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Plastic Power and Developing your Horizon

The New Year is upon us, what exactly should we do, what can we do? We can develop ourselves to be better humans, but what is better? I am no big shot, I have no PhD, although I wish, my wallet has other desires; the aim of this blog/discourse, or whatever you want to call it is to pass down knowledge other than what society tells us. For example, there are these “TikTok” video trends that begin the video with saying “90 percent of people are already have swiped away from this video if you made it this far…” and so on. If you ascertain value, meaning, and success by the attention span of the duration of a short video your value system is defined by the group you affiliate with.

Friedrich Nietzsche states:

“I mean by plastic power the capacity to develop out of oneself in one’s own way, to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, to replace what has been lost, to recreate broken molds” (p. 62).  He goes on to say, “there are people who possess so little of this power that they can perish from a single experience… from a single painful event… like a man bleeding to death from a scratch” (Ibid). 

We see examples of this everywhere in the news, politics, protests, religious institutions, at homes, and in our personal lives. We lose someone we hold dear to our heart; you lose a best friend over a disagreement on social media due to political differences, you grew away from a toxic church, and the media blows up and over politicizes a small event.

Experiences as such, shapes and influences our being in who we become it is up to us to determine how those experiences influence us and to what measure they do so. We must develop Plastic Power, it is a skill, we must develop ourselves without the influences of social media, news outlets, political parties, or any other institution including but not limited to church doctrines. All these influences Nietzsche continues saying:

“All his valuations are altered and disvalued; there are so many things he is no longer capable of evaluating at all because he can hardly feel them anymore: he asks himself why he was for so long the fool of the phrases and opinions of others; he is amazed that his memory revolves unwearyingly in a circle and yet is too weak and weary to take even a single leap out of this circle”

These valuations are stored and coached into our very being from a very early age. We are taught what is acceptable, morally, politically, and religiously. It does not matter how these valuations arise or start they all hinder you from becoming oneself. Whether it is coming form a pastor or a politician these valuations grey one’s ability to think for oneself and develop one’s self. We are tuned and primed for certain trigger words in the religious community and the political community; these words and phrases is the scratch that causes oneself to bleed out.

What happens to the one who says NO to the religious or political community; what happens to the one who grows away from the church and does not choose to mold into a group or conform to a certain part of society based on geographical, political, or socioeconomic facets? Nothing happens to them; nothing happened to me. Those people become successful, revered, and people become curious about you in your life choices. Want to know why I know these things? Because I said NO to all of that. I said no to social media [specifically Facebook and Instagram]; I said no to the religious community, and I said no to the Political community because all those communities do is divide who you are and separate oneself and molds it into themselves. These are the same people that tell you what to believe when they themselves cannot ascertain value for themselves without any influences – how can someone tell you what is right when they themselves cannot define right from wrong without bringing up politics or religion? One must let those types of people live in their own reality that they have adopted, and you do not. 

Develop your own horizon:

“And this is a universal law: a living thing can be healthy, strong and fruitful only when bounded by a horizon; if it is incapable of drawing a horizon around itself, and at the same time too self-centered to enclose its own view within that of another, it will pine away slowly or hasten to its timely end” (Ibid. p. 64)

           The values that stem from religious or political viewpoints are acceptable within the group, they are not values or have value due to the nature of how those values are given their value are they justified or warranted and how are they warranted? – that is the question. Value cannot be ascertained by simply accepting those values as truths. There must be two conditions, one must accept that value but also, they must view that thoughts/values as justified. This is where divine command theory plays into the religious community, simply put, divine command theory is the idea that God commands us to do X, Y, Z based on the doctrines put forth through church government.

           When one grows away from the church community or political community nothing happens, they continue living in their own realities, triggered by certain phrases, programmed to respond in such a way to defend their purported value system handed down by their group. When you grow away and develop yourself, it will surprise you how free you can feel and become, what you can accomplish in life, and the type of person you can become.

           I have my own horizon and developed plastic power, how did I do that? Do not accept socially acceptable behavior or value systems (not condoning criminal activity in no shape or form), it is not an excuse to be a bad person. Be yourself, figure yourself out, define your own destiny do not let others do so.

Work Cited

Nietzsche, F., Breazeale, D., & Hollingdale, R. J. (1997). Untimely meditations. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

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Reflection(s) 2021: 01/02/21

“Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by: they do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. This is a hard sight for man to see, for though he thinks himself to be better than the animals because he is human, he cannot help envying them their happiness -- what they have, a life neither bored nor painful, is precisely what he wants, yet he cannot have it because he refuses to be like an animal” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely meditations, On the Uses and Disadvantages of history for life, A1). 

Being content with what one has whether how little or how much you may have, or I may have, regardless of the quantity or quality of life we (humans) always want more. Are we really better than any one animal or status that we have -- we claim to live in a Democracy, but more divided than ever, perhaps Nietzsche is right, perhaps Plato as well was right, a dog has more freedom in a democracy than man does and Nietzsche being right when man desires some blissful happy medium that animals have while humans spend their live finding that medium animals do so everyday, yet humans refuse such mediums. Man thinks he can be stronger or richer will make him happy; ladies wish or desire to be prettier or more successful and envy their counterparts just as men do but reaching such milestones still does not satisfy. This is no religious claim because churches are just as guilty, they divide more than they do multiply when they multiply, the multiplicity diminishes the value comes from the numbers. So then what? 

We need to develop what Nietzsche calls, “Plastic Power” and a Horizon (Ibid); Plastic power and the horizon will be covered in a later reflection.

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Faith

This is an ongoing project/blog regarding faith; this will be revised at a later time, so there may be grammatical errors or some things may not make sense, I will do my best to make what is below, clear -- maybe not so much to some.

The reason why I have chose Christianity is due to my upbringing and development through my adolescent years. Faith was a challenge in itself (when I say ‘in-itself’ it does not mean I have found Jesus or discovered the causal, cause of faith. I just mean that when challenging it with those I grew up with around my sphere of influence they all left me with more questions than answers -- but they seemed to be completely satisfied with remaining with more questions)  during my years growing up there were many different ways in which faith was tested, defined, constructed, and construed. Faith according to scripture was defined in the book in the bible (Hebrews 11:1): now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. An example of this act of myself challenging a pastor, when I did, I told him according to scripture it does not say ANYWHERE that one must give tithing in order to go to heaven and that the person who was preaching happened to be his father. I suppose he took offense to that because a week or two later he left to America Samoa due to a calling that God had urged him to. Anyways, that was that, but back to faith; that was one example of which aligns to those many more questions than answers. In that specific case, I actually received an answer -- coincidence, I think not.

The key words that I am going to focus on are, “assurance, things hoped for, conviction, and things not seen”

For each one of these categories I will define what they mean in each separate context of scripture and the analysis of outside contexts and thoughts including personal experiences and other mediums.

It is inhuman (meaning NOT human like) not (inhumane like in poor treatment of animals, for one example); as I was saying, it is inhuman to have assurance of ‘things not seen’ at the same time to possess a conviction of things not seen, unless one concocts a imaginative cause for their justification for revenge. Humans cannot have assurance for something if they cannot begin to understand the ‘it’ (it being whatever they want to understand, and in this case “Faith”)

Here is faith: a long LONG time ago when human understanding was not capable of grasping the many facets and concepts were being conceptualized faith was also categorized in the depths of misunderstandings and gaps that science was unable to define. When humans are faced with something completely and utterly unknown, they define it under a concept something that is not seen. They (the religious thinkers) called it FAITH.

A contradistinction, in comparison to our legal system and religious systems, when a court case has never been seen before, there is a Latin word “Prima Facie” meaning “at first sight” similarly, “at first face”. The courts gather all the evidence and establish the preponderance of evidence or “the burden of proof” they establish the evidence before making a determination, in the religious thought methodology (if there is any method to it anymore) if they cannot define it within the confines of religious text(s) they either issue one of two things, perhaps both: “God works in mysterious ways” and “God’s ways are above our ways”. There process is defining words, through the original language: if its OT (Old Testament) they use Hebrew, if NT (New Testament) they use Greek. They pick out key words that are the focal point of the statement or verse, compare those words through cross-referencing similar passages and define those words within the original language, take some cultural context, read the whole chapter to achieve that context, then begin to map the historical and geopolitical issues and conflicts of the time to attempt at extracting or what they call “exegesis”.

This exegesis process is nowhere near a critical analysis of the text, typically when someone analyzes a text they use scholarly sources and comparisons within the same or even different perspectives to refine and accurately determine the value if there is any. In religious texts there is NO way to critically analyze any given text other than cross-referencing the principle passage to others within the biblical text, even in theologians go through this same exegetical process but go more in depth to the historical and geopolitical issues happening at the time. Just as the exegetical process remains to be uncritical outside of anything but itself; when taken out and compared to things outside of the principle text they say, “your taking it out of context” -- yes, one can say they are taking it out of ‘its’ context historically, literally, and figuratively. Which begs the question: can religious critical interpretations even be accomplish in the slightest bit? Can then, faith be taken seriously as a precept and cornerstone of one’s religion if one cannot know what they ought to have a conviction in? Prima Facie and based on the preponderance of the burden of proof -- maybe not. Is it impossible? They tell me: “Nothing is impossible for God”. Again I am at more questions than answers.

When we take a look at faith outside of itself:

"Faith: not wanting to know what is true." (Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science) and when Nietzsche states that faith is the willingness or “will to ignorance” (WP) they do not want to know what is true, that it takes no reason whatsoever to deny the truth and replace it with a ultimatum of truth that surpasses any and all reason and or logic and willingly ignore it. This ultimately leaves Nietzsche with the conclusion that because Faith is not wanting to know what is true that one who actively engages in the ‘faith’ process essentially believes in nothing, they are considered an active nihilist. We can then, ‘condition’ ourselves to choose unconsciously one religion over another, believe in these concepts like faith. That is where the danger lies in hibernation; perhaps Pascal gave up and determined it was better to believe, than not to believe creating a derivation of what we know as “faith”.

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In Nietzsche's aphorism 2, First Essay "Good and Evil", "Good and Bad" -- he discusses that the 'good, unegoistic acts' were done by those who considered them good and were doing habitually, and praised to be good:

"Originally" -- so they decree -- "one approved unegoistic actions and called them good from the point of view of those to whom they were done, that is to say, those to whom they were useful; later one forgot how this approval originated and, simply because unegoistic action were always habitually praised as good, one also felt them to be good -- as if they were something good" (F.N. A2, GM).

In how one defines good as, well, 'good' is defined by the group or context in which that action is being taken place and if that group finds it to be good. We can see that the most current context in which this takes place is within a child's upbringing. They are praised for doing something good and disciplined accordingly if something is done that is wrong.

Nietzsche states that good was defined in the wrong hands. When a child is exposed to certain behaviors that they do or their parents do they are being exposed and their brain is in development. Children have far more neurons in their brain than the adolescent brain and when those neurons are firing and they recognize something as bad, they get punished and they do not do that same behavior again. If it is good they carry out that action again. As parents, being able to bring up our kids to think for themselves, rationally, develop their own moral compass and guide them how to do so is crucial to the development of the child subject to such behaviors. Here is where children develop their varieties of biases:

"If a man is accustomed from childhood [to act in a certain way, it becomes second nature]. There is an advantage to have some distance from one's own time" (WTP, FN, A269).

Here is also where children develop their duty and throughout the rest of their life, they create their moral system by the many perceptions, experiences, and challenges that arise. When Nietzsche discusses the "distance from one's own time" what I feel he is talking about it the distance between the values once brought up under, being physically away from them and deciphering those values for yourself in making your own values and deciding for oneself if they still possess value in one's life.

The further one goes back into history, there are elements of this type of moral value system being created, with the Greeks as well, not only religious values -- the Greeks had two types of groups back them "we and they" (Kauffman, GM, A5, footnotes, p. 465). In the Greeks time, they defined what was good and bad, separating themselves from the rest having this sort of superior complex and if it was not them, everyone else, was bad -- the plebian. Of course, Nietzsche goes further, with the Celtic origin, with being a Philologist he paints a picture as to how those words are derived and to what significance that he strategically uses to show the flaws in language:

"In the word 'kakos' as in 'deilos' (the plebeian in contradistinction to the 'agathos'), cowardice is emphasized: this perhaps gives an indication in which direction one should seek the etymological origin of agathos, which is susceptible of several interpretations…the distinguishing word for nobility, finally for the good, noble, pure, originally meant blond-headed, in contradistinction to the dark, black-haired aboriginal inhabitants"

It was Greek words that were originally used to define 'black-haired' as bad and 'blond-haired' as good. Affirming Nietzsche's stance on how 'good' and 'bad' were established in Greek and further Latin words including the fact that the word, 'agathos', Greek for well-born, gentle, brave, and capable is subject to several interpretations as are these interpretation given and taught to children to treat other people as different than them. Proving that behaviors are learned from the community brought up under and whether good or bad, those values are determined by the community not by the individual. Teaching children to think and analyze for themselves is critical for the upbringing of the next generation and teach starts in the home, but first parents need to understand these principles of how 'good' and 'bad' were defined in the wrong place. This includes religions, religions should not be teaching what is 'right' from 'wrong', or 'good' from 'bad' because of the variety of interpretations and different religious sects are out there.

It is a parent's duty to foster 'good' or 'bad' and what that looks like, not religion, or anyone else for that matter; allowing their children to develop their own thought process, this will ensure that their hands are not the wrong hands as 'good' and 'bad' have been coined in the wrong places -- especially in the place of a child which looks up to their mother and father as their first teachers. We are the change that society needs; we are the bearers of the future and it starts with our children. Our children may be the future but the parents are the prerequisite to upbringing the future.   

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Quote of the Day

Faith means not wanting to know the truth. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

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FN.05.21.20

Thursday, May 21, 2020

11:51 AM

I want to make it clear, I don't have a PhD in the subject matter, I find it financially ignorant to follow my dreams of doing so because I would have to undertake a LOT of debt for no return on investment. The intrinsic ROI (return on investment) is not worth it for me.

Growing up we are taught what to believe and what to not believe. What is the truth and what to belief to be false? In a conservative Christian home, watching Bill O'rilley and Hannity and Colmes every night at 9:00 pm there were segments on the show where I recall where they categorized each person on the show an idiot or a patriot, something like that. Anyway, when we grow up we are brought up with some measure of indoctrination in how and what we are to believe. Nietzsche calls the belief "something one holds to be true" (Will to Power). Defining a belief is one of the fundamental processes that philosophers encounter within the philosophizing process. The aim of this blog is to document knowledge and perspectives within 19th century, also considered continental philosophy by one of the most controversial philosophers of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche. Since I have been reading N's (Nietzsche's) work, I have learned a great deal of philosophy, why people do what they do, and the documentation of how historical norms and values were developed through history -- and much more. If you are reading this, bear with me, if you want to add onto or comment on what I discuss about even if it is refinements, I encourage all such suggestions. I will not tolerate unprofessional or degrading remarks in any way shape or form, take that somewhere else, people like that are not welcome here (you will not be acknowledge as you exist). As I take on the journey of becoming a father, husband, worker, and writer I find uses of N's work for my life, more than I have with any religious text. I consistently questioned pastors, youth pastors and other priests alike and I always asked them deep questions and I always received responses like "God is all powerful and his ways are beyond our capabilities". This is a tactic that many people, still today use to answer over-complex processes and knowledge and over-simplify some of the most demanding disciplines. I find myself asking myself what the purpose of this blog is because Nietzsche once said, "There are no facts, only interpretations" (Will to Power).

What is the purpose of this blog? Honestly, I have no clue, I have been debating on starting a blog, so I guess I am documenting my thought processes and deliberating what I have learned over the years of reading Friedrich Nietzsche when I first heard of him in my political theory class in community college. Now, I am not an atheist or agnostic but I feel there must be someone beyond any one's interpretation of who God is, especially if he is unknowable (according to Scripture of the bible). Through this blog I will make sure (at least to do my best) to offer the different perspectives while presenting ideas and thoughts. This entry is simply an introduction as to how my development and upbringing contributed to my current ideas, thoughts, and concerns that I have today. I apologize in advance if I go off on a tangent -- I write as ideas come to me.

The very first idea that struck me when taking my first political theory class, I was like, "Who the hell is Nietzsche" -- my professor at the time, Dr. Morrione, would always tell us I can teach Nietzsche and political theory because "I have a PhD in this shit". He will always be remembered as the one who introduced me to a major influence that has changed my whole perception of life itself. Here I am four years later, still reading Nietzsche and studying him as if I was still in his class.

That moment I started reading Nietzsche and understanding his work opened up a whole new realm of understanding and really, a journey -- the aim of this blog is to document that journey. The first concept that I remember from reading Nietzsche was his attack on faith. Which was the first concept that truly made me question the values that I was brought up with -- Christianity. Christianity's cornerstone is faith. Let's begin.

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Quote of the Day

One word can conceal the most divergent tendencies -F.W. Nietzsche