“Great things require to be quiet, or talk about it with greatness: with greatness, ie with cynicism and innocence.
“What I am telling is the story of the two centuries that will come. I describe what will come, what can not come otherwise: the rise of nihilism. This page of history can be told now: for in this case, the necessity itself is at work. This future already speaks by the voice of a hundred signs and omens, this fatality announces itself everywhere; to hear this music of the future all ears are already tense.
“Our entire European civilization has been agitating for a long time under pressure that goes as far as torture, an anxiety that grows ten years in ten years, as if it wanted to provoke a catastrophe: anxious, violent, carried away, like a river who wants to reach the end of his course, who does not think anymore, who is afraid to think.” (source)Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will For Power
This text is not mine, it was written more than a century ago by a German philosopher, the only one I love, my friend Friedrich. On him, I have already posted several articles. But as it is unavoidable, I will probably write some others.
There is always something to tell about this pure genius, so innovative, so visionary. The Nazis wanted to recover, these jokers did not have the stuff. They stung without picking some Nietzschean notions, such as the Übermensch, the will to power, the decadence, the reversal of values, the eternal return. With these things, green dogs did anything. That’s why the great reich that was to last a thousand years became a tiny reich that did not last ten years.
But the nihilism that animated these mangy dogs, Nietzsche had seen coming, rise in power, settling insidiously in all layers of society. He needed his visionary talent to anticipate it. Among the excesses of the Stürm und Drang, the German aufklärung and romanticism, among the decaying world of a finite world, with ideologies out of breath, Nietzsche was needed to isolate the dominant: the irresistible rise of nihilism.
“Great things require us to be quiet or talk about it with grandeur: with greatness, that is, with cynicism and innocence.” (source)Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will To Power Match such extremes, trait of genius. Cynicism and innocence. Such is the warrior, this is the whistleblower. He denounces an abuse, he announces another world order, which begins with each of our actions, here, now. His innocence justifies his cynicism.
When Nietzsche evokes the superman of the future, he does not divinize it. On the subject of God, Nietzsche is very clear: “God” is a far too extreme hypothesis.” (source)Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will To Power He has already brought to light the whole range of illusions that we have been forced into the skull from birth. Nietzsche doesn’t take that crap. He invites us to do the same, evoking “the existence as it is, meaningless and without purpose, but always coming back inevitably, without a denouement in nothingness: “the Eternal Return”. This is the extreme form of nihilism: eternal nothingness!” (source)Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will To Power
Other philosophies have taken over, all lacking sap. None of them followed the path laid out by the mad prophet. Existentialism even flirted with nihilism that Nietzsche rightly conquered. The punks have launched their terrible No Future slogan. They waded into nothingness with a broad smile hanging on their faces with safety pins.
However, I make an exception for nagualism, a philosophy of action advocated by Carlos Castaneda, to which I subscribe without reservation. It is not exactly recognized as a philosophy by a bunch of crippled and chilly academics whom Nietzsche would have boo. None of my readers care about their opinion. Me neither. Nagualism deals with energy, intention, unknown powers. I see there the natural daughter of the will to power dear to Nietzsche.
The will to power causes drunkenness. We were taught to stay small. To live small, to think small, to dream small. How could we imagine that we are powerful beyond any limit?
“I have the happiness, after thousands of years spent in aberration and confusion, to have found the path that leads to a yes and a no. I teach to say no to everything that makes you weak – everything that runs out. I teach to say yes in the face of everything that strengthens, that accumulates strength, that justifies the feeling of vigor. Until now, neither has been taught: virtue, unselfishness, pity, or even the negation of life have been taught. All these are the values of the exhausted.
A long reflection on the physiology of exhaustion forced me to ask the question: how far have the judgments of the exhausted penetrated into the world of values? The result to which I arrived was as surprising as possible, even for me, who already felt familiar in many strange worlds: I found that one could bring back all the higher judgments, all those who became masters of the “humanity”, of at least domesticated humanity, to the judgments of the exhausted.” (source)Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will To Power
The will to power is a magnificent plea for energy, for positive thought, for the worship of effort and will. What is missing most in our time. We are devoured by a unique, idiotic and suicidal ambition, to acquire more and more. To possess always more. What idiocy! What we have will not live forever. The matter will pass. Treasures are nothing. Why own gold and diamonds? We do not even own ourselves.
We are the elusive property of those who wanted us. They made us in their image so that we could work for them, enjoy with them, laugh with them. Then they left. When they come back – because they will come back – will we always have the same desire to laugh? When they take our daughters and our wives, they will not let us enjoy them anymore. When they put chains on us, we’ll have to work for them.
The exhausted who lead us will never lead only the exhausted. To regain strength, it takes courage. The courage to leave the domestication, the determination to leave the herds of domesticity, the thirst to find in us wild nature, irresistible, beautiful. The free man, without prejudice, without thought, without remorse. Taste this absolute only a few moments before you die.