Synopsis: Notebook of short-form philosophy in homage to Nietzsche's own. Like Nietzsche's aphoristic collections, Interludes indulges in excursions tangential to more central ideas. Compared to the Scintillae collection, Interludes concerns signature Nietzschean topics or follows styles especially reminiscent of his work. And on average, Interludes is even more intricate, more challenging, more esoteric and even arcane.

Interludes from a Philosopher of the Future

By Phoenix
with thanks to kindler Friedrich Nietzsche
("Ja! Ich weiss, woher ich stamme!...")

Introductory dedication. In the eighth and ninth decades of the 19th century, an obscure, iconoclastic, dissident, and very creative philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche developed a provocative approach, and a punctuated, often aphoristic form to challenge the long, dry discourses typical of formal philosophy. Characteristically, Nietzsche would tease, query, and employ artful intimation and useful ambiguity of language to broaden the scope of his writing and the scope of his readers' thinking as well. The classic short Nietzschean book sections (the 'aphorisms' of Human, All Too Human, Daybreak, The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil) may imply almost a deductive riddle for the reader to solve on the basis of bringing other perspectives to bear, or in more extended forms, offer complex series of provocations for the reader to juggle all at once as the flow of thought pours on and on — to overwhelm superficial readers. But those willing to engage such challenges could become enlarged and educated by the demanding process (whether or not they could precisely understand every detail of Nietzsche’s intent). In both his predominantly aphoristic and predominantly non-aphoristic works, Nietzsche often included aphorisms incidental or tangential to the main pursuits of his thought. In gratitude to my essential, inspiring herald of the Promethean future, I offer this collection as a tribute in the same tradition (updated a bit for modern Prometheanism), especially intended for those familiar with Nietzsche's own work. The astute reader of mine may wonder at this departure into homage (with a dash of parody for seasoning now and again), and any usual reader of mine may attest to its singularity. For I have tried at every critical turn to follow Nietzsche as he wished: not religiously or imitatively, but in kind, by following myself and finding my own methods and styles for self-expression. So this more "imitative" collection should be taken in at least three ways: for the content in itself, as an amusing indulgence, and as expurgative of imitative tendencies and gratuitous gratitude assembled into artifactual words within my notebooks over recent years.

A Gordian knot. Any communication between teacher and student requires a foundation of metaphor in common, as does all language for that matter. The more esoteric the metaphors, the more estranged the communication and the more difficult the lesson.

Acquiring wisdom from the sands of the Ganges. The so-called democratization of information, its popular availability, has also contributed to an arrogance about the popular availability of wisdom. It is now a widespread belief that it is always granted to obtain a given understanding as easily as information can be accessed. This is by no means a new assumption, but it is now far more popular. From this notion it follows that if wisdom is not understood it has not been properly conveyed, as though understanding depends on its portrayal and not on the preparation, mindset, and abilities of the one who receives it. In fact there are infinite teachers for one who is prepared for them. When wisdom is offered it is so often rejected. Many find the bearer distasteful and assume he is not wise. They think wisdom must be aesthetically pleasing, so much so that they mistake what is beautiful for what is profound. Others have now been trained to mistrust their tastes for what is pleasing and pretty, so that the artist and the poet may no longer be trusted, no matter what they say.

The importance of play for intellectuals. Playful is not far removed from experimental. A small example furnished by scholarship shows that with all they understand of their specialties, scholars often forget a child's first instinct of self-tutelage. The useful, now 'proper' academic habit of supporting any contestable point with references to the work of others can easily metastasize to become a comprehensive mental habit. By this training an academic learns not to venture beyond what others have already thought, losing the self-assurance necessary for free experimentation. By self-habituation in examples such as this the academic's natural human conformist urges are augmented, and independent capacities atrophied. Breaking with orthodoxy occasionally, and whenever its unwritten rules are superfluous or burdensome, cannot just serve an intellectual with a lark, a diversion of playing with the self-image of maverick. It is rather a necessity, for the intellectual, to play studiously in the midst of study.

Science left us rigor, not to be wasted. Now that most wiser human beings have realized that science, having freed us from the limitations of belief in dogmatic, superstitious or impenetrable religion, was not our new Deity, and could not take its place as the ultimate provision for purpose and value (they have in other words turned against scientism), we enter another crisis of faith. Now the typical human error would be overcorrection — to turn too far or even wholly against the importance of science and to favor faith disposed against it. We see this most foolishly in the dogmatic ‘environmentalist’ nature religion and the fundamentalist ‘revivals’ of old religions, to which we may easily feel superior and dismiss as errors we would not make. But is it not more important for wiser human beings now to see that just because they see the error in those two examples, does not prove they themselves are immune to overcorrection against science, if far more subtly? We philosophers of the future who relearn experimentation or rejuvenate creativity in the wake of too much academic-scientific seriousness should not cease to learn and practice skepticism and methodology as they serve us. Above all in world-historical terms science promoted rigor in intellectual thought, above all we should not dispense with this historical gift and the bequeathed responsibility to satisfy a rigorous conscience in examining ourselves and our world. Our own thoughts and their expression benefit exceedingly from exercising a “scientific” disposition in this sense, or at least the retained capacity to practice it when we need it — and we do still need it. The self-guidance of rigor is no less important than the free “playing” of our creativity in artistic expressions. To succeed where others erred, the philosopher who creates the future requires both faculties to work together, in his own unique discipline.

Ancient metaphor versus modern methodology. It seems to me the poorest or nearly poorest comparison between the modern and the ancient can be made regarding their consciousness of metaphor, appearance, pose, suggestion, guise, connotation, and all in thought and expression which is not direct and literal, versus the modern lack of such accustomed skill with metaphor, appearance, and pose. Without such suspension of judgment and delight in questions and ambiguity as required in the old culture and practiced then, one simply cannot read well, one cannot think well, and one cannot dream in daylight. Such a faculty above all we have lost to our detriment even as we have gained acquaintance with methodology.

Coaxing the innermost from its shrouding bonds. Outwardly-restrained by unseen rules and conformities, wrapping himself in unwritten obligations, many a man appears in public, even to his intimate public, only as a human mummy, acting social parts in apparent freedom but with the honest kha within covered by the same limits of propriety which bind limbs from their wanton exercise. In time his limbs forget their extent and intent, and even a lively man forgets he once played at becoming a mummy. He hides behind his customary mask and identification becomes even more mysterious. A heart that cannot be felt cannot be weighed. So say to those who might obligate themselves to you, "Do what you want!" And think to yourself, 'Thereby I will know your character.' You will certainly acquaint yourself with some vital disappointments, but at least you will not keep the company of husks, waiting in line for their plot in the vast field of xenotaphs.

Power and environment. The enormous impact of upbringing on a character should not be discounted, particularly regarding what is learned about power. It is in childhood that we learn how to respond to power imbalances, how to react to positions of social weakness, physical inferiority, and existential fears. Managing these with grace and courage in childhood is likely to carry through to the formation of an adult character; lashing out at others or cowering in inactive fear — these habits will typically also last. Perhaps most spectacular of all is acquiring a permanent complex based on some sort of power-redressing fetish, which again has its roots in what children learn about power — how powerful they are in relation to others. In the case of abuses or neglect the lesson is all too impressed on most, and so they spend their lives attempting to redress the resulting insecurity and sense of relative weakness. And in general, even in better cases of helpful power education, family, particularly parents, will have the greatest effect; parents generally have more impact here than siblings, because parents themselves are a dominating power to a child. Related or unrelated playmates will usually present more of an analogy of peers.

Distortions of metaphor. Language and other metaphors inherently demonstrate the flaw of inaccuracy, and may be mistaken for identity with what they describe. But sharpen the metaphor to further and exacting accuracy, and the model becomes soulless, colorless, uninteresting, undistinguished — why bother at all, one begins to feel? Or dispense with metaphor, and you have — nothing.

A subjectivist responds to grammarian phantoms. Ask a needless question, receive a heedless answer: being? — being is the coalescence of metaphors.

Limitations of 'the self' as a model, and having to take care. 'I' may be the most commonly used word, and at the same time the least understood and most ill-defined. And we still live in the dark ages of philosophy, in which ten parts of work must be applied to refute the dominance of the mass, collective models over the individual models, while only one part may be hazarded to go further than the comfortable myth of continual, whole self-identity and "the individual" as the most basic, all-cohesive unit of life, without distracting too much from the far preferable one in that assumed bipolarity. And how many people will misunderstand you, from both camps of advocates! It is like some juncture in a hypothetical history of physics, at which point the complication of quanta has been discovered, but the quantum physicist has to ignore them for most purposes, so that swarming besiegers of atomic theory will not seize upon it as proof that atoms are not important at all, while defenders of simple atomism might accuse this quantum physicist of being a traitor to the cause of Democritus. Question: Why does Libertarianism want to stop short so suddenly where the multitude meets the one? Answer: An over-adaptation to these times in which the importance of the individual is threatened.

Diasporas, cultures, and people. If you wish to favor cultures, keep them separate. If you wish to favor people, allow people in cultures to mingle and share what they will. The very notion of a diaspora puts culture above individual people.

Builders and bureaucrats. Students of history will think they discover a law of association when they observe the bureaucratization of every inventive, productive and powerful civilization, a relationship in evidence since the Sumerians and Egyptians and which now continues among Americans, who it seems will soon want to have certification and approval for everything. But this does not indicate a causative relationship in terms of the rules, laws and oversight making accomplishments possible, but a parasitical relationship as inevitable as flies on unprotected food. Nor does this mean such is the ineluctable result and price of constructive civilization, merely the ineluctable result of building civilization within a state: the systematic decay of the individual builder.

Petty bureaucratic leadership. People mistake the anti-heroic, boring, mundane, bureaucratic rulership of today's "great leaders" for either real heroic leadership, or the unimportance of heroism, or the end of heroism, or the sign that their leaders are not the semi-tyrants that the dynamic, heroic classically great leaders of the past were — he is no Napoleon in dash and dynamism, therefore he is no oppressor. This is a great error — in fact, the petty modern leaders are all bureaucracy and boredom besides their tyranny; there is no hero with our tyrant today. This is the worst of both worlds, with rulers. This is what becomes of idolized democracy.

Myopia and parallax from Aristotle. Surely Aristotle, that well-meaning scientist, that taxonomist in temperament never above the industrious propagation of pervasive and enduring errors in philosophy, was working most contrarily to his gifts with the superficialities of the plodding Politics, for example "man is by nature a political animal" — something which means man lives most naturally and best in a Greek polis. In other words, as he already did. As a meal for the mind, this great tautologist serves us here a communion wafer — thin and without body. At his worst Aristotle nourishes little more than the common sentiment. He fulfills extant social and linguistic bias, systemizing, not transcending. Compared to the glut-o-cratic political scientists today, however, his politics looks astoundingly, even naively open… thus usefully parallactic.

The peculiar perspective of castle-builders. If the human sciences seem to discover rules, laws, or eternal consistencies, we should imagine nothing magical, or objective in this apparent access to presumed ‘truth’ achieved when economists et al. study and theorize about human behavior and human action. This is like — if we should imagine man as unconscious castle builders in age after age, all building on the work of all, as they pay attention to other things besides the edifice they are constructing for themselves — this is like those who find their way to perch on some particularly extended parapet studying the situation for some time, and pronouncing that they have discovered the castle was built for humans, with man-sized doors and portals, with rooms designed for typical tasks of men, women, children, with spaces and lengths and proportions matched to human eye perspectives and pleasing to human aesthetics, or at least those aesthetics which have heretofore occupied that role in the construction. Their studying humans is building upon what is built — by other human beings.

The bounds of objectivity and subjectivity. To you mediums conjuring your beloved phantasmic Objectivity as though it were as usual as the ground beneath your feet, despite all lack of foundation for such a figment, since you feel it (and there can be no more "self-evident" justification) — that is, because you are inclined to be fair or inclined to adopt a universal view — as one who once also little understood just how much he needed an exorciser, I want to admonish: so you already wish to be decent in these ways? then be honest — stop trying to be truly objective, to know true objectivity, even to think about true objectivity, much less to worship or deify it. Objectivity is never possible, surely, but that is not important. More importantly, it is never relevant to us living things. We are all subjective beings, and it is impossible to be removed and objective, if only because of the kinds of ears and eyes one uses to sense, and the differences of our brains and other organs. To live one way, with its advantages and disadvantages, is at the same time to exclude other ways and to not hold the authentic perspective of other ways. We are all disposed toward some things over others as a function of living at all. Yet this realization does not justify either the notion that we are all biased, so we are all unfair, thus one should learn to become careless of others and exploitative of them — nor the notion of wallowing and detesting our lack of objectivity. For, we can still be fair or universal on a patch of ground — within any given set of criteria that we understand in common — although on social turf the disposition to be "fair" might be more aptly described as generous or giving, and the disposition to be "universal" might be more fittingly termed broad-minded or cosmopolitan. But subjectivity does mean that instead of trying to be or posing as that which we can never be, we should explore our own subjective view and our own abilities to understand their unique character. We should endeavor to know how far these dispositions extend, and when we must yield to others'.

Evidence of diversity. We can guess no God made this world from one piece of Biblical evidence alone: we are told he said, “be fruitful and multiply.” We know this must just be story; after all, any God who had made this world must have enjoined his creations: “go forth and diversify.”

Seeing the hand of God in evolution. Why assume that the fossil record would provide representative clues to evolution? Further, why assume that the process of evolution is anything but what happens to occur — any less complicated than that — in some cases, survival of the fittest, in others the pressure of numbers, some in gradual evolution, some in punctuated equilibrium, et cetera — or whatever genes happen to mutate which follow no particular pattern and no particular import, for advantage or for disadvantage? Why not "survival of whatever happens to survive"? And then, dare we cope with all the realizations of: "whatever happens to happen"? Even, "whatever beliefs happen to ... "?

Good versus Evil. What is the significance of every battle between Good and Evil? It is not only to decide which side wins and which side loses, it is to decide which side is Evil and which side is Good. The winner inevitably assumes the identity of moral rectitude, while the dispossessed or vanquished becomes known as Evil, if only because "the victor writes the history books." Even in myth, such a battle between values is even constructed where one never or barely existed, or has simply concluded long ago, in order to provide this kind of martial endorsement for existing cultural morals. We see this in the Old Testament for example. One should note that very much of what is assumed Good in any place or time, is more accurately a value which has won the hearts of a majority and perhaps driven away alternatives. Thus, to question Good and consider Evil is not evil — it is merely to question the circumstantially dominant and consider a circumstantially faint voice of dissent. Many of the sacred ideas of this age (some would call them "sacred cows") — such as democracy, racial identity, even codes of morality themselves — may boast no effect worthy of such respect in human terms, except the sole virtue of majority acceptance, belief, and devotion.

From values for the lumpenproles, aesthetics for the lazy. The Judeo-Christian value-inversion of taking the old low as the new high, and the old high as the new low, which in the domain of social morals likely once required a tremendous struggle by the helots and servants of the world to turn on its head the very definition of ancient nobility, and the mobilization of tremendous resources and incentive (as related in Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals), may now be easier than the alternative, at least aesthetically, if not also morally. Seemingly now it is easier for the unambitious, consigned to mediocrity, to praise and exalt the mediocre, even admitting it to be mediocre — or preferably, extravagantly worse and therefore delightful (thus kitschy, campy, etc. no longer serve exclusively as insults) — than to maintain standards and judge sensitively and tastefully according to them, even supposing one has some capacity for it. Thereby the implicit challenge of comparison, competition, standards, judgment so integral to the aristocratic sensibilities of old have been blotted away by an eventual but inexorable rank floodwater — a most popular, democratic, most proletarian, most Judeo-Christian process to which we now have become so accustomed it seems a natural cycle like a lunar tide, rather than an unnatural disaster. What began in esoteric moral doctrine now finds its logical end in popular aesthetics, having propagated its message of civilizational decay across the centuries — a decay of a most literal kind of figurativeness: the high heights, the towers acquired by careful building, crumble to the lowest levels below for want of architects to create them and princes to appreciate and commission their loftiness.

The social law against conservation movements: some force of Progression eventually moves Inertia. Even if the forces of a vaunted "Progress" are advocating worse than the forces of conservatism who want to return or stay still, it may be impossible to succeed in opposing that Progress directly, with mere Inertia. That is like always anchoring to the same rock because it is well known to be weighty, though it is shifted and eroded more with every tide. Once it was said, "constant as the Northern star" — but sailors from a past distant enough would have set their sights on a different point of light. Change is a natural pattern, maybe of all things. Faced with an unbearable Progressive force, Inertia is less wise than finding a replacement change, preferably a path for change more attractively radical than the Progress which must not succeed, a new progress to steal away the force of change, superior in effect to both the fearsome Progress and the Inertia of the past, calling upon reserves of change and movement to which mere conservation cannot appeal.

Fight to grow. A battle is (only) over when one side is convinced to stop fighting. This is true of an ideological struggle, a bloody war — or the contest inside every person's heart to decide whether they will make the effort necessary to develop and grow and change, or settle, intent to impossibly remain fixed in who they are or who they were, as they slowly decompose.

The bliss that forgets to say no. For those who love life extraordinarily, the last course to stay on their long odyssey runs between Yes and No. (The catastrophic among them have drowned earlier, sailing high over beguiling benthic worms — whose sour songs called to them temptingly of insignificance, of common easements, of an end to quests.) But the blissful, rather, want always to affirm everything and anything in life. They forget judgment, they forget exception-making unless they look about sharply to remind themselves of danger and the guidance of their mission. Full on over-love of the journey they go sun-blind, aimless. From there a short crash, aground on the rocks of pity.

When the activist dies. At some point there may come a dangerous tension for any conscientious agent of a deserved rebellion, that of resisting his own gravity, that most merciless enemy of all. Nausea and disgust and discomfort in reaction to the omnipresence of unbelievable horror, stupidity, naivete, doltishness, oppression, corruption, and simply the distance not from an ideal, but from what seems decent and pleasant and honest and sensical — burden and crush the activist, and either harden him to dense inflexibility and diminished thoughtfulness — or more often wear away and soften him, over time. The activist becomes comfortable, deceiving himself that all is well enough. Peace is desired even at the cost of self-deceit. He is smaller, older. This relaxed reformed agitator laughs at his younger self; he was foolish then, but he is mature now. The activist has been lost to the world, and to himself.

To question every thing. You may say: "question everything!" — but that includes everything you hold so sacred, the very ground that seems to hold you up, and evermore you, yourself!

Two centuries of Nihilism. We must be living between two great grindings of the world about its human axis. So much has been worn away in the first, so much more crumbles away even now. In the second, such we must recover or make anew for the next ten thousand years. (Or will our winding trace the last cycle?) So what is the import of living at the end of the first century of Nihilism — Nietzsche having predicted another? This point would seem to be the cynosure, and the fulcrum.

Masks of the herald fall away. If they have been forthright, not one of these publishing scholars analyzing Nietzsche so meticulously has understood him. One gets this impression from them indistinctly anyway, in their general clumsiness with matters of importance rather than minutiae, and various confusions over creativity and spirit and other points of discussion which the carefully reflective scholarly minds often find themselves ill-disposed to emulate, even to comprehend. But clearer markers we can draw out, too. First reason: they do nothing — they do not become within, they change nothing without! And we can be doubly sure because those who really understand him, if they exist, would never betray his own wishes not to burn the eyes of cave mankind with illuminations lit by harsher daylight all too soon, until they can gaze up under the glare of the great noon with blinding fears forgotten. Such scholars as were students would keep quiet, knowing joyfully that the time draws nearer when the Philosopher might be discussed and gratefully lauded openly for every matter he perceived and intended (or did not perceive or did not intend) — without those disguises he wore and blind alleys and ivory walls he drew around himself to keep the wide world that reads him from too much realization — the gift of bottomless nadir nights — and to defend himself from their fly and snake bites. Some of those artifices are already antique. But the time has not yet come. Perhaps even now, a wild-eyed but farseeing Nietzschean could shout breathlessly in the marketplace, and all the scholarly oxen gathered to the crowds would ignore the madman, flick at flies and keep on chewing.

Coda: autumneveningold returns eternally to the beloved youth. "Alas, what are you after all, my written and painted thoughts! It was not long ago that you were still so colorful, young, and malicious, full of thorns and secret spices — you made me sneeze and laugh — and now? You have already taken off your novelty, and some of you are ready, I fear, to become truths: they already look so immortal, so pathetically decent, so dull! And has it ever been different? What things do we copy, writing and painting, we mandarins with Chinese brushes, we immortalizers of things that can be written — what are the only things we are able to paint? Alas, always only what is on the verge of withering and losing its fragrance! Alas, always only storms that are passing, exhausted, and feelings that are autumnal and yellow! Alas, always only birds that grew weary of flying and flew astray and now can be caught by hand — by our hand! We immortalize what cannot live and fly much longer — only weary and mellow things! And it is only your afternoon, you, my written and painted thoughts, for which alone I have colors, many colors perhaps, many motley caresses and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds: but nobody will guess from that how you looked in your morning, you sudden sparks and wonders of my solitude, you my old beloved — wicked thoughts!" — F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil part 296.

Subscribe to the Promethea announcement list to be notified of further updates and additions to Interludes. Also see Scintillae: An Evolving Notebook of Promethean Scintillations and The Renewing Dissident's Notebook of Antipolitics, Autopoiesis, and other Forethoughts.