One the the benefits of reading Nietzsche is that he throws up ideas as a challenge. He makes an outrageous comment, and he makes you think.
The major thing for me is Nietzsche's attack on Good and Evil and "the priests" that taught us to hate ourselves.
In the old days, Nietzsche proposes, we hated our enemies as good manly men should do. But now we are wimps and last men.
That made me think: What is the point of things like Original Sin? And then I decided that the reason was probably that when people live in large communities, cities even, the men can't go around hating their enemies all the time. The city is about cooperation and the division of labor, in which no man is an island, entire of itself. So quarrelsome men are a problem.
Back-biting women are something else, but we are not talking about that today.
So I would say that, in a city, it is social beneficial if people look at themselves and blame themselves occasionally rather than doing the usual thing and blaming other people for everything. OK, maybe, maybe not. Do you have a better idea?
So now I am reading Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, part one of his Deptford trilogy. (I bought the book at a used bookstore in Coupeville, WA, and the guy in the store wanted to look at the first page: Yes, he said, this is the very book I first read 40 years ago). The first part of the book deals with small-town life in Deptford, near Toronto, and the whole question of dirty sex.
Why, I thought, has this notion of sex being dirty come about? And then I came up with an answer. If you teach women that sex is dirty then they will believe it is dirty like the Good Little Girls they are. And that means that they will have a lot less sex than if they have been carefully taught to look forward to a nightly roll in the hay with hubby. And they will likely have less children. So maybe the "sex is dirty" meme is merely the birth control of olden times. It is curious, is it not, that the modern era celebrates sex-is-fun with the full benefit of the Pill and abortion on demand. OK. Maybe, maybe not. Do you have a better idea?
Another interesting meme in Fifth Business is that the women -- in 1908 -- run the village, mainly because the men do not want to ruin their home lives by disagreeing with their wives. Hello patriarchy?
Do you men connect with this? That it is just not worth proving your point with your wife? Because domestic tranquility? I talked with a guy 15 years ago that spoke about The Catalog. Every time he and his wife had a disagreement his wife would recite The Catalog: all the bad things he had done since they had first met.
OK. I admit I am not impartial in this. I take the position that everything the left proposes is a Bad Idea. The only question is to determine Why.
So there you have it. We think used to think sex is dirty because it helped control over-population, and we hate ourselves because it helps us live in a city of strangers.
There is more stuff like this out there. I know it.
The major thing for me is Nietzsche's attack on Good and Evil and "the priests" that taught us to hate ourselves.
In the old days, Nietzsche proposes, we hated our enemies as good manly men should do. But now we are wimps and last men.
That made me think: What is the point of things like Original Sin? And then I decided that the reason was probably that when people live in large communities, cities even, the men can't go around hating their enemies all the time. The city is about cooperation and the division of labor, in which no man is an island, entire of itself. So quarrelsome men are a problem.
Back-biting women are something else, but we are not talking about that today.
So I would say that, in a city, it is social beneficial if people look at themselves and blame themselves occasionally rather than doing the usual thing and blaming other people for everything. OK, maybe, maybe not. Do you have a better idea?
So now I am reading Robertson Davies' Fifth Business, part one of his Deptford trilogy. (I bought the book at a used bookstore in Coupeville, WA, and the guy in the store wanted to look at the first page: Yes, he said, this is the very book I first read 40 years ago). The first part of the book deals with small-town life in Deptford, near Toronto, and the whole question of dirty sex.
Why, I thought, has this notion of sex being dirty come about? And then I came up with an answer. If you teach women that sex is dirty then they will believe it is dirty like the Good Little Girls they are. And that means that they will have a lot less sex than if they have been carefully taught to look forward to a nightly roll in the hay with hubby. And they will likely have less children. So maybe the "sex is dirty" meme is merely the birth control of olden times. It is curious, is it not, that the modern era celebrates sex-is-fun with the full benefit of the Pill and abortion on demand. OK. Maybe, maybe not. Do you have a better idea?
Another interesting meme in Fifth Business is that the women -- in 1908 -- run the village, mainly because the men do not want to ruin their home lives by disagreeing with their wives. Hello patriarchy?
Do you men connect with this? That it is just not worth proving your point with your wife? Because domestic tranquility? I talked with a guy 15 years ago that spoke about The Catalog. Every time he and his wife had a disagreement his wife would recite The Catalog: all the bad things he had done since they had first met.
OK. I admit I am not impartial in this. I take the position that everything the left proposes is a Bad Idea. The only question is to determine Why.
So there you have it. We think used to think sex is dirty because it helped control over-population, and we hate ourselves because it helps us live in a city of strangers.
There is more stuff like this out there. I know it.
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