling for you, and we're all in this together."