I haven't really seen what you describe in the last paragraph. Where I've seen Nietzsche discussed, master morality is usually seen with some sympathy. Personally, I feel like aspects of slave morality as Nietzsche describes it were acting as deep unconscious forces in my psychology that I am very glad to have made conscious to more easily push back against where they are unproductive, and I feel like conversations like these help with that. To manage emotions it helps to be able to identify them, and reading your post I actually felt the ressentiment reading about the jocks, I noticed it, and I let it go. That is not something I used to be able to do so easily.
I think the issue with the jocks and nerds view is by definition you are dealing with youth coming into the world with whatever background they happened to have, and little of their own choices has had an effect on where they are. The question is what happens for the rest of the adult lives of the slave morality kids? Are they doomed, or can they change their outlook? Can someone think themselves into being a master moralist or onto some kind of middle road? I tend to think we have some kind of agency and can alter the course of our lives in some way. Elon Musk takes ketamine for depression, he probably grew up immersed in slave morality and forged some kind of master morality for himself, but still has parts from his childhood that hate himself. That's the kind of complexity that is happening for most people who aren't totally immersed on one side or the other.
I haven't really seen what you describe in the last paragraph. Where I've seen Nietzsche discussed, master morality is usually seen with some sympathy.
Because you're reading it from the guys doing it. I say it goes back to Nietzsche because Nietzsche himself was, well, not a powerful vital warrior aristocrat. I love his work and and what he contributed to the western tradition, but he was a loser. When you read a Nietzschean, and he's not a big powerful dominant successful warrior, there's an element of a kind of jealous undermining of one's real enemies with one's imaginary friends. "Hey, look, you might act like you're better than me, and you might be taller and richer and better looking and have a hotter girl and a bigger bench press, but you ain't shit, because you don't have the real perfect pure master morality you're still a SLAVE maaaaan." There's a lot of that in the more white-identitarian corners of the online right.
I think the issue with the jocks and nerds view is by definition you are dealing with youth coming into the world with whatever background they happened to have, and little of their own choices has had an effect on where they are.
Well we're dealing with myth, not history, but to engage with extending the metaphor...
The question is what happens for the rest of the adult lives of the slave morality kids? Are they doomed, or can they change their outlook? Can someone think themselves into being a master moralist or onto some kind of middle road?
Yes. People do this all the time. It might even be called "maturity" or "growing up." Learning to love the things you love without worrying about others. A lot of it has to do with finding one's space, one's social grouping where one is mature or even dominant at least on occasion. Nerdy hobbies often provide this: the same guy who is a loser at school or work might be a great guild leader in WoW or whatever. So do social organizations: you might be the bottom tier loser at work, but at the Elks lodge everyone knows your name.
I like your framing of it, in real life we all contain both genuine human desire and emotion and ressentiment. In my mind, Elon is both engaging in things he loves for the sake of things he loves, and he is desperate to gain approval from or undermine the values systems of those who hate him. He builds a crazy, insane vanity project like the Cybertruck. But then he's fighting petty internet feuds on Twitter.
Personally, the way I apply this in my everyday life is simple and libertarian: let people enjoy things. People having fun doesn't imply that I must have a take on it. People resenting other people having fun is bad.
I see what you're saying, the far right areas where he is discussed are pretty unknown to me. I wouldn't necessarily characterize Nietzsche as a loser, though. If he hadn't succumbed to sickness as young as he did, he would've been celebrated in his own lifetime and his long, prolific, but isolated journey would have payed off.
I think the loser attitude is putting too much stock in the American high school analysis because the things Nietzsche accomplished aren't valued there, and he would be seen as lesser for basically having a problem with women, something obviously Jay-Z would never have an issue with. But to an adult in the room, hopefully they'd see that Nietzsche's influence and power far exceeds Jay-Z's, along with the metaphorical jocks, to the world's benefit or profound harm depending on which of his disciples you are looking at.
I just think there has to be room for the "sigma male" in the analysis of things, where the truly powerful don't necessarily match the vital youth imagery, a lot of times they are weirdos taking big risks to even the odds in their favor, and if it doesn't pan out in their lifetimes, I'd hope they don't get necessarily lumped in with slave morality unless they were actually expressed ressentiment and were preoccupied with being part of the mob/morality police etc. (which I do think you can still argue Nietzsche was doing himself to a degree, at least with the former)
Don't get me wrong, I've read Nietzsche, I love Nietzsche, but we have to admit that by any standard of Master Morality, Nietzsche was lacking. He never conquered in his lifetime. His tangible achievements more or less crowned at becoming the youngest professor of philology, from which he then lived off disability the rest of his life. Was a lot of this the result of bad luck and disease? Yes, undoubtedly. But equally undoubtedly, the lot of many of the weak, those most Nietzscheans are so willing to throw away as the "superfluous men" from Zarathustra, are the result of bad luck, disease, etc. I don't think I'm being unfair when I call him a loser, he lost.
This is where I think the complication of Master Morality comes in. To defend Nietzsche's life on Nietzsche's own terms, one must reject all tangible evidence of success in favor of talking about forms of success that are totally interior to the individual, that involve a small circle of the also-weak, or that post-date his present day in such a way that they are unknown to his contemporaries. His later reputation, and later published writings, might allow us to judge Nietzsche, but to his contemporaries he was who he was, they had no knowledge that he would be famous in the future. Rejection of all real tangible symbols and signs of worldly success, and the people who hold them, as evil; in favor of a mystical, interior definition of virtue that will pay off after one's death, which is the real definition of the Good. It tracks perfectly to the Christianity that Nietzsche decries as Slave Morality, as the ressentiment of the loser against the beautiful and the strong.
Now, one way to square this circle is to say that Freddy was self aware, that he knew what he was saying, and we're meant to read his work with a certain degree of irony. We're meant to see and to know that the man telling us to honor strength had none, that the man telling us to be suspicious of those who reject the value determinations of the great and the powerful is telling us this while in the act of rejecting the value determinations of the great and the powerful! We're not meant to wholesale adopt the positions he argues so vehemently, but to consider and synthesize them into our worldview. This is my preferred view.
Another is to attempt to categorize Masters in such a way that there is a carve-out for the writer. Masters are the brave and powerful Achilles, plus little ol' me. This strikes me as a kind of mystical cope, exactly the kind of thing that Slave Morality is made out of, a transvaluation of values by which earthly success becomes a sign of future damnation. Just as the Christian peasant says: being rich is bad because the rich are greedy and spoiled and sinful, he ain't making it through the eye of that needle! The Nietzschean loser says: being successful is bad, because it means you're conforming to the Longhouse Ethics and not striking out on your own, I may be a loser today but in the future I'll be remembered and the winners will not.
P.S.: I'll admit to not knowing the term Sigma male? Could you define it for me?
I think the contradictions only arise if you ignore the good things Nietzsche says about slave morality (I’ll have to go digging for quotes but basically it made man "interesting", added depth to his soul and made him more cunning).
Nietzsche spends a lot of time praising master morality because it is the side which needs to be rehabilitated, but the Nietzchean project isn’t about going back to the Vikings. The higher type of aristocratic development he is aiming for is only possible in the man of mixed slave/master heritage, and it’s as much about creative ability and aesthetic sense as anything else – Shakespeare, Goethe and Da Vinci are mentioned as higher men alongside the military geniuses.
I agree! part of it is a rhetorical or philosophical test for the reader! You're meant to read the text and think about the guy talking to you, and examine his extremely persuasive arguments, and say, hey wait let's apply this brilliant analytical framing to his own statements! And that second level of analysis is what frees the reader, takes the reader to the level of someone who can examine the world, rather than one who just accepts what he is told!
I think one should pair Nietzsche with Crime and Punishment and Notes from Underground in philosophical study.
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Notes -
I haven't really seen what you describe in the last paragraph. Where I've seen Nietzsche discussed, master morality is usually seen with some sympathy. Personally, I feel like aspects of slave morality as Nietzsche describes it were acting as deep unconscious forces in my psychology that I am very glad to have made conscious to more easily push back against where they are unproductive, and I feel like conversations like these help with that. To manage emotions it helps to be able to identify them, and reading your post I actually felt the ressentiment reading about the jocks, I noticed it, and I let it go. That is not something I used to be able to do so easily.
I think the issue with the jocks and nerds view is by definition you are dealing with youth coming into the world with whatever background they happened to have, and little of their own choices has had an effect on where they are. The question is what happens for the rest of the adult lives of the slave morality kids? Are they doomed, or can they change their outlook? Can someone think themselves into being a master moralist or onto some kind of middle road? I tend to think we have some kind of agency and can alter the course of our lives in some way. Elon Musk takes ketamine for depression, he probably grew up immersed in slave morality and forged some kind of master morality for himself, but still has parts from his childhood that hate himself. That's the kind of complexity that is happening for most people who aren't totally immersed on one side or the other.
Because you're reading it from the guys doing it. I say it goes back to Nietzsche because Nietzsche himself was, well, not a powerful vital warrior aristocrat. I love his work and and what he contributed to the western tradition, but he was a loser. When you read a Nietzschean, and he's not a big powerful dominant successful warrior, there's an element of a kind of jealous undermining of one's real enemies with one's imaginary friends. "Hey, look, you might act like you're better than me, and you might be taller and richer and better looking and have a hotter girl and a bigger bench press, but you ain't shit, because you don't have the real perfect pure master morality you're still a SLAVE maaaaan." There's a lot of that in the more white-identitarian corners of the online right.
Well we're dealing with myth, not history, but to engage with extending the metaphor...
Yes. People do this all the time. It might even be called "maturity" or "growing up." Learning to love the things you love without worrying about others. A lot of it has to do with finding one's space, one's social grouping where one is mature or even dominant at least on occasion. Nerdy hobbies often provide this: the same guy who is a loser at school or work might be a great guild leader in WoW or whatever. So do social organizations: you might be the bottom tier loser at work, but at the Elks lodge everyone knows your name.
I like your framing of it, in real life we all contain both genuine human desire and emotion and ressentiment. In my mind, Elon is both engaging in things he loves for the sake of things he loves, and he is desperate to gain approval from or undermine the values systems of those who hate him. He builds a crazy, insane vanity project like the Cybertruck. But then he's fighting petty internet feuds on Twitter.
Personally, the way I apply this in my everyday life is simple and libertarian: let people enjoy things. People having fun doesn't imply that I must have a take on it. People resenting other people having fun is bad.
I see what you're saying, the far right areas where he is discussed are pretty unknown to me. I wouldn't necessarily characterize Nietzsche as a loser, though. If he hadn't succumbed to sickness as young as he did, he would've been celebrated in his own lifetime and his long, prolific, but isolated journey would have payed off.
I think the loser attitude is putting too much stock in the American high school analysis because the things Nietzsche accomplished aren't valued there, and he would be seen as lesser for basically having a problem with women, something obviously Jay-Z would never have an issue with. But to an adult in the room, hopefully they'd see that Nietzsche's influence and power far exceeds Jay-Z's, along with the metaphorical jocks, to the world's benefit or profound harm depending on which of his disciples you are looking at.
I just think there has to be room for the "sigma male" in the analysis of things, where the truly powerful don't necessarily match the vital youth imagery, a lot of times they are weirdos taking big risks to even the odds in their favor, and if it doesn't pan out in their lifetimes, I'd hope they don't get necessarily lumped in with slave morality unless they were actually expressed ressentiment and were preoccupied with being part of the mob/morality police etc. (which I do think you can still argue Nietzsche was doing himself to a degree, at least with the former)
Don't get me wrong, I've read Nietzsche, I love Nietzsche, but we have to admit that by any standard of Master Morality, Nietzsche was lacking. He never conquered in his lifetime. His tangible achievements more or less crowned at becoming the youngest professor of philology, from which he then lived off disability the rest of his life. Was a lot of this the result of bad luck and disease? Yes, undoubtedly. But equally undoubtedly, the lot of many of the weak, those most Nietzscheans are so willing to throw away as the "superfluous men" from Zarathustra, are the result of bad luck, disease, etc. I don't think I'm being unfair when I call him a loser, he lost.
This is where I think the complication of Master Morality comes in. To defend Nietzsche's life on Nietzsche's own terms, one must reject all tangible evidence of success in favor of talking about forms of success that are totally interior to the individual, that involve a small circle of the also-weak, or that post-date his present day in such a way that they are unknown to his contemporaries. His later reputation, and later published writings, might allow us to judge Nietzsche, but to his contemporaries he was who he was, they had no knowledge that he would be famous in the future. Rejection of all real tangible symbols and signs of worldly success, and the people who hold them, as evil; in favor of a mystical, interior definition of virtue that will pay off after one's death, which is the real definition of the Good. It tracks perfectly to the Christianity that Nietzsche decries as Slave Morality, as the ressentiment of the loser against the beautiful and the strong.
Now, one way to square this circle is to say that Freddy was self aware, that he knew what he was saying, and we're meant to read his work with a certain degree of irony. We're meant to see and to know that the man telling us to honor strength had none, that the man telling us to be suspicious of those who reject the value determinations of the great and the powerful is telling us this while in the act of rejecting the value determinations of the great and the powerful! We're not meant to wholesale adopt the positions he argues so vehemently, but to consider and synthesize them into our worldview. This is my preferred view.
Another is to attempt to categorize Masters in such a way that there is a carve-out for the writer. Masters are the brave and powerful Achilles, plus little ol' me. This strikes me as a kind of mystical cope, exactly the kind of thing that Slave Morality is made out of, a transvaluation of values by which earthly success becomes a sign of future damnation. Just as the Christian peasant says: being rich is bad because the rich are greedy and spoiled and sinful, he ain't making it through the eye of that needle! The Nietzschean loser says: being successful is bad, because it means you're conforming to the Longhouse Ethics and not striking out on your own, I may be a loser today but in the future I'll be remembered and the winners will not.
P.S.: I'll admit to not knowing the term Sigma male? Could you define it for me?
I think the contradictions only arise if you ignore the good things Nietzsche says about slave morality (I’ll have to go digging for quotes but basically it made man "interesting", added depth to his soul and made him more cunning).
Nietzsche spends a lot of time praising master morality because it is the side which needs to be rehabilitated, but the Nietzchean project isn’t about going back to the Vikings. The higher type of aristocratic development he is aiming for is only possible in the man of mixed slave/master heritage, and it’s as much about creative ability and aesthetic sense as anything else – Shakespeare, Goethe and Da Vinci are mentioned as higher men alongside the military geniuses.
I agree! part of it is a rhetorical or philosophical test for the reader! You're meant to read the text and think about the guy talking to you, and examine his extremely persuasive arguments, and say, hey wait let's apply this brilliant analytical framing to his own statements! And that second level of analysis is what frees the reader, takes the reader to the level of someone who can examine the world, rather than one who just accepts what he is told!
I think one should pair Nietzsche with Crime and Punishment and Notes from Underground in philosophical study.
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