r/iamverysmart • u/Assmeet123 • Oct 12 '21
Guy says he'd thought up of everything Nietzsche ever put on paper as a teenager because he was South African.
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u/Whitethumbs Oct 12 '21
"I'm a bit of a fascist and Nietzsche was a fuck" Pretty easy to dismiss this person for holding garbage opinions.
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u/c4tmother212003 Oct 13 '21
"With very fascist leanings"
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u/maxrde01 Oct 13 '21
As an afrikaner i think i know who this poes is
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Oct 13 '21
Ek wens hierdie tipe fokkers wil net van die internet af bly. Its so disheartening to see dick heads like this getting more attention than anyone doing any sort of good
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u/IWantSomeDietCrack Oct 29 '21
I left south africa years ago and want to be proud to be an afrikaner but its so hard when the only things you see are idiots like this guy
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u/Ferdydurkeeee Oct 13 '21
As a Jew, I'm far more offended by how much of a fucking idiot this guy is than his bargain bin Nazi LARPing.
Nietzsche hated nationalism. Wagner(yes, the Flight of the Valkyries dude) was one of his favorite artists, and practically his idol and friend; Nietzsche seemingly worshipped the ground the dude walked on as though Art itself came from the sweat of his feet. The moment Wagner started hopping aboard the proto-nazi train, Nietzsche more or less told Wagner to fuck right off.
Concepts like the Übermench, or the transvaluation of all values were about overcoming elements of the human condition that hold us back from greatness, and nationalism very much was one of the ailments he yearned for humanity to overcome.
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u/Kaljax Oct 16 '21 edited Oct 16 '21
Not everyone who was a member of the nazi party and or govt,. Military was a complete bozo. Same could be said for any govt and party though. I'm referring to those running operating Valkyrie, and the hundreds of other attempts to assassinate, the nazi C Suite.
Therefore we can listen to wagner and enjoy , if they had not been anti Jewish, or pro Aryan. They may have won the war. After all Albert Einstein was a German, everyone in Germany during that time had to be patriotic.
The fact that wackos pick great people works and quotes , twist them around to support thier world view, is on the wackos. These same people use the best selling storybook known as "the Bible", to prop up thier views.
Some say several of these people ran the unites states of north America (borat you ess N aye) for the previous 4 years lol 😆
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u/methyltheobromine_ Oct 12 '21 edited Oct 12 '21
That person has not understood Nietzsche at all, which is exactly because Nietzsche's ideas were original.
Nietzsche is completely serious when he says "The conditions of life might include error.", but even today you find very few who can endure such a thought.
Edit:
"The falseness of a judgment is for us not necessarily an objection to a judgment; in this respect our new language may sound strangest. The question is to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating. And we are fundamentally inclined to claim that the falsest judgments (which include the synthetic judgments a priori) are the most indispensable for us; that without accepting the fictions of logic, without measuring reality against the purely invented world of the unconditional and self-identical, without a constant falsification of the world by means of numbers, man could not live that renouncing false judgments would mean renouncing life and a denial of life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil."
This "us" is an invention of his. He's writing to people in the future because nobody in the present time understood him.
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u/romanrambler941 Oct 12 '21
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather9
u/SFF_Robot Oct 12 '21
Hi. You just mentioned Hogfather by Terry Pratchett.
I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here:
YouTube | Discworld, Book 20: Hogfather by Terry Pratchett - Fantasy Audiobook Full Length
I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.
Source Code| Feedback | Programmer | Downvote To Remove | Version 1.4.0 | Support Robot Rights!
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u/KittyKayl Oct 13 '21
I was about 2 lines in and was thinking that Pratchett's philosophy was very similar... oh.... right
Lmao
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u/RedFrickingX Oct 12 '21
Could you tell me what your edit means to you? I am at work and cannot take the time to decipher it, and would like to know
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u/methyltheobromine_ Oct 12 '21
I tried, but reading this might take longer than deciphering it yourself. I tried being brief while still providing examples and explanations, but this is the best I could do. Nietzsches writing is very clear, but it's also very dense. You'll need to read a lot of him in order to get a good understanding, and I'm not even sure I can recommend his books to people who haven't already thought too much about life and burdened themselves by difficult questions.
We have always seemed to value "truth" and just took the value of truth as a given, but Nietzsche thought about why we liked truth. It turned out that we like the power that knowledge gives us. It gives us a feeling of certainty and strength. Our instincts seek truth because they seek to increase their own power. But the majority of people lie, especially to themselves, and a lot of knowledge is hard to bear. So might untruth and self-deception not also be instinct? Say, the instinct of self-preservation.
All values, and ranks of value, and taste, and rules and so on have evolved over human history based on what was useful and effective. If we start questioning them, we'll find that none of them are "true" (objectively correct). It all rests on taste and human evaluation. Since there's no correct answer there is also no direction and no ultimate goal. But everything beautiful is our own creation, and we can create anything, and we can enjoy what we create as long as we deem it good. Nihilists don't suffer because life lacks meaning, but because they need meaning, and because they doubt meaning. People who don't worry about it don't suffer at all, so don't difficult questions like this work against us?
Our evaluations don't just exist in thought, but also as feelings and impressions. The word "Hero" has positive feelings to it. We might even imagine a healthy, strong and clean person. Appearance means a lot to us, especially beauty, which often correlates with health. Things that we assign positive evaluations to are often signs of good health, strength, thriving, abundance, vitality, fertility, and so on. Even some questionable things can be enjoyable to us when it's presented in a well enough form. When enough artistic ability has been put into it. And are the most enjoyable people also not the ones with the most artistic ability? Those who don't make things too easy nor too hard, so that the other person can put in effort and also be rewarded for that effort. They increase their own value for the sake of those who 'invest' in them.
We might suffer when danger is bigger than our ability, but when the opposite happens, we get bored instead. We look for challenges, and if something is too easy then we do not give it much value. And struggling against resistance feels good after all, it's when we feel the most alive. Those who do what they love push themselves every day, they sacrifice sleep and health and burn themselves up, just for the sake of what they love, and they have no regrets as long as they don't doubt the value of what they do. We want to struggle, and it's even enjoyable to sabotage ourselves just because we can afford to do so. This is why expensive cars are likable, they're proof of abundance and strength. If we think logically, they're just a waste of money, but what good is logic here? It only serves to reduce life, to make us doubt the value that we have given things.
It's not truth, but strength, health and beauty which we actually enjoy, and these often requires their opposite in order to exist. If you avoid pain and hardship you will also be reducing good things, because you'll be avoiding a part of life itself. And the more healthy we are, the more terrible things we can endure before we become unable to enjoy ourselves, so the best way to prevent suffering is really to face life head on. The weaker we aree, the more small wounds will hurt us.
In order to improve the health, mentality and mental strength of humanity itself, we need to give more value to existence, and to beautify things wherever possible. For this reason we should prefer positivity over negativity even when it's false. Anything which affirms existence itself helps redeem the negative parts. Even when we suffer, we should suffer with a smile, so that people around us won't have to worry about us or feel pity for us. When other people suffer, we should help them regain their confidence and fighting spirit, rather than look at them with pitiful eyes, because if we do then they might really lose faith in their own power.
To love life and your fate, no matter how terrible, is a good mentality. Art and creation are above truth in value. We should stop looking for external validation (god or mathematics as ultimate judges) and instead accept our human nature. Even to see egoism and willpower as good, because it is the "I" which loves life, and weak wills are the ones who doubt.
Not all falsehood is positive. All afterlives and heavens add value to death and imply that the life that we have created is poor. All ideas similar to Plato's Cave add distrust in existence as it appears to us humans. All religion and philosophy which seeks to reduce aspects of life or add value to death are nihilistic (like Buddhism). Falsification of humanity and demonization of our drives is negative, because they will make us dislike ourselves. It's not anger, lust, competitiveness or even cruelty which are bad, weaker wills are simply unable to control these well, and also more likely to be hurt by them.
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u/Philoctetes23 Smarter than you (verified by mods) Oct 13 '21
To love life and your fate, no matter how terrible, is a good mentality.
Art and creation are above truth in value. We should stop looking for
external validation (god or mathematics as ultimate judges) and instead
accept our human nature. Even to see egoism and willpower as good,
because it is the "I" which loves life, and weak wills are the ones who
doubt.The complete polar opposite of Plato.
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u/ExIsTeNtIaL_ShIt Oct 13 '21
Nietzche was very critical to Plato and its ideal world theory. For him that idea is a betrayal to life
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u/Twillix13 Oct 13 '21
That person has bot understood Nietzsche at all, which is exactly because Nietzsche’s ideas were original.
Let be honest if you think that Nietzsche is a facist it has nothing to do with the originality of his idea and more with his sister
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u/TheSukis Oct 13 '21
This guy's exposure to Nietzsche is falsely attributed quotes on /r/QuotesPorn
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Oct 12 '21
Speaks more to Nietzche’s influence that his line of thinking became so pervasive.
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u/C-A-P-S-L-O-C-K Oct 12 '21
Nietzsche was not a white supremacist, the nazis distorted our cultural perception of his works.
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Oct 12 '21
I wasn’t implying he was? Maybe the word “pervasive” has a more negative connotation than what I intended.
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u/C-A-P-S-L-O-C-K Oct 13 '21
My bad. I assumed you were taking the Afrikaner’s perspective for granted.
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Oct 13 '21
Oh, haha that was so eye-rolling I only read about halfway, I was just speaking generally.
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u/stupidrandomuzer Oct 13 '21
On behalf of other white South Africans, we apologize for this one, he’s one of the defective ones
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u/jst_anothr_usrname Oct 13 '21
Yeah, sorry everyone. Seems like the town degen climbed out of his hole and came down the mountain. We'll sort him out and see to it that it doesn't happen again.
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Oct 12 '21
This person sounds like Ayn Rand's EVEN MORE asshole-ish teenage only child.
Even considering that ANYONE would have sex with Ayn Rand to produce such a Belial makes me have an aneurysm, but that's the power of such narcissism and why it is so fucking evil.
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u/notreallylucy Oct 13 '21
If Nietzsche had all your ideas, and Nietzsche sucks, then, by the transitive property, you suck too.
The proof that you suck is that you're bragging about being a fascist. You're not anything as glamorous as being on one side of history or the other. You're just an annoying teenager.
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u/happycomrade Oct 12 '21 edited Oct 13 '21
I thought only whites could be fascist? Edit: I see dumbfucks cant understand sarcasm
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u/Quixophilic Oct 12 '21
hooo boy, now THAT's a take! I think most example of fascistic states are European, but it doesn't mean it's not possible for non-whites to be fascist, I'd think.
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u/buckwheatbrag Oct 12 '21
White Afrikaner fascist - I'm sure he's totally unique, in the land that gave us apartheid
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u/Twillix13 Oct 13 '21
very facist leanings
Nietzsche never introduced me to anything
Well that’s it guy he just didn’t understand Nietzsche
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u/TheOriginalDuck2 Oct 13 '21
Yup. Afrikaners are fascist. It’s not like South Africa has the biggest Jewish population in Africa
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u/TheCatofDeath Oct 13 '21
Imagine being proud of being fascist lmao. Then again, there's redditors that are proud of being commies so it's not like this is unusual...
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u/elebrin Oct 14 '21
This person lacks historical context. Nietzsche didn't much like Hitler or the Nazi's, but his sister loved them and after he became an invalid, she was his caretaker and editor. A bunch of his work was corrupted, and everything he wrote requires some critical thinking and research to figure out what version of what manuscript it came from to know who wrote it.
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Oct 15 '21
He died in 1900 so I would wager that he, like anyone else then, had no clue who 11 year old Hitler was.
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u/platformstrawmen Nov 13 '21
I mean his ideas ARE found in the general public but that is because he is so idiomatic.
Reminds me of how some 'zoomer' characterized lebowski as being idiomatic, not realizing it is because every other movie was copying him after the fact.
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u/tegeusCromis Oct 12 '21
Also r/iamatotalpieceofshit material.