so i just finished watching lost
In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of "world history"-yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world. There is nothing in nature so despicable or insignificant that it cannot immediately be blown up like a bag by a slight breath of this power of knowledge; and just as every porter wants an admirer, the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees on the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts.
It is strange that this should be the effect of the intellect, for after all it was given only as an aid to the most unfortunate, most delicate, most evanescent beings in order to hold them for a minute in existence, from which otherwise, without this gift, they would have every reason to flee as quickly as Lessing's son. [In a famous letter to Johann Joachim Eschenburg (December 31, 1778), Lessing relates the death of his infant son, who "understood the world so well that he left it at the first opportunity."] That haughtiness which goes with knowledge and feeling, which shrouds the eyes and senses of man in a blinding fog, therefore deceives him about the value of existence by carrying in itself the most flattering evaluation of knowledge itself. Its most universal effect is deception; but even its most particular effects have something of the same character.
i don't really know why i'm typing down here, that's no act i can follow, but that first paragraph is just ...magical. i don't think there's a better word to describe how powerful it is. and how he's writing my exact point, that men--humans have this copernican ideology that everything is measured by man, and otherwise incomprehensible...and then again, effectively useless. he goes on to say a lot of amazing things, but that's because i'm biased. and it's just such an "ah ha!" moment. and if you liked that and want to read what i got a chance to read, but will be looking for the full text of, i'm linking you to my prof's web page link that he had us read. so if it doesn't work for you, i'm sorry. i did it wrong. http://my.ilstu.edu/~jkshapi/Nietzsche_truthandlie.doc
One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world. There is nothing in nature so despicable or insignificant that it cannot immediately be blown up like a bag by a slight breath of this power of knowledge; and just as every porter wants an admirer, the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees on the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts.
It is strange that this should be the effect of the intellect, for after all it was given only as an aid to the most unfortunate, most delicate, most evanescent beings in order to hold them for a minute in existence, from which otherwise, without this gift, they would have every reason to flee as quickly as Lessing's son. [In a famous letter to Johann Joachim Eschenburg (December 31, 1778), Lessing relates the death of his infant son, who "understood the world so well that he left it at the first opportunity."] That haughtiness which goes with knowledge and feeling, which shrouds the eyes and senses of man in a blinding fog, therefore deceives him about the value of existence by carrying in itself the most flattering evaluation of knowledge itself. Its most universal effect is deception; but even its most particular effects have something of the same character.
i don't really know why i'm typing down here, that's no act i can follow, but that first paragraph is just ...magical. i don't think there's a better word to describe how powerful it is. and how he's writing my exact point, that men--humans have this copernican ideology that everything is measured by man, and otherwise incomprehensible...and then again, effectively useless. he goes on to say a lot of amazing things, but that's because i'm biased. and it's just such an "ah ha!" moment. and if you liked that and want to read what i got a chance to read, but will be looking for the full text of, i'm linking you to my prof's web page link that he had us read. so if it doesn't work for you, i'm sorry. i did it wrong. http://my.ilstu.edu/~jkshapi/Nietzsche_truthandlie.doc