Sunday 17 April 2011

Nietzsche: psychology in historical context

I have greatly benefited from Nietzsche, but I suspect this was only because I came from a culture much closer to 19th Century Christianity than to anything like 21st Century culture. I had all the symptoms of victimhood to this ideology. I had very repressed individuality, I sought out the "truth" of every situation in order to submit to it (making me as easy object of manipulation). I had turned my own aggression, including creative energies, inwards.

I think Nietzsche speaks effectively to those who are in this sort of state. Basically, to turn things around one must overcome one's narrow Christian conscience, which has trapped you. From a Christian ideological perspective, this means to "do evil". This is the rhetoric Nietzsche employs.

Basically, I see that those who want to take Nietzsche's writings in the other direction, which is to eliminate empathy from their lives, in order to transcend what they would like to view as "mediocrity", but which is in fact normality, end up not richer, but poorer for their efforts.

To eliminate empathy is in fact to live in a narrower corner of the psyche than one has need to do. It's actually to shrink, to retract from the world. This approach also makes other people harder -- not easier -- to understand. If it seems very erroneous, I think that is because it is in fact error.

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Cultural barriers to objectivity