The Hierarchies of Human Values

I didn't mean that, if the world is the will to power and nothing besides, the eternal recurrence must logically/necessarily be a fact. What I meant is that, if the world is the will to power and nothing besides, viewing the world as such must mean willing it as such. But precisely if it is, it cannot be willed as such.

My first formulation of this problem, before I found it explicitly in Strauss, reads thus:

I wrote:

Nietzsche's philosophy is the philosophy of the eternal recurrence [i.e., not of the will to power] [...] for the following reason. Nietzsche defines philosophy as the most spiritual will to power which prescribes to nature what or how it ought to be ([BGE] 9). Nietzsche's philosophy prescribes to nature that it ought to be will to power and nothing besides. However, this means prescribing to it that it ought to be what it most probably is. In other words, commanding it that it be what it most probably is. But how could something not be what it is? How could I command a miserable wretch about nihilism to be a miserable wretch about nihilism? He could not do otherwise if he wanted to! So that's not much of a command. Therefore, the command must be, "remain what you are". But of the essence of what nature is is change. Nietzsche does not command nature to stop changing. What he does is, he commands it to keep changing to all eternity. But change is not all there is to nature; it is a series of specific forms. What Nietzsche does is, he commands nature to be that series of specific forms to all eternity. In other words, he commands it to eternally recur. This is why Nietzsche's philosophy is not simply the philosophy of the will to power, but the philosophy of the eternal recurrence of the will to power: Nietzsche's philosophy prescribes to nature, not that it be what it most probably is, but that it recur eternally as what it most probably is. In other words, he does not prescribe to nature what it ought to be, so much as how it ought to be:

"The determination 'will to power' replies to the question of being with respect to the latter's constitution; the determination 'eternal recurrence of the same' replies to the question of being with respect to its way to be." (Source: Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vol. II, Chap. 26, trans. Krell.)

In the meantime, I've reformulated it several times, but can't readily find those formulations right now. Strauss's explicit formulation, or at least the part of it that I saved, is this:

"We start again from the premise that reality is will to power, and there is no essential difference between men and brutes; there is no nature of man strictly speaking. Given this premise, the doctrine of eternal return, which means, subjectively, transformation of the will into acceptance, is the only way there can be knowledge, as acknowledging of what is, and it is the only way in which there can be nature; that is to say, that which is by itself and not by being willed or posited. But precisely because acceptance is transformed will, will survives in the acceptance, in the contemplation. Contemplation is creative." (Lecture transcript of May 18, 1959.)

And in my book draft, I've formulated it as follows:

Quote :

"Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation. And he who seeketh to create beyond himself, hath for me the purest will." (Thus Spake  Zarathustra, "Immaculate Perception", Common translation.)

The will to create beyond oneself is the pure form of the will to power. But this will is present even in perception. Perception necessarily "maculates", that is, re-creates its object. All perception involves interpretation. And this does not just apply to sense perception, but to intellection as well. Thus the word translated as "perception" by Common is Erkenntnis, "cognition" or "knowledge". Cognition is necessarily maculate, for knowledge is a mental image of something else--not of itself...

Now Leo Strauss rightly discerned a problem within the doctrine of the will to power:

"Precisely if all views of the world are interpretations, i.e. acts of the will to power, the doctrine of the will to power is at the same time an interpretation and the most fundamental fact[.]" (Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, page 178.)

The doctrine of the will to power is the doctrine that all occurrences are acts of the will to power. Thus Nietzsche wrote:

"I recognized the active force[,] that which creates[,] in the midst of the coincidental
--coincidence is itself only the colliding into each other of creating impulses" (Nietzsche, Notebooks Winter 1883-1884 24 [28] = section 673 of The Will to Power.)

But the word translated as "recognized" is erkannte, "cognized"; the doctrine of the will to power is not a discovery through immaculate cognition, but itself a creation, an imposition, a violation of the way things are. It therefore cannot simply be the most fundamental fact. The "recognition" that all occurrences are acts of the will to power is a willful re-creation of those occurrences.

Now we can only know what happened in the past. As Crowley says:

"[W]e can never know what is happening, but only what has just happened, even when most actively concentrated on what we call 'the present'." (Crowley, Little Essays, "Memory".)

Yet we cannot will into the past. The will is directed into the future. And we cannot will things to be exactly what they are or were, for then it's not a case of willing at all. In order to see all--past--occurrences as acts of the will to power, therefore, we must will them to be what they were--but now in the future! We must will them to recur, as acts of the will to power. This is the necessary connection between the doctrine of the will to power and the idea of, nay the will to, the eternal recurrence.

[...]

Now even if we limit our acceptance of the will to power doctrine to cognition, the necessary connection to the eternal recurrence still holds. In order to see all--past--acts of cognition as acts of the will to power, we must will them to be what they were, but now in the future. We must will them to recur, as acts of the will to power.

I will probably delete this last quote soon. For now I'll add, though, that if all acts of cognition are acts of the will to power, all cognition must be a willing into the future. I'm reminded:

"Said ye ever Yea to one joy? O my friends, then said ye Yea also unto all woe. All things are enlinked, enlaced and enamoured[.]" (Zarathustra, "The Drunken Song".)

Perhaps cognition itself is always a joy, even if what is cognized is woeful. Compare:

"We cannot exert our understanding without from time to time understanding something of importance; and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the awareness of our understanding, by the understanding of understanding, by noesis noeseos, and this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that Aristotle could ascribe it to his God. This experience is entirely independent of whether what we understand primarily is pleasing or displeasing, fair or ugly. It leads us to realize that all evils are in a sense necessary if there is to be understanding. It enables us to accept all evils which befall us and which may well break our hearts in the spirit of good citizens of the city of God." (Strauss, "What Is Liberal Education?")

The realization that cognition is will to power is the noesis that noesis is poiesis. As such, it's not just a realization, but also an actualization. Self-actualization.

Excellence. Lets hope WL and Bill are lurking.

Ill be contemplating this for a while, as your book quote finally made me understand why one would from an analytic perspective find it necessary to affirm the Eternal Recurrence of the Same.
I admit it is far deeper, more demanding, more Heideggerian than I had figured.

I can easily accept it without feeling I have missed things I shouldn't have though, because it is also clear to me that VO is a means to affirm the recurrence "grammatically", syntactically. Selfvaluing logic is a picture of itself, thereby it is a knowledge that forges a unity knowledge and being - (a unity - and it claims that there is no the unity) and thus destroys the difference between ontology and epistemology.

I am glad to see that not only you have at last set yourself to write a book, but that also the first thing I read from it clarifies what has had me puzzled for fifteen years or more - your insistence on the ERs crucial importance for philosophical course of action, a politics of philosophical life.

Very interesting. Ive saved the text to my hardddrive. I do believe this stuff needs to be rewarded, that it can't be thrown like pearls to the swine. Here, it is in its place as it is valued in the terms it carries (not to say in its own terms, I can't make that claim, obviously), but even so you must indeed make sure you don't lose the momentum of your book to free publications of its first part.

It is not proper to not derive power from power. Philosophy must stand in the world, otherwise there is no Dasein.

Now our philosophies may merge. Parodites, Aletheia-Thrasymachus, Pezer, you and myself - all of these now, in my mind, address, if entirely different universes and orders, also the very same thing. A form of consciousness that is a proto-mind from which we derive the mind anew, this time it is not shaped haphazardly from a derangement of the instincts, but as an architecture in time, a true meddling with the process. It is not without trepidation that I praise all this.

Parodites was the first to reveal to me the possibility of truly cracking the mind. More crucially, of having that intention. Now, every one of the other 3 has shown me not only this intent but also the accomplishment. And none of that really surprises me - Ive anticipated this moment even as I sat on your couch below the poster of that British girl.

Now I can place that memory - it was the period in which I was practicing affirmation of the ER. Streetfighter EX lent itself very well for it.

"Given the fact that philosophy is more evidently quest for wisdom than possession of wisdom, the education of the philosopher never ceases as long as he lives; it is the adult education par excellence. For, to say nothing of other things, the highest kind of knowledge which a man may have acquired can never be simply at his disposal as other kinds of knowledge can; it is in constant need of being acquired again from the start. This leads to the following consequence. In the case of the gentleman, one can make a simple distinction between the playful education of the potential gentleman and the earnest work of the gentleman proper. In the case of the philosopher this simple distinction between the playful and the serious no longer holds, not in spite of the fact that his sole concern is with the weightiest matters but because of it. For this reason alone, the rule of philosophers proves to be impossible. " (Leo Strauss, "Liberal Education and Mass Democracy".)

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Preface


That I write this book in English


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A note on the title.

This book was conceived as a children's book for adults, written by a child of around forty years of age. (As I begin writing, I've just turned 39, but who knows how long it will be before I "finish" the book? Hence "around forty".) In Latin, there is a plurale tantum (plural-only word) "liberi", which means "children". If there was a singular, "libero" would mean both "to/for a/the child" and "with/by a/the child". The title LIBER O in the first place means "for a child by a child". After all, it has only one author, and also only one reader: you.

(Ironically, "you" is technically always plural, like the French "vous". If I wanted to be unambiguous, unironic, I should have written "thou".)

LIBER O literally means "Book O". This is my (first) book, and my first name starts with an O. O is also a circle, and a zero.

"One cannot 'find the Lady' by any other way than that of the Knight-Errant, of the Great Fool--the Way of the Eagle in the Air--whose Sacred Number is the Sacred Zero." (Aleister Crowley, _Little Essays toward Truth_, "Understanding".)

Crowley also wrote a text titled "Liber O". I only discovered this after thinking of that title by myself, though I did immediately suspect it, and was inspired by other Crowleyan titles. I think of Crowley much like Crowley thought of Qabalah: "mostly either unintelligible or nonsense." (op.cit., "Man".) But just as Crowley exempts the Qabalistic Tree of Life from this judgment, so I exempt his _Little Essays_ and the writing titled "One Star in Sight".

"Liberi" literally means "free ones"; and "Liber" is also a Roman god identified with Dionysus.

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1.

This book's opening quote by Leo Strauss, which is its motto, is also its direct inspiration. I always used to think that I should only write a book if, not when, my philosophy had finally fully matured. Said quote made me see that this "if, not when" is not due to the uncertainty of that happening during my lifetime (and thereby of that happening at all), but to the certainty that the maturation of philosophy would be its end, wisdom.

I've often thought that the "corpus" of my writings might remain limited to forum posts and e-mails scattered among several internet fora and correspondents. Equally often, I've considered collecting the best thereof and editing them for publication. But this is too much of an administrative task for me to do as an amateur.

For I'm an amateur philosopher. In my more cynical moods, I've sometimes thought of professional philosophers as prostitutes, loving Lady Sophia only for money. But that's unfair. It's a great privilege if one can make a living doing what one loves. To be sure, though, there's always the danger of compromise. Also, a professor of philosophy is not necessarily a philosopher, nor vice versa.

Now of course I might make some money off the sales of this book. But I'm quite unwilling to compromise, regarding form as well as content. This book shall be an honest expression of philosophy, of what I think philosophy is and should be. Back to the opening quote, then! In that passage, Strauss says:

"[T]he highest kind of knowledge which a man may have acquired can never be simply at his disposal as other kinds of knowledge can; it is in constant need of being acquired again from the start."

Let us get right to the highest kind of knowledge to which I lay claim. In order to do so, I will take you back to the first time I acquired it, or to my entrance into philosophy. That was when I was inspired, while reading Nietzsche's _Also sprach Zarathustra_ in German for the first time, to write a "bridge" to a song of mine, for which I had formerly written two stanzas. This occurred while I was experiencing the effects of psychedelic mushrooms.

I must briefly relate the pre-history of that event. When I was eighteen years old and in the graduation year of high school, I had my first romantic relationship. This ended after a month because my girlfriend had forbidden me to use psychedelics in her presence and I did it anyway. Two weeks later, however, she came back to me. But two months after that, the same thing happened again, and that was the end of it. It must have been near that time that I wrote those two stanzas.

The song in its entirety can be found as Appendix 1. Here I will discuss it piece by piece. Unless otherwise indicated, I'll be telling you how I interpret it now, which is not necessarily what I originally meant, even subconsciously.

O Zoetsa,

This is also the title of the song. Zoetsa is the modern-Greek diminutive form of Zoe. The emphasis is on the e. It literally means "little life". Incidentally, a friend of mine around the same time wrote a song that began thus:

Think I'm gonna change
This little life of mine

Could Zoetsa be interpreted as my Life, in the sense of Nietzsche's Zarathustra's Life? In that book, Life is (initially) opposed to Wisdom. Could "O Zoetsa" be the (provisional) opposite of "O Sophia"?

I glance at the truth of your sight

By "your sight", I meant "the sight of you". The truth of the sight of her meant the actuality, the presence, of the sight to behold that she was for me back then. That I only _glanced_ at it was the first indication of the fatalistic character of the first two stanzas. I wallowed with the pleasure of self-pity in the idea that the relationship was doomed. The end came, as we say in the Netherlands, like a thunderstrike by bright heaven, though.

A glimpse of your eternal light

If all I caught of her was a "glimpse", i.e. if I only was with her for a short time, the splendor of her young womanhood would be "eternal" for me.

The desert--I'm blinded
Red sand--I am blinded

These lines were directly inspired by Jim Morrison's poem, "The Desert". Back then, I thought of the desert as some kind of psychedelic oasis. It was the splendor thereof that I imagined blinded me. But we might also interpret it as my being (willfully) blind to the most obvious quality of the desert, its being a barren wasteland. The redness of its sand--the color of love and fertility--, its warmth: these things it owed solely to the Sun, my symbol for our relationship throughout.

O dark setting sun,
(You'll be down so soon)
Look up at the sky,
Let us die now

Here we see the fatalism I spoke of in full effect. Yet we see also a certain positivity, a kind of philosophic power and will to relativize. From its own perspective, as I imagined it, the sun wasn't going down at all, but ever rising, ever making new days dawn. This concludes the first stanza. The second almost immediately continues, this is not a song with a refrain.

Mona Lisa,
You show me a mystery smile
I know who you wish to beguile
My heart--I am spellbound
Our hands--we are well bound
Oasis of Greece,
Let us rest in peace
Oh no that's a lie,
Let us die now

She often smiled at me when it wasn't obvious to me why, and she would refuse or be unable to explain. My heart was a pars pro toto for myself. We would often hold hands and that was a thing, a kind of theme in what I said to her and the poems I wrote. The distinction between resting in peace and dying now was one I would again make in my "Apollo-Aphorisms": "I do not long for death, but to die." Compare:

"Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were--a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence." (Aldous Huxley, _The Doors of Perception_. Note: I would argue that the above goes only for the _exoteric_ Plato, but that's another part of my story.)

A month and a half later, well after I had graduated, I was, as I said, experiencing the effects of psychedelic mushrooms. I tried reading on where I'd left off in R.J. Hollingdale's translation of Nietzsche's _Zarathustra_ (the last chapter I'd read was "On Voluntary Death"), but the whole thing seemed to me a collection of fake plastic jewelry and neonlights. I then started reading the next chapter in the German instead. But no matter how inspiring that might have been on its own, it was my foreknowledge, owing to my having read Hollingdale's Introduction, that may have really done it for me.

Ooooo Zoeeeeeetsaaaaaaa!

I shatter your dreams

Originally I meant her hopes for our relationship, but now I may interpret it as the phantasms she represented for me. The shattering of dreams, of illusions and delusions, is surely of the essence of philosophy. In fact, I've always regarded this line as bound up with the next, which expresses my foreknowledge's realization, its becoming immediate awareness, as opposed to abstract information.

I love my creation

This meant two things: first, that I took great pleasure in writing and singing this bridge, which is to say, negatively speaking, in the "shattering of dreams"; and second, immediately following the first meaning, that I thereby took great pleasure in my being alive, my having been born, created. And I imagined this self-affirmation as becoming the object of hatred and envy, as witnessed by the following line:

You hate me!
Ain't that what you wanted?
I want it!

I imagined the will to power of the whole world as having led to my writing and singing this bridge. And that fact was then certainly _my_ will to power!

And this is the truth
I love my creation
I want it!
Fuck all those who hate me
They want it!

I originally wrote "you want it", but then immediately changed that to "they want it". I imagined countless people hating me, at whom I rained my word-arrows like sunbeams at those who hate sunlight. Compare:

"O thou that with surpassing Glory crownd,
Look'st from thy sole Dominion like the God
Of this new World; at whose sight all the Starrs
Hide thir diminisht heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy Spheare[.]"
(Milton, _Paradise Lost_, Book 4.)

Above my sphere? I think not. Or at least I _thought_ not, back then:

There's no one to save me
I'm Jesus!
I'm Jesus!
I'm Jesus!

Thus ends my bridge, making it more like a ski jump. This Jesus, be it noted, is to the "historical" Jesus as Nietzsche's Zarathustra is to the "historical" Zarathustra: no longer a moralist, but now an immoralist; one who had recanted his teaching, the teaching of his youth, of the _world's_ youth, of ancient history.

"Verily, too early died that Hebrew whom the preachers of slow death honour: and to many hath it proved a calamity that he died too early.
As yet had he known only tears, and the melancholy of the Hebrews, together with the hatred of the good and just--the Hebrew Jesus: then was he seized with the longing for death.
Had he but remained in the wilderness, and far from the good and just! Then, perhaps, would he have learned to live, and love the earth--and laughter also!
Believe it, my brethren! He died too early; he himself would have disavowed his doctrine had he attained to my age! Noble enough was he to disavow!
But he was still immature. Immaturely loveth the youth, and immaturely also hateth he man and earth. Confined and awkward are still his soul and the wings of his spirit.
But in man there is more of the child than in the youth, and less of melancholy: better understandeth he about life and death." (_Thus Spake Zarathustra_, "Voluntary Death", Common translation.)

My Jesus is the Jesus who has disavowed his teaching--who between his first and second coming has become an Antichrist. But between when I was almost nineteen and now, that I just turned thirty-nine, I too still had to mature--in the wilderness, far from the good and just. For I too was "melancholy".


2.

When I was thirty-five or thirty-six, I changed my taste in music. As a rule, I only listen to _modal_ music anymore, preferably from before 1600. I'd grant that atonal music may be a necessary evil in certain circumstances, but my taste demands to move _beyond_ good and evil. And _tonal_ music is only good--noble and good and just, to speak with Heraclitus!--, which means it's _bad_: it spoils the soul.

Modal music is good in moderation only. That is, I can listen to modal music as much as I want, for it will still be a moderate pleasure! Which is not to say that it won't be a profound, a subtle pleasure...

I had planned on starting this section by saying I don't mind if "O Zoetsa" is never recorded, since it's entirely tonal, anyway. But having just put on my mind's eye-glass, I think I should aspire for it to be the ultimate tonal song, the sung farewell to tonal harmony... After all, this book is an attempt to change the world, to be political.

The way I read it now, this song is a protestation, a rebellion against the prevalent view of life, of life as flashy, a rapturous vision that quickly burns out. A hit song. I finally thought of the perfect name, the perfectly imperfect bandname for my and my mentioned friend's band (now long disbanded): _The Plastic Bags_... (I was struggling with a plastic bag just now--quite frustrating.) Plastic is a good example of a _durable_ product of our age. "O Zoetsa", the final song on the album _Glimpses of Beulah_, by The Plastic Bags... The contrary of such lightning is the sun: slow, steady, long burning, eight lightminutes away. My book as opposed to my song.

The song ends with a return to the beginning. I think I'd already knocked together such a third stanza, which I used right after I'd written the bridge, but it wasn't good enough and I no longer have it; all I remember is that the first two or three lines (depending on whether you count the invocation, "O Zoetsa,") were the same as they are now, and the last four lines were something like this:

O stars and o moon,
You have come too soon
[...]
Let us die now

But the definitive stanza, which I wrote soon after the bridge, goes like this:

O Zoetsa,
I've glanced at your side of the truth
One glimpse of your eternal youth
So stunningly striking,
Thru thunder I'm light'ning

O fiery sun,
You will dawn real soon
You're dying to shine,
Yet let's lie
down
for now

This repeats what happened with the bridge: "Zoetsa" is replaced by "Jesus", "you" is replaced by "I". _I_ am stunningly striking, the beauty of what I sing (of) is essentially my _projection_. But I was not yet ready to be that sun: my Jesus, my higher self, was fated to set on me for five years, more or less straight. And even when, at the end of those years, I "became a Shiva", I availed myself of Krishna so as not to have to be That guy... Though I did flirt with it. In fact, the Hare Krishna's--whom I never joined, by the way--will accept a neophyte's shouting "I am Krishna!" As a Hindu supposedly once said, the man who loves God needs seven incarnations to reach enlightenment whereas the man who hates Him needs only three...


3.

Isn't presenting oneself as a Sun, let alone a Jesus or a Krishna, mere vainglory? I say: it only _isn't_ when the line "I love my creation" applies to one--that is, when one celebrates one's existence through one's joy in one's own active feats. For then, one is not just proud of oneself, but also thankful to all the events and actions that contributed to one's coming about, and one's coming this far. And it is not at odds with this if one wishes, or even wishfully thinks, that one's "creating" will be an essential factor in bringing about the _recurrence_ of one's being "created".

This is the foreknowledge I spoke of in chapter 1. The idea of the eternal recurrence. But in order to go there, I will first introduce the doctrine of the will to power. To that end, I will start with a short passage from _Zarathustra_:

"Where is innocence? Where there is will to procreation. And he who seeketh to create beyond himself, hath for me the purest will." (_Thus Spake Zarathustra_, "Immaculate Perception", Common translation.)

The will to create beyond oneself is the pure form of the will to power. But this will is present even in perception. Perception necessarily "maculates", that is, re-creates its object. All perception involves interpretation. And this does not just apply to _sense_ perception, but to intellection as well. Thus the word translated as "perception" by Common is _Erkenntnis_, "cognition" or "knowledge". Cognition is necessarily maculate, for knowledge is a mental image of something else--not of itself...

Now Leo Strauss rightly discerned a problem within the doctrine of the will to power:

"Precisely if all views of the world are interpretations, i.e. acts of the will to power, the doctrine of the will to power is at the same time an interpretation and the most fundamental fact[.]" (Strauss, _Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy_, page 178.)

The doctrine of the will to power is the doctrine that all occurrences are acts of the will to power. Thus Nietzsche wrote:

"I recognized the active force[,] that which creates[,] in the midst of the coincidental
--coincidence is itself only the colliding into each other of creating impulses" (Nietzsche, Notebooks Winter 1883-1884 24 [28] = section 673 of _The Will to Power_.)

But the word translated as "recognized" is _erkannte_, "cognized"; the doctrine of the will to power is not a discovery through immaculate cognition, but itself a creation, an imposition, a violation of the way things are. It therefore cannot _simply_ be the most fundamental fact. The "recognition" that all occurrences are acts of the will to power is a willful re-creation of those occurrences.

Now we can only know what happened in the past. As Crowley says:

"[W]e can never know _what is happening_, but only _what has just happened_, even when most actively concentrated on what we call 'the present'." (Crowley, _Little Essays_, "Memory".)

Yet we cannot will into the past. The will is directed into the future. And we cannot will things to be exactly what they are or were, for then it's not a case of willing at all. In order to see all--past--occurrences as acts of the will to power, therefore, we must will them to be what they were--but now in the future! We must will them to recur, as acts of the will to power. This is the necessary connection between the doctrine of the will to power and the idea of, nay the _will to_, the eternal recurrence.


4.

But why should we accept the doctrine of the will to power in the first place? As Nietzsche wrote in what may well be the high point among his writings:

"[The currently ruling instincts and taste of the times] would even rather bear with the absolute coincidentiality, indeed the mechanistic nonsensicality of all occurrences, than with the theory of a _power-will_ transpiring in all occurrences. (_Genealogy of Morals_, Second Treatise, section 12.)

He then goes on to argue that this "democratic idiosyncrasy against everything that rules and wants to rule, [this] modern _misarchism_ [hatred of rule]" has already penetrated, not just into physics, but also into biology. But even if we reject the will to power from biology, not to _mention_ physics, we cannot easily reject it from human psychology. By this I do not mean that humans beings are evidently driven by a desire for power. What I mean is what I described above, the view of cognition as interpretation. The only alternative would be to bypass our cognitive apparatus, our "reason", and appeal to _revelation_ instead. And even revelation runs into the following problem.

If a man claims to be the recipient of divine revelation, one either believes that he saw what he said he saw, or one does not. But even if one does, one may still respond: "Okay, I believe that you had the vision you describe; but that it be a revelation, and not a hallucination, is just your interpretation." In other words, even if the man is no liar, he may still be a madman.

Now even if we limit our acceptance of the will to power doctrine to cognition, the necessary connection to the eternal recurrence still holds. In order to see all--past--acts of cognition as acts of the will to power, we must will them to be what they were, but now in the future. We must will them to recur, as acts of the will to power.

And it does not end there. It is _reasonable_ to ascribe cognition, or consciousness, to all existence. Classical (Newtonian) mechanics thought in terms of unities (indivisible particles); quantum mechanics thinks in terms of units (discrete quanta); but both think in terms of mechanisms: all existence, according to modern science, is a machinelike process of parts (or particles) moving and being moved by other parts. In other words, existence consists solely of objects, and how subjectivity (consciousness) can emerge remains a mystery. The latter is supposed to be explicable in terms of the former--that is, mechanistically or even mathematically (mechanistic science is mathematized science).


5.

Now I'm not going to argue that the human brain and nervous system do not suffice for making human consciousness possible. What I'm getting at is this. I suspect, indeed strongly suspect, that human consciousness is nothing else than what the human brain and nervous system are like from the inside; that our consciousness is nothing else than what it's like to be a human brain and nervous system--in fact, the very specific human brain and nervous system that each of us essentially is.

But what about the human brain and nervous system _is_ it that is like that? I think it's its electromagnetic activity, possibly even on a quantum level. And although that activity is certainly a very complex form of such activity, if I'm right _all_ electromagnetic activity in existence, and perhaps even all _quantum-level_ activity in existence, must have _some_ form of consciousness, a "what's it like to be that activity". Of course, depending on the activity's complexity, it may be a very rudimentary form of consciousness; but a rudimentary form is still a form.

And if such activity is everywhere and in everything, there must be consciousness everywhere and in everything.



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Appendix 1: "O Zoetsa".


O Zoetsa,
I glance at the truth of your sight
A glimpse of your eternal light
The desert--I'm blinded
Red sand--I am blinded
O dark setting sun,
(You'll be down so soon)
Look up at the sky,
Let us die now

Mona Lisa,
You show me a mystery smile
I know who you wish to beguile
My heart--I am spellbound
Our hands--we are well bound
Oasis of Greece,
Let us rest in peace
Oh no that's a lie,
Let us die now

Ooooo Zoeeeeeetsaaaaaaa!

I shatter your dreams
I love my creation
You hate me!
Ain't that what you wanted?
I want it!
And this is the truth
I love my creation
I want it!
Fuck all those who hate me
They want it!
There's no one to save me
I'm Jesus!
I'm Jesus!
I'm Jesus!


O Zoetsa,
I've glanced at your side of the truth
One glimpse of your eternal youth
So stunningly striking,
Thru thunder I'm light'ning

O fiery sun,
You will dawn real soon
You're dying to shine,
Yet let's lie
down
for now

Is this a short book that you wrote? If so is there a way I can get it in print and pay something for it?

I would also like a copy when it comes to that. Due to not owning a credit card and not being able to access online finances, I don't even have copies of Capable and my own work so far, though Ive held them in my hand when my mother visited, she has been rereading them, they are nicely worn already.

In any case, precious texts,
I agree that "Zoetsa" could be seen as your Life - that is a beautiful instrument of interpretation, and god a long way shedding light on all of our poets lives.

The future appears bright, with the works of dancing stars forming its firmament.

Ill pick one specific idea to comment on, the idea that all which carries its electrical circuitry is to some degree conscious.
The argument through which you arrive at that proposition is, to my mind, sound. However, I do have an issue with the use of this specific term to cover such a wide range of phenomena.

It is not a very different universe where the notion that all is valuing has us end up - it is just that I argue in the exact opposite order, and thus end up with the obverse premise: consciousness is nothing besides a richly convoluted form of valuing. That is to signify: humans are not more free in will than dead objects at all. Their consciousness is entirely determined by the structure of their valuing, it is impossible for them to respond coherently and comprehensively (like one billiard ball to another) in any other way than commanded by the "shape of their valuing". By comparison, A ball simply has a round shape of its valuing.

What Im saying: we can look at humans as animate objects, see their consciousness as a layer of very rich activity of valuing-collisions (a lot of billiard balls going around in the brain) but not anything more free to determine what it thinks or feels, or chooses, than an atom is free to determine its reactions. It is the way it is capable of responding.

This "demotes" consciousness to a phenomenon of itself entirely unrelated to reason. Which, I believe, is a crucial demotion.
Reason comes in with philosophy, which is the only way for a consciousness to amount to thought, which is the only human way of arriving at the experience of freedom. Only in Philosophy is man different from a humble patch of moss.

At this it must be said that philosophy does in quite many forms, most of which hidden and forever unexpressed, for fear of envy and the dire consequences of that sentiment on the envied.

And having said all this, the consequence of this thought of mine is not entirely different from the consequence of your thinking - both imply a possibility of a more intimate communion with the world.

I do not agree to the separation of the brain and nervous system from the rest of the body and the world that hosts that body. I remember ou conversation about air pressure in this context - you were saying how there is no limit to the sphere of the forces that impress themselves upon us so as to shape us. Where I disagree that there is necessarily no limit at all, I certainly think that before such a possible limit ((which may for example be between two central galaxies, which may to themselves be so coherent that they only revolve around each other by gravity but do not infiltrate each others magnetospheres)) all that is within these limits impressed itself on us somehow, and thus is part of us, of the experience of our being. And thus, per the observation that all parts of it are valuing and thus responsive - we may actually be able to commune with all these parts through out consciousness.

That would, for all intents and purposes, amount to the experience of the whole universe being conscious.
(not the universe as itself a thing that is conscious of itself - but as an ocean of consciousness, which thus becomes "the thing in itself".)

I will add a note, or nod to Parodies here, recognizing that consciousness in such terms does not describe the human psyche, which is what he approaches under the term consciousness, and reveals as a result of the derangement of the instincts and reattribution of the drives that got detached from the instincts, which provides for a very vivid accounting of the early history of hominids up to our present, the early stage of man, which we are pushing to its conclusion - your self-attribution of the term Child is significant here - preparing for a first stage of maturity -

which will be marked by the universalization of the sort of insights our type has been unearthing the past 20 or so years.

Fixed is correct in my estimation-- consciousness arises as a phenomenon of valuing, not of electricity. Valuing learned how to use electricity systems to propagate and elevate itself, deepen and expand itself into substance built from values. This is probably because electricity, like fire, is an intangible fluid thing that can be reconfigured instantaneously or made to hold its pattern. Instantaneous reconfiguration of the material substance is needed for valuing to commune with itself properly. From this came value-derivative meta systems or pure value beings, namely what we tend to call conscious life.

We humans are made of information, of truth and facts, --valuing. Perspective-having. All conscious life is like this, and the animals and creatures of nature share this same type of structure with us except that their values are much more refined and certain than ours are, hence human indecision and propensity to error and pathology while animals simply never do that. As an analogy, animals in nature are built from 10 (arbitrary number) values all firmly integrated together as substance, whereas humans are built from 10,000 values which so far have been impossible to firmly integrate due to the sheer number of them. So we are much less clearly refined, but then again this is also our power and advantage in so far as madness and lack birth the need for reason, which births "ego"; which births greater perspective, the self, which finally births a capacity to hopefully integrate more and more of those 10,000 values from which proliferation and chaos came the very necessity of our madness.

Electricity is not consciousness. Electricity is just a material substance that selfvaluing figured out how to use to elevate itself even higher, into the pure universe of itself. Living beings able to instantly rearrange themselves mentally around new values-combinations. But that material substance isn't the consciousness, rather the consciousness is quite literally all of the content-information which this consciousness contains. Information become its own substance. Facts and truths valued in terms of each other, directly. Thus the highest possible delimitation, which is the human mind and self; thus also therefore the greatest possible ontoepistemological being. The pyramid only ascends to the degree that it subjects itself to increasing limitation. This is what it means to come to a point, to have a point, to be a point and to make one. To "make sense".

But I do think that electricity can directly be accessed and influenced by consciousness, and vice versa -  that it is responsive to it, thus lists on the same terms (self-valuing).
I think that our brain can actually control electricity, as it is a consequence of the very same principle that operates as our brain -
what we experience as "will" (power) can be used to directly address the terms of electricity.
I have no personal doubts about this but its one of those things rather uneasy to prove. I say uneasy because, given that it moves beyond any facades, "shells", veils,  it is always personal, not just difficult.

Yes I agree. I am simply clarifying that consciousness is not made out of electricity, it is made out of valuing/values. The values/valuing ride the electricity. Skating like Thor on bolts of lightning.

AI will be possible once we learn how to impart values/valuing to computers. Currently there would only be spontaneous little quantum bubbles of pre-value in the computer circuitry, in part because the computer has no freedom (choice space) to deviate from is programs/hardware, and in part because the computer cannot know that it is mortal.

Sauwelios: I recommend Lulu if you want to publish your book. You an even refrain from adding an ISBN and just post it on their marketplace only. Design your own cover too. I'll buy a copy for sure.

Thrasymachus wrote:

Yes I agree. I am simply clarifying that consciousness is not made out of electricity, it is made out of valuing/values. The values/valuing ride the electricity. Skating like Thor on bolts of lightning.

Yeah, we agree that the term that binds electricity and consciousness into the same logically and scientifically functional context is valuing.

it is the signifier-terms whose permutations produce such specific things like electricity and consciousness, as well as existence in general. (((as logically inter relatable notions, as a Logos ; -- for the philosopher. It is that which places the lover of wisdom on top of the hierarchy of power with the surest efficiency, as it is the logic of love itself, which itself is wisdom. )))

Thrasymachus wrote:

Sauwelios: I recommend Lulu if you want to publish your book. You an even refrain from adding an ISBN and just post it on their marketplace only. Design your own cover too. I'll buy a copy for sure.

Yeah, thats a good idea, and I bet your books would sell quite a bit. Your writing is provocative enough and is relatively modest and concise, below the threshold of what people find too easy to dismiss.

Thanks, guys. Note though that I'm not saying electricity _is_ consciousness, just that wherever there is electricity there must at least be a rudimentary form of consciousness; but there may also be consciousness where there is no electricity.

As for selling my work: The reason I posted my unfinished book here in full, instead of not doing so--let alone deleting the part I'd already posted here, as I'd said I'd probably do--, is that I've decided to present my thoughts as wise after all:

"The coming-out of philosophy, for which it may very well seem prideful--nay, I AM proud, proud to present my wisdom, which was shared with me by the wise men of the past--it is this: the love of life as it is, blindingly and scorchingly bright and frighteningly dark, and everything in between. The circle of life." (Open letter to Leonardo DiCaprio, 5 October 2017.)

However, at present this makes me even _less_ inclined to sell my work. At the very least I first want to see how this "coming-out" works out. And the book is left unfinished because it was written before the decision to come out.

Our philosophies are like electricity. We do to the discipline of thinking and valuing what nervous systems did to the biological world.