
Friedrich Nietzsche: The truth is terrible - secondary
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/friedrich-nietzsche-truth-terrible/
======
zkomp
Nice to see a good reading of Nietzsche, which is super hard given his style
and your own bias.

I agree with this, and it really puts the focus on why it is rewarding reading
Nietzsche today.

The only thing I miss is the implicit and hidden Spinozism in Nietzsche. Why
it matters? - Spinoza can really help with the political aspect. Goal of true
democracy and maximum freedom.

Such a reading will see The will to Power as the Spinozian conatus/desire. As
for Power, not opressive power of rulers, but the power to live and act. The
affirmation as Spinozian affirmation of joy (ie affirmate what makes you grow
in such power)

------
Negative1
Enjoyable read but quite the dire ending. Of course that's the point; this
essay wasn't meant to bring you happiness.

------
dnomad
Leiter tends to take Nietzsche very literally.

Yes, Nietzsche grasped quite clearly that exceedingly few people have the
courage to endure the world "in itself." Most people persist their whole lives
trapped in elaborate fantasies. This is something that, Nietszche suspects,
has been true since the dawn of time and recognizes it as an essential human
characteristic (herd instinct).

Science causes a kind of crisis. ("God is dead.") After millenia of extreme
devotion to all manner nonsense (think of the religious wars that plagued
Europe) science starts asking some very uncomfortable and very pointed
questions. But people will not abandon their fantasies, even in the face of
overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Instead they will cling to their
fantasies that much harder often with full knowledge that what they "believe"
are lies. This metastasizes into fascism [1]. When Trump says climate change
is a Chinese hoax he knows he's lying, and you know he's lying, and accusing
him of lying would be pointless and that's the point. Nietzsche foresaw quite
clearly that this would be the crisis of the 20th century and beyong: in the
face of science people would become _more willing_ to deceive themselves.

What Nietzsche proposes against this isn't some tired paean to "human
excellence." Leiter here gets very literal and selective here. Nietzsche does
not think that art or philosophy or dance can stand against the ever rising
tide of fascism. It is what _motivates_ these things -- the _will to power_
\-- that is the only defense against self-deception. All fantasies are born of
fear, a fear of change and growth and death. But there also exists in some men
a _desire_ for change and growth and death. (Indeed Nietzsche will come to
believe that the will to power is a kind of cosmic necessity.) The only hope
that societies have against falling to fascism is cultivating precisely this
opposing force which Nietzsche understands not as some mere "will to truth" or
"will to excellence" but a far more primal "will to power" that motivates men
to plunge into the unknown and confront their own mortality.

[1] "In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the
point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing,
think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass
propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the
worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived
because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass
leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that,
under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic
statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable
proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of
deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had
known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for
their superior tactical cleverness.”

~~~
jancsika
> When Trump says climate change is a Chinese hoax he knows he's lying, and
> you know he's lying, and accusing him of lying would be pointless and that's
> the point.

That's hilarious-- you left out the one person who matters in your anecdote:
the person who voted for Trump. I see no evidence that could lead you to
assert that a Trump voter picked at random would know that Trump was lying
about climate change being a hoax.

On the flip side, I've seen _a lot_ of Republican politicians, pundits, and
op-ed writers for years repeat the assertion that climate change is a hoax. So
many, in fact, that we're now calling it "climate change" instead of "global
warming." Why? Because those same demagogues preyed on the layperson's
confusion of weather and climate, repeatedly pointing out cold weather days as
some kind of refutation of "global warming."

Plus-- fucking climategate! What could possibly be the point of all the money
and rhetoric poured into that phony controversy if not to _actually_ convince
people climate change is a hoax by muddying the waters?

By positing this broad-- and frankly, untestable-- theory that a metaphysical
Nietzshean breakdown is causing Trumpism you actually make it impossible to
address the problem. And the problem is that millions of people _really do_
believe something that isn't supported by the broad, overwhelming scientific
evidence. That's a tractable-- if depressing-- problem which lies mainly in
the disconnect between the primary research and the current portals through
which laypeople attempt to learn what the primary research says (if at all).
(Also in the low quality of U.S. public education.)

> instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest
> that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire
> the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.

That way of thinking turns every single case of non-trivial politicking into a
form of fascism.

For example: was Jill Stein acting as a fascist when she quite shamelessly
hedged on vaccination in order to pander to her anti-vaxxer base?

~~~
DanBC
> that we're now calling it "climate change" instead of "global warming." Why?

[https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-
warming/](https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming/)

> Global warming

> Global warming refers to the upward temperature trend across the entire
> Earth since the early 20th century, and most notably since the late 1970s,
> due to the increase in fossil fuel emissions since the industrial
> revolution. Worldwide since 1880, the average surface temperature has gone
> up by about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F), relative to the mid-20th-century baseline (of
> 1951-1980).

> Climate change

> Climate change refers to a broad range of global phenomena created
> predominantly by burning fossil fuels, which add heat-trapping gases to
> Earth’s atmosphere. These phenomena include the increased temperature trends
> described by global warming, but also encompass changes such as sea level
> rise; ice mass loss in Greenland, Antarctica, the Arctic and mountain
> glaciers worldwide; shifts in flower/plant blooming; and extreme weather
> events.

------
ThJ
My takeaway from witnessing countless arguments about Nietzsche: Nietzsche
wasn't very good at expressing what he meant. If he were, there wouldn't be so
much arguing about how to interpret his works.

~~~
bsenftner
I always felt he was extremely articulate, and it is the typical readers
preconceived filters preventing them from understanding Nietzsche sentence by
sentence.

I have sat down with an unbelievably large number of people studying
Nietzsche, as I was a teaching assistant for an undergraduate class on his
work. Time and time again, I would be pointing out the basic, fundamental
misunderstandings; The world view of the typical American Christian cloud
their ability to think clearly about the basic nature of Nietzsche's
perspective. They literally can't think logically straight, and bend meaning
word by word with personal emotional criticism interlaced with "fear for their
soul". They are intellectually handicapped, their thoughts are so interlaced
with variations of fear.

~~~
yonoataraxia
I think it's ok. When they would instantly understand Nietzsche, it's very
likely they already had major depressive episodes in their lives.

Otherwise it's difficult to question everything you thought you knew about
anything. Normally it's not a pleasant experience. That is the reason that so-
called enlightenment happens only to those who had big inner struggles after
many years of reflection.

In a Freudian way their unconscious side protects them from threats attacking
their mental health. Knowing what's right and wrong is necessary to do
anything with reason. If you accept the fact that there is no right and wrong,
you can definitely lose some motivation which is detrimental to the incentive
system that our consciousness gets trained with.

It's therefore rational for most people to reject those ideas (although they
don't necessarily can reflect on this level). I wouldn't call it
"intellectually handicapped", I would say their mental processes protect them
very well from thoughts that could lead to a loss of their values and belief
system. Otherwise it sounds so negative although it's a rational thing to do
for the consciousness. Normally your incentive system is not "I want to know
the whole damn truth", it's "I want a happy and fulfilled life, want to feel
good about myself and achieve something". Cognitive biases help us to achieve
those goals. It just seems irrational from external point of views because of
missing profundity in the analysis of the psyche of the other person. They're
perfectly logical w.r.t. the incentive system.

~~~
rwill128
I really appreciate the way you've articulated your thoughts on this. It
helped me reflect once again on the way Nietzsche affected me when I first
read him.

I was about 20 years old, and had lost several important friends while also
briefly dropping out of college. Saw Nietzsche on a bookshelf while making an
effort to continue my education independently as I saved money. I was young
enough to earnestly jump into pursuing "the whole damn truth," and my mental
health be damned. Cue years of unrelenting depressiveness, self-absorption,
solipsism, fragile and tragic romantic relationships, etc.

I completely agree, and I think a lot of people who don't "get" Nietzsche are
actually reacting to his ideas perfectly rationally with respect to their (not
necessarily anti-intellectual) values in life. I for one would have been much
more fortunate to have studied him in an academic setting, with a group of
peers. I recall reading once that Nietzsche's ideas are valuable insofar as
one finds a resistance to them.

~~~
yonoataraxia
It's funny. I had a nihilistic mindset and found Nietzsche afterwards. I guess
we're similar. Therefore I didn't had the chance to have any resistance to his
ideas.

Recently I've dropped out of college, I was lonely in school and even
nowadays, had several relationships that didn't last long and were painful.
I've endured the pain of existence until I was able to comprehend it. I still
feel this suffering every time I choose to feel.

I'm 20 years old now. I know how to help myself, but maybe there are things
you want to say to your younger self. Maybe I can invite you to see this as a
chance.

~~~
sethrin
I never got much into Nietzsche, but well, between being trans, and having
seasonal depression, and having been stuck in rural Alaska for twenty years,
we can say that I've seen some depressive episodes.

It does get better.

One thing that helped was leaving the negative environment. Also, some of my
angst sprang from the disempowerment of youth; having more power ($$, or in
Spanish, _effectivo_ ) to control the world around you makes most life
problems easier to deal with. Philosophically, I became something of a Stoic:
this may be the worst of all possible worlds, but there's not really much
value in being depressed about it. You are not in control of the world, but
you are in control of your reaction to it, and as long as the world is absurd
one may as well laugh. However, the ultimate key to my depression was simply
self-acceptance. Try to make peace with your demons; they're just another
aspect of you.

I doubt if your life and mine have many true parallels, but that was my path
out of darkness. I hope that you may find peace, and the warmth of good
feeling.

~~~
yonoataraxia
> I became something of a Stoic

I can relate.

> However, the ultimate key to my depression was simply self-acceptance.

This is so important. Learning to love oneself is such a difficult task but so
rewarding in the end.

Thanks for sharing your story, it was very inspiring.

> I hope that you may find peace, and the warmth of good feeling.

I'll try to remember to allow myself to find peace in hard times. I hope that
you can feel the love and warmth in your life.

Your story gives hope. I feel blessed that you told us your philosophical
journey. Have a great day!

------
peter_retief
The pragmatic views of Trump _are_ more in line with Nietzsche's philosophy.
There _is_ a very small elite group that create wealth. Taxing the successful
and giving out free stuff for votes seems to be the default position of the
intelligentsia of the age. Nice read though, well constructed

~~~
nickthemagicman
That's false. Wealth is created by needs of the market that's why markets with
strong middle class do so well. Any random rich person can fill those needs.
It's not some brilliant vision they have. As a matter of fact most new tech
wealth... Google Uber Facebook Apple Microsoft... all of their founders came
from the middle class.

If your idea was true then 3rd world countries where the rich have vast wealth
and cheap resources would have the best economies.

Your armchair supply side trickle down economic theory doesn't hold up. You
should question what you hear on conservative news outlets.

~~~
peter_retief
You make no sense, rather just keep quiet

~~~
dang
Posting like this will get you banned here regardless of how much sense
another comment makes. Please don't do this again.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
peter_retief
sure, sorry

------
davidpaulyoung
Before ingesting Nietzsche, please first understand Plato.

~~~
virmundi
Why? Nietzsche gets it right, assuming there is no God. There is no objective
morality. There are no forms. The world is entirely material and all things
are subjective. Even the uberman is just a subjective fantasy that Nietzche
told himself to find meaning in a meaningless reality.

~~~
theothermkn
I’m going to chime in to this very rote and dreary conversation only long
enough to point out that, even in the unlikely event that “objective morality”
is anything more coherent than “nuance makes me uncomfortable,” the existence
or absence of “God” does not impinge on its existence. This is one of the more
damning things about that whole “conversation”; the psychological need for a
moral order is so great that the justification used for it is an utterly
unquestioned, utterly absurd non sequitur.

I’ve just said the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard on the topic, and
I’m _still_ bored with it.

~~~
virmundi
I bring up God's existence for this end, without such a being, we are left
with a material universe. There is no measure within the universe for right or
wrong. People need to accept that since all of your ethics and laws are
fundamentally build on it.

For example, why is rape wrong? Easily answered with God: because he said so.
With out God, well, you don't have an answer. You can say, "Because it
impinges on the rights of the victim." To which one will reply, "Why should I
care about the victim?" This will cycle until one person is honest enough to
admit, "Because if you rape, the force of the masses will descend on you to
the point of pains or death." Might makes right (so too for God).

With man, the uneasiness is that we are fickle. We will only defend those we
wish to. We know that fundamentally we can't trust each other. We know that we
are each out for our own. We can lie and say, "She loves me. Or they wouldn't
do that." These are all lies. The Germans were fairly good people until they
weren't. The Russians and Chinese too. The government was a kind father until
it exterminated millions with the, at least, tacit consent of millions more.

That, dear friend, is your world. That is why you don't need to read Plato
first. Plato is predicated on a world view of constants and moral weight: the
Forms. Nietzsche shows those don't exist. The only thing remaining is the
stark reality that reality and all its trappings don't matter for all is
simply matter. It is neither good nor bad. The only rule is that made of the
strongest material to crush the wills of others to submission. Whoever bears
that scepter has the right to make moral.

~~~
ninkendo
I'm about as far from someone who understands this topic as it gets, but
here's my explanation for why rape is bad that doesn't invoke god:

It's not an evolutionarily stable strategy. [1]

By that I mean, if we had a society where rape was normal, and sex was largely
a nonconsensual thing, meaning there would be more violence, women would
develop adaptations to prevent being raped, and more energy would be spent on
the prevention of unwanted procreation, and the the gene pool would be less
fit for survival than one without the rape gene.

But merely having a society full of non-rapists isn't enough either: the first
serial rapist to come along would invade the gene pool by raping others and
spreading the gene that encodes this "rape others" behavior, and within so
many generations the gene pool would be full of rapists.

To have an ESS, our behavior would have to be encoded with a "don't rape
others, but also don't tolerate others who do rape" strategy, which would
increase a society's fitness for survival, _and_ be more resilient against an
invading strategy.

Calling rape "immoral" is a good shorthand because "morals" are basically a
formal way of defining the whole "don't do this, and don't tolerate others who
do" concept in a way that humans can understand. But at the end of the day
morals are just an abstraction that we've had to create in order to be more
successful as a social species. Religion may have helped as well... to me
these things are extended phenotypes for our genes that have been selected for
over eons to keep our gene pool at a stable equilibrium.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy#Human_behavior)

~~~
Thiez
Rape is a regular thing for ducks to the point where males and females have
evolved weird reproductive organs in some sort of evolutionary arms race. Bed
bugs practice what is known as 'traumatic insemination', where the male
literally stabs a female with his penis, and sperm travels to the eggs through
the blood of the female. Females can die of infection because of the open
wound left after sex. Clearly rape isn't such a big evolutionary disadvantage
that no species exist with this trait. Likewise, lions show us that killing or
scaring away someones partner and killing their infant children can be
perfectly 'evolutionary stable'. It seems to me that your reasoning starts
with the conclusion, and then works backwards to some argument that sounds
plausible. It's a strange world out there, and I would be very wary to base
morality on evolution.

~~~
Riesling
> clearly rape isn't such a big evolutionary disadvantage that no species
> exist with this trait.

If different species (with different evolutionary strategies) also have
different moralities, would this not be a strong hint towards morality being
based on evolution?

------
bhouston
This was excellent except for the last two chapters. I am pretty sure that
Trump and elite oriented capitalism is much more in line with Neitzsche's
views.

Or did I misunderstand?

EDIT: Crazy down voting in this comment thread.

~~~
sxu
From my reading of the article, Neitzsche is critical of the hedonistic life
we have today.

This hedonistic life is exemplified by Trump and Twitter and how we don’t
struggle. Instead, we tweet, voice opinions and continue with our happiness
maximizing lives.

The author is suggesting that since we live in a culture that maximizes
happiness, the nihilists were right. In this world, according to Neitzsche,
humans can not achieve excellence.

I agree that it’s a rather abrupt point made at the very end. Probably
something the author will expand upon in his book.

~~~
magicalbeans
What is the so called excellence and why is it so important?

------
some_account
What actually is happening is people being indoctrinated with a view of
themselves and the world as being animals spinning around a rock with no
purpose and no meaning. This is how the powers that be wants us to feel, and
it's the point of going through the education system, shaping us into
specialized workers, with relief coming from consuming things.

It seems very few people realize what is going on. It's no accident the world
was told to be round in the 1500s, because in order to make people believe we
are pointless small little hairy apes, you first have to create the
understanding that we are not special and have no purpose.

Let the downvoting begin :) Hacker news readers are usually unable to even
consider things like what I said. It's natural to assume people like me are
just dumb, but reality is not that easy.

~~~
Drakim
It's so much easier to imagine that there is a grand, fantastic, and amazing
conspiracy, and that ultimately when the curtain is pulled down it will all
make sense and the truth will be clear. No more confusion, no more enfeebled
helplessness, no more spinning around in a universe where directions are
meaningless. The evil will be pushed back and things will go back to how they
ought to be, in perfect harmony.

By romanticizing the world this way, it all becomes so much easier, it's an
easier pill to swallow because it's a bitter taste that we are familiar with.
And there is an allure of sweetness behind the taste, the idea that ultimately
there is an inherent wonderful good truth waiting, just around the corner.

But it's ultimately an illusion, there is no grand conspiracy, and when there
carpet comes down we find only empty space behind it. It can be both
terrifying and liberating to accept that.

~~~
some_account
No no, this is not some romanticizing fantasy image that I dreamt up after a
couple of glasses of wine one night :)

I'm a hard-core geek, programmer, tinkerer since I got my first computer in
1985 or so. I'm working as a data engineer and cloud architect currently. My
IQ is fine and I dont believe in fairies :)

All I did was research the history of our societies. Who controls what, who
benefits from what, stuff like that. And there is actually a big conspiracy
going on when it comes to our world view and our place in this world. There
are sites purely set up for propaganda, like flat earth society, who explains
gravity with "yeah so the world is currently traveling upwards at a constant
rate, and that is gravity"... Lol :) Nobody actually believes that. It's just
to turn people off from the idea, and it's working. It's been the Google
number one hit since like forever, and it's designed that way :)

All this makes sense if you understand what the purpose is, but people usually
spend like 10 minutes, go to the wrong sites, and laugh it off :)

Go to Eric dubays videos on YouTube, go through the ones where he goes through
how things are working according to flat earth theories. Its highly
interesting. There see more than one way to explain what we see.

~~~
wruza
Given how much effort you have to put into a local progress and how many
‘energy’ and knowledge is lost on progress that crosses the
company/group/area/country boundary, it is a very small femtochance that any
worldwide conspiracy exists. Obviously, the capital and power has to be
accumulated in relatively few hands, but it seems too doubtful that at least
one of our species is capable of managing and routing that in the way you
describe. It may appear as such to some idiots with megatons of money and
clear minds behind them, so they form their elite clubs, but no more than
that.

Anyone who did something complex should have seen that clearly. We as a whole
civilization are just an uncontrollable mess.

~~~
andai
To clarify, are you saying there is an illuminati, but they really suck at
their job?

