Beyond “Beyond Good and Evil”

Friedrich Nietzsche would have been an avid Twitter user. He was an accomplished user of the aphorism. I wish I had his ability to succinctly communicate a meaning as complex and revolutionary as his mind created in so few words as he did.

An aphorism is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. One of his most famous was “(Out of life's school of war) - what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger.” This is from his book “Twilight of Idols” which is where I found it over 50 years ago. I actually remember the profundity that hit me laying on the floor of my “Hippie Pad” in Tempe, Arizona. I quit college shortly after and began my quest for self knowledge.

He was not well read while alive which I think disturbed him. But, I think the forces that usurped his turn of phrase Übermensch after he died in 1900 would have disturbed him far more. Nietsche’s Übermensch was a theological and intellectual concept intrinsically in opposition to the biological magnification of the “Superiority” of the aryan race . For the Übermensch there is no higher law, no higher authority, than himself. And himself alone.

But, the individual is doomed to fail because of his lack of understanding of Time. The individual is aware of himself currently but has no control of his own future because of the fluidity of Time. He can attempt an understanding of his history which I personally think helps but today and tomorrow are beyond the scope of his existence. And no level of Group Think can fix it. Hence, the very human need for religion, philosophy, physics and other methods of reassurance of the importance of each one of us are useless…. interesting but nothing approaching universal Truth.

Nice “stash”