Will to Power

Things matter because there are living things who depend on what matters to them.

I sometimes use the statement: Everything matters but nothing matters.

By this I mean that there are living things who depend, one way or another, on everything. Everything doesn't matter to me but there are some things that do matter. Most of those are in my philosophical arena. My principles, if you will. And for those things I have the will to power. Within my limitations I control those aspects of life that matter to me.

But then, long term, hundreds of years, nothing matters because I will have lived and died during that time span and it should be a given that nothing will matter after we die.

If life is worth living then things will matter.

Every single thing in existence matters, to something. Otherwise it would not exist.

I think Pezer means more something like things must matter to matter. It needs to matter if were going to talk about it. How do things matter most? Through seeing life as Will to Power? That is what Nietzsche proposed. Etc. Not a bad way of entering philosophy, not a bad path to point out to novices, it'll keep them pure. Thats actually what VO needs, a gateway drug.

Obviously things matter to me. Anyone can tell I am vey driven by things mattering to me. It is how I saw that to value is not merely the sum but also the precursor of being. I saw this from my own perspective, which is an overfull type of constant discovery. I realize that this is not a given to all humans nor to all animals or al plants. That is why I now see merit in a gateway theory. "There is no entity that "I" know of, it's just, things are really fucking important."

This could be a nice mind-unfuck for moderners.

And then when they've disbanded their fake being, their aloof, nonchalant, indifferent, modern hipster atheist narcissism, they are free to be thrown in the lions den, to reclaim their own entity from a perspective of being.

Such claim an only be made in the form of courageous wit with graceful strength.

Its what we've been looking for. A way to turn people to a path that makes them worthy of accepting VO. It is after all a responsibility, to be paid off only with a heart of your weight in gold.

True lyrics, I rip it from the spirit. - Pezer the 'dying soul'

He is out for a way to speak sense to people. VO hasn't tried to address People. Only philosophers, geniuses of the heart.
A gateway to the heart.

A ridge along the crevices of hell. Lure them onto it, and these souls will begin to suspect the existence of a magical ring. Next, we show up. Hic sunt Dracones. Inferno hoc, haec est Servilia, Bellum hinc.

The gates of heaven are the eye of a needle in a haystack.

"Slender truths" - but not starved!
A fine balance of the aesthetic ascetic.

The path of sacrifice is the ethos of preparedness. It is the path of faith as well and of the ability to prognosticate. It is ultimately to sacrifice only where and when there is a crossroads to be paid for. But never in vain just to please a god or offend a human. This is why the Greeks sacrificed: to eat. And thence to drink, and thence to believe.

Life is simple if you have it.

You’re right. It is a perfect gateway drug to VO. Damn. I can already see many different applications of this.

First they need to disbelieve in their disbelief in themselves. That’s what the gateway is needed for.

Back to my comments on war, which I was able to realize in part thanks to Pezer's return here, this doesn't just apply to actual literal war, in fact it applies much more so to basic human conflicts; people get angry because being angry stirs up their giving-a-fuck, it forces them to need to give a fuck. So when things are stagnating, basically when a person is stagnant already within and as themselves and in their life generally, they become more prone to impulsive anger because this anger represents a breakdown in their ability to give a fuck, they are trying not to give a fuck but of course the body and psyche are not formed like that... it isn't so easy to just not care. The anger is both a sign of the breakdown of giving a fuck, as well as a natural response to this breakdown aimed at pushing it even further along its own logic so that giving a fuck can be stimulated back to life.

This is what they discover. Truly they want to not care, they want to descend their caring down a few rungs because of how shitty they and their lives are, in their own view of these, and this is the influence of thanatos or basically just apathy/entropy--- except they have great difficulty in actually lowering caring like that. Thus a kind of warped daemonism ensues wherein a constant pull and tension of irreconcilability between wanting to not care and needing to care about wanting to not care occurs, which prevents either of these forces from ever winning out. In the process a person becomes more and more destroyed, mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, socially... until perhaps they hit rock bottom in some way, meaning they reach a point where this daemonic cycling can no longer continue because one side of the equation has encountered something too dense and unyielding to allow itself to change within the bounds of that daemonic cycling. So the cycle hiccups and stops, and a choice possibility is encountered:

"Do I avoid this hard-reality that will not break on my daemonism, or do I reassess my daemonism?"

Of course that choice is realized on an entirely unconscious level, but the choice itself is made on the conscious level; we know this because the choice, the choosing of such a choice, is itself what consciousness actually means.

And back to the subject of willtopower, truth will use all of this postmodernism weirdness today in order to achieve new breakthroughs in reality that were formerly not possible; it will wield the weirdness upon the world as a surgeon wields his cutting instruments upon a patient.

Thus the earth is offering herself up as this patient when she births these strange movements and insanities. Liberals, religious kooks, hipsters, feminists, Marxists, Nazis, all of this weirdness is basically the earth throwing the lever on a slot machine, giving truth as many options as possible, as many tools to work with. Truth is building up all this postmodern hipstermillennial nihilist neofeminist weirdness that is going on today, building it up toward some great historical use-value after which it will be dropped like a bad habit.

Well, I thin that in order to live one's will to power is to be "Beyond Good And Evil" and the only way one can attain this (Nietzsche's) state is to be an anarchist.

But 99+% of he time a herd animal will always remain a herd animal. We often see a lone wolf but rarely see a lone buffalo. (The buffalo soon dies after becoming a loner.)

Thrasymachus wrote:

You’re right. It is a perfect gateway drug to VO. Damn. I can already see many different applications of this.

First they need to disbelieve in their disbelief in themselves. That’s what the gateway is needed for.

Haha. Yes.

I suppose we can observe that what the buddhists and them call "ego" is this "disbelief in themselves".

In reality we do not have, fundamentally, a "self", the "ego" is what needs this "self" to be fixed - we are self-valuing. There is no "home plate" so to speak where one can "return", "fall back on", one can only fall back on effort, on bravery, on ingenuity, on intelligent valuing.

A "Self" can be built from the experience of ... building it. It is the aggregate of our "successful experiences"; our ethos. Ethos Anthropos Daemon, which can also mean something like "the human is where the god can appear" i.e. the valuing is the place where the value can appear. This dynamism becomes self-valuing, and casts the form of the Self.

"Ethos" in this sense is a location, a "clearing" for being to emerge.

And so on. Pretty fertile.

Well, ok. Sisyphus. I spent a lot of time wondering about why you post like you post. I didn't NEED to know, among other reasons because my sense of taste would be offended by some of it, no doubt the reverse is true, but it tickled me. Not hard to see there is a genious behind thosr posts.

By my interest in people's, specially geniouses', motivations and agendas has all but disappeared. It takes far too much energy, and I came to the conclusión that it's also wasted energy, because no motivations or agendas can be as interesting as mine. Not in this age.

In your case, there is also that I decided I like you, what you're about, your weird well read West Virginia anarchist nazi fighting guru shtick. And I respect that you, like me, have lived on the street.

No, my energies are no longer directed at negociating wills to power. All aims are yet too low, and will be until Nietzsche is understood and his challenges first accepted and then overcome.

The reason I came here is to grapple with Nietzsche, to make damn sure I'm not the only one who got it, but mostly to have fun discussing his ideas with learned men.

Now, to get back to business:

"Every single thing in existence matters, to something. Otherwise it would not exist."

Not everything that exists matters. Every single thing that matters comes into existence, ex tempora. What is there to find is not what exists, which is finite, but to figure out what one can figure out to care about. This is the game. And it's infinite, because the ability to figure new ways to care, new things to care about, is not exhausted by caring. This is what it means that will to power only wills will to power.

To follow the weird and unexpected side thread you guys took, you cannit care about something that doesn't matter.

"What is there to find is not what exists, which is finite, but to figure out what one can figure out to care about."

Indeed, this could be a way out of nihilism for goo aspiring to become entity.
I will point out that it is a folly. Which is the point, I think. Levity, right? For the ones who already have it so heavy. The downtrodden.

It speaks for itself that one can't decide to care about something or seek for something to care about that one doesn't already care about. One is determined by what one cares about. There is literally no behaviour in any species that does not instantly prove this.

What can be done is to meet, go seek out, that which one cares about, and see if one stills dares to care. That is indeed a real test of character. (The space between your lines is a lot more telling than your lines.)

I guess people who are used to living indirectly may set out to find out what they care about, if they are sure that it exists. If they are sure they have the seed of direct being in them. But that is the ancient grail knight myth, not Nietzsche. Nietzsche is about political power, about, in short, the fact that you care is a good beginning, but doesn't mean that you matter.

Ive tried to address your OP directly but you start out with a reference to Parodites' thinking which is, as far as Ive read Parodites, a fiction. P has spoken very little about ontology, Ive perhaps read 5 sentences on it, and that certainly was as clean of "caring" as possible - P doesn't give a shit for "what is", he cares, if I can speak for him, about the fact of caring. Which he in no instance equates with being.

The description he gives of being "as such" is of a dyadic, entirely dead, ping-ponging of potential with absolutely no substance. You are wrong about that. Which goes some length in explaining the trouble you had with the follow up I gave.

VI

There is a difference between people to whom N speaks, and those that speak to N.

Of course he speaks to the latter too, but for them it is not a matter of whether or not N is understood. it is all too clear that N understands them.

Now comes the kicker: N understands only what he reveres.

And how could he revere someone that doesn't speak to him?
It is only because N knows that from him inevitably greater, or lets say healthier great ones will follow, that he writes.

It is not that I am proud to understand N. I am humbled to be understood. There is work to be done. Sowing in dark soil with illuminated touch. That is all N says to me. He is a sanction for what I know since I learned of the existence of oceans, wars and atoms on the one hand and human thinking on the other, that can be done. Its not that it needed to be done then - decades of increasing insanity were possible and did manifest. This moment has been drawing steadily closer.

To me P you are a man standing before a mountain asking it: why should I climb you?
You'll receive no answer. There is only the climb and whether or not you want to see what it leads to.
"Is it as great as it must be for me to not have wasted the soles of my shoes?"

Holy sneakers. This is a sure measure of existence. How well does one like the experience of ones feet? It is a great starting point. The question is whether the mountain is as great. But what Montreal taught me is that a mountain is the most solid ground.

No one may follow me - either one joins some action or not. I can't be followed, I am untraceable. Dancing stars, don't ask more (or less) than that.

Ah! But then caring depends on existing things, which are set, instead of the other way around. Your focus is on the things one cares about and pursues. Evidently, vikings didn't care about airplane engeneering. Yet Luftansa.

About Parodites, I don't think anything you said contradicts my assessment. I'll leave it to the readers to figure out why.

New posts from you, I'll address them.

Gentlemen don't care about what is the measure of gentlemen's greatness, but what they can do on the field.

And you wish to decide on which field that takes place. Don't forget that.

Well good, that you figured out that you don't disagree with me. I found it rather trivial.

By the way, these Germans that engineer machines and locks and all mysterious objects, these aren't vikings but more kin to dwarves from the Hinterland, medieval, scary scared snifflers, operating small existences from which great ingenuity created spaces. It is strong but the Vikings are coastal people. Germans are inland. They were more weird than savage, I think that is what scared the Romans.

Ive seen this castle you'd need to visit to see what I mean. It was stocked with the craftsmanship of the dark ages in Central Europe, which is quite a bit more scary than Vigo the scourge of Karpathia, because it is inward. Germans are inward. Why they are nerds, and need beer to talk. They speak through their machines their uncanniness. Maybe they found the answer to mortality. I don't know. I suspect nerds of that in general.

Maybe I can find where it is. It was near Innsbruck. Maybe even in Innsbruck. Strange town. Served beef with berries and whipped cream.

Vikings eat mostly fish. They live near the beach. They do not conjure in the world but conquer what is conjured.

Pezer wrote:

Well, ok. Sisyphus. I spent a lot of time wondering about why you post like you post. I didn't NEED to know, among other reasons because my sense of taste would be offended by some of it, no doubt the reverse is true, but it tickled me. Not hard to see there is a genious behind thosr posts.

I post my unfiltered thoughts at the moment. I might change my mind five minutes later but I can't unsaid what I said.

Like I mentioned, I'm not here just to express my opinions and understandings, I want to learn as well.

Pezer wrote:

By my interest in people's, specially geniouses', motivations and agendas has all but disappeared. It takes far too much energy, and I came to the conclusión that it's also wasted energy, because no motivations or agendas can be as interesting as mine. Not in this age.

I have no agenda but I am motivated to gain a better understanding of Nietzsche's thought/concepts.

Pezer wrote:

In your case, there is also that I decided I like you, what you're about, your weird well read West Virginia anarchist nazi fighting guru shtick. And I respect that you, like me, have lived on the street.

Well, I can't deny that I'm not weird. I prefer "different" but either word would work. Yes, I have lived on the streets but I always had a place to go if I needed sanctuary. Anarchist? Absolutely. Anti Nazi/fascism? Absolutely. But then, anti-Socialism as well. Not West Virginia although I have been there. I'm here in Florida. I am glad that you accept me for what I am.

Pezer wrote:

No, my energies are no longer directed at negociating wills to power. All aims are yet too low, and will be until Nietzsche is understood and his challenges first accepted and then overcome.

Yes, I seek a deeper understanding of Nietzsche's thoughts. I can't say it might change my life but at least I would be better able to speak of his philosophy.

I mentioned to someone not of this forum that I had much of Nietzsche's works in MSWord format on my computer. They immediately asked if I would share. I will, of course.

Pezer wrote:

The reason I came here is to grapple with Nietzsche, to make damn sure I'm not the only one who got it, but mostly to have fun discussing his ideas with learned men.

I did most of my Nietzsche reading during the mid 1980s. Much has been forgotten, of course. I intend, one way or another, to regain most of what has been lost from my mind. But then I am staying active with my Taoist readings so I'm not just letting what I have read go to waste. I feel Nietzsche and Chuang Tzu had much in common even though 2000 years separated their lifetime.

Pezer wrote:

Now, to get back to business:

"Every single thing in existence matters, to something. Otherwise it would not exist."

Not everything that exists matters. Every single thing that matters comes into existence, ex tempora. What is there to find is not what exists, which is finite, but to figure out what one can figure out to care about. This is the game. And it's infinite, because the ability to figure new ways to care, new things to care about, is not exhausted by caring. This is what it means that will to power only wills will to power.

Interesting how you inspired my thoughts again. I am the lead for a study of the Chuang Tzu by a translator named Victor H Mair. I actually don't care too much for his translation but it's the translation that got us started with the study.

One of the concepts just spoken to is that of "useful/useless". So I agree with you in that there must be an existant in order to place value upon something. Other wise things just are - no value judgements.

Pezer wrote:

To follow the weird and unexpected side thread you guys took, you cannit care about something that doesn't matter.

Please forgive me that whenever I go off topic. Nearly all my responses are spontaneous. One thought gave rise to another, though loosely associated.

Fixed Cross wrote:

Now comes the kicker: N understands only what he reveres.

But we all are that way, those of us who care, aren't we?

I was asked if I would join in the discussion, but I think the best I could contribute at this point is this long quote, which should at least give you guys an idea of what I'm working on:

"The ontological difference [i.e., the difference between beings (entities) and their Being (essence)] can come to light in the simple posture of placing before us everything that is, including ourselves. [Note: "placing before" is the literal translation of vorstellen, "representing, imagining".] Aristotle, for example, sought the clue for how to approach 'Being' in questions like what a thing is, what kind of nature it has, where it is located, and so on--namely in the basic categories one draws on to let others understand what sort of thing one is talking about. In other words, out of all the predicates of a thing, he tried to isolate the basic forms that determine what a thing is. Kant took his clue from the various forms of judgment, and from them isolated the basic a priori structures of the understanding. He then extracted from these the 'transcendental' formal structure of the ways in which the understanding relates to intuition. Both thinkers, however, set the world up as an object of contemplation. Such an approach, while admittedly one mode of human existence, in effect disengages one from the real self who actually is, as well as from the world. In the contemplative mode we place ourselves before ourselves but do not touch on who the we is who is doing the looking and thinking. The self who sees and the self who is seen are bifurcated.
The self who actually is has been thrown [geworfen] into the world and is in relation to the various things in it. To take this kind of actual existence as the clue to the human mode of being is to say that it is possible to question Being from within a mode of existence where the seeing self and seen self are truly one. [...]
According to Heidegger, our way of being as the beings we are consists in our relating (Verhalten) to other beings that are. At the ground of this kind of relating is an understanding of Being, through which all modes of relating become possible. Included, therefore, in our way of being as human beings is a sense that the things that are are encountered as a whole. What is it, then, that makes an understanding of Being possible in general? Within what kind of horizon can we understand Being?
In principle, when we distinguish Being from beings, we transcend the realm of things that are. It is not that we go to some other world beyond the world we know, or enter into some different realm of beings. Such notions constitute, for Heidegger, a vulgar form of metaphysics with which true philosophy (metaphysics as science) has nothing in common. Philosophy does not go beyond beings ontically to other beings that dwell beyond or behind. It transcends beings ontologically in the direction of Being. [At this point there is a footnote quoting Heidegger: "Nothing is the 'not' of beings [Das Nichts ist das Nicht des Seienden] and thus is Being as experienced from the side of beings. The ontological difference is the 'not' between beings and Being."] In the act of transcending beings, human being at the same time goes beyond the self as being, and thus for the first time reaches human existence as the 'self' (Selbst). In this way, transcendence constitutes the 'selfhood' (Selbstheit) of the self. [At this point there is a footnote quoting and explicating Heidegger: "Heidegger writes: 'In surpassing, Dasein comes for the first time to the being that it is, to it as it"self". Transcendence constitutes selfhood' (ER 39). The idea is that one can understand one's being as a 'self' only insofar as one has gone beyond oneself and other things and come back to oneself in such a way as to experience the difference between beings and Nothing, and between oneself and others."] Or, to put it another way, in the act of transcending beings, a distinction is made between what is 'self' and what is not, on this basis the self relates itself to the beings it has transcended. This is what it means for a self to 'be'--insofar as everything it is to be a self is exhausted in relationships. It is not that there is first of all a self on one side and then a 'thing' on the other, so that the self can relate to what lies outside it. This kind of conceptualized schema has nothing to do with the self's basic mode of being. Basically, the self's mode of being is to be 'outside' from the beginning. [At this point there is a footnote saying: "Nishitani emphasizes Heidegger's 'relational' and 'non-substantial' conception of the self from the perspective of the long tradition in East Asian (Taoist and Buddhist) thought of viewing the self as a matrix of relations rather than as a substance. One of the ways in which Heidegger tries to explode the idea of an encapsulated self is by characterizing our awareness as an all-encompassing field or 'clearing' (Lichtung) rather than an 'inner' sphere of consciousness, and by emphasizing that, phenomenologically, we are 'outside' far more than 'inside' [...]. Heidegger goes on to emphasize that we are 'outside' not only in the perception of the 'external' world, but also in other cognitive activities which we are even more inclined to think of as 'internal'[.]"]
The next question concerning the human being's transcendence of beings becomes: where does it go to if not to some world beyond? The horizon up to which (woraufhin) human being transcends is what Heidegger calls 'world'. This is not some pre-existent beyond, nor indeed any kind of object at all. When human being relates to beings from its situatedness in their midst, a horizon of beings-in-totality is revealed, and this horizon is the world. Thus transcendence is an understanding of beings in their totality, and this understanding is transcendence-to-world. In this transcendence, the being of beings is disclosed; and this kind of disclosure belongs essentially to human existence.
In this sense human being as transcendence is what Heidegger calls 'being-in-the-world' (In-der-Welt-sein). This should not be thought of as something fixed or static, since every time one relates to something self-being is opened up and the world occurs--that is, the world 'worlds'. [At this point there is a footnote saying: "Because 'world' in the transcendental/ontological sense is not a being or entity of any kind, it is not possible, strictly speaking, to say of it that it 'is'[.]"] In this sense transcendence to the world, together with the 'worlding' of the world, arises in the essence of human existence. Being-in-the-world itself has the structure of arising, and this in turn is an indication of the fundamental temporality of Being itself, the very foundation upon which 'time' is conceived.
[...]
Transcendence to world as being-in-the world means projecting [entwerfen] world on to beings through coming out beyond them; the world as the horizon within which beings are encountered is thrown over [Überwurf] beings. [At this point there is a footnote saying: "Heidegger's point is not that beings are there already and we then project world over it: the point is rather that the prior projection of world is what lets beings be what they are in the first place."] This is the meaning of being-possible, or possibility. The possibility of relating to things rests on this projection of the 'world', as does the sense of Existence as a going outside of oneself. [At this point there is a footnote saying: "This is a reference to Heidegger's frequent playing on the roots ek-histemi and ex-sistere which link the idea of 'existence' to 'ek-stasis', or 'stepping out from'."] Here the being of the self comes to light as at once a transcendence of beings and an understanding of Being.
Given that there are no beings apart from beings-as-a-whole [das Seiende im Ganzen, translated above as "beings-in-totality"] means that Dasein is being held out into Nothing (Hineingehaltenheit in das Nichts). In other words, human being is exposed to nihility [Nichtigkeit, also "insignificance"!] in its very foundation and through this nihility is able to go beyond beings and to relate to them and to itself. [At this point there's a footnote saying: "While neither Heidegger nor Nishitani makes this connection explicit, a little reflection on the two texts from 1929 makes clear that 'world' in On the Essence of Ground and 'nothing' in What is Metaphysics? are equivalent."]" (Nishitani Keiji, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, pp. 161-64, trans. Parkes.)

::

Here's what I wrote when I started to write a post for this thread yesterday, in an increasingly unsober state:

Quote :

I recently read two things I think are wrong with Islam. The first is the teaching that "heaven and earth", even with no people on the earth, is greater than man. The second is that man should reflect on "heaven and earth", not on God. I now think these may be related as follows: it's only man's ability to reflect on God that makes him greater than "heaven and earth".

::

What does will to power matter? Suffer me to cite my three-year-old "Nietzschean definition of nihilism":

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2577337#p2577337

"Nihilism is the denial of the will to power.

Who or what denies it, then? To say that it's anything other than the will to power is already a denial of the will to power. Nihilism is self-denial on the part of the will to power."

Whenever the question, "What does the will to power matter?" is asked, a will to power is denying itself--a self-valuing is not consciously valuing itself, which means to me a valuing is not self-actively a valuing of valuing itself.

I was going to say, "albeit passively", but then I postponed it. What does "active" even mean! is not _everything_ passive, and be it "passionate"? DENYING ITSELF IS PASSIVE, INASMUCH AS IT'S A DENYING OF DENYING ITSELF, CONCEDING AS IT DOES THAT "EVERYTHING'S A PASSION"... Wait, one may say, that's not logical: after all, does not denying only deny _activity_? But that rational thought only holds because one actively keeps reminding oneself of it, inscribing it even slightly deeper in the (un)conscience of one's collective "One".

I now think the thing about Islam actually makes more sense in the light of the Nishitani quote: in the sense that God is the Nothing, and what makes human being stand out from "heaven and earth" is his comporting himself understandingly towards Being--which I recently equated with world and Nothing.

"And do you know what 'the world' is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end [in time]; [...] enclosed by 'nothingness' as by a boundary; [...] this, my Dionysian world[.]" (Nietzsche, WP 1067, Kaufmann trans.)

"The child [Dionysus]'s seduction by its own mirror image is Plotinus's figure for the soul's separation from itself at the moment of its descent into becoming; for as Plotinus goes on to say, not only does part of the soul remain in heaven [i.e., in God, not in the created heaven], the apparent 'cut' is part of a larger suture, which he calls 'one harmony with its circuit', where 'the circuit' (periphoràn) is that of the entire 'soul-period' [i.e., the Great Year of becoming]." (Ned Lukacher, Time-Fetishes: The Secret History of Eternal Recurrence, page 30.)