Perspective
Abookamongstthemany
Posts: 8,209
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
This a great quote that always makes me think of the struggles we all face. What really matters is how we choose and carry out our actions. Because good guy, bad guy...it all depends on perspective. Everyone thinks the actions they have chose are 'just' or 'necessary' despite objections, resistance or inner conscience. This opens up a whole world of excuses for things that have no justification...where acts against humanity can easily be rationalized away. So was there ever really a monster? Do we allow ourselves to become one? Thoughts?
This a great quote that always makes me think of the struggles we all face. What really matters is how we choose and carry out our actions. Because good guy, bad guy...it all depends on perspective. Everyone thinks the actions they have chose are 'just' or 'necessary' despite objections, resistance or inner conscience. This opens up a whole world of excuses for things that have no justification...where acts against humanity can easily be rationalized away. So was there ever really a monster? Do we allow ourselves to become one? Thoughts?
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
I see where you're coming from.
I'm guessing someone may come along and ask for a definition of "monster". What is the human monster?
I think monsters are something from our childhood. Sometimes imagined, sometimes real. Well-adjusted, healthy-minded people, young and old have the capacity to look not only around, but above the turmoil and tragedy that is faced. In any time or circumstance.
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
Was it the booze?
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
I'm a little bit in disagreement with myself. Mainly for the fact that I haven't read the book, so the quote may be entirely out of context with what the writer had in mind.
And, I'm only guessing what Abook had in mind. This place, this forum, and how we're dealing with the day-to-day here.
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
I guess so.
Rawr.
Snarl.
I guess Nietzsche was right all along.
Rowr!
I think I remember reading something about a morphine addiction. I don't know what did him in. I know the story of the horse he saw being beaten...
Whatever the case, the man was a thinker-communicator extraordinaire.
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche
Philosophers and popular culture have responded to Nietzsche's work in complex and sometimes controversial ways. Many Germans eventually discovered his appeals for greater individualism and personality development in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, but responded to those appeals divergently. He had some following among left-wing Germans in the 1890s; in 1894–95, German conservatives wanted to ban his work as subversive. By the First World War, however, he had acquired a reputation as a source of right-wing German militarism. The Dreyfus Affair provides another example of his reception: the French anti-semitic Right labelled the Jewish and Leftist intellectuals who defended Alfred Dreyfus as "Nietzscheans". The Nazis made use of Nietzsche's philosophy, but did so selectively. After the Second World War Nietzsche's reputation suffered due to this association with National Socialism. Nevertheless, Nietzschean ideas exercised a major influence on several prominent European philosophers, including Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Bears are bears. Terror (in this case being attacked by a bear) isn't a pre-equisite of monsterdom. Or is it, Alex?
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
Wouldn't be the first time I've completely mistook a quote. But I still like to spark discussion even if my premise of the quote was way off. I haven't read Beyond Good and Evil yet only Thus Spoke Zarathustra. But even if the quote meant something totally different to him, it's still a topic worth discussing, to me.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Nice reply.
What would your definition of a monster be?
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Didn't I just give it?
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/tls.htm
It's where you start, with Nietzsche.
I thought you described more the mindset that creates a monster.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Anyone can "create" a monster. You'll need the listeners willing to believe, of course.
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
i think you can take a quote out of context in order to discuss it without attributing your interpretations back to the author.....:)
Nietzsche would say, that's the only way to read.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Absolutely.
I hope I didn't imply otherwise.
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
The motherlode.
In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of "world history"—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world. There is nothing in nature so despicable or insignificant that it cannot immediately be blown up like a bag by a slight breath of this power of knowledge; and just as every porter wants an admirer, the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees on the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts.
Thanks Richard.
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.