Daily Dose of Nietzsche.........

[Kirby]

"From a Distance. - This mountain makes the landscape it dominates charming and significant in every way. Having said this to ourselves a hundred times, we become so unreasonable and grateful that we suppose that whatever bestows so much charm must also be the most charming thing around - and we climb the mountain and are disappointed. Suddenly the mountain itself and the whole landscape around us, below us, have lost their magic. We had forgotten that some greatness, like some goodness, wants to be beheld only from a distance and by all means only from below, not from above; otherwise it makes no impression. Perhaps you know some people near you who must look at themselves only from a distance in order to find themselves at all tolerable or attractive and invigorating. Self-knowledge is strictly inadvisable for them."

Friedrich Nietzsche
"The Gay Science"
1887

[grabtindy]

"You took a vow of silence because of Friedrich Nietzsche? Far out."

[Cliff Huckable]

Good stuff.

Worthy of being re-read several times.

[PacRimRider1]

Sounds like something a guy who never climbed a mountain would write.

[rideit]

Thank god for Wellbutrin.

[Kirby]

"And when I beheld my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: it was the Spirit of Gravity - through him all things are ruined. One does not kill by anger but by laughter. Come, let us kill the Spirit of Gravity! I have learned to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move. Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances with me".

Friedrich Nietzsche
"Thus Spoke Zarathustra"
1883

[Sutter]

Sounds like something a guy who never climbed a mountain would write.

For a college student, you clearly are not a philosophy major.

[pappag]

"The vanity of others offends our taste only when it offends our vanity."

- Beyond Good and Evil

[nick > jesus]

the world could use another intellectual revolution

"Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied."

a good one^^ and one that makes me chuckle:

"Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent."

[AsheanMT]

The last Christian died on the cross.

[soylent green]

Nietzsche got it wrong.


You cannot stay on the mountain forever. You have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know. (Rene Daumel, Mont Analogue)

[Tippster]

"A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness."

-Miller

[Ottime]

This thread is great. But... Padded Room??

And will need to post up some Tillich

[nealric]

See sig...

[Kirby]

This thread is great. But... Padded Room??

Your probably right, but I can't move it so here we go.

"Yes, my friends, believe with me in Dionysian life and the rebirth of tragedy. The age of the Socratic man is over; put on wreaths of ivy, put the thyrsus into your hand, and do not be surprised when tigers and panthers lie down, fawning, at your feet. Only dare to be tragic men; for your are to be redeemed. You shall accompany the Dionysian pageant from India to Greece. Prepare yourselves for hard strife, but believe in the miracles of your god."

Friedrich Nietzsche
'The Birth of Tragedy'
1872

[climbhoser]

the world could use another intellectual revolution

Check out Ken Wilber.

And wasn't the mean, green meme...the "everybody's marginilized" era of the late 60's and 70's an intellectual revolution?

But, the way I hear it is you're dissatisfied with the amount of mental masturbation in the modern world. When was the last time you visited a liberal arts uni? It's like psychic spank central!

[adam]

my favorite nietzsche
"In the horizon of the infinite.-We have lef the land and have embarked. We have burned our bridges behind us-indeed, we have gone farther and destroyed the land behind us. Now, little ship, look out! Beside you is the ocean: to be sure, it does not always roar, and at times it lies spread out like silk and gold and reveries of graciousness. But hours will come when you will realized that it is infinite and that there is nothing more awesome than infinity. Oh, the poor bird that felt free and now strikes the walls of this cage! Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it had offered more freedom-and there is no longer any, "land"".

[Emerson Biggin's]

"OOhhhhh how shalt mine Hellbents plow through the deepest depths of this so-called "virgin" snow. What act of nature dares call itself "virtuous"?? Does snow have any great virtue over fire or land or wind or water??? What rogue of nature behest itself with the right to elevate it's virtuosity over nature's so called "lesser" forces. Be still now my brethren and sistren...and let your reverse cambered aristocracy "deflower" the self-proclaimed "virgin" of nature. Even the most elevated amongst us will cower to the deepest depths of our souls to pillage this "virgin"...can we say that our society is any loftier than the heathens????

Emerson Biggin's....2008


...common. Philosophy is sketchy logic. Even the greats are kind of guessing. EVERYONE is a potential philosopher....choosing one over another is a weird and ultimately misguided endeavor. At least "Science" and "Religion" take a stand...."philosophy" is the ultimate opinionated but still academically accepted outlook on human existance. If you choose philosphy as your outlook on life, why latch onto someone else's philosophy??? Just create your own!! It's just as valid's as Nietzsche's...isn't it?? If you disagree, than you probably disagree with Nietzshce. Mind warping huh?

[gaijin]

The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction that you believe in... willingly. (Wallace Stevens) Compare that with recent micro-biology and neurology research and suddenly a poet becomes a man of science. Perceived reality is, in fact, biological and created by ourselves.

Humility is recognizing that the meaning of your life could be as simple as a mere moment in time and as trivial as something that any one person could have performed.

[Droopy]

For real? Nietzsche was a cunt. I mean I get it, reality is a human construction, really I do understand. But does that mean the only logical outcome to existentialism/postmodernism is for all out social darwinism or reversion to a hobbesian state of nature as Nietzsche would suggest? Most of all why does he have to be such an iconoclastic elitists asshole in most of his writing(even if he is right about a lot of it)? /rant

Skiing relates more to eastern philosophy anyway.
Tao Te Ching (~600BC)

Chapter 22
The way of Nature is clear
to anyone who looks.
Bend with the wind
if you wish to remain rooted upright.
Empty yourself and expect to be filled.
What wears out is continually renewed.
Don't be foolish enough
to try to improve upon Nature
or to set yourself against
its immutable ways.
Instead, learn from Nature
how to lead your own life.
Let others discover how clever you are
and how much you've accomplished.
Those who don't compete
meet the least resistance
and reach their goals unopposed.
The wise have always understhood this.
Bend with the wind
if you wish to remain rooted and upright.


Chapter 34
The Tao moves the stars
and rests in the heart of the atom.
All thins arise from it
yet it takes no credit,
demands no loyalty,
asserts itself over nothing.
Since it is the invisible force within everything,
we might thing of it as humble.
Because all things return to it, pulled like the
waves, we recognize its power.
The Tao has no need to make claims.
All of nature acclaims it.

I think a good powder day is really summed up in the concept of Tao:
"Tao is, by contrast, often referred to as 'the nameless', because neither it nor its principles can ever be adequately expressed in words. It is conceived, for example, with neither shape nor form, as simultaneously perfectly still and constantly moving, as both larger than the largest thing and smaller than the smallest, because the words that describe shape, movement, size, or other qualities always create dichotomies, and Tao is always a unity." see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao

[climbhoser]

DW,

The prolixity, as you put it, of many analytical philosophers can intimate as much in no-less a poetic language...if you have the ears to hear it. Wittgenstein, Rorty, Russell, Godel, Van Inwagen, etc... all have the ability to travel this path.

I agree Wilber is garbage, please never lump me in with him.

Just do not pre-suppose that the metaphor and allusion of continental philsophers, especially idealists (Rilke, Nietszche, Kant, et al.) have some superior ability to intimate.

To me, I find intimation the most obnoxious of all, however...it's like saying it without committing to it. Like my wife, a passive aggressive midwesterner, who makes me "figure everything out." It's a malodorous way of excusing one's self from being wrong (aha, psychology over philosophy...how neat!).

Even if wrong I prefer the Humes, the Kants, the Heideggers, the Merleau-Pontys of the world who use skepticism as a tool to build the scaffolding and framing of a different ontology. It's less mental-stroking, more REAL work, less ego play... And then a handful of them, Hume for example, accept defeat and order a pint

[Goatski]

so Nietszche was a climber? or a poet?

now i'm confused - but i like the sound of this Hume guy

[climbhoser]

Nietszche was both. A metaphorical climber, a literal poet, and, IMHO, quite possibly a sufferer of Asperger's. I think he died a virgin. I bet he wanted to climb...Zarathustra was a hardcore mountain man, for sure. Like the Jeremiah Johnson of the Austrian Alps and shit.

[Professor Chaos]

No Nietzsche. Just some words from Chuang Tzu.


We're cast into this human form, and its such happiness. This human form knows change, but the ten thousand changes are utterly boundless. Who could calculate the joys they promise?
And so the sage wanders where nothing is hidden and everything is preserved. The sage calls dying young a blessing and living long a blessing, calls beginnings a blessing and endings a blessing. We might make such a person our teacher, but there's something the ten thousand things belong to, something all change depends upon - imagine making that your teacher!


When Adept Piebald was wandering in the Shang hills, he came across a tree unlike any other. It was so huge it could shelter a thousand teams of horses in its shade.
"What kind of tree is this?" wondered Adept Piebald. "Its timber must be of the rarest and most treasured kind." But looking up, he saw that its spindly branches were too twisted for beams and its massive trunk was too gnarled and mealy for coffins. He tasted a leaf, and it left his mouth burned and blistered. He sniffed, and the smell was bad enough to put someone into a crazed stupor for half a week.
"So this tree's useless after all," he said. "No wonder its so huge. Yes, yes - thats how it is for the sacred: they too have mastered uselessness."

[climbhoser]

We agree. So all I can do is add.
Hume is worth reading and re-reading. Kant ... probably not even the reading. Not because he couldn't spell out or use his own ideas halfway decently - many suffered from that fault - but he used too damn many words to obscure those ideas. The Cliff notes are better.
Nietzsche ... well, I recently dug him up for another look, and was beginning to think maybe I had wrongly maligned him (along lines similar to yours) ... but then ... nah, I think I had it about right.

Yes, he was a passionate man, a man who loved words and imagery. He was also a very egotistical man, who thought himself very important. As a good friend says, "your way is not the only way, but simply another."

I wrongly lumped Heidegger...was thinking Hegel in my mind and the name spilled out. Heidegger was most definitely a continental and a true idealist. Hegel bridged the gap.

Nontheless, they're all nuts. Clinging to something which I know nothing of. All I can think about these days is f00kin'.