Is there an ideology of knowledge?

[ZenMuadDib]

Do you see your place in that story? Discouraging the untamed man -- "ohs noes, disease and suffering are bad we must eliminate them!! peace for all, long lives and science!!"

That's your problem, kiddo -- you see the 'untamed man' as foisting it upon others!

You can be untamed all you want. You can choose your own hardships, like in that Brave New World quote. Go into alaskan wilderness with a magnifying glass and a good knife, and experience hardship! Go live in Africa, and experience poverty and privation! But that's not what you want, is it? You want to foist hardship upon others so as to reap benefit.

You want to take instead of creating. Instead of transcending man, you do your best to regress to tribal gang warfare, to glorified banditry. That's not the way of the strong-and-free -- that's the way of the weak-but-cruel, the way of the bully.

You are a wanna-be bully, kiddo, and too weak to actually take the world head-on.

You are weak.

Awesome man. The point is not to gain an advantage over others, but to see that we are all men and people.

[ZenMuadDib]

Victor has been pretty impressive in this thread

Personally I think Victor's delusions are the equal, if not worse than Neil's.

Victor is unable to think in terms of context, such that things have different meanings in different contexts, and he therefore mistakenly tries to apply his own narrow context to everything.

When you are locked within one small context, such as Victor, everyone else seems stupid. And to those locked in a different context, Victor seems stupid.

And of course, to those who have the loftiest vantage point of all, such as ourselves, they all seem stupid.

Maybe an ideology of one's individual knowledge?

[Alex Jacob]

Neil,

There is a perspective---perhaps that is the Nietzschean perspective, and the post-modern perspective---where any outcome at all can be defended and represented. But that sort of activity, a sort of psuedo-intellectualism, always seems to take place in a remove from reality, as an absurd academic exercise, and in this way I feel you are removed from reality, and don't have much experience with which to judge what is desirable or not. I guess to answer your (absurd) question is to be found in stating what is not desirable, that I don't 'approve' of as if I am deciding just how low my daughter's skirt shall be, and I guess you'd have to start with 'universal annihilation'. You philosophers, of course, could debate the issue, but I think we have to start with such an agreement, and then work downward. If most of us agree, democratically, I guess it will be, that we want life to go on, and yet there is some small group of Nietzschean geniuses that deem that life shall end, well then we have a problem. (Of course this is all just a game, and the whole base of the conversation is non-sense, absurdity).

"It took thousands of years to build the good, civil, Christian state -- Nietzsche himself was fighting against it, was destroying it."

Well, if what you say is true, then I (and we) have many good reasons to recoil from Nietzsche's doctrines. And that has been sort of my point for a certain number of posts here. But other readings are possible, and there have been other readings. Also, there is a legitimate angle of critique against this thrust or result of Nietzsche, and so a result of Nietzsche is to throw very relevant and very demanding questions at one, to cause one to do a great deal of soul-searching, to discover what 'noble cause' one wants to serve. In that sense, Nietzsche is volatile, there is nothing that Nietzsche has decided, and there is absolutely nothing conclusive in his philosophy. It could be this, it could be that, you simply make your choice and run with it.

You seem to imply that Nietzsche had some sort of agenda...a ten-point plan or something. That he was 'destroying Christianity', but that is highly debatable. And anyway some of that mishegoss appreared just as he got swept up into severe mental disease, that can't be denied, it took place right on the fringe, all those grandiose declarations. And even with that, Nietzsche is not some authenticated prophet who can simply declare one thing over any other, but you seem to have him on a pedastal, you oddly 'worship' him. But Nietzsche often operates from limited premises, in my opinion, and his psychology is just one part of a big picture of what was revealed 'for consideration' in the tumultuous age that produced him, of which you know so precious little I might add.

"By "bad reading" surely you mean "reading with immoral (bad) outcome", not an interpretation other than the one that was intended."

In what way can Nietzsche have 'intent'? I ask you? Look at the 'intent' of some of the nutcases who seem to want to sing his songs (the loons from the neonazi list for example). They all seem to have some 'intent', some agenda, but does that validate them? I don't think you are thinking very critically, Neil.

And yes, I do indeed mean 'bad' outcomes as those that are immoral. (And criteria that don't have to do with morality alone but also with well-being). But that doesn't mean that I think morality cannot be discussed, debated. For reasons you are not fully conscious of (that is my sense) you need to get out from under the grip of something that is not, apparently, authentic to you, or original to you, that you didn't come to of your own free will---the religion of your parents. The Nietzschean dynamite exploded in your head and we witness the fallout. That is a part of growing up, I guess. But I don't think that any of that necessarily invalidates, all in one sweep, an accumulation of certain values, human values or cultural values, though I never said and don't mean to say that Christian values are not criticable. Or the psychology of ressentiment, any of it. It is all there to be examined. But an apparent difference between us (and perhaps other who read here) is that I really and truly think that these values---I focus on them as Judaic values---are highly relevant and important and should not be discarded. And of course I also believe in a divine being in which we are 'taking place'. So, I don't cast anything away so quickly or definitively, and can apparently defend things that you cannot. And I am not at all alone in this, not at all. The world of ideas is huge.

[ZenMuadDib]

Ok, so you want to be an ubermensch or something? Can't there be more than one type Neil? It would depend on your values as I believe someone mentioned. I beieve that Nietzsche saw Christian morals as nihilistic, they denied life. You can be, say, a philosopher-king ubermensch or some kind of satan-like one couldn't you?

[Boyan]

Here's an interesting post on true satanism and how it relates to Nietzsche, written by, it seems, an advanced satanist.


''A big misconception about Satanism is that Anton LaVey created it. This is not true. LaVey did popularize it in the sixties, but he did not create it. For me, Satanism begins with Friedrich Nietzsche. Not only did Nietzsche wrote a book called the “Anti-Christ,” but his definition of a supreme Overman is basically what LaVey crafted his ideal Satanist from, IMO. For me, Satanism is an emotional bridge to Nietzsche’s writings. I don’t even pay attention to the “9 Satanic” statements by LaVey. Still, I give a lot of credit to LaVey for introducing the religion to me. The purpose of the rituals is to keep you emotionally strong, and focused into becoming a higher human being, an Overman. So Satanism, for me, is an emotional bridge to becoming that Overman. The Overman would be the Anti-Christ, a supreme mating of Man and God, and thus I strive to be an Anti-Christ, aka a Satanist.

Most amateur Satanist only know how to focus on “indulgence” and “narcissism.” However, the higher Satanist doesn’t focus on “indulgence,” having a massive “ego,” or constant “Christian bashing.” The true Satanist seeks out all that is fearful, weak, meek, cowardly and slave within HIMSELF, for the soul purpose of destroying it. Thus, when he does so, he can become master of his own will, and command not only himself, but others as well. This is my brand of Satanism, but it is not for every Satanist. ''

[Boyan]

An interesting comment relevant to our discussion here, written by someone competent regarding Nietzsche.

From this blog I stumbled upon just now. http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2006/07/fou ... s-ass.html

''Let us be, at least, intellectually honest. Nietzsche can be, and often is, exaperating, but he's not wrong. If he was, why did Pope Pius XIII do a frontal assault?

Nietzsche dared us to leave "slave" mentality behind, and many institutions did not like his way of thinking. What if "pride" is a true virtue, as the early Greeks maintained, against the "humility" preached by Plato and Jesus? Why, then, we might be self-creative, become daring, experiment, and be free.

Anathema, proclaimed Pius. Submission to God's revelation in Jesus necessitates abandoning those "modernist" ideas. The problem is that Nietzsche's virtues, which were the early Greek's virtues, predated Jesus. If anything, Nietzsche was appealing to historical virtues before Plato and Christianity, not making them anew! The "modernist" heresy was actually a call to the restoration of "historical" values. If fundamentalists want us to return to traditional values, Nietzsche might have argued, let's use tradition, not Jesus and Plato. Pride is a virtue, not the "cause of all error."

Christianity, via Saint Paul, has always understood its "enemies." While Nietzsche had a limited admiration of Jesus, he held Saint Paul in contempt. The "problem" with Western Civilization, according to Nietzsche, is that Plato and Saint Paul (a devotee of Plato more than Jesus) corrupted it. Jesus proclaimed freedom and integrity, while Plato and Paul demanded obedience to abstractions. The Church has always preferred the latter. It loses control with Jesus's virtues. Pope Pius saw the handwritting on the wall, and sought to bring down the wall.

Foucault is a bird of another stripe. No question he obtained inspiration from Nietzsche (as did almost everyone else), but his focus was on imprisonment, a concept similar to Nietzsche's "slave" mentality. According to Foucault, man is impossibly entangled in his own web of imprisonment. Even his "ideas" are weighted and opposed by his other "ideas." Nietzsche's appeal to freedom is much harder to achieve than the imagination can conceive. Limits come on man from every side, even sides man cannot comprehend, and even the most liberated person is still confined by his and society's boundaries. Thus, one man's freedom imposes on another, is circumscribed by another, limited by another, so that ultimately, it devolves to one person's "power" over another, in order to achieve freedom itself. The Other must be dominated (limited, curtailed) to allow any room for freedom. In a man's yearn for freedom, he encounters opposition at every turn. Ultimately, it becomes one power against another, each and collectively acting against the Other, to keep power of the person's freedom "confined" so not to oppose the power of the Other. All efforts to be free are opposed by other's efforts to be free. Thus, power is used to overcome the other's reach.

Despite it's vigor and apparent extremism, does anyone dispute this? Despite (or in spite) of Foucault's personal prediliction for S&M, an exaggerated expression of his views, perhaps, does anyone deny the force of his insight (which was originally Nietzsche's)? No matter where and in which way one turns, someone or something will, and does, oppose us. We've even institutionalized this opposition (the penal system).

One only need look at the "ex-gay" ministries to observe the superficial aspects of "power relations." Who cares if someone prefers the same sex? Most of Christendom most of the time, that's who. Being "homosexual" was another Greek virtue that Christianity upended. But who cares about another's private sexual expression? Again, Christianity cares, and worse, it has been known to kill those who engage in it. Why? Because it prevails only if it has culprits to blame, to limit, to exclude, to rehabilitate, to save -- in other words, to make into an Other against which it can impose limits. Islamic fundamentalism is no different. Both are defined by OPPOSITION to the Other. If the merits of its positions could be evaluated, discussed, and debated, reason would be the criterion; but allowing that, makes the OPPONENT equal to the putative "truth." No dogmatism can abide "tolerance," for tolerance leaves nothing to OPPOSE. All fundamentalisms, religious and political, must have OPPONENTS to give themselves power. This is Foucault's insight, applied more broadly than even Nietzsche envisioned. Incredulously, even Foucault's broad stroke does not cover all power relations, which only reinforces just how powerful "power" is. I'll be the first to agree that S&M is not the best way "out" of that power dichotomy, but it is one option.

Here is the dichotomy. Western Civilization was on its way to make an incredible, even insurmountable, difference. Grecian democracy, for all its defects, remained heads above all subsequent institutions, until almost two millennia later. What happened? Simply Plato, who was reincarnated in Saint Paul, overcoming Jesus himself. Despite "modernism" with science and Descartes trumping "received" institutions, conservatism prevailed. Not until Nietzsche's repudiation of the inheritance did anyone notice. He insisted we "re-examine" the inheritance, reinstate "traditional" values, and start afresh. The rest, as they say, is history.''


Here - something I found on Nietzsche and Chomsky: http://www.infidel.org/library/modern/t ... power.html

By "actual neighbor," I take Nietzsche to be referring to bordering states or societies, as the context would indicate. It seems then, that Nietzsche is trying to say that the violence inherent in the way a society exerts its will to power is evidence that the true nature of man is one of violence also. What Nietzsche reveals about the nature of states in these passages is interestingly similar to some of the political views which Noam Chomsky has professed--that states are fundamentally violent institutions and a state's internally espoused values have no bearing whatsoever on its external behavior.4 This is not to say, however, that Chomsky subscribes to Nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power, but Nietzsche does seem to anticipate Chomsky and others who have said similar such things regarding the nature of states and societies. Other than that, however, their views differ considerably. Nietzsche seems to approve of the violent conquest of others while Noam Chomsky, of course, does not.

[ZenMuadDib]

Here's an interesting post on true satanism and how it relates to Nietzsche, written by, it seems, an advanced satanist.


''A big misconception about Satanism is that Anton LaVey created it. This is not true. LaVey did popularize it in the sixties, but he did not create it. For me, Satanism begins with Friedrich Nietzsche. Not only did Nietzsche wrote a book called the “Anti-Christ,” but his definition of a supreme Overman is basically what LaVey crafted his ideal Satanist from, IMO. For me, Satanism is an emotional bridge to Nietzsche’s writings. I don’t even pay attention to the “9 Satanic” statements by LaVey. Still, I give a lot of credit to LaVey for introducing the religion to me. The purpose of the rituals is to keep you emotionally strong, and focused into becoming a higher human being, an Overman. So Satanism, for me, is an emotional bridge to becoming that Overman. The Overman would be the Anti-Christ, a supreme mating of Man and God, and thus I strive to be an Anti-Christ, aka a Satanist.

Most amateur Satanist only know how to focus on “indulgence” and “narcissism.” However, the higher Satanist doesn’t focus on “indulgence,” having a massive “ego,” or constant “Christian bashing.” The true Satanist seeks out all that is fearful, weak, meek, cowardly and slave within HIMSELF, for the soul purpose of destroying it. Thus, when he does so, he can become master of his own will, and command not only himself, but others as well. This is my brand of Satanism, but it is not for every Satanist. ''

While I don't have a problem with finding weaknesses within yourself, why would you then use that to continue the same cycle over again by using it to control others? I'm not sure what Nietzsche had in mind exactly in this regard. I guess it depends on your ideology and your context. As far as I know Jesus was a part of the minority group during his time so it makes sense that he would say things like "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Nietzsche on the other hand, as mentioned earlier in this thread, was concerned with German culture. It seems like the satanist perspective is akin to the Nazi and Hitler perspective. I think that Nietzsche got some things right, but if he really did advocate the use of power over others, and that was the sole purpose of seeking the over-man, he got a negative wrong somewhere in his equation, so to speak.

[Imadrongo]

"It took thousands of years to build the good, civil, Christian state -- Nietzsche himself was fighting against it, was destroying it."

Well, if what you say is true, then I (and we) have many good reasons to recoil from Nietzsche's doctrines.

... And portray them as a mistaken reading, as some testimony to altruism hidden in deep metaphors? I really don't see how you can get any other interpretation from Nietzsche. WHAT is going on in your mind when he says the goal of his philosophy is for an ordering rank where the slaves moralists are no longer in control, when he calls himself "the anti-christ", etc?????

And yes, I do indeed mean 'bad' outcomes as those that are immoral. (And criteria that don't have to do with morality alone but also with well-being).

"An immoral reading of someone who continuously called himself an 'immoralist' -- heaven forbid!"

... But an apparent difference between us (and perhaps other who read here) is that I really and truly think that these values---I focus on them as Judeic values---are highly relevant and important and should not be discarded.

Let me dig up a Nietzsche quote for you Alex...
"Let one not be deceived about oneself! If one hears within oneself the moral imperative as it is understood by altruism, one belongs to the herd. If one has the opposite feeling, if one feels one’s danger and aberration lies in disinterested and selfless actions, one does not belong to the herd."
-WTP, don't have the number here right now

And of course I also believe in a divine being in which we are 'taking place'.

Haha.

[Imadrongo]

An interesting comment relevant to our discussion here, written by someone competent regarding Nietzsche.

From this blog I stumbled upon just now. http://jonrowe.blogspot.com/2006/07/fou ... s-ass.html

...

Foucault is a bird of another stripe. No question he obtained inspiration from Nietzsche (as did almost everyone else), but his focus was on imprisonment, a concept similar to Nietzsche's "slave" mentality. According to Foucault, man is impossibly entangled in his own web of imprisonment. Even his "ideas" are weighted and opposed by his other "ideas." Nietzsche's appeal to freedom is much harder to achieve than the imagination can conceive. Limits come on man from every side, even sides man cannot comprehend, and even the most liberated person is still confined by his and society's boundaries. Thus, one man's freedom imposes on another, is circumscribed by another, limited by another, so that ultimately, it devolves to one person's "power" over another, in order to achieve freedom itself. The Other must be dominated (limited, curtailed) to allow any room for freedom. In a man's yearn for freedom, he encounters opposition at every turn. Ultimately, it becomes one power against another, each and collectively acting against the Other, to keep power of the person's freedom "confined" so not to oppose the power of the Other. All efforts to be free are opposed by other's efforts to be free. Thus, power is used to overcome the other's reach.

Despite it's vigor and apparent extremism, does anyone dispute this? Despite (or in spite) of Foucault's personal prediliction for S&M, an exaggerated expression of his views, perhaps, does anyone deny the force of his insight (which was originally Nietzsche's)? No matter where and in which way one turns, someone or something will, and does, oppose us. We've even institutionalized this opposition (the penal system).

...

I agree.

[Alex Jacob]

I was reading a Spanish author, writing about some of the possible origins of Nietzsche's ideas, and he mentioned these:

Max Stirner

"In the time of spirits thoughts grew till they overtopped my head, whose offspring they yet were; they hovered about me and convulsed me like fever-phantasies — an awful power. The thoughts had become corporeal on their own account, were ghosts, e. g. God, Emperor, Pope, Fatherland, etc. If I destroy their corporeity, then I take them back into mine, and say: "I alone am corporeal." And now I take the world as what it is to me, as mine, as my property; I refer all to myself."

Machiavelli's Discourses on the Ten Books of Livy

Book Two, Chapter Two:

"In thinking, therefore, of whence it should happen that in those ancient times the people were greater lovers of Liberty than in these times, I believe it results from the same reason which makes men presently less strong, which I believe is the difference between our education and that of the ancients, founded on the difference between our Religion and the ancients. For, as our Religion shows the truth and the true way (of life), it causes us to esteem less the honors of the world: while the Gentiles (Pagans) esteeming them greatly, and having placed the highest good in them, were more ferocious in their actions. Which can be observed from many of their institutions, beginning with the magnificence of their sacrifices (as compared) to the humility of ours, in which there is some pomp more delicate than magnificent, but no ferocious or energetic actions. Theirs did not lack pomp and magnificence of ceremony, but there was added the action of sacrifice full of blood and ferocity, the killing of many animals, which sight being terrible it rendered the men like unto it. In addition to this, the ancient Religion did not beatify men except those full of worldly glory, such as were the Captains of armies and Princes of Republics. Our Religion has glorified more humble and contemplative men rather than men of action. It also places the highest good in humility, lowliness, and contempt of human things: the other places it in the greatness of soul, the strength of body, and all the other things which make men very brave. And, if our Religion requires that there be strength (of soul) in you, it desires that you be more adept at suffering than in achieving great deeds."

[ZenMuadDib]

I was reading a Spansih author, writing about some of the possible origins of Nietzsche's ideas, and he mentioned these:

Max Stirner

Machiavelli's Discourses on the Ten Books of Livy

Book Two, Chapter Two:

"In thinking, therefore, of whence it should happen that in those ancient times the people were greater lovers of Liberty than in these times, I believe it results from the same reason which makes men presently less strong, which I believe is the difference between our education and that of the ancients, founded on the difference between our Religion and the ancients. For, as our Religion shows the truth and the true way (of life), it causes us to esteem less the honors of the world: while the Gentiles (Pagans) esteeming them greatly, and having placed the highest good in them, were more ferocious in their actions. Which can be observed from many of their institutions, beginning with the magnificence of their sacrifices (as compared) to the humility of ours, in which there is some pomp more delicate than magnificent, but no ferocious or energetic actions. Theirs did not lack pomp and magnificence of ceremony, but there was added the action of sacrifice full of blood and ferocity, the killing of many animals, which sight being terrible it rendered the men like unto it. In addition to this, the ancient Religion did not beatify men except those full of worldly glory, such as were the Captains of armies and Princes of Republics. Our Religion has glorified more humble and contemplative men rather than men of action. It also places the highest good in humility, lowliness, and contempt of human things: the other places it in the greatness of soul, the strength of body, and all the other things which make men very brave. And, if our Religion requires that there be strength (of soul) in you, it desires that you be more adept at suffering than in achieving great deeds."

That made my eyes gloss over. "Sacrificing large numbers of animals" seems like a large waste and an almost insane act.

[Alex Jacob]

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It is actually pretty important to consider that in Nietzsche there is simply no 'pathway' that leads or connects to any sort of divinity, and it is as if all the pathways to such a 'fact' or ideal had been cut off. You sort of have to laugh at the metaphor that jumps out at you: he threw the baby (Jesus) out with the bathwater. If the mood in the quote from Machiavelli is relevant to Nietzsche's mood, the criticism of Christianity is that it swings too far to one pole, is tendentious and unbalanced, but Machiavelli's entire opus was dedicated to a very tangible goal: defining how temporal power really functions, and to providing a sort of basic science about rulership of men. In other parts of the Discourses, of course, he also speaks about the need for religious forms and how the Prince must maintain them. This is the stuff of statesmen, and certainly not of spiritualists. In my opinion, one cannot turn to Nietzsche for any infomation at all about any of these more subtle matters.

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Jung in an essay on Freud compared Freud to Nietzsche, in that they both came out of a repressive, Victorian era where everyone was lying to themselves about themselves. (Hence his criticisms of the 'English moralists'). Man did not really know man and had been captured by his own lies. Nietzsche levelled an attack on this falsity, on those lies and what they covered over, and what person fabricated them, and for what purpose. Similarly, Freud 'psychologized with a hammer', cutting through the lies about human nature and impulse and reducing it to biology, to raw psychological forces, to basic sexual impulse, and opened the closet to view all the terrible little interior imps that no one had the guts to look at.

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In that sense Nietzsche wants to do the same thing. He says 'We never find ourselves because we never seek ourselves' and so, under such a false premise, how could we ever 'bring home any honey', but the whole point of philosophy and self-discovery is to find something, to bring something home. Nietzsche has pretty clear ideas as to what must be 'brought home'. Nietzsche seemed most influenced by the least optimistic sorts, and the most pessimistic, like La Rochefoucauld, not only literarily, for the style of pithy aphorisms whose meaning you have to work to discover, but for the way in which he sees through the human front, to an avaricious and quite selfish heart.

But similarly to Freud, Nietzsche apparently had no way to conceptually process even the idea of a divinity, it simply could not appear on his radar, he did not respond to it in any way. (And yet---as is alluded below---he certainly responded and expressed deep mysticism, a connection through the blood to something ancient, something raw and powerful).

Yet simply because he found significant elements within the Christian 'attitude' to brutally criticise (but he was not alone in this and there are notable precedents) does not necessarily mean that 'he had the right' (if you will) to do away with the whole conceptual pathway to an idea of the divine. There were in fact all sorts of different alternatives in operation at the time and of course well preceding Nietzsche. A turning away from the limited and doctrinaire 'mood' of typical Christian theology, or its weak anti-masculinity, and opening up to the investigation of other sources, other interpretations, and to other cultures. For example Voltaire criticized the Catholic hierarchy and its power structure and investigated oriental religion.

Psychologically (but it is almost more a branch of theology) CG Jung, the medical doctor, discovered a complete avenue to an understanding of the divine through a sort of twisting of Freudian understandings, starting with the idea that a dream was a sort of message from some interior part of oneself, that there was a 'speaker' there who brought to the 'ego' a message that could be interpreted, something that was produced by a 'higher' order of intelligence. (Rediscovering, as it were, and giving a voice to, the priestess of the Delphic temple all over again, and to the interpretation of signs and auguries, among many different things).

Despite the ambiguity of the Jungian opus, it stands there right in front of the Nietzschean denial and poses difficult questions to that denial, and to that materialistic retreat from the idea of divinity, to a means to 'explain God', and yet this whole avenue was completely unknown to Nietzsche, simply because it had not been articulated, or 'discovered'. Jung and the modern mythologists have reopened a 'conceptual pathway' whereby modernity, and even the precise sciences, has at least some language to explain divinity, or perhaps one would have to say 'defend theology'. (It is often people like Father Bowes who resort to a vague Jungianism to defend a theological relationhsip to life that, in fact, they simply cannot explain).

The Jungian opus had so many ramifications on modern culture, it is almost impossible to name them all. But one important thing is that it harkened back to something quite original and basic in man: a sort of shamanism that is not merely abstract mysticism at all, but a 'shamanism' intimately connected with the body, intimately connected with the notion of evolution of the 'soul' or spirit of man, the unconscious and the invisible, and with a world that speaks to one in signs and omens, not in conscious language (logos), just as something interior can speak to us through dream symbolism and feeling.

So, with all that, Neil, I only wanted to point a little more precisely to the idea that 'we exist in the body of God', which in no sense is an alternative or an escape from the material sciences and that sort of investigation of reality, but is rather a way to reassess, to look at anew, to rediscover all over again.

The 'satanist' alternative is one possibility. Might give sis a bit of a fright, though. (Interestingly it is mirrored, somewhat less dramatically of course, in 'carvaka' philosophy, a branch of Hindu theology that is atheistic and 'atomistic', Epicurean). It is in a very real sense one viable alternative for the died-in-the-wool Nietzschean dozing on his fluffy pillow with the cat meowing at the door.

While life is yours, live joyously; None can escape Death's searching eye: When once this frame of ours they burn, How shall it e'er again return?
____________________________________________________

Jungian Terms:

"Mercurius: in alchemy, the supreme spirit imprisoned in matter. When freed by the alchemist, Mercurius took his/her form in the hermaphroditic Philosopher's Stone but also stands for the prima materia and the opus. For Jung, Mercurius symbolized the unconscious Self. He/she also provided the alchemical counterpart to the all-good and therefore incomplete Self-symbol of Christ. The anima and Wise One archetypes flow together in Mercurius's androgynous symbolism. The lion and the metallic man as well as dragon, raven, black eagle and hermaphrodite also symbolize him.

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"A list of his aspects: all conceivable opposites; both material and spiritual; process by which lower/material is transformed into higher/spiritual; a trickster and God's reflection in nature; reflection of the artifex's mystical experience and opus; the self; the individuation process; the collective unconscious. As Christ is the archetype of consciousness, Mercurius is that of the unconscious.

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_________________________________________

Wotan

Wotan: ancient god of the hunt. Jung felt him behind National Socialism, the blond beast. Berserker, storm god, wanderer, warrior, lord of the dead and of remembrance, master of secret knowledge, magician, god of the poets, god of rage and frenzy who embodies the instinctual/emotional aspect of the unconscious, but also intuitive and able to interpret fate.

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