The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. ... But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche believed that tribe or herd morality, limited human beings, by promoting people to be modest, submissive & conforming. Samuel Johnson said ‘So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other’ (Boswell, Life of Johnson). Nietzsche condemned pity, & opposed pity as having any part in the basis of morality, because pity preserved the weak & prevented people from becoming stronger through suffering. He said that pity demeans both the person who is shown pity & the person who shows it. The pitied person is shown to lack power, & their self-respect will be undermined, so pity brings them more suffering. Nietzsche attacked religion, while still having enormous regard for it - he had no respect for people who rejected religion thoughtlessly. Consistently, Nietzsche criticized a faith in science as the ultimate source of knowledge, saying that science does not genuinely explain the world, but only describes it. Nietzsche argued that we must treat the evidence of our senses cautiously, as all our experience is filtered with our values. Nietzsche said that morality is herd instinct in the individual. Survival herd instinct. Irony: Evolutionary wise, success is a matter of reproduction, but it is the herd, with their herd morality, right or wrong, who manage to reproduce the most successfully, with lower mortality rates. Why should we reject herd morality, or the tyranny of the majority? The weakest link or the weak’ form of life with the higher mortality rates, live on the outer of the herd, at a mere point in time.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 08:59:49 +0000
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