Recently in nietzsche Category

Rad note » today's entry was lifted from another page. I transferred the following text here .. to its own separate entry because the subject (I'm sure you would agree) seems so different.

This is something I would consider a special treat. Here ya go...

Snickerdoodle Dad

"Those high school girls are checking you out, punkin'," I said.

He lifted his still-sleepy head and looked over there weakly for a few secs ..

.. then gently set it back down on my shoulder and said, "Can we get a snickerdoodle, dad?"

It struck me how he was more interested in a cookie.

And the way that he says the word » snickerdoodle .. is just so adorably cute that I can hardly stand it.

And I say, "Punkin', please dont be so cute. I cant stand it when you say such cute things."

He obviously has no clue why I think he question is so cute. Nor does he care.

Because there is a pause before he says (with a touch of morning eagerness in his voice) "Does this mean we can get a snickerdoodle?"

But I don't want to be the pushover-dad that I am .. so I said, "We got a snickerdoodle last time. Can it be my turn to choose this time?"

He took surprisingly long to decide, but finally said (rather disappointedly) » "Okay .. you can choose."

I mean, there came a point when I thought he simply wasnt going to answer.

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» I lived in Florida for nearly a year. It was the first place that the Navy sent me .. after prying me away from mom's apron strings in Connecticut. I was 18 (close to Trayvon's age) and Florida is where the military sent me for bootcamp (.. via Amtrak, 1-way, 2-day trip).

Six months later I RETURNED to Florida to attend the Navy's [ Holy plutonium, Batman! ] Nuclear Power school (.. in Orlando).

After I got out of the Navy some 6 years later [at EAOS], I again returned to Florida .. to visit an ex-shipmate who I'd previously lived with on the North Shore of Oahu (.. in a shack on the beach in Waialua).

"Come on down," he roared. "You'll LOVE it here!" (He was a Brooklyn boy who could talk anybody into anything.)

Seeing it was the dead of winter, and the rest of the country was freezing their babushkas off, I hopped on a plane and headed south, spening another month or two down there.

[ Takes time .. a while .. to re-orientate yourself back into civilian life. Not easy. I found it a formidable challenge .. and nobody even SHOT at me.

In other words, I think our military needs a REST .. after more than a decade of fighting two wars on the other side of the planet. I mean, come on .. isnt it obvious?

Our government wants our military to be more disciplined, yet they themselves have none. ]

I did however, love it down there in Florida, and was shown a great time.

So Florida is where I went to re-orientate myself back into the civilian world .. with a small part of the world's best ex-military support group (.. who had already experienced the transition and understood its psycho-dynamics) .. to try and screw my head on straight .. and grow my hair long again.

So I like Florida. The good-sized waves at Daytona Beach, the cool-sounding name of Cocoa Beach, the Disney World buzz of Orlando, the "on vacation" attitude of Ft. Lauderdale ..

.. especially the tropical feel in Tampa & St. Petersburg, and the bathtub-warm murky waters of the entire Gulf coast (.. before the spill, anyway).There was no part I did not enjoy. Even Ocala horse country.

Tho I never made it down to the Keys, I believe I could someday retire there.

It's definitely the FLATTEST state I've ever lived in. Great state if you like to bike .. cuz there's not a hill to be found anywhere.

Takes a little getting used to the humidity. Sitting at sea-level means that much of the the state is a swamp (.. called the Everglades).

It's a state where .. in the span of 20 minutes you can go from beautiful blue skies to a torrential downpour and back to sunny skies again .. with the wet pavement STEAMING in the hot sun before it's dry again. Can you say sauna?

[ You learn to wait, and not make a mad dash for it, where the faster you run, the wetter you get. Because, by the time you get there, the rain has stopped. ]

And then there's the BUGS. Florida has more bugs than any other state I've been to. Cockroaches thrive there. The mosquitoes have been known to carry off cattle. Alligators think nothing of taking a dip in your swimming pool.

The Feel You Get Living in Florida

Now every state has its own distinct 'feel' .. its own unique flavor, its own particular characteristics .. which you might not be able to appreciate until you've LIVED there a while. (At least, that's how it was for me.)

And I could certainly wax verbose here and talk at great length on the subject .. and maybe things have since changed .. but suffice to say that the #1 'feeling' I got from Florida .. while living there ..

.. was that THIS was a place where they » LET YOU DO YOUR OWN THING .. which is one of the reasons why I liked Florida, and one of the reasons why my buddy decided to settle there .. after globe-trotting for 6 years with the Navy. (In other words, they stay out of your business.)

[ By contrast, California (like the Feds) tries to get involved in every little aspect of your life. I have LIVED, btw, in ~ a dozen different states, and visited many more, which gives me a variety of points of reference from which to compare & contrast. ]

So while I *am* surprised about the Trayvon Martin shooting by George Zimmerman (4-weeks ago today), and by the SPECIFICS of the case, I'm not surprised that it happened in Florida.

I mean, the Stand-Your-Ground law, which the authorities cite as justification for the shooting, sounds a whole lot like » "You folks go ahead and take care of whatever business you need to take care of .. and call us only if you really need us." Does it not?

Now, many people have already commented on this tragedy at length, so I wasnt sure that I was going to comment myself .. which is why I waited a month. (No sense in duplicating what others have already said.) So I'll get right to the point.

» I thought the book was about the Bohemian/Austrian poet » Rainer Maria Rilke ('ril-kuh, 1875-1926, a one-time associate of Rodin (who everybody knows is a creative giant who kicks much artistic ass).

Rilke is probably best known for writing » Letters to a Young Poet (.. which he never intended to be published).

And it is (.. about Rilke). But it's written by Lou Andreas-Salomé, a fascinating woman in her own right.

She was Rilke's life-long friend & traveling companion. (Lou was 36 when they met, he only 21.)

A "grand dame" of her age. Accomplished. Not movie-star gorgeous, but skilled at coaxing art out of the artist. In other words » his muse.

Some women simply have a knack/gift for being a Muse. You probably know one yourself. 

[ Lou(ise) was born in Russia, St. Petersburg. Her father was a Russian army general.

She had 3 (or 5) older brothers, no sisters, which suggests she understood men. They had money. Her married pastor proposed marriage to her at age 17. (Yeah, you read that right. He had two kids at the time.)

She was one of the first female students admitted to the University of Zürich. Both Rilke & Lou met Tolstoy while visiting Russia together. The first time (for the first visit) Lou's 'husband' went along. (Yeah, you read that right, too.)

She wrote more than a dozen books, one of which is titled (in German) » Die Erotik, which suggests she was comfortable with her sexuality. Tho the book I'm reading makes it clear she preferred sexual abstinence in order to focus on pursuing intellectual ambitions.

One of her earlier books is titled » Searching for God. Rilke was her first lover (at age 36) .. after (after!) she'd been married to Friedrich Carl for 10 years. Interesting girl, no? ]

» Is She the Reason Nietzsche Lost it?

Something about her drove men wild. We're talking about men who have since become icons. But what? What was it? What spell did she cast? And what did she see in the young Rilke? (.. other than youth)

She is the woman who Nietzsche had the hots for. "I lust after this kind of soul," he wrote.

And, "From which stars did we fall to meet each other here?" when he first met her.

Also » "She was prepared like none other for that part of my philosophy that has hardly yet been uttered."

But she rejected Nietzsche's proposals of marriage, and may (in retrospect) be one of the reasons Fritz went off the deep end later in life. (He badly wanted to make babies with her.)

Lou later wrote a book about her relationship with Nietzsche. She was 21 when they met and Nietzsche was well-known by then at 37. So it seems it wasnt long between the break-up and his first symptoms of insanity. (No, I dont know how long their relationship lasted. How long could any woman tolerate Nietzsche? A year or two max?)

That puts him at 38 or 39. I think he started coming unravelled at 43 or 44.

If we do the math .. we know he was born toward the end of '44. Add 37 to that for his age when he met Lou. That gives us » 1881/82. Add a couple of years for Nietzche to get acquainted with Lou, before crashing & burning.

That gives us 1883/84, which are the years he spent writing Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which I read somewhere that Nietzsche said was a substitute for the son he knew he would never have.

He finished Thus Spake in '85. 1888 was the last year he wrote anything. By January '89, they were coming for him with a white I-Love-Me jacket.

Instead, she married a guy named Frederick Carl Andreas, 16 years her senior, only because he threatened to kill himself if she didnt (.. he plunged a knife into his chest in her presence) .. with the stipulation she never be obliged to do the nasty with him. (Say what?!) He agreed! Their 40-year marriage remained unconsummated. (Cant make up this stuff, folks.)

» It surprised me to learn that .. Javascript (and most programming languages) require no spaces.

In other words, you can use all the spaces you like (.. to improve, for example, the readability of your code) ..

.. but programming languages themselves just ignore white space (.. especially when you use optional semicolons to separate your statements).

That torqued my cranium nicely. Tho not sure why. Maybe cuz it's clear that the Englishlanguageneedsspacessobadly.

Still plowing thru Javascript. Got a little sidetracked there, learning about Unicode, ASCII, UTF-8 (the 8-bit version of character encoding that all my new web pages use) and UTF-16 (the 16-bit UCS Transformation Format that Javascript uses). Surprising amount of info contained there .. for something most of us take for granted.

Programming is Nietzsche (Values)

Another little curio I've stumbled upon is:

• Programming (it seems) is very much about » values.

• Nietzsche (it seems) is very much about » values.

■ Therefore, ipso facto » Programming is Nietzsche. =)

Wouldnt Nietzsche make a good name for a programming language?

What are your values? Your highest values. Do you live your life in a manner that is congruent and consistent with them? (Do you dare?)

Nietzsche did. (And he went stark raving mad.)

PS - For months (.. as I've studied programming) I've been on-the-lookout-for parallels or intersections (connections) between's Nietzsche's values and Programming values. Tho I never found what I was looking for. Not even a loose thread. Frustrating.

Nietzsche's 'values' are really about » morals & priorities.

While Programming values are about things such as » numbers (.. 1,2,3), "strings" (.. of text), booleans (.. true/false), arrays (.. ordered lists), objects (.. unordered lists of property/value pairs) & functions (.. code that can accept an input (argument, parameter) and spit out a value).

In other words we're talking about » variables. Which are values that change.

Two totally different sets of semantics. So I'm surprised by how the non-existent connection finally played out. I mean, the syllogism was obviously meant as a joke. (I did have a class in Logic, which was one of the better uses of my college time.)

Regulars might recall how, during the Rad days of Nietzsche (last fall) .. I kept making vague references to how Nietzsche's insanity might actually (somehow) confirm the validity of his ideas .. rather than discredit them.

The problem here is that this notion is counter-intuitive, no? If a controversial intellectual goes crazy, would it not seem reasonable that a little of his nascent insanity might've infected his earlier works .. thus discrediting them?

To be honest, I am not clear myself on how my counterintuitive notion might be true. The 'feeling' comes as an intuition (.. if you believe in such things). A hunch. A vague impression.

In Nietzsche's case however .. I feel his insanity is different (perhaps) because of the topics he covered, one of which is » morals, which can transcend the intellect.

In reading him, I find the man obviously intelligent, occasionally brilliant, with a remarkably keen insight. In MOST of his thought-processes, I detect NO hint of insanity. (Whatsoever.)

But in other areas .. yeah, not difficult to believe this stuff was written by a guy starting to lose his mind.

So his mental stability seems to be context-sensitive. (Tho I have not analyzed his writings closely enough to determine where exactly the dividing lines of these contexts might lie.)

Again, my thoughts here seem to be consulting my intuition .. which is not the most reliable communications interface. In other words, my gut is telling me something that my head cant quite grasp. (Not fully. Not yet, anyway.)

» Dangerous Knowledge (BBC Video)

My point today involves a video titled » Dangerous Knowledge (BBC) .. which looks at the lives of .. four brilliant mathematicians:

1. Georg Cantor ("god's messenger," a german who successfully dissected INFINITY where others such as galileo had failed)
2. Ludwig Boltzmann ("the genius of disorder," an austrian physicist who looked at TIME & ENTROPY in new and disturbing ways)
3. Kurt Gödel ("the limits of logic," greatest logician ever, who was a close friend of einstein and famous for his incompleteness theorem)
4. Alan Turing ("the enigma," father of COMPUTER SCIENCE, an unapologetic gay who was chemically castrated by the british government .. for being gay)

".. whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them INSANE and eventually led to them all committing SUICIDE."

The above quote comes directly from the DK website, which is interesting .. cuz Cantor didnt kill himself. [ Rather he merely died alone in an insane asylum. =/ You can watch the entire video » here. ]

To be sure, this video is a trip. One of its recurring themes is » uncertainty. Which means our physical world (in which we live) operates on probabilities (not certainty) .. especially when you try to predict how matter will operate at the atomic and subatomic levels.

This concept should not be too surprising, tho, since tomorrow is promised to no man. There exists no certainty that you or I will wake tomorrow. Merely a probability (.. that we can venture to calculate).

The concept of 'uncertainty' initially made those who saw it most clearly feel ill-at-ease. Even Einstein had trouble with it .. leading him to famously quip » "God does not play dice with the universe."

There's a reason the subject of heaven is rarely a topic of scientific research. (It's not physical.) "So, at least," reasoned these great minds, "let's try to find some certainty here in our physical world."

Not only was that certainty NOT coming .. but the most brilliant minds could see that it was NEVER coming. Ever. You could kiss the idea of certainty goodbye. In reality, it's just an illusion.

This is kinda WHY these guys went crazy. They saw things (using their super-powerful minds). Things like infinity & eternity. But what's really weird .. is that they started out trying to prove the EXACT OPPOSITE. They started out searching for certainty. (Think about it.)

Regulars might recall how I delved into Nietzsche last autumn. Time & distance have since provided some perspective to the strange & interesting things I found there. The overriding impression I'm left with -- after months of Nietzsche's ideas fading in my rear-view mirror -- is this »

» It doesnt much matter what particular religion a person might claim (or proclaim), or even whether they faithfully carry out the tenets of their specific denomination.

What matters is » how good a person they are. How they live their lives.

I realize this is waay-subjective, but you know what I mean (.. especially if you have an idea of what 'good' is).

Nietzsche is/was very much about » morals .. particularly as they pertain to VALUES.

Perhaps I should come right out and make a strong, unambiguous declarative statement .. such as what Nietzsche himself would like.

And here it is (drum roll, please) » Nietzsche is » very much about values.

Perhaps this quote here will shed more light on the man and his feelings about morals and values.

At least, that's what struck me about him. Certainly that's what surprised me most, and is what I came away thinking about.

Not surprisingly, I now have a more discriminating eye where morals & moral behaviors are concerned.

Tho sometimes I wish I didnt see as clearly. Cuz the world is no Disneyland. Definitely not the "happiest place on earth." Ignorance is bliss. (Or, at least, it can be.)

Tho I am also more tolerant and forgiving now. Cuz I realize how difficult it can be for folks to operate congruently with their inner moral compass. (Can we call this 'conscience'?)

Anyway, I never would've imagined that Nietzsche would have had that kind of effect on me. I do however, feel stronger for having had the experience.

It was initially exhilarating -- both intellectually & morally -- but also challenging, spiritually, which later grew fatiguing (.. like the end of a hard workout).

It's good to challenge ourselves from time to time. To find what things we fear and go there, to confront them (our fears) .. for that very reason. You just *know* you're gonna find something gnarly lurking behind the scary door.

After reading Nietzsche, I realized that people can walk out of church and do bad things. So the church, or the religion, is obviously not the thing that makes a person moral.

Rather it's the IMPACT someone has on others that matters. That's what really counts (.. from a moral standpoint).

Sure, I knew this before. But Nietzsche had a way of bringing it out, front-n-center. Quite strikingly.

Attending church doesnt make one moral. It's what happens OUTSIDE the heavy wooden doors that count. Right?

I'm also more in touch with my own moral compass. Can sense it more clearly, more cleanly. And with this clarity has come a sense of responsibility.

We dont do the right thing because God wants us to, or because he'll toss a few lightning bolts our way if we dont. No, we do the right thing cuz .. it's the right the thing to do. And cuz we'll know if we dont. And we'll think less of ourselves (.. if we have a conscience).

Winter solstice today. Longest night. Shortest day. The exact moment .. when the sun reaches its southerly-most point and begins heading back north » 3:38 PM PST (California time) .. if my calcs are correct.

Winter begins .. for those of us who live here in the Northern hemisphere.

In the Southern hemisphere, Christmas occurs at the beginning of summer. That would seem strange.

The winter solstice, I feel, is the most significant of the various solar demarcations that arrive thru-out the year .. as we sail around the sun .. making elliptical like .. at warp speed.

Here's an interesting video (10-mins) along these lines.

Good time to stop & think about things. .. as the sun appears to stop for a few days. (The term 'solstice' means » sun-stopping.) Things like life (= the present). The past. The future.

Regarding the present .. it is raining like crazy. Unbelievable. Worst storm in 10 or 15 years. So there's no way we'll be seeing any of the eclipse.

Multiple storms lining up to kick our butts and drown us. Souther California is not designed to handle large amounts of water (.. cuz it rains here so rarely), so it is doubly bad when it does.

Speaking of 'thinking-about-things' .. the biggest consequence I've noticed (thus far) .. of familiarizing myself with Nietzsche (& his ideas) .. is that I've started seeing things in light of VALUES. Specifically » how values for the same things vary.

Never did this before. At least, not like this.

Nietzsche is very much about » values. The terms 'good' & 'bad' imply that values have been assigned to things .. things for which we use these labels.

» Liu Xiaobo | Nobel Peace Prize

Take, for example, this Chinese guy who won the Nobel Peace Prize » Liu Xiaobo. This is what got me thinking along these lines.

He has been recognized & honored for calling for greater freedom of expression & human rights in China (.. by writing Charter 08, signed by 350 others) .. something he obviously feels strongly about (i.e. » values very highly).. enough to go to jail for.

The Chinese government, on the other hand .. uh, doesn't hold these same values. Not hardly. They say he is a criminal .. who deserves to spend 11 years in prison. (That's a long time, Dawg.)

Same man, valued differently by different organizations. Dramatically so. Striking contrast, no?

What award could be more uplifting? Than the Nobel Peace Prize. What punishment more sapping? Than spending a decade rotting in a Chinese prison. He must feel like someone standing in the eye of a hurricane.

That's what Nietzsche has done to my perception. There's this auto-focus-thing going on that sharpens the lines of contrast where values are concerned. Like I said, not something I was expecting.

The effect of this heightened contrast .. is that values seem to be a function of the person doing the valuing, and not the object itself.

Is Liu Xiaobo a hero, worthy to be included along with a century of legendary laureates? Or is he a criminal, worthy of prison? Depends who you ask. Right?

I've turned my focus back to programming with PHP. With very technical material, I seem to learn best after taking a break & putting it aside for several weeks. Maybe I need the time to digest.

Good to be back in the programming world. Things clicking much more smoothly now, conceptually. The next course focuses on OOP.

But still find my thoughts drifting back to Nietzsche occasionally .. specially during that first sip of coffee in the morning. Also in the steamy shower.

Ever seen the movie » Murder by Numbers (2002), starring Sandra Bullock? The story seems farfetched, but is actually based on real life events (.. something I didn't know 'til last week).

In May of 1924, two wealthy kids, both "exceptionally intelligent," ages 18 & 19, named Nathan Leopold & Richard Loeb, from the University of Chicago, planned & executed (tried to, anyway) "the perfect murder."

Their motive? Get this:

Leopold, 19 at time of the murder, and Loeb, 18, believed themselves to be Nietzschean supermen who could commit a "perfect crime" (in this case kidnapping and murder).

Before the murder, Leopold had written to Loeb: "A superman ... is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do."

Here's what their high-power defense attorney argued to keep them out of the electric chair at Joliet:

"Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche's philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it?... It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university."

What's *really* weird .. is that these kids were both Jewish. And they killed another Jewish kid (.. bludgeoned in the backseat with a chisel). They saw themselves as Jewish Nietzschean Supermen (.. übermensch).

Ooh, I just realized this was 1924 .. some 15 years *before* WW II, and 18 before Jews started being exterminated at Auschwitz. (.. by Nazis who championed Nietzsche's ideas). Interesting, no? Doubt many Jews subscribed to his philosophy afterwards.

In her book titled » The Untouched Key, little Alice Miller quotes a guy (named Richard Blunck, on page 88) who devoted himself to Nietzsche's life & work for 40 years. This is possibly the best thing I've read on what it's like to actually read Nietzsche & grapple with his ideas .. something you might call » the Nietzsche experience. (Incoming!)

Blunck's comments confirm & validate my earlier impressions .. to a remarkable degree.

In an intro to a two-thousand-page biography on Nietzsche by Curt-Paul Janz, Blunck writes (my emphasis):

"Those who come across a book of Nietzsche's for the first time, immediately sense that more is required to understand it than mere intellect, that more is involved here than following someone's logic from premise to conclusion.

They will feel they have wandered into an immense force field that is emitting shock waves of a far deeper nature than can be registered by the intellect alone. They will be struck less by the opinions and insights expressed than by the person behind those opinions & insights.

Readers will often react defensively, as if they have something to defend. If readers pursue these ideas that confront, and sometimes even assault..."

That's right .. this is the guy selected to write the intro to a two-thousand-page biography (published 1987). The mother of all biographies. Now, here's what I wrote in a previous entry (dated Oct 11, 2010, before I found Alice's book):

* "Reading Nietzsche feels like someone walking thru your mind wearing a bandolier of grenades, lobbing them, one after another, at everything we (in the Christian Western world) hold sacred."

and also:

* "Need to armor-up before entering Nietzsche's garden .. cuz you know it's coming at you. Protective gear. Bulletproof vest. Kevlar, the lightweight one. Lock-n-load. Incoming!"

and also:

* "Reading Nietzsche feels like a self-induced spiritual crisis. Yes, it's good to challenge ourselves. (I hope.) Yo Friedrich, bring it, Dawg. Bring your Nazi-inspiring philosophy."

and also:

* "Nietzsche challenges me like that. Tho in a different way. He goes deep .. to the very foundations of our Western belief systems. An area normally off-limits."

If history could've buried Nietzsche, it would have. Cuz he said things that were not merely offensive, but downright heretical (.. such as 'God is dead'). The Dark Ages would've had him drawn & quartered. Progress.

Few people with whom I spoke -- and I chat with some fairly educated folk, including professors -- knew very much about the man. The ones who did tho, seemed to like him the least.

The more religious a person was, the more they disliked Nietzsche, as a general rule. And 'dislike' is putting it mildly. I mean, people got pretty fired up reading his aphorisms .. especially those on religion & morality.

I'm like » Dude, I didn't write the book. Okay? I'm just reading it.

But you don't have to read many headlines these days to know that organized religion has had its share of problems. We're talking BIG problems.

Serious morality issues continue to plague the church. You know. You read the news. And that's hypocritical, cuz they claim to represent & champion the moral standard. Especially when 'tolerance' isn't considered a Christian virtue.

» Nietzsche & Religion

So, at least in our day, it's not unreasonable to find fault with religion. And I doubt things were much different back in Nietzsche's day.

The reason history hasn't been able to bury Nietzsche .. is cuz he was brilliant. Remarkably perceptive. No doubt about it. Anyone who grapples with his ideas - even on a casual level - will readily admit. Tolstoy was only partially correct.

That's why he's still one of the youngest ever tenured professors (at age 24). And note that being a professor meant his intellect was highly developed.

Most people associate Nietzsche with an arrogant 19th century intellectual who found fault with religion because of its hypocritical morality.

Yeah okay. But Nietzsche wasn't the first or only to do so. Remember what Jesus said?

Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, saying the scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.

For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,

For they say and do not. You don't hear that verse preached from many pulpits. Seems little has changed over the centuries.

No one is immune to error cuz we're all human, and therefore fallible (by definition). You know anybody who's not-capable of making a mistake? I don't.

But hypocrisy is particularly odious .. such as that practiced by politicians when they write laws to punish those who do the very same things they themselves do in secret (.. in an airport bathroom, for example).