Nietzsche and the logic of resentment

[dark empathy]

Beware! possible triggers.

I'm sorry I haven't posted for a while, I've wanted to, but whenever I considdered writing anything at all it just seemed to serve no point.

I don't know what impulse hit me, but I recently went and looked at some sections of Thus spake Zarathustra by Fredrich nietzsche.

I first read Nietzsche when i was 17, and principley because I couldn't believe what the man was actually arguing, that compassion, morality, empathy and quest for happiness were all pointless and that all human relations fell down to the exerting of power by the strong on the "many too many" And that ultimate aim of humanity was to become the superman, (or overman if you prefer), someone who freely enacted his will on the world untroubled by the wills of others.

What shocked me at first is how much I appreciated of Nietzsche. he appreciated creativity, he lauded the aesthetic appreciation of the world and a kind of tough attitude of strength that gloried in everything including pain. He said for example that the overman should live life as though it were to be repeated endlessly, that we would live the not just another life, but the same one again after death so the only recourse was either to embrace everything, or to feel nothing.

Oh, and I say "over man!" because Nietzsche was horribly and completely sexist, even for the late 1880's, in one of his more famous quotes is "If you visit a woman, be sure to take your whip"

nietzsche was taken up later by the Nazi party, but though he would've probably approved of a government where a person could get ahead by simply pushing enough, he himself hated the state sinse he saw it as crushing the invidiaul, indeed for a man who claimed the Overman was the next stage of evolution and that morality was an evil thing he was a firm believer on people exacting strength on others, indeed his own genialogy of morals was basically that the ideas of good and evil existed simply to allow the "slaves" or the weak to exact their will upon the strong.

When I was 17, I found it difficult to understand how Nietzsche even came to his realization, of how someone could maintain such ccontempt for everybody, even himself that he invested all his hope in a mythic "overman" that he actively believed the exacting of power and will on others was something to value.

What shocked me, and what now bothers me is I can understand how Nietzsche came to this line of thinking, especially looking at the man's life, he was after all very much alone, rejected by the establishent, he even had ciphalis and managed to alienate the few friends he ever had (he fell out with the composer Richard Wagna because Wagna wrote an opera praising compassion).

I have found recently that my entire resentment that my life is so shit has lead me down some very dark trains of logic, especially about women. I have never lost my empathy, but it is only that empathy which has stopped me from starting to believe some very dark things.

For example the other day, I heard a news report saying that the woman who's husband is currently held captive by terrorists in the Middle east had sent them a message pleading for his release. My first thought was "Well why the hell does shebother! she can always go and get another one sinse men are replaceable!"

I know if she herself had been on the news and I'd experienced her emotional reaction I'd not have felt this, my first reaction would've been "oh God she must be going through hell worrying about her husband!" However, without that human connection it is too hard not to feel resentful.

There are still darker forms of logic. I have found myself reasoning that rape of a woman can't be too bad, yes, the experience is undoubtedly bad, but hay, at least a woman can always have a positive experience of physical intimacy if she wants, it's always on offer, so it must be easier for her to recover. Hell, I know genophobia would be no problem for a woman.

I've started wondering that, as I've found myself so much rejection has occured by me simply being disabled, how many women have an easier time for just! being female, getting employed, getting relationships or being accepted due to being pretty!

I've even found myself reasoning that sinse women are taught to report abuse, how many female victims of sa are actually telling the truth about a crime, and how many are just playing upon people's sympathy, after all the girls who abused me spent considderable time calling me! a sexy beast, and on one occasion got me yelled at by a teacher. Indeed one thing I've recently realized is that had I been female, the first occasion when i was 12 when I was publically stripped I would've reported it, or someone else would've sinse after all for a boy it's funny, for a girl it's serious!

I've even started to reason that I should! go and get a prostitute, sinse logically if any woman can acquire a relationship whenever she wants, any woman who is a prostitute must automatically be such because she likes to be, so logically if I did hier a prostitute she would want! that sort of intimacy with anyone who would pay, which would get me the thing I've always wanted, and hay, while I know my genophobia would be difficult, well the prostitute wouldn't get paid if I weren't satisfied so she'd have! to to be kind about my genophobia.

i've even asked myself whether I would want to hurt or sexually humiliate a woman if I could, and should I specifically search for a prostitute for that reason. I did decide no to that one, sinse I know however resentful and generally angry I am at the world, my empathy would not allow me to actively desire hurting someone else, though I have found myself in a place so dark that it was necessary to aske myself the question.

Yes, I know these things are bad logic caused by my own resentment, and utter levels of frustration, however what shocked me when i ran into Nietzsche is just how much I understand the man now, ---- and I admit it scares me how much i am like him, trying to substitute creativity for humanity, being alone, a failure, and becoming over come with resentment which I want to project into creative works.

That! actually scares me, more than any of the nasty forms of misoginistic logic I've run down here.

Am I actually such a monster?

 

[victor-victim]

you have accurately descibed my own twisted history of pretzel logic.
i had very similar experiences with various writers such as nietzsche and de sade and crowley and others.
such is the power of printed word.
i have to remind myself that i am having a one-way conversation with a dead guy.
these men chose to record and share their sufferings and speculations.
the least i can do is empathize.
suspension of disbelief allows us to entertain
thoughts which we would otherwise exile.
this allows us to examine evil from a seemingly safe distance.

i was taught to let the crows fly over my head,
but never let them nest in my hair.

 

[pufferfish]

That is a really good post.

Pufferfish

 

[dark empathy]

@Victor, the problem with that form of logic is that when you are and indeed have been as powerless as me, there is something infinitely tempting about it. I'm resentful, I'm angry, my life is pretty shit and I have no idea how to fix it, yet I see women getting the things I want offered to them on a platter day after day. The ladder from resentment to actually believing there would be a justification for sadism is an attractive one, sinse after all if I believe inherently that the world is easier for women (which I do), anything I logically would do to a woman wouldn't be bad.

The one thing that stops me is my empathy, the faculty which men like Nietzsche seemed to completely missunderstand.

I recieved a shock the other day sinse I was listening to a Doctor who audio (which aren't afraid to have bad stuff happen). There was a character who had all the characteristics of females I despise. she's introduced as oh no, she's had a baby isn't that bad, and she's young and pretty and people feel sorry for her. There was then a really nasty sequence when a genetically modified human beat her for information and suddenly it hit me just what sort of logic I was employing, and what this sort of thinking actually meant! (sinse this is fiction, she gets the same genetic upgrades and enacts her own revenge soon afterwards).

It is easy to hate an ideal when you see examples of that ideal constantly in the world, it's less easy to hate a real person, indeed part of the reason nietzsche feels more real to me than Desade or Crowly, is that where Desade and Crowly actually did! the things they advocated and were planely at that level of psychosis, Nietzsche just presented the inherent logic, indeed much as he advocates all his strength, will to power stuff he freely admited himself that sinse he was small and weak and had no power he was not himself an overman.

@Alan, I'm really sorry to here what happened. While I know you experienced abuse at the hands of a cult, I wasn't aware they were founded on Nietzsche's philosophy.

In fairness to Nietzsche, he himself would probably not agree with those sorts of practices, sinse to him the Overman was something which a man would himself freely ceize control of by his own choice, not something w you could brainwash someone into being, indeed sinse the essance of the overman was individual power over the environment and social experience, according to Nietzsche the overman should be someone who rejected! that sort of destiny, indeed this was the very point of the Overman and likely why Nietzsche would've hated the Nazi party sinse he was far more an individual anarchist than a believer in the good of the state.

Some of his past examples of Overmen include people like Lionado Devinci,, people responsable for creative or artistic changes.

He also freely talks about the Overman as someone who is unaffected by Traumer. One of his most telling examples is of being bitten by a smake, the Overman, instead of worrying about his death would see good in the situation and reply with "well I had an itch there that needed scratching"

Of course, this isn't to say the Overman would be a particularly nice character. nietzsche freely talks about women having no will to power and thus existing just to be slaves, and the idea that the Overman's power was as physical as it was part of their over all willingness to think outside the social box. Nietzsche talks about the Overman having no friends, only slaves and enemies or rivals to struggle against, indeed in some of his other work he represents the overman more like a fudal knight who lives on his land with his serfs and his concubines, and occasionally rides out to battle other knights.

Many people forget this aspect of Nietzsche and see him just as advocating creative freedom, and the rejection of society as morality. Indeed, while men like Crowly or Desade don't tend to have their own supporters in mainstream thinking, it's quite respectable to be a supporter of Nietzsche and his rejection of morality. Indeed I've even seen appologists who regard all of Nietzsche's stuff like "on women" as symptoms of megalomania caused by his Syphalis!

I actually sometimes have desired to get a large stick and hit such people and say "there! There's my will to power and dominate others, and sinse I have the stick there's nothing you can do about it, now do you still! think Nietzsche is such a great guy?"

What shocked me when I looked at Nietzsche again for the first time in many years, is how similar some of my darker trains of logic were to Nietzsches, sinse after all I have tried to live through my own creativity instead of relationships to others, and I've even felt a contempt for others on occasion, albeit that this contempt is always for an idealized group rather than a real one, and if you really presented me with a helpless woman and asked me to enact myfrustrations, my empathy would come first.