[quote]jj-dude wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
The cockroach hasn’t changed much in 200 million years. It doesn’t have to.
This simply reflects the fact that cockroaches have found an evolutionary niche.
What Nietzsche was saying is that if you are content with Man as he is now, you should long for peace and tranquility, with no challenges.
I don’t think so. Nietzsche had complete contempt for people like you and me. He saw such trifles as personal liberty as debasing and democracy as the worst thing to happen to humanity. He also lived the quiet, uneventful life of a classical philologist (at least until his nervous breakdown) in a picturesque city. His view is one of hyper-elitism, not one of mawkish self-betterment – you are either superior or not and it is unlikely your condition can be improved. All he saw was the “will to power” (analog to the “will to live”), in which an oily domination of others was the only real goal and anyone who achieved this no matter how was “better”.
If you however want the ‘higher man’ (Ubermensch) then you need a stimulant to change, an all-out, kill or be killed, battle. The survivors are likely to be smarter, stronger, and what not. They are evolving.
No they aren’t. How to you survive modern warfare? Curled up in a hole in fetal position is a good way to start (find someone who’s been bombed and ask them). The sheer mechanization of modern warfare largely invalidates this assumption, tacitly assuming it was ever true. At this time in German history there was a great deal of emphasis on cults of physicality (the ubiquitous “Turnvereine” you see over in Germany were mostly started in the late 1800’s as part of this.) They had the completely confused the affluent assumption that warfare was just hard physical activity and therefore was a replacement for calisthentics.
So, looking at war as how humanity forces itself to adapt, to become stronger and smarter than the people ‘over there’, is war actually a good thing?
Wars have been the de facto method of resolving all disputes until recently. Europe in particular was famous for this – at least until the last major war, when they got an American army parked on them who forced them to play nice. Now they claim they invented peace. Oh brother…
I would argue that, by and large, that Clausewitz was right. Warfare is an extension of diplomacy. So, as social animals it is certainly plausible that the occurrence of warfare is a measure of how we fail. Social evolution (how institutions and cultures adapt) is much faster than physical evolution. So one part of the answer to you question is that this whole thing is moot. Warfare will have far less of an impact on the human race than, say, the rise of agriculture or a one child policy. This is miles away from the romantic (and very middle class) view of heroic struggle. Any way, war is now a professional business. If we have a war, few of you have more than a remote relationship to it. So here you sit, talking about all the benefits war will bring parked behind the most fearsome military in world history. How do their actions improve you? Osmosis?
Short answer to your question: Even if so, you get no benefit from it at all and the discussion is a fascist pipe dream.
– jj [/quote]
Interesting avatar! You’re take on Nietzsche is interesting too — I never realized how wrong I was about his philosophy. I never knew I was a fascist too! Yikes!!
Thank you for enlightening me about Nietzsche!!
LMAO!!!11111
