Tag: Nietzsche

Geworfenheit

We can’t trick the truth by hiding from it

we can’t trick reality by denying it

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we can’t subtract our differences from the social equation

we can’t avoid our conflicts

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we can’t jettison the sandbags of the flesh

we can’t outmaneuver the flow of life

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we cannot rationalize our way out of the mess of it

we cannot explain away the dilemma of it

we cannot transcend the problem of life

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but we can choose…

We can choose to say yes and stay honest

we can choose to pay attention

we can choose to be an honest witness

we can choose to be kind

we can choose to let ourselves make mistakes

and always to take the next step

we can choose to take on whatever gives

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We can choose the truth as our true north.

Adding Blue to Red Yields Magenta

What’s more interesting than the polarization intensifying in the culture right now is the fact that there seems to be two major types of humans—each with their respective strengths (virtues) and weaknesses (sins).

To wit: while some of us lean more toward socialism others of us tend more toward individualism. Apparently.

The problem with socialism (as I see it) is that it is based on the dynamics of codependence: Wherein the parties are at the mercy of those who become the dominant members of the group. And the problem with individualism (in my view) is that it is based on the psychology of separation and distrust.

In codependence the parties can abuse each other to the extent they are reliant on one another. In independence the individual is left to their own limited devices and is exposed to the elements on their own.

These are the psycho-energetic poles we are magnetized around when operating from existential anxiety. We either seek solace in the crowd or in the illusion of control of a self-directed life.

. . .

Polarity is not something to be resolved, though. Polarity is a creative tension or force that drives development and growth.

It is the inter-personal conflicts between different temperaments that sets intra-personal growth in motion. This is why individualists need socialists (and vice versa): in order to grow and continue to align and mentally evolve.

In a way we were all waiting for the present stir of events. That’s why it’s here. And all that we can do is embrace for impact.

Precisely what we are aching to do.

The ‘New Normal’ is The Same Old News

We’re discouraged from doing more and more of the things that help us evolve while encouraged to do things that keep us psychologically stunted.

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becoming an adult is to arrive at the understanding that you’ll be shamed and punished for your virtues and rewarded and exalted for your sins. that society will not encourage you to be humble and enlightened. on the contrary: it will condition you to perpetuate the ratcheting neuroses and pretense that undergirds it all.

Herbert Brün Contra Political Correctness

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German artist Herbert Brün talked a lot about floating hierarchies. or social systems based in growth and evolution—rather than stagnation and diminishing returns. an ecology of the shared mind that thrives beyond the pale of good and evil.

here’s a couple of succinct and eloquent pointers offered by him regarding the issue:

AGREEMENT IS A NONVIOLENT WAY OF MAKING ANOTHER PERSON SUPERFLUOUS.

PEACE IS SATISFIED BY US BEING ABLE TO HAVE OUR CONFLICTS [WITHOUT VIOLENCE].

OUR CONFLICTS SATISFY OUR NEED FOR PEACE.

WE HAVE TO FIND A METHOD OF LANGUAGING THAT DOESN’T ASSUME PEACE AS A REWARD BUT AS A CONDITION FOR CONFLICT.

WE CAN ONLY ARGUE WITH EACH OTHER WHEN THERE IS PEACE.

WAR PREVENTS US HAVING OUR CONFLICTS.

which are, incidentally, great counterarguments against the trending consensus of policing micro-aggressions, hate speech, and the excesses of the PC culture in general.

also:

A VICTIM IS A PERSON WHO CANNOT ESCAPE A SITUATION WITHOUT VIOLENCE [WHICH DOESN’T MEAN THAT THE PERSON CAN ESCAPE THE SITUATION WITH VIOLENCE]

which brings to mind the greyer areas of the Me Too movement as well. but let’s not step on that landmine here.

Why

so here I am and I am here and I say yes:

I allow what is and I roll with what gives,

I say yes because I am here and I say yes,

not because I want to change the world,

or to change the people of the world, no

I say yes because I’m here and life is yes,

life is yes and so I say yes: simple as that,

I take what life gives and I give what life

takes, yes: I say yes because even if it is

a goddamn mess, in the end, life is a yes

 

A juxtaposition of cool quotes

Gertrude Stein

We are all the same age inside.

Thomas Pynchon

If they can get you to ask the wrong questions they don’t have to worry about the answers.

Don DeLillo

[Interviewer: As technology gets more advanced, our fears as a public, as a people, as human beings actually become more primitive. So, even as the world is getting ever more technologically advanced, we are becoming in many ways more sort of Cro-Magnon-like in our instincts or our reactions]

In a curious way, despite the enormous powers of technology, I think for many people it narrows the world rather than widens it. It makes facts instantly accessible, but I think as people grow into their personal technology it has the ultimate effect of creating a world that’s centered on an individual’s immediate needs, immediate desires, excluding much of what is most interesting about the lives we ought to be living. I think that whatever technology is capable of doing becomes what we desperately needed to do, and I’m not sure that’s such a hopeful situation.

Friedrich Nietzsche

This tyrant in us wreaks horrible revenge for every attempt we make to dodge or escape it, for every premature resignation, for every acceptance of equality with those among whom we do not belong, for every activity, however respectable, which distracts us from our main cause—indeed, for every virtue which would protect us from the hardness of our inmost responsibility. Every time, sickness is the response, when we want to doubt our right to our task, when we begin to make things easier for ourselves in any way. It is the easing of our burden which we must atone most harshly. And if we want to return to health afterward, we have no choice: we must assume a heavier burden than we ever carried before—

[in Christ’s words: If you bring forth what is within you what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.]

Robert Louis Stevenson

I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound for ever on man’s shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.

Adyashanti

Open, closed, open, closed. And all the while the mind waits for it all to come to an end, waits for deliverance. The waiting, the cycles are the way the mind holds on to control, holds on to a control that it does not have, that it can never have.

Bare your heart open to being held captive by illusion. You are caught, endlessly caught. And you are fighting (and a clever fighter you are) against your own mind, against the illusion of being trapped in this endless game. You are trying to win the game but your trying to win is the game, as is your trying to let go.

Give your full consent to your circumstance. Resist not, grasp not, move not. Do not be frightened by hell or tempted by Heaven.

Joey Lott

 The mind is loud and hysterical and melodramatic.

 The heart is painful because it is continually broken open and bleeding.

 The mind divides.

 The heart welcomes.

Charles Bukowski

I don’t believe in perfection. I believe in keeping the bowels loose.

People who solved things usually had lots of persistence and some good luck. If you persisted long enough, the good luck usually came. Most people couldn’t wait on the luck, though, so they quit.

David Deida

Your gift is developed by applying consciousness to your (unresolved) issues.

Whatever you experience: you’re meant to experience and fully metabolize.

Tony Robbins

Prepare for volatility and turn them into opportunities.

Corrections and crashes occur with regularity but never last.

Uncertainty is no excuse for inaction.

Joe Rogan

You can write and you can get seeds but you’ve got to plant those seeds in the dirt of the crowd.

You’ve got to constantly throw shit at the wall for some of it to stick.