Nate Anderson

Subtitle: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World

2023-08-15: I have many complaints, some about Nietzsche, some about the author. The book isn't horrible or anything, just there's a lot of bullshit in there where Nietzsche and the author make incorrect assumptions. Humans are animals and the function of animals is to exist. All that blathering on about heroism and what not is just them trying to make sense of something that doesn't make sense. Now, if we want to make the world nicer I certainly think that's a good idea and I think doing away with violence would be nice touch. If we want to pretend we're better than the other animals then being the animal that gave up violence would be step in the right direction. I think though that Nietzsche is laboring under the delusion that we're special... we'll see.

2023-08-17: I'm at 38% and it unlikely that I'll finish. Too much of Nietzsche's philosophy* is bullshit about the "will to power" and how desirable struggle and warfare are. It's a load of proto-fascist shit I understand that he wrote other things that basically say "I didn't mean it like that" or that indicate he didn't actually support "might makes right" as a general principle but IMO that means he's either two-faced or a shitty writer. If you write things that can be interpreted as contrary to your beliefs, without making an effort to bend the work, then you either don't know how to say what you mean or you didn't bother to give to much thought to the words you were writing. The book gives me the impression that Nietzsche was the latter. That he was over passionate about getting his brilliant thoughts on paper and didn't give much thought to whether they really reflected his beliefs.

Based on 38% of this book (😉) I think his fundamental problem was that he underestimated humanity. If you give people a life of comfort and leisure then yes, many people are essentially going to waste their life consuming entertainment. But, many people will be unsatisfied with that and go looking for things to do. Some of those things will also be a waste of time, but some will not. Changing tack, Nietzsche's just too focused on the individual. Individual's don't matter. How many amazing people have lived and no one knows their name? Since we invented writing that's probably improved but most of the people we learn about still aren't that important. How many scientific discoveries turn out to have been made by multiple people working individually? If someone wasn't available to fill a role then it's pretty likely that someone else would have stepped up, and if they hadn't then history would be different but no one be complaining about that missing person. None of which is say that society should suppress the individual in favor of the group, we have to find the right balance.

But Nietzsche didn't see that. He was hung up on his ubermensch bullshit and his "will to power" and consequently he comes across as a proto-fascist. And if you come across that way then you are, even if you're not. Shitty writer?

I will also note that I'm a 57 year old dude who's lived a comfy life and despite that and Nietzsche's view that "how can anyone become a thinker if he does not spend at least a third of the day without passions, people, and books?" here I am spending way to much time thinking about his thoughts and how full of shit he was. Which is not a disaster, IMO everyone is an simultaneously an idiot and a genius, the difference is the question they're answering. So while I think his over focus on the individual and struggle are shit there's still some good stuff in his writing, the problem seems to be the amount shit you have to wade through to find it.

...

* Note: Read as "Nietzsche's philosophy as presented in this book". I'm not a scholar or interested in being one. I've read other things about Nietzsche and his work but I'm mostly reacting to what's presented here.
… (mais)

Very repetitively fails to do justice either to Nietzsche or to electronic screen devices when properly used.

But what, you ask, is the proper use of phones, laptops, tablets, televisions as bulk information sources and video streaming devices? A very important question for us all, no doubt. The author's simplistic answer: unplug them all and do your thinking joyfully walking, rowing or however one likes to do the active life outside, as he imagines Nietzche, Wordsworth, and other greats to have done in primitive, screenless eras.

We all need to find a balance between the benefits and excesses of all too easily accessible information. It doesn't do to discount the benefits. As for Nietzsche, to me his relevance to any of this finally seemed tangential at best.… (mais)

Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher towards the end of the 1800s. People love him and hate him. He is possibly the most polarizing philosopher in history. So, in the hope of sorting through it all, I read In Emergency, Break Glass, by Nate Anderson, an academic, journalist, human, and fan. The result: Nietzsche is both less and more, significant and irrelevant, full of insight, full of himself, and full of ...other things.

Nietzsche appears less a philosopher than what today we would call a life coach. For one thing, he didn't have much of a life. He quit his professorship, lived spartanly, had fewer and fewer friends (until he had none), was in constant agony (eye pain, migraines...) and was certified insane by the age of 44. He never married, had no children, and spent his adult life writing books no one read until after he died. To accept life lessons from such a man, as isolated and inconsistent as he was, is rather iffy.

He started out like a rocket. By the age of 24 he was chair of the philology department at the university in Basel, Switzerland. He was the center of activity, in the thick of things. But he couldn't take it. He suddenly gave it all up, moved to small rural villages, rented small and cheap lodgings, and kept to himself. He spent hours a day walking the woods, where he did his best thinking.

The result of this thinking was a prescription for life. It was a carpe diem sort of package. He exhorted readers to think, undistracted. And challenge themselves. Anything less than a life-altering struggle meant you weren't living life to its fullest. "How can anyone become a thinker if he does not spend at least a third of the day without passions, people and books?" Nietzsche lashes out, without admitting that for his own case, two out three ain't bad.

This is where Anderson comes in. His life is the usual American trashbarrel of Netflix bingeing, constantly stopping to respond to emails and texts, and endless pointless searches to satisfy a momentary thought. Every day. Hours of doomscrolling, interspersed with junk food snacking, and all of it sitting on a chair or at the extreme, a couch.

Nietzsche had the answer. Ditch the distractions, understand what was important in life, and pursue it forcefully all the time. Nietzsche wanted to be a "yes" man, a positive force rather than a naysayer. That is attractive to the Nate Andersons of the world, tired of criticism and seeking positive alternatives. Addressing the 21st century, Nietzsche said "Noise murders thought." If only he knew...

Nietzsche, in Anderson's telling, had a very positive outlook. "He wanted to be a Yes-sayer who stopped worrying about life's unfairness, who did not brood over past slights, who accepted what the world doled out. One does not get to pick and choose; everything in some mysterious sense, is ultimately all right. Even suffering and death are part of the pattern." Which is all true and even obvious, but still a lot to absorb. And no one had more trouble absorbing it than Nietzsche.

Anderson says Nietzsche "isn't amoral - he simply believes that negative morality is, in a word too easy. We need something that calls for our striving, not just our renunciation."

Anderson examines the state of life today, and concludes it is all about safety, and nothing about risk: "The digital paradigm active in many wealthy societies today stresses:
-constant entertainment
-physical safety
-control
-continual and worldwide connection with others
-unlimited information
-'another world' rather than my local, physical world
-mental stimulation over physical activity"
...which he finds depressing. The activity is all solo, safely ensconced at home, without need of the presence of any other beings. This can't possibly be what life is all about.

It is nothing new. There are tons of books that stress ditching the digital for the real, of limiting screen time, reconnecting with friends and relatives and an end to pointless bingeing, as nothing the least bit memorable, let alone important, comes from it. Checking the phone 200 times a day, as Americans do, is not a life. No one even gets a chance to experience genuine boredom. There's always more so-called news to scan. He says information overload is "a kind of smothering - not a spur to action but an inhibition of it." Anderson knows and acknowledges all this. But for him, Nietzsche saw it happening 150 years ago and tried to stop it then, so he is worth considering.

One of Nietzsche's greater gifts was the turn of phrase. Where run of the mill philosophers were wordy, Nietzsche was all about the biggest impact from the fewest words. He coined the term "will to power", which has been used to smear him as a proto-Nazi, but which Anderson says is about the individual's "ascending vitality of life itself." Nietzsche claimed it was more primal than even survival. It is the will to live the full life. It is neither good nor evil. And it makes Nietzsche eminently quotable.

Another was his concept of the last man. The last man was comfortable, lazy, contented and unadventurous. This term too has survived and thrived.

Meanwhile, on his dark side, Nietzsche could say some pretty regrettable things, Anderson says.
-"The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And one shall help them to do so..."
-"The sick man is a parasite of society. In a certain state, it is indecent to live longer."
-"Ascending life demands the most inconsiderate pushing down and aside of degenerating life - for example for the right of procreation, for the right to be born, for the right to live."
Readers might be forgiven for thinking him a fascist rather than a philosopher.

One of his very last friends, Ida Overbeck, was not fooled by Nietzsche's bold prescription: "Nietzsche hated the normal person because he could not be one." Again, this is not necessarily someone to learn from.

My own problem with this philosophy is that you are always becoming; you never are. There can never be a sense of accomplishment, a finality or even a success in this scheme. It is to forever struggle and/or die trying.

The way Anderson describes him, he seems like a Thomas Jefferson - he has a quote for everyone and everything, including both sides of opposites and contradictions. As Anderson admits, one has to pick out what to consider significant, because there is a lot that is worthless in his writings. Take this for example: "The fact that The Birth of Tragedy has endured for more than a century tells us how much the ideas have spoken to people. (Well, the ideas in the first half, anyway. The second half, with its praise of Wagner, is widely regarded as rubbish.)"

Similarly, Nietzsche claimed he only read eight authors, and read them repeatedly, rather than going any wider. Anderson labels this is a ridiculous statement to make, because Nietzsche had to read widely if only to pick the eight authors he settled on. And if it was true, you would not want to value anyone so narrowly read. It is a lose/lose position to take. The authors were Epicurus, Montaigne, Goethe, Spinoza, Plato, Rousseau, Pascal and Schopenhauer, in case that tells you anything.

Using such an inconsistent, if not defective agent to treat the decadence of the digital age is risky. I personally don't think it accomplishes that goal. As an intro to Nietzsche, the book has modern relevance that most straightforward biographies do not. But as a theorem to prove, it fails, much as Nietzsche did in his own time.

David Wineberg… (mais)