Nietzsche vs. Nietzsche (A story of decadence)

Photo: 'Tomorrow in a year', Hotel Pro Forma

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote about two types of selfishness (A 'healthy' form and a 'sick' form). I paraphrase him now because its my lay-opinion that much of what he has written can be happier and more chilled out (a bit more 'easy campese' if you will).

Nietzsche wrote about a 'healthy' form of selfishness which appropriates and gives according to a 'desire to bestow'. Beneath this idea is really nice acorn: That it feels good and can actually be good for you to give things away in honesty and silence (and if one is particularly skilled, in a harmonious way to the recipient of one's potential gifts). It is at this point that I feel Nietzsche reached one of the highest apex's in his trajectory as a thinker.

Its a shame (but also a blessing for us whom are lucky enough to inherit his works), that he poorly grasped Buddhist thought. He is not to blame however, as at the point of his writings, Buddhist practice (that is to say, Vipassana) had not entered Europe. It was still geographically land-locked in Myanmar at the time. Speaking figuratively but also somewhat literally, it was an 'underground' discipline throughout Nietzsche's whole lifetime. The history and historiography of Vipassana are deeply complex and I look forward to learning more about them (It is important to scrutinize the academic legitimacy of a gorgeous story, even when one believes it instinctively).

Nietzsche's mishandling of Buddhist thought and practice can be seen in his attack on Karma. In Nietzsche view, Karma was a tool designed for social repression and a reflection of psychic repression. This was due to the fact that in his view it rewarded 'good' behavior and punished 'bad' behavior based upon a 'value system', and critically, while not questioning or valuing the ethical integrity of the system itself (Nietzsche was the first Western thinker I know of to really explore the finer nuances of the 'value of values' problem, which is to say, the psychologically fine nuances of it).

What Nietzsche misunderstood about Karma (especially in his later works like Ecce Homo when he started becoming sad and egocentric, but also quietly more interesting) is that the integrity and coherence of Karma cannot be intellectualized or conceptualized. Its empirical reality lies in its practice and as such has to be sensed by oneself. We can only understand Karma by experiencing and feeling it. It is a really tough thing to do well however. The great challenge once one begins to realize its importance (even if only to one's own happiness and harmony), is discovering how to do it at the practical level; How does one ensure that one's gifts are harmonious to ones recipients?

This is a timely question (with all sorts of public holidays approaching). But it is also an untimely question in the sense that it is one of the oldest and time-honored questions of them all (A question with a far deeper intellectual and historical heritage than our dear 'canon of western thought'). Feeling the joy of giving is cool, but knowing how to do it well is an art. Nietzsche called this art 'healthy selfishness'. Thankfully, there are other fields of thought that are elegant enough to incorporate practice into their epistemology with far greater coherence.

Now for some 90s Aussie Synth Pop, a bath and a :-)

ps. Updated: I lied (about the bath). I can't stop reading and re-reading this recent paper by the Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG, 'The rule of law beyond the law of rules'. It is profound. It is like a more eloquent and experientially grounded version of chapter 9 of 'A Thousand Plateaus' (and with more juridic intelligence too of course!)