The Tao Of Nietzsche

[Stosh]

Fred said:

 

I am bringing gifts unto men." "Give them nothing," said the saint. "Take rather part of their load, and carry it along with them—that will be most agreeable unto them: if only it be agreeable unto thee! If, however, thou wilt give unto them, give them no more than an alms, and let them also beg for it!"

 

I dont know what Tao has to say about these topics but I think pride is very significant , and being part of something-companionship too , that pride can be shown in begging is ironically interesting and the idea that folks dont want things to just be handed to them also seems to be true. I dont know what the beginning means.

 

So maybe it means that the authour thinks the lives of men would be benefitted if they could drop pride and ambition they prize?

Edited December 19, 2012 by Stosh

[Marblehead]

Hi Stosh,

 

Nice response and question.

 

I posted this because it included the word "love". The saint had already given up on 'love for man' and rested with 'love of God'. Of course, at the end of this very paragraph, upon the parting of Zarathustra and the saint, Zarathustra questions: "Is it possible that this old saint hasn't heard that GOD IS DEAD?

 

So what is left? There is no God to love and loving man is useless.

 

I think that you are on to something with your question. If things are just given to man he comes to expect gifts through no effort of their own. (American Welfare System) But if we offer them help with their load, or if we require them to do something, even if it is only to beg, then what is received has much more value.

 

And yes, perhaps the concept and feeling of pride in man is badly misplaced in most cases. Interesting concepts.

[Vmarco]

This is a shot in the dark.

 

Otherwise instead of making a sound point; you are just exposing your incompetence and plain ignorance of the subject ( here the Christian love).

 

"When people say 'I have faith', what they really mean is 'I don't want to know the truth'." Nietzsche

 

The Great Love Chapter of Christendom, Corinthians 13; is quite simple, "love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things", 1 Cor 13:7.

 

Even simplier is what it points to,...although this form of love, that is, bearing, believing, hoping and enduring is encouraged by their Faithful, it isn't Unconditional Love, but the submission, devotion, expectation and suffering to the conditions of their religions brewed beliefs.

 

"What would be the need for faith if it stood to reason?" Joseph Campbell

[Bubbles]

yada yada, Vmarco

 

your quotes and thinking are just spinning around

 

Please study, ponder and question your own thinking more and talk less. Be a true taoist

 

Edited: I am out of this one too

 

Edited 2: Sorry Marblehead

 

Edited 3 : Ok, I come back just just a little

Edited December 21, 2012 by bubbles

[Marblehead]

People come, people go. Nietzsche will live forever.

[GrandmasterP]

Remember that Graffito?

God is Dead.... Signed Nietzsche

beneath in another hand...

Nietzsche is dead.......Signed God

 

I like Fred.

[Marblehead]

Remember that Graffito?

God is Dead.... Signed Nietzsche

beneath in another hand...

Nietzsche is dead.......Signed God

 

I like Fred.

Yeah, it is easy to call a person dead after they have died. The depth of some people truely amazes me.

 

Need I say I like Fred too?

[Vmarco]

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

[Vmarco]

Whatever a theist regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth. Friedrich Nietzsche

[Vmarco]

"Christians call it faith ... I call it the herd." Friedrieh Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

Vmarco calls it Sheeple.

[Vmarco]

"One had better put on gloves before handling the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it highly advisable." Friedrich Nietzsche

[Vmarco]

"Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life." Friedrich Nietzsche

[Marblehead]

"Christians call it faith ... I call it the herd." Friedrieh Wilhelm Nietzsche

 

Vmarco calls it Sheeple.

Yes, I noticed that.

[Marblehead]

"Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life." Friedrich Nietzsche

Yes, this is an important statement but we must be careful to not misunderstand it. And remember that Fred was living in a place and a time where life was so very hypocritical. And the people used Christianity to justify their hypocracy.

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

Nietzsche was special.

 

His philosophy is a brick...

 

 

 

 

[Bubbles]

Yes, this is an important statement but we must be careful to not misunderstand it. And remember that Fred was living in a place and a time where life was so very hypocritical. And the people used Christianity to justify their hypocracy.

 

Nietzsche condemned Christianity- the church- and all the ideological instruments of mass control it used. These instruments were made up by transforming the Gospels message ( which is about how to live so that life who be freed) into morality and life contempt. The following extract is very clear about it. Snap judgements are always off the mark.

 

Taken from Antichrist:

 

Chap 33: In the whole psychology of the “Gospels” the concepts of guilt and punishment are lacking, and so is that of reward. “Sin,” which means anything that puts a distance between God and man, is abolished—this is precisely the “glad tidings.” Eternal bliss is not merely promised, nor is it bound up with conditions: it is conceived as the only reality—what remains consists merely of signs useful in speaking of it.

The results of such a point of view project themselves into a new way of life, the special evangelical way of life. It is not a “belief” that marks off the Christian; he is distinguished by a different mode of action; he acts differently. He offers no resistance, either by word or in his heart, to those who stand against him. He draws no distinction between strangers and countrymen, Jews and Gentiles (“neighbour,” of course, means fellow-believer, Jew). He is angry with no one, and he despises no one. He neither appeals to the courts of justice nor heeds their mandates (“Swear not at all”) (Matthew v, 34) He never under any circumstances divorces his wife, even when he has proofs of her infidelity.—And under all of this is one principle; all of it arises from one instinct.—

 

The life of the Saviour was simply a carrying out of this way of life—and so was his death.... He no longer needed any formula or ritual in his relations with God—not even prayer. He had rejected the whole of the Jewish doctrine of repentance and atonement; he knew that it was only by a way of life that one could feel one’s self “divine,” “blessed,” “evangelical,” a “child of God.” Not by “repentance,” not by “prayer and forgiveness” is the way to God: only the Gospel way leads to God—it is itself “God!”—What the Gospels abolished was the Judaism in the concepts of “sin,” “forgiveness of sin,” “faith,” “salvation through faith”—the whole ecclesiastical dogma of the Jews was denied by the “glad tidings.”

The deep instinct which prompts the Christian how to live so that he will feel that he is “in heaven” and is “immortal,” despite many reasons for feeling that he is not “in heaven”: this is the only psychological reality in “salvation.”—A new way of life, not a new faith....

 

Chap 34

If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths” —that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of “the Son of God” does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this typical symbolist, of the “kingdom of God,” and of the “sonship of God.” Nothing could be more un-Christian than the crude ecclesiastical notions of God as a person, of a “kingdom of God” that is to come, of a “kingdom of heaven” beyond, and of a “son of God” as the second person of the Trinity. All this—if I may be forgiven the phrase—is like thrusting one’s fist into the eye (and what an eye!) of the Gospels: a disrespect for symbols amounting to world-historical cynicism.... But it is nevertheless obvious enough what is meant by the symbols “Father” and “Son”—not, of course, to every one—: the word “Son” expresses entrance into the feeling that there is a general transformation of all things (beatitude), and “Father” expresses that feeling itself—the sensation of eternity and of perfection.—I am ashamed to remind you of what the church has made of this symbolism: has it not set an Amphitryon story at the threshold of the Christian “faith”? And a dogma of “immaculate conception” for good measure?... And thereby it has robbed conception of its immaculateness—

 

The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.” The whole idea of natural death is absent from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, useful only as a symbol. The “hour of death” is not a Christian idea—“hours,” time, the physical life and its crises have no existence for the bearer of “glad tidings.”... The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere....

 

Chap 35

 

This “bearer of glad tidings” died as he lived and taught—not to “save mankind,” but to show mankind how to live. It was a way of life that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers, before his accusers—his demeanour on the cross. He does not resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme penalty—more, he invites it.... And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who do him evil.... Not to defend one’s self,not to show anger, not to lay blames.... On the contrary, to submit even to the Evil One—to love him....

Edited December 21, 2012 by bubbles

[三江源]

Excellent, thankyou, bubbles, so much, for taking the time to fill out the picture.

 

How different it looks, according to the way in which we look.

 

How misleading is partial evidence.

[Marblehead]

Hi Bubbles,

 

You done good!

 

Nietzsche was not anti-Jesus. Many years ago I submitted a paper suggesting that Nietzsche considered Jesus to have been one who was just about to become a superman but failed in the end when, on the cross (pole) he asked, "God, why have you forsaken me?"

[GrandmasterP]

God......

"Who, me"...

..............................

Rabbi and a Mullah chewing the fat in a bar (as they do).

Rabbi says....

"We paid for our boy to have a gap year on a kibbutz, last week he comes home and announces he's become a Christian. My wife is broken hearted".

The mullah nods tearfully and sniffs...

"Same here, we paid a fortune for our lad to study Koran at the best medrassah in Jerusalem, he's just back and now he's telling everyone that he is born again and he wants to train to become a pastor".

At that the bar roof is rent asunder, a bright light fills the room and God's voice booms out......

"Tell me about it. The same trouble I had with my boy. Kids eh!".

Edited December 21, 2012 by GrandmasterP

[Marblehead]

Hehehe.

[Stosh]

^{Im thinking Fred looked down on the idea of herd mentality , but have heard that he lived a conventional life .}

^{Does anyone think people should act like a pack of wolves?}

^{Is not a placid herd a reasonable paradigm for a society?}

^{Why should sheeple be derogatory from a Taoist perspective ?}

^{Or is it the ideal that everyone runs around in some chaotic scrum}

^{ignoring the collective migration beneficial to the group and the individuals which participate in it?}

 

^{Moreover about the Neitzche chapters above , I dont see how it makes sense to villify the collective opions of the church and then suggest that there is a one true reading on the meanings of the gospels and outlining the single psychological effect it would have. It reminds me of Vmarco , he suggests that no belief system is valid and yet continues on with perfect view that should be had by all.}

^{What am I missing that corrects the apparent contradictions of either?}

Edited December 21, 2012 by Stosh

[Marblehead]

^{Im thinking Fred looked down on the idea of herd mentality , but have heard that he lived a conventional life .}

^{Does anyone think people should act like a pack of wolves?}

^{Is not a placid herd a reasonable paradigm for a society?}

^{Why should sheeple be derogatory from a Taoist perspective ?}

^{Or is it the ideal that everyone runs around in some chaotic scrum}

^{ignoring the collective migration beneficial to the group and the individuals which participate in it?}

Hi Stosh,

 

I will speak to only this part of your post and let Bubbles speak to the other if he cares to do so.

 

Yes, Nietzsche spoke unfavorably of the herd animal. Lao Tzu does not. Remember though that Nietzsche almost always associated the herd animal with Christianity and the Church. And I think that Vmarco's 'sheeple' is directed at the same people.

 

Even wolves roam in packs. It is rare to see a lone wolf and when one is seen it is normally because he lost a battle for Alpha male. Yes, people, by their nature, are herd animals. We who would be lions are generally not accepted into a lion's pride.

 

Lao Tzu wrote mostly of how people should be able to get along with each other (the ruler and the ruled). People live in groups so that we can help and be helped by others. This is quite normal. Based on some of his stories, even Chuang Tzu lived close to, or in, a village.

 

I think that Nietzsche is protesting the control of the Church over the people rather than a people who socialize.

[Stosh]

Hi Stosh,

 

I will speak to only this part of your post and let Bubbles speak to the other if he cares to do so.

 

Yes, Nietzsche spoke unfavorably of the herd animal. Lao Tzu does not. Remember though that Nietzsche almost always associated the herd animal with Christianity and the Church. And I think that Vmarco's 'sheeple' is directed at the same people.

 

Even wolves roam in packs. It is rare to see a lone wolf and when one is seen it is normally because he lost a battle for Alpha male. Yes, people, by their nature, are herd animals. We who would be lions are generally not accepted into a lion's pride.

 

Lao Tzu wrote mostly of how people should be able to get along with each other (the ruler and the ruled). People live in groups so that we can help and be helped by others. This is quite normal. Based on some of his stories, even Chuang Tzu lived close to, or in, a village.

 

I think that Nietzsche is protesting the control of the Church over the people rather than a people who socialize.

 

I gathered that he has a problem with the church of the time, in particular. He sets his own view up as a rival to it.

 

"Nietzsche condemned Christianity- the church- and all the ideological instruments of mass control it used. These instruments were made up by transforming the Gospels message ( which is about how to live so that life who be freed) into morality and life contempt."

 

The passages tend to disparage the structures and rewrite the mindsets of what the shebang is about ,, Im challenging that he hasnt made much of a case for the social implications of his idealized people here.

To have a situation where folks get along of their own free will is great tao , to whip and claw a recalcitrant headstrong population also can work establishing an order of sorts , Captain Bligh style.

1)

I just dont see how a population of these supermen is supposed to get along by Freds method more fulfilling-better than the churches of any ilk.

2)

Is not the superman a lion or wolf making decisions independent ,and reigned in only by defeats

(and probably rather alone in that as well) ?

Edited December 21, 2012 by Stosh

[Marblehead]

1) I just dont see how a population of these supermen is supposed to get along by Freds method more fulfilling-better than the churches of any ilk.

 

2) Is not the superman a lion or wolf making decisions independent ,and reigned in only by defeats

(and probably rather alone in that as well) ?

The superman is a different concept. An anarchist to be sure. He would also be a leader of people, not because he wanted followers but rather because people wanted to follow him willingly.

 

I doubt that he could be reigned in by defeat. I think he would be beyond that - winning and losing.

[GrandmasterP]

Shepherds need sheep.

Leaders need those who are led.

Management is easily subverted when staff simply ignore them.

"They pretend to manage, we pretend to work".

(Old pre-unification East German saying)

'Sheeple' are very powerful individually and even more so collectively, they create and destroy Gods; almost at whim.