(11-27-2016, 03:27 AM)Pdeathstar Wrote: It definitely matters what other people say. No one is posting on the critique forums because they don't care what people say.
You started out so well -- anyone who posts on a critique forum and then says they don't care what other people say is either entirely devoid of intelligence or a flaming hypocrite.
And then you go on to say this...
(11-27-2016, 03:27 AM)Pdeathstar Wrote: Most want positive feedback as well. People object to harsh negative feedback, they take it personally (I'm guilty).... People need to be loved.
What a load of steaming horseturds.
Meh. Not many people want to be told their poetry is shit
(11-27-2016, 03:27 AM)Pdeathstar Wrote: It definitely matters what other people say. No one is posting on the critique forums because they don't care what people say.
You started out so well -- anyone who posts on a critique forum and then says they don't care what other people say is either entirely devoid of intelligence or a flaming hypocrite.
And then you go on to say this...
(11-27-2016, 03:27 AM)Pdeathstar Wrote: Most want positive feedback as well. People object to harsh negative feedback, they take it personally (I'm guilty).... People need to be loved.
What a load of steaming horseturds.
Meh. Not many people want to be told their poetry is shit
i agree. i think it is entirely reasonable to assume, if not most, a significant number of people desire positive feedback. and i've seen enough negative critiques being taken personally to justify thinking that.
i suppose what we're looking for is some causal connection between the expectations, reasons for writing, etc. and the quality of poetry. i don't think you'll find any. i don't think someone who writes wanting positive feedback [even if that is their sole purpose] will necessarily write bad poetry. in fact, i think someone who says "i write for myself" will be more inclined to write poor poetry than the fellow who's doing it to get his dick sucked. . . i mean, he's got a lot more invested in writing something good.
on being told my shit was gold made me so happy and i filled my my bank vault with shit; couldn't understand why all i got was shit when i cashed a cheque.
i was just watching a debate about bill c-16 and freedom of speech with jordan peterson. and, although a bit of a stretch, i couldn't help seeing some parallels between his opening and some of the things people have discussed here and in other threads, especially with regards to improvement being a social thing and how listening to your own feedback loop is detrimental to progress [personal or otherwise]:
“. . .And when you talk it doesn’t mean you’re right. It doesn’t mean you’re correct. It means you’re trying to articulate and formulate your thoughts like the bone-headed moron that you are; and you’re going to stumble around, idiotically, because what the hell do you know? You’re full of biases and you’re ignorant and you can’t speak very well and you’re over-emotional and you’ve got problems that you can hardly even imagine and they’re interfering with your ability to state something clear; and so, what you do is, you do your best to say what you mean and then you listen to other people tell you why you’re a blithering idiot and hopefully you can correct yourself, to some degree, as a consequence of listening to them. You see, that is what free speech is about. It isn’t just that people can organise themselves and societies by thinking; you can’t do that because there’s only one of you. What you have to do is articulate your thoughts in a public forum so that other people can attack you and then you want to step back a little bit and you want to correct what you say because then you correct how you are and then you correct how you act in life and then you correct your society and to the degree that we limit freedom of expression we put all of that at risk.”
(11-27-2016, 12:51 PM)shemthepenman Wrote: i was just watching a debate about bill c-16 and freedom of speech with jordan peterson. and, although a bit of a stretch, i couldn't help seeing some parallels between his opening and some of the things people have discussed here and in other threads, especially with regards to improvement being a social thing and how listening to your own feedback loop is detrimental to progress [personal or otherwise].
i transcribed it quickly in word, please ignore all capital letters and correct spelling, i didn't have time to turn off auto-correct:
“. . .And when you talk it doesn’t mean you’re right. It doesn’t mean you’re correct. It means you’re trying to articulate and formulate your thoughts like the bone-headed moron that you are; and you’re going to stumble around, idiotically, because what the hell do you know? You’re full of biases and you’re ignorant and you can’t speak very well and you’re over-emotional and you’ve got problems that you can hardly even imagine and they’re interfering with your ability to state something clear; and so, what you do is, you do your best to say what you mean and then you listen to other people tell you why you’re a blithering idiot and hopefully you can correct yourself, to some degree, as a consequence of listening to them. You see, that is what free speech is about. It isn’t just that people can organise themselves and societies by thinking; you can’t do that because there’s only one of you. What you have to do is articulate your thoughts in a public forum so that other people can attack you and then you want to step back a little bit and you want to correct what you say because then you correct how you are and then you correct how you act in life and then you correct your society and to the degree that we limit freedom of expression we put all of that at risk.”
billy wrote:welcome to the site. make it your own, wear it like a well loved slipper and wear it out. ella pleads:please click forum titles for posting guidelines, important threads. New poet? Try Poetic DevicesandWard's Tips
I have a do it yourself aesthetic. I want to write my poems and stories and everything myself because my writing rhetoric is D.I.Y. And this may have to do a lot with how I wrote a lot of rhyming poetry when I was younger and was laughed out of the world. To me, rhyming formal poetry was poetry. And in the late '90s and early '00s I was told that was lame. Shelley, early Yeats, especially Bryon. And Robert Frost was as tame as The Cosby Show. But I kept rhyming and metering. And people kept saying, Oh, you rhyme. . . . Of course, very few people said anything at all. The few who knew the least bit about poetry said rhyme was outdated and lame. So I said, I'll not rhyme no more, I'll not be formal anymore, I'll write in my own local dialect. People said, That's racist. . . . So I said, All right, I just want my writings to sound like bad translations from the French. People said, That's pretentious. So I realized I was just going to have to write like I write, no matter what people around me thought and sa
id. I also had to face it that nobody around me knew much about poetry or read it very much.
Byron. I can't afford to make mistakes. I can't fix them. But when I don't mean to make them, I have to make a whole new message. Unless you just know and assume I can't fixem any way.
But I have a do it yourself aesthetic. A do it yourself spiritual bond with doing anything at all. People here want to workshop, and they like that artistic process, and that's fine. Outside of here, 98 percent of people don't want to read what I write, even read it at all. And two percent want to read it and put their mark on it. Two percent of people in all the world will take the time to read it, but will only take it seriously if I allow them to say, I like it but if it were me I'd . . . and put their mark on it. But I don't want them to do what they'd do. They can write their own poem. . . . I have a do it myself aesthetic and spiritual margin. And people might not like it. But I want people who don't like it not to like it. Though I do want people who do like it to like it.
And that's why I find it hard to like workshopping. Because I don't see a poem as a product like a product that's meant to be accepted, liked and bought. If you're an asshole you should be able to write asshole poems, if you're a creep you should be able to write creep poems, if you're retarded you should be able to write retarded poems. Me, I have a huge distaste for the world, so when I write poems and stories, I feel it would be dishonest to take good advise from the world I despise in writing my poems and stories. But I don't always enjoy despising or feeling uncomfortable in the world, so I take what I can from it and offer what I can to it. But I have a do it yourself aesthetic and I don't think anyone should tell me I can't have that, and I can read and listen to other people and things as much and less as I want and need to.
And it not mattering and no one being interested hasn't changed much. Because there's no Why or Who For, there used to be a Who For, but that ended up lame.
hey now, a textbook or research paper can be written with a ton of passion -- it tends to show in more mathematical ways, though (although some of the biology textbooks i've read sneak in a few jokes). there's a certain art to expressing thought, just as there is to expressing emotion or faith, and just because a text is supposed to focus on thought, does not mean it loses the other two (i guess Kierkegaard?)
i think of art as communication, and communication as a living, breathing process. effectively what shem wrote -- when i write for myself, it's not for the nebulous idea of self-satisfaction or mute (for if the whole world was deaf...) self-expression, it's for stroking my ego, getting all the artsy girls, intimidating all the foolish boys, impressing all the superior artistes, and, most importantly, receiving responses that help me better analyze the poem, both as an aesthetic work, so that I may be able to glean deeper thingsfrom or impress better things upon other works (for just reading a poem alters its meaning somewhat -- the goal, i feel, is either leaving so little an impression so as to let the imagery shine, or so strong a one that another poem has to be created), and as a socio-psychological-spiritual world, so that, as per the quoted text, through how people reacted to the piece, society may be influenced, or faith may be strengthened, or the part of me (for i do not believe anything, even in sciece, could be so completely detached from the self -- even in heaven, God should prefer us to some alien work) that was involved in the poem's creation may be generally improved. and so, i workshop -- well, that, and to find my voice as an artist, still possessing the double-edged sword of youth (and Age Don't Mean a Thing, Achebe, with regards to Katharine Hepburn, xP. although i'm far more stunned by Vivien Leigh and Kate Bush -- and i never really look at the later pictures.)
When I read books about writers and their works there's always talk of the flaws and complications, and that just seems a part of it. The flaws and complications aren't outside of the work or detract from it. All the good parts are good and the bad parts are part of the good. Then a lot of the time people don't agree on what's bad and what's the better parts. All that adds up, and makes it more interesting to me.
On a personal level, writing is a way of talking to our future selves.
(That future sometimes being only minutes away [at least for me ]).
It could also be another way for our separate selves to communicate:
Multi-Consciousness - Joao Barcellos:
"One of the most widely accepted models of the brain's functional structure is the one
in which the brain is divided into functional areas. In this model, each functional area
of the brain is responsible for a function or a small set of functions. These functional
areas, which do not necessarily need to occupy a contiguous space in the brain, are
called functional modules. Thus, within this theory, the brain is a set of functional
modules, each one responsible for a small group of information-processing tasks.
Within this perspective, our consciousness would also be one of these modules. The
module responsible for consciousness must not be distributed throughout the brain,
since when we are unconscious there are parts of the brain that still work.
I believe one of the main functions of human consciousness is to delay impulses and/or
desires so that they can be subjected to rational analysis (another set of modules)
before they are corresponded. That way we may have more efficient responses in relation
to the stimuli we receive if we respond to them effectively, with intelligence.
Nevertheless, the main function of consciousness is the ability to feel. But the ability
to feel is the ability to receive various impulses and somehow evaluate them before
producing a response.
If we look at each brain module within this perspective of being an autonomous and
thinking organism, since they also process signals, we can see that each one of them
also have its own conscience: their function is exactly to receive several signals from
other brain regions and process them before returning an answer.
Thus, each brain module could be seen as having its own "consciousness". They may have
the perception of "self-consciousness", capable of perceiving itself, or not. It is possible
that each of these "conscious-modules" that form the brain feel things very different
from what our conscience normally does. That is because our consciousness, as one of the
modules of the brain, is able to feel and perceive the result only, the signals output from
other modules, that is, the outcome of its internal processing.
It is important to realize that this concept of "multi-consciousness" is very different
from the "Multiple Personality" of the traditional psychiatry . In this pathology, every
facet of personality takes over consciousness in an excluding way. When one is active,
the other is not and vice versa. The "Multi-consciousness" is not like that. There are
multiple consciousnesses simultaneously active in our brains. The one we call "consciousness"
would be just one of them, and perhaps not even the most important one, as the famous
experiments of Benjamin Libet showed ( Libet set up an experiment showing that our
consciousness does not seem to be the main source of our free will.* ) . It is interesting
to think that we can live with several of our internal "I" s, without even knowing what
"they" actually feel and think.
We could theorize that our brain can have multiple internal consciousnesses, and that the
one we call "consciousness" is just one of many that inhabit our brain and it has the ability
to monitor the others, choosing which module to activate or not.
It is also possible that this module is not conscious, but is a common area of the brain
that is used as a way of storing data so that different modules of the brain can exchange
information among themselves and reach a consensus (or not) as to which actions to take."
* Wiki article about Benjamin Libet's experiment can be found here.
a brightly colored fungus that grows in bark inclusions
Leanne - have you read 'Madness, Rack and Honey, collected lectures by Mary Ruefle'?
If not, please do.
I think you mustn't have, or your opening post in this thread would not sound so discouraged. Maybe that's not the right word. Anyway, I recommend it to anyone who has ever wondered about poetry (and life itself) - what it is,what it does, why it is so important.
(11-27-2016, 07:31 PM)RiverNotch Wrote: hey now, a textbook or research paper can be written with a ton of passion -- it tends to show in more mathematical ways, though (although some of the biology textbooks i've read sneak in a few jokes). there's a certain art to expressing thought, just as there is to expressing emotion or faith, and just because a text is supposed to focus on thought, does not mean it loses the other two (i guess Kierkegaard?)
I love writing textbooks AND research papers, but I'm pretty disturbed. I'm also kind of a Kierkegaard groupie. I definitely didn't choose to write poetry because I'm super touchy feely or ultra expressive about emotional stuff -- I just quite like the challenge of maximum impact, minimum words and maybe occasionally getting someone to think a bit.
(11-28-2016, 03:00 PM)just mercedes Wrote: Leanne - have you read 'Madness, Rack and Honey, collected lectures by Mary Ruefle'?
If not, please do.
I think you mustn't have, or your opening post in this thread would not sound so discouraged. Maybe that's not the right word. Anyway, I recommend it to anyone who has ever wondered about poetry (and life itself) - what it is,what it does, why it is so important.
I haven't and I will, thank you. I think I'm more disillusioned than discouraged -- I know how important poetry is to the world, it's just that there are so many people who are all "ooh, Kardashians" and off to the next shallow object, while a really good poem can languish in obscurity forevermore. And god forbid someone has a disagreement about the colour of a dress -- you could write the next Howl and nobody would have a clue, because they'd be too busy trolling the crap out of the guy who couldn't figure out about filters.
I think the kardashians are as legitimate a form of entertainment as any, it's chalk full of allegory....
Entertainment is more competitive than ever, and it's also highly segmented. It's the poets responsibility to find a niche... People have always loved fart jokes and naked woman more than Homer or Himmingway, but those forms of entertainment weren't recorded to history.
In ten years of writing music loads of live shows and a few festivals, the most money it's brought me is 30$ and 500 diapers, but then all I've spent on gas, instruments, and gear, I'm way behind. Since I'm still doing it, though, i think I can say it's just to inspire those that like it. Or wish they could do it.
(11-29-2016, 07:34 AM)CRNDLSM Wrote: In ten years of writing music loads of live shows and a few festivals, the most money it's brought me is 30$ and 500 diapers, but then all I've spent on gas, instruments, and gear, I'm way behind. Since I'm still doing it, though, i think I can say it's just to inspire those that like it. Or wish they could do it.
exactly! proof, if proof be needed, that the "I/Other" dichotomy, raised by the ludicrous question "who do you write for?", is bogus. that rivernotch fellow raises a valuable point about the ego. society has made us ashamed of our own nature, our own psychology as human beings. we no longer understand the ancient greek aphorism of "know thyself". instead, we are told how we should feel, who we should be, what we should think, by adverts and movie stars, or other authority that thinks they have raised themselves above the pond of human scum, ironically telling us to be ourselves, all the while making basic human emotion something shameful. and god forbid you should actually feel a sense of satisfaction from impressing someone, from occasionally desiring that fundamentally human satisfaction; because we must never ever write for [or before] the other, WE must be singular! WE must run away from ourselves! fuck that noise. We are plexus, rhizomatic, strange, hypocritical, stupid, fucked up, confused, and ridiculous. . . and we're doin' all right.
(11-29-2016, 07:34 AM)CRNDLSM Wrote: In ten years of writing music loads of live shows and a few festivals, the most money it's brought me is 30$ and 500 diapers, but then all I've spent on gas, instruments, and gear, I'm way behind. Since I'm still doing it, though, i think I can say it's just to inspire those that like it. Or wish they could do it.
exactly! proof, if proof be needed, that the "I/Other" dichotomy, raised by the ludicrous question "who do you write for?", is bogus. that rivernotch fellow raises a valuable point about the ego. society has made us ashamed of our own nature, our own psychology as human beings. we no longer understand the ancient greek aphorism of "know thyself". instead, we are told how we should feel, who we should be, what we should think, by adverts and movie stars, or other authority that thinks they have raised themselves above the pond of human scum, ironically telling us to be ourselves, all the while making basic human emotion something shameful. and god forbid you should actually feel a sense of satisfaction from impressing someone, from occasionally desiring that fundamentally human satisfaction; because we must never ever write for [or before] the other, WE must be singular! WE must must run away from ourselves! fuck that noise. We are plexus, rhizomatic, strange, hypocritical, stupid, fucked up, confused, and ridiculous. . . and we're doin' all right.
You're a fucked up kind of wonderful, and you're right.
(11-29-2016, 03:57 AM)Pdeathstar Wrote: Entertainment is more competitive than ever, and it's also highly segmented. It's the poets responsibility to find a niche... People have always loved fart jokes and naked woman more than Homer or Himmingway, but those forms of entertainment weren't recorded to history.
I agree with this, except on one point: there are more sculptures of naked gods than any of the homeric heroes, and the oldest recorded joke follows (originally in Sumerian):
Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.
Although in the what-should-be highly uncompetitive society that is humanity (as in, it's cooperation and non-destructive competition that's been the key to our species success), it really shouldn't be that the dedicated poet should find his niche, I think, rather that all dedicated poets should be niches unto themselves. Hence the whole find your voice thing everyone keeps talking about.
(11-29-2016, 08:31 AM)shemthepenman Wrote:
(11-29-2016, 07:34 AM)CRNDLSM Wrote: In ten years of writing music loads of live shows and a few festivals, the most money it's brought me is 30$ and 500 diapers, but then all I've spent on gas, instruments, and gear, I'm way behind. Since I'm still doing it, though, i think I can say it's just to inspire those that like it. Or wish they could do it.
exactly! proof, if proof be needed, that the "I/Other" dichotomy, raised by the ludicrous question "who do you write for?", is bogus. that rivernotch fellow raises a valuable point about the ego. society has made us ashamed of our own nature, our own psychology as human beings. we no longer understand the ancient greek aphorism of "know thyself". instead, we are told how we should feel, who we should be, what we should think, by adverts and movie stars, or other authority that thinks they have raised themselves above the pond of human scum, ironically telling us to be ourselves, all the while making basic human emotion something shameful. and god forbid you should actually feel a sense of satisfaction from impressing someone, from occasionally desiring that fundamentally human satisfaction; because we must never ever write for [or before] the other, WE must be singular! WE must run away from ourselves! fuck that noise. We are plexus, rhizomatic, strange, hypocritical, stupid, fucked up, confused, and ridiculous. . . and we're doin' all right.
That issue does feel kinda more complicated though. For one, without society we wouldn't even have language (and without modern society, the means to speak out so; without Christian society, the drive to write, either towards or away from God, or the idea of him) -- for another, I feel like said ancient Greek aphorism is tied to the whole "some people are citizens, some people are slaves, and by people we mean men" thing that the ancient Greeks tended towards -- and for yet another, I'm sure very few people criticized Kate Bush or Leonard Cohen for being happy about performing again in front of a live audience, so few that it could be considered a sort of neurosis. I find myself agreeing, but also sorta dissatisfied.
for sure, it is mind bogglingly complicated. . . far more complicated than a single paragraph on the thread of a social media message board could comprehensively unpack. but, i am not suggesting that 'society' is necessarily a bad thing. rather, a society that makes categorical value judgements about 'feelings' and 'thoughts' even 'impulses', is far from a healthy one. Once merely feeling angry, for example, becomes unacceptable, you're looking at thought crimes. . . and then. . . you're living in 1984.
find below a short extract from my essay on Klossowski's interpretation of Nietzsche, specifically focusing on the 'gregarious/singular' dichotomy. i will also attach a bibliography of books i used to write the essay at the bottom:
Here we arrive at the crux of the distinction between the ‘gregarious’ and the ‘singular.’ The gregarious is that which attempts to communicate in order to stabilize and secure. Gregariousness is a social survival technique and is related to the code of everyday signs and the simulacra (and simulacrum). As we have seen from the comments above concerning philosophy and philosophers, the dominant impulse, which is fundamentally incoherent and related to the singular case or the idiosyncratic, is mimed in accordance to the code of everyday signs. The idiosyncratic (from the Greek idiosugkrasia literally meaning, ‘personal mixing together‘), the singular, is covered over by the gregarious due to the fact that the singular poses a threat to the gregarious, a threat to the species [humanity]. This covering over, in turn (and if allowed to maintain a certain consistency, or, consistency of development) “disturbs the sensitivity of individuals.” [NVC: p. 4]
Early on in ‘Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle’ we find mention of the sick and healthy in relation to the gregarious and singular.
According to Klossowski the ‘moral question’ should not be posed in terms of, right/wrong, true/false, etc. but rather, in terms of the sick and the healthy. Nietzsche, as always, is not content with making the gregarious exclusively applicable to the sick or the healthy; or, determining the singular in like manner. Nietzsche tells us that initially the gregarious springs from that which “have the character of sickness” [ibid] due to the fact that the singular (which is the initial impulse) stands in direct opposition to the gregarious, the species, humanities survival. The singular disrupts the code of everyday signs that are systems of security, ensuring the survival of the species. Here we can see the tension between the singular and the gregarious. The singular wishes to assert its own will, its own power, and this will be at the expense of the community (if we narrow the global species down to communities). The singular stands out against the restrictions of the constraining power of the gregarious - is not the singular a dangerous glitch in the sanctuary of the gregarious, the social, the communicable, the code of everyday signs? Yet, this initial sickness is only the beginning of the story. Klossowski says of the gregarious that it is “the levelling power” [NVC: p. 5]1 and that the singular is an ‘erectile power.’ Furthermore, the gregarious amount to a mediocrity whereby singular cases, high intensities of moods, impulses, tonalities of the soul, etc. are suppressed by the generality of the gregarious. George Bernard Shaw [1856 - 1950] once said that, “the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man,” and if one replace the ‘reasonable’ and the ‘unreasonable’ with the gregarious and the idiosyncratic, respectively, one begins to appreciate the delicate arrangement between the gregarious and the singular case; in this sense, the singular, or idiosyncratic, may ultimately define its own restrictions and become gregarious. Nietzsche states that, “the first explosion of force and will to self-determination is a sickness that can destroy humanity; and even more sickly are the first, strange, wild attempts of the mind to adjust the world to itself, to its own authority” [ibid]. (It is important also to note that whereas Shaw’s emphasis is on progression, with the implication of social progress, Nietzsche will not speak in such terms - Nietzsche‘s is a singular progress).
However, Nietzsche makes an important distinction between two cultures: 1) the conceptual culture that is founded on the gregarious, and 2) lived culture, that “can never have a gregarious foundation.” [NVC: p. 6] The lived culture is that of the impulses, the singular - a conceptual culture is a re-presenting, or, simulacra. Klossowski contends that the mere fact that we have a concept of culture shows a covering over of the lived culture.
It is with this distinction between conceptual culture and lived culture, between the gregarious and the idiosyncratic, that Nietzsche talks about the ’combat against culture.’ But, what are we to make of this combat? Nietzsche states that we must take sides, see what’s problematic in culture, what is beneficial to us as individuals, etc. Where does culture restrict, and what does it allow? How far can we go, and where are the routes blocked?
Now, we should note that this culture is just that culture that Nietzsche himself has inherited; it is this culture that has delivered us Nietzsche - and yet, Nietzsche would see this culture burn as he once imagined how he would revel in the “marvels of the Louvre in flames” [NVC: p. 10]. On the one hand we have the combat of the lived culture by the conceptual [gregarious] culture, and on the other we have Nietzsche’s own combat of conceptual culture in favour of the lived culture.
According to Klossowski, culture cannot be a fixed entity (once and for all) because the very nature of culture is becoming; any appeal to simulacra stands in direct opposition to culture. It is this very fixing of a concept of culture that prompts Nietzsche to refer it to the slave type; for, it is the slave type that will accept the foundations of a conceptual culture without questioning the masters that had invented it. This discussion relates directly to the discussions of the valuations good/bad and good/evil in ‘The Genealogy of Morals.’
It is through the gregarious that conceptual culture (or, the conceptualization of culture) covers over the very arbitrariness of the values created. No one questions these values, these morals, right, wrong, truth, falsehood - in fact, these antitheses are the very product of a conceptually gregarious culture. This may be what Gilles Deleuze would refer to as an overcoding of values, whereby the values are coded to fit a particular system of articulation (maybe Ludwig Wittgenstein would refer to these systems as ‘Language Games’) and then overcoded in order to conceal the arbitrary nature of those systems; this, in turn, provides the security of the species by applying the code to other areas until one no longer wills oneself. Overcoding, put simply, ensures the survival of the species by ensuring the dominance of the code.
What is lacking in the conceptual culture, or, as Klossowski would have it, what is covered over, is the ‘the fact of experimentation.’ Can a culture, a lived culture, survive this lack? What does culture amount to if it only repeats, replicates, re-establishes, the status quo? And here we have the combat of culture. But, and again, Nietzsche is on the offensive, waging his own war on the conceptual culture of the gregarious. In Nietzsche’s combat there are to be no sacred cows. Language itself must be uprooted! Nietzsche’s mission statement is, “to give men back the courage of their natural drives / to check their self-underestimation… / to remove antitheses from things after comprehending that we have projected them there…” [NVC: p. 10]. Yet, why courage? Nietzsche believes that inequality prevails, yet, this inequality is not reflected in the gregarious and thus man has lost his courage to bear this inequality. The idea of the Eternal Return will serve to bring this courage back to man and ultimately split humanity down the middle, into those that accept the Return and those that do not. In which case, the question of advocacy of Nietzsche’s own combat against culture will depend on whether one is willing to accept the implications of the Eternal Return.
NVC: Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle: Pierre Klossowski
AC: The Anti-Christ: Friedrich Nietzsche
BGE: Beyond Good and Evil: Friedrich Nietzsche
GM: The Genealogy of Morals: Friedrich Nietzsche
GMM: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (on a supposed right to lie because of philanthropic concerns): Immanuel Kant
That explains Nietzsche's distaste for the British. And why French shouldn't be translated into English, even in summary. To me a concept is a knot I Alexander the Great through.
(11-30-2016, 02:08 AM)rowens Wrote: That explains Nietzsche's distaste for the British. And why French shouldn't be translated into English, even in summary. To me a concept is a knot I Alexander the Great through.
it depends what period and who's analysis you're reading when it comes to Nietzsche's taste for britain. north america got off relatively lightly, for, apart from the odd statement suggesting americans were a nation of idiots, he was pretty much indifferent--from what i remember.
North America is a nation of idiots as is Germany. But for a few people here and there, the whole world is a place full of idiots. Useful idiots if you're a comedian or a philosopher, which is the same thing. There were a lot of useful idiots in England in the 19th century, not so many in North America. England had Blake, and the U.S. had Emerson, and Blake was already on his way out. They were the only two who weren't idiots in philosophy and poetry. Then there were a handful of useful idiots, and the rest were rote scoundrels and manual labor.
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