If you've ever read Nietzsche, perhaps you've been struck by how directly he responds to (and attacks) Hegel's idea of history. The influence of the Enlightenment sits heavy upon the readings of Hegel, and certainly there are many a moment when you ask yourself whether or not Hegel really and truly believes that all meaningful life (through action, through spirit, through history and therefore also through time) has ended.
Perhaps what I love most about Nietzsche is his "Eternal Return." If you're not familliar with him (and therefore probably have never really experienced having your personal concept of truth - capital T - turned upside down) then I will briefly explain what this means. Nietzsche, as far as I've understood him, picks up where the Greeks (ah, the Greeks..) left off with a cyclical continuum of nature and time. Note: he does not concur with much else they wrote! For Nietzsche, it is PROCESS and not progress that becomes the measure of meaningful life. He pushes for wo/men using the creative process to ..create.. and then to be able to see their creation and once again, use that same process to accept the success or failure of their creation. Nietzsche says that if we can use our creative process in a way that we could live with, as though we had to live all through eternity (that is, endless cycles of creating and then creating a response to our creations) then we have found our own truth.
I've said again (and again and again) that I've been grappling again (and again and again) with the sense of rhythm, almost to the expense of instinct, that people seem to have developed with regard to meals/food. With regards to Nietzsche, I really find myself returning to conversations I've had and been privvy to, in which there has been discussion of the "right way" to eat. Although Nietzsche was bored to tears by science (and indeed, I think that although he defied Hegel's end to philosophy, he certainly pioneered the decay of metaphysics) we can all agree that via science, certain absolutes hold true. Or do they...
:)
For all the high carb, low fat, no dairy, all dairy, vegan, paleo, south beach, west coast dietary approaches, I think Nietzsche would have some serious poo-pooing for anyone who avoided confronting their food-truths by adopting a foreign philosophy. I have come to believe more than ever that we are all responsible for finding the truths (capital and lower case T) in our lives. With regard to fitness, health, longevity and aesthetics, I am finding that absolutely no one can influence my own creative process of eating and living more than me. As radical as he may be, as much as we can tame and tone down Nietzsche, I think we need to take him for his rawest ideas and realize that there is no morbidity to finding your own truth, or rejecting someone else's (diplomatically, of course).
What gave rise to all of this ridiculousness, you ask? I've been a bit - nay - hideously sick for a few days with the most prolific stomach flu ever. In the course of this sickness, I have really come to find a renewed sense of individualism in my approach to well-being. I've come to see that in fact, I don't really care for doctors or for medicine as I care for healing and messages. I realize that I've even been eating in a prescribed way and haven't entirely found my own way when it comes to repeating the cycle in a way that brings me peace.
Although, now that I think of it.. if I ever truly "find" my algorhythm for creative fulfillment, then where does that leave me and N-Dub..?
"A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation."
-Friedrich (easily misspelled as "Fried Rice") Nietzsche
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A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation."
Indeed.
However, Nietzsche does presume that creation in this context is a one time deal as opposed to ongoing acts of creation?
What do I mean? Well that's a good question. Allow me to elaborate.
Creation. To bring into being from nothing. But to bring what into being? Fixed, static, and unchanging entities and beings?
No.
Beings and a cosmos that is changing, renewing, moment to moment. As humans we are literally renewing beings - Skin and organ cells die and are replaced. Wounds heal. Leaves turn from green to rust. Stars are born and die.
If one understands the Almighty as Operative Cause (by which I mean to say that Cause that gives rise to all other causes), one comes to appreciate that the act of creation is not an act but is rather an ongoing process of acting.
Who's got time for boredom?
I wonder, sometimes, why childhood is prized so much, by so many. Eat, sleep, poop, toot, burp, smile and repeat.
Perhaps, I've answered my own question. Perhaps, though, in addition to a life of indolence and sloth, we value childhood for what isn't there. The constraints on mind, the constraints on spirit, the constraints on body that are pushed on us through a rigorous and process of socialization.
Babies dont' think that they're too fat. Babies don't think that they need deoderant. Babies don't think of themselves as stupid.
Isn't that interesting?
Infants represent, perhaps, the ultimate in listening to ones-self.
Why?
They don't have any other options. They haven't been taught to attend to external cues in preference to internal ones.
So they don't need therapy, 2nd mortgages, waxing products, laproscopic bands or a lubricating strip that changes from white to another colour to let one know when to change one's razor (what, incdentally, is wrong with going by how one's skin feels)?
External cues. Somebody else's think about how we should think. What we should value. How we should feel. How we should look. What we should eat. When we should feel shame. When we should not feel shame (as an aside I would suggest that our present socialization has, in the main, got the latter two buggered up to disgraceful extent).
I think that one ought, on an ongoing basis, to seek a deep, unadulterated and unmediated knowledge of self. One ought, then, I think to critically reflect upon, consolidate and act on the basis of the awareness that emerges from such introspection.
At an atomic level, we are all part of the same whole. Acting on instinct, therefore, would appear to be nothing more than tapping in to the resources, the power, the whole that we are already a part of. One engages in rationality, to some extent, by removing ones-self from the whole, by putting ones-self in the position of viewer, and the other in the position of subject (that which is being viewed). Rationality is thus an exercise in separation and reflection, alledgedly to gain an "objective" perspective on things. But to separate, even intellectually, is to confine ones-self to one's own meagre resources. Not a bad thing. Not always a useful thing.
Instinct. Like curling up in the foetal position, pulling one's hand away from a hot stove, smiling when happy. To rejoin, to become part of, to draw from the more. For a moment, to become part of the whole.
I've thought it for many years and still believe it -
There are not many things. There is one thing that manifests itself variously.
I think I know this.
By instinct.
Any chance that do you do essays?
(Hopefully not by instinct, though!)
Aamir does essays.
By inward reflection, by introspection.
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