[yonoataraxia]

I think it's ok. When they would instantly understand Nietzsche, it's very likely they already had major depressive episodes in their lives.

Otherwise it's difficult to question everything you thought you knew about anything. Normally it's not a pleasant experience. That is the reason that so-called enlightenment happens only to those who had big inner struggles after many years of reflection.

In a Freudian way their unconscious side protects them from threats attacking their mental health. Knowing what's right and wrong is necessary to do anything with reason. If you accept the fact that there is no right and wrong, you can definitely lose some motivation which is detrimental to the incentive system that our consciousness gets trained with.

It's therefore rational for most people to reject those ideas (although they don't necessarily can reflect on this level). I wouldn't call it "intellectually handicapped", I would say their mental processes protect them very well from thoughts that could lead to a loss of their values and belief system. Otherwise it sounds so negative although it's a rational thing to do for the consciousness. Normally your incentive system is not "I want to know the whole damn truth", it's "I want a happy and fulfilled life, want to feel good about myself and achieve something". Cognitive biases help us to achieve those goals. It just seems irrational from external point of views because of missing profundity in the analysis of the psyche of the other person. They're perfectly logical w.r.t. the incentive system.

[rwill128]

I really appreciate the way you've articulated your thoughts on this. It helped me reflect once again on the way Nietzsche affected me when I first read him.

I was about 20 years old, and had lost several important friends while also briefly dropping out of college. Saw Nietzsche on a bookshelf while making an effort to continue my education independently as I saved money. I was young enough to earnestly jump into pursuing "the whole damn truth," and my mental health be damned. Cue years of unrelenting depressiveness, self-absorption, solipsism, fragile and tragic romantic relationships, etc.

I completely agree, and I think a lot of people who don't "get" Nietzsche are actually reacting to his ideas perfectly rationally with respect to their (not necessarily anti-intellectual) values in life. I for one would have been much more fortunate to have studied him in an academic setting, with a group of peers. I recall reading once that Nietzsche's ideas are valuable insofar as one finds a resistance to them.

[yonoataraxia]

It's funny. I had a nihilistic mindset and found Nietzsche afterwards. I guess we're similar. Therefore I didn't had the chance to have any resistance to his ideas.

Recently I've dropped out of college, I was lonely in school and even nowadays, had several relationships that didn't last long and were painful. I've endured the pain of existence until I was able to comprehend it. I still feel this suffering every time I choose to feel.

I'm 20 years old now. I know how to help myself, but maybe there are things you want to say to your younger self. Maybe I can invite you to see this as a chance.

[sethrin]

I never got much into Nietzsche, but well, between being trans, and having seasonal depression, and having been stuck in rural Alaska for twenty years, we can say that I've seen some depressive episodes.

It does get better.

One thing that helped was leaving the negative environment. Also, some of my angst sprang from the disempowerment of youth; having more power ($$, or in Spanish, effectivo) to control the world around you makes most life problems easier to deal with. Philosophically, I became something of a Stoic: this may be the worst of all possible worlds, but there's not really much value in being depressed about it. You are not in control of the world, but you are in control of your reaction to it, and as long as the world is absurd one may as well laugh. However, the ultimate key to my depression was simply self-acceptance. Try to make peace with your demons; they're just another aspect of you.

I doubt if your life and mine have many true parallels, but that was my path out of darkness. I hope that you may find peace, and the warmth of good feeling.

[yonoataraxia]

> I became something of a Stoic

I can relate.

> However, the ultimate key to my depression was simply self-acceptance.

This is so important. Learning to love oneself is such a difficult task but so rewarding in the end.

Thanks for sharing your story, it was very inspiring.

> I hope that you may find peace, and the warmth of good feeling.

I'll try to remember to allow myself to find peace in hard times. I hope that you can feel the love and warmth in your life.

Your story gives hope. I feel blessed that you told us your philosophical journey. Have a great day!

[StevenRayOrr]

The struggle here, not that this contradicts anything you've said, is how easily this turns into a fetishization of unhappiness or suffering: Lincoln's depression as a cost for his genius (or Beethoven's, as the article talks about). It is a sort of bastardization of Faulkner's point about how "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies: "The Gettysburg Address" is worth any number of depressive episodes. Which maybe it is to us, but was it worth it to Lincoln?

If we believe that suffering is valuable for the excellence of humanity (not just for individual human beings), it seems to justify a political system that actively neglects the welfare of its citizens. To say nothing of the intellectual dishonesty of claims that suffering builds character when said from the vantage point of those who can choose not to suffer.

In the end, I actually think Nietzsche's political philosophy is wholly compatible with something resembling the modern welfare state: insofar as we can understand suffering to be valuable, it is only so when it is an active, human choice. Those forced into such a position may find themselves closer to "the whole damn truth", but only incidentally. And human experience is rooted in the choosing. The power of Martin Luther's oft-(mis)attributed "Here I stand, I can do no other" is not in its truth -- he obviously could have done otherwise, but he chose not to. Without the capacity to make those decisions for ourselves, to be allowed to decide that truth is worth the loss of happiness, achievement, fulfillment, we are never ourselves truly human. That some (many? most?) may decide the 'easier' path of herd morality doesn't change this: we are, by virtue of our humanity, able to elect not to be human. That so many do is a tragedy, yes, but an understandable one; and the possibility and fact of this tragedy gives meaning to the choice itself.

[yonoataraxia]

How much suffering are we able to endure before giving up? I think a lot, because most of us have the desire to live. So I agree that people in power positions should realize that they should give real choices to powerless people on their own. They have to realize that they are self-delusional when they say "Just work hard and you can become one of us".

I think most of them truly don't realize how self-delusional this phrase really is because their own experiences confirm their beliefs (they were able to work hard and achieve something). So I don't think that most of them are purposely intellectually dishonest but just lack awareness.

- - -

> Without the capacity to make those decisions for ourselves, to be allowed to decide that truth is worth the loss of happiness, achievement, fulfillment, we are never ourselves truly human.

I like the small discussion about being human, although I can't agree with the position that we're "truly human" because of our ability to choose. This is a philosophical and subjective question, but basically I think that humans can have inherent value (based on ones belief system) even if we would find all the mechanisms in their decision making process and can predict what they do. I think that humans can be "truly human" even if we find out that free will is an illusion. I believe this, because "being human" is a definition made by humans and it wouldn't be very helpful to see ourselves as worthless just because we don't have real choices (using the assumption that free will is an illusion here - this doesn't mean that I necessarily think it is). It can be that people see humans as worthless, but they don't need the "ability to make choices" as an excuse for their misanthropy, beliefs or nihilism. There are many ways to achieve that.

Therefore it's likely that you'll change your definition of being human (and their inherent value) as soon as research shows us that free will and choices are mostly illusions because our thoughts are based on deterministic processes.

[StevenRayOrr]

> So I don't think that most of them are purposely intellectually dishonest but just lack awareness.

Some days I feel this charitable. Others not. Usually I suspect they're too intelligent for a lack of awareness to be a good enough excuse: there comes a point where ignorance becomes willful. Then again, this is precisely the problem we're talking about here: when our cognitive biases are so comfortable that our brains erect strong defenses to keep intruders out.

---

I probably should have avoided being categorical with my comments on choice. While the capacity for such a choice appears to be unique to the human being, I am not entirely convinced it is, but that has more to do with intuitions about nonhuman minds rather than any sort of certainty. However I am incredibly cautious about the kind of research into free will that you're talking about, because, even if I doubt the inevitably of the endpoint you suggest, it remains an attempt to transform the human being into a calculation, into a process, and that reduces our affairs into mere administration. It's one of the (productive?) contradictions in my own thought that I am constantly pushing up against: my politics are such that I see the value in that kind of bureaucratic management, but my philosophy is such that I see it as dehumanizing. There is no natural equilibrium to be had here, so our duty is one of rebalancing, of maintaining the scales between the unique capacity for human choice and ensuring the conditions of life that are necessary for our biology.

[sbinthree]

Agreed with this. Based on the history of my family, and my temperament, there was no way I was going to be able to protect my mental health in favour of comfortable distortions. But 3/7 days a week I wish that I could.

[vibrato]

Yes, evolutionarily, systems of subjective belief and value are clearly beneficial to humans since they developed and persisted simultaneously basically everywhere