(no subject)
Learning LSQ which is truly wondrous. I'm in love with its semi-concealed nature... To a certain extent, any communication in any foreign language that only the sender and receiver understand is an encoded transmission... and the chances of being "overheard" are much higher for LSQ than for most spoken languages since signs can be recognized from afar, and some symbols are iconic insofar as they clearly portray the actions or characteristics they are meant to represent. But... It's so much fun! I know 2 people who have a passing familiarity with it, and intend to practice it more. I think I am amazed at how it is making me aware of hand and arm movements, and how we hold ourselves spatially. It's like dancing and realizing all the different postures and sequences the human body can be led through.
Also polishing off Ecce Homo and the Gay Science. As much as I love Beyond Good & Evil for its style and flow, there's something very... seizing in the Gay Science. Maybe because it's one of N's earlier pieces... the language is easier to parse (though just as rich in connotations and clins d'oeil!) and it sometimes feels like you are discovering the ideas at the same time as N.
He has this brilliant jab in 14 ("The things people call love") that I think makes a compelling case for the belief that Romantic Love as it's commonly understood, taken to its possessive extreme, is akin to religion: it is obsessive and life-denying, because it's hunting all value into something abstract, into a value that can only with great difficulty be reconciled with living, whether it be living well or living poorly.
I am especially big on this one.
Consciousness. -- Consciousness is the last and latest development of the organic and hence also what is most unfinished and unstrong. Consciousness gives rise to countless errors that lead an animal or man to perish sooner than necessary, "exceeding destiny," as Homer puts it. If the conserving association of the instincts were not so very much powerful, and if it did not serve on the whole as a regulator, humanity would have to perish of its misjudgments and its fantasies with open eyes, of its lack of thoroughness and its credulity -- in short, of its consciousness; rather, without the former, humanity would have long have disappeared.
Before a function is fully developed and mature, it constitutes a danger for the organism, and it is good if during this interval, it is subjected to some tyranny. Thus consciousness is tyrannized -- not least by our pride in it. One thinks that it constitutes the kernel of man; what is abiding, eternal, ultimate, and most original in him. One takes consciousness for a determinate magnitude. One denies its growth and its intermittences. One takes it for the "unity of the organism."
This ridiculous overestimation and misunderstanding of consciousness has the very useful consequence that it prevents an all too fast development of consciousness. Believing that they possess consciousness, men have not exerted themselves very much to acquire it; and things haven't changed much in this respect. To this day, the task of incorporating knowledge and making it instinctive is only beginning to dawn on the human eye and is not clearly discernible; it is a task that is seen only by those who have comprehended that so far we have incorporated only our errors and that all our consciousness relates to errors.
There are things I don't like about this passage (like some of the crude psychologism, and getting angry at consciousness for causing errors in our self-appraisal, and then being happy that it is evolving only slowly?) but I love the main chunk that tries to dispel this notion that we are such fully-developed beings that our consciousness perfectly defines us. It's not just that we aren't as in control of ourselves as we think we are (which leads into Freud's thoughts, from what I understand), but that by focusing on this consciousness and not being aware of its fragility, we are ignoring a very large chunk of who we are, of how we react to situations, of what obstacles we have to overcome, of what we need to understand and accept in ourselves. Our ipseity is ALL of this.
I also LOVE (and had never thought of) the fact that consciousness is self-limiting, insofar as it leaves us with a sense of self-satisfaction when it comes to itself, that it sometimes needs to be explicitly challenged ("Of course that's a chalice and not two peopl-...OHISEEITNOW!!") It makes me think I should rekindle my interest in cognitive errors and assumptions... Might make me empathetic and self-discerning.
Also polishing off Ecce Homo and the Gay Science. As much as I love Beyond Good & Evil for its style and flow, there's something very... seizing in the Gay Science. Maybe because it's one of N's earlier pieces... the language is easier to parse (though just as rich in connotations and clins d'oeil!) and it sometimes feels like you are discovering the ideas at the same time as N.
He has this brilliant jab in 14 ("The things people call love") that I think makes a compelling case for the belief that Romantic Love as it's commonly understood, taken to its possessive extreme, is akin to religion: it is obsessive and life-denying, because it's hunting all value into something abstract, into a value that can only with great difficulty be reconciled with living, whether it be living well or living poorly.
I am especially big on this one.
Consciousness. -- Consciousness is the last and latest development of the organic and hence also what is most unfinished and unstrong. Consciousness gives rise to countless errors that lead an animal or man to perish sooner than necessary, "exceeding destiny," as Homer puts it. If the conserving association of the instincts were not so very much powerful, and if it did not serve on the whole as a regulator, humanity would have to perish of its misjudgments and its fantasies with open eyes, of its lack of thoroughness and its credulity -- in short, of its consciousness; rather, without the former, humanity would have long have disappeared.
Before a function is fully developed and mature, it constitutes a danger for the organism, and it is good if during this interval, it is subjected to some tyranny. Thus consciousness is tyrannized -- not least by our pride in it. One thinks that it constitutes the kernel of man; what is abiding, eternal, ultimate, and most original in him. One takes consciousness for a determinate magnitude. One denies its growth and its intermittences. One takes it for the "unity of the organism."
This ridiculous overestimation and misunderstanding of consciousness has the very useful consequence that it prevents an all too fast development of consciousness. Believing that they possess consciousness, men have not exerted themselves very much to acquire it; and things haven't changed much in this respect. To this day, the task of incorporating knowledge and making it instinctive is only beginning to dawn on the human eye and is not clearly discernible; it is a task that is seen only by those who have comprehended that so far we have incorporated only our errors and that all our consciousness relates to errors.
There are things I don't like about this passage (like some of the crude psychologism, and getting angry at consciousness for causing errors in our self-appraisal, and then being happy that it is evolving only slowly?) but I love the main chunk that tries to dispel this notion that we are such fully-developed beings that our consciousness perfectly defines us. It's not just that we aren't as in control of ourselves as we think we are (which leads into Freud's thoughts, from what I understand), but that by focusing on this consciousness and not being aware of its fragility, we are ignoring a very large chunk of who we are, of how we react to situations, of what obstacles we have to overcome, of what we need to understand and accept in ourselves. Our ipseity is ALL of this.
I also LOVE (and had never thought of) the fact that consciousness is self-limiting, insofar as it leaves us with a sense of self-satisfaction when it comes to itself, that it sometimes needs to be explicitly challenged ("Of course that's a chalice and not two peopl-...OHISEEITNOW!!") It makes me think I should rekindle my interest in cognitive errors and assumptions... Might make me empathetic and self-discerning.