Well like Nietzsche believed, to each his own. But Nietzsche's ideas go beyond the changing times and old men's complaints about it. I like your quote because it fits with Nietzsche's ideas that values, ethics, and morals are always changing with the times. Nietzsche's decadence doesn't refer to 'better' or 'worse' it refers to our perception of such things as manifested in our conceptions of better or worse. This isn't to be confused with the old, judging the changes in core values. The young, the yearning, the growing, see the stale state we are in now, which isn't about changes in morals or tastes, it's the abuse of the same morals and tastes we have come to respect. EDIT: That example I promised will come... might be a bit though, it's notable undertaking <.<;
That's quite a bit of straw-mans you got there. You honestly haven't given me a single thing I can scrutinize here. He didn't want to be an arbiter, he wanted rid of them. He was trying to to give us the potential to achieve our goals. The fact that he keeps getting referred to as a teenager tells me just how misunderstood he really was and still is. Besides, philosophy should never say too much, doing so is a good sign that it's riddled with logical error. He merely laid the framework down for us to figure out our own purely subjective societies. His ideas apply to all human societies through time, through and through. Well those were all assumptions about what you thought Nietzsche's ideas meant. I said absolutely nothing about how the aforementioned phenomenon relates to decadence. You said much more than I did on the subject: That is plenty of a hypothesis, even though it seem you made just a few statements about how our society is. Something that seems so straightforward and basic to you, is actually so much more than that. As it stands, your points don't seem to directly relate to decadence. But if we break your ideas down, we can start to see how it relates, and how Nietzsche's ideas can give us so much more insight on the issue. I don't know how much I'll get into this, because his ideas are connected back to back. This is what makes his ideas of decadence so hard to apply and prove. I'm sure you are well versed enough on the subject to make such a claim. I think it's ironic how your dismissing his ideas in your arrogant misunderstanding of his philosophies. I know you said this off the cuff, so don't take the following personally. Honestly it means you have a noble soul. You may not have realized it, but you have exemplified the murky lens that is dreadfully attributed to the Apollonian. I dare say the reason you didn't notice your own claims is because you yourself were unaware of the logical leaps you were making.(The Dionysian seeping unfiltered through your blinding Apollonian views) You were unaware because you view technology as a fundamental game changer and have applied whatever ideas you have about this to your societal ideals.(valuing the Apollonian first, without proper analysis, which includes accepting and fighting it with your Dionysian counterpart, more on this later.) This has created some logical errors in your societal views, but your lens isn't so bad that you got it all wrong. There is more depth to this problem then what you have portrayed, let us begin with the insight you provided and as I get into this, you will begin to see how fundamental Nietzsche's ideas are. The idea: Technology and homogenizing music are related with easier access of 'catchy' tunes. Now if we take your statements in logical order, your first point to this conclusion was that people create catchy tunes with the path of least resistance. This implies that humans are naturally lazy. If history has shown us anything, it is that this couldn't be further from the truth. If we take a large population sample size from the past, we can see that humans worked really, really hard. Sometimes and unfortunately to their death. The point is everyone has this potential in them. And when are they exhibiting such strength? Usually through immense suffering. So the question isn't- why are their so many lazy people? Nietzsche would say this is loaded question. The point can't be that people are lazy, because we are 'The will to power." (I'll come back to this later) So the next part of your point would be trying to define 'catchy' tunes. Since I'm not a music major this is somewhat difficult, but the basic idea is their are certain sounds that we like, so we listen to those songs. So we are indulging in the Dionysian's intoxicating pleasure of the sound. The Apollonian speaks through the lyrics, and it would be nice if it was in poetic and meaningful ways, but instead we get basic skin deep material, with less than something to say. Once again the Apollonian lens is so saturated that the Dionysian overwhelms unnoticed. We accept the Apollonian at face value, giving us bland and overused themes. It isn't satisfactory by itself so they have to provide enough Dionysian pleasure to give the piece enough energy for our entertainment. The only thing stopping us from noticing is the Dionysian pleasure it provides. The ideals we are holding don't calculate a balance between them. When we do this we are robbing the Apollonian of it's growth, and this isn't what we want. As has been stated by many here, and in other threads. This is because again, we are the will to power. So why does it happen?(I'll come back to this later) So now that we have covered the first point, the second point is that Technology is giving everyone a large sample size of music, thus amplifying the homogenizing effect. Seems logical enough. Except I can say that there is so much music, a single person can't possible listen to it all, so giving any individual more than that shouldn't have any effect on this phenomenon. And there is still so much more music that is yet to be, that can still be original and inspiring. So by itself, technology doesn't seem to explain how it is amplifying this homogenizing effect. We have to once again look at our society an answer, and then, only then does technology come back into play. If we take a look at what is missing from our standards using Nietzsche's teachings we see that we are unsatisfied with our skin deep Apollonian values. They don't contain enough substance to keep us going, to keep us growing. We supplement is with Dionysian pleasures. The key to this puzzle is suffering, the triumph of nihilism. The reason it rarely get's any deeper is because we are denying something so fundamental to our growth. The pain that gives us strength, to rise to the challenge, to no longer be weak willed. So technology most likely allows the disease of decadence to become more serious. Because it becomes a crutch to stabilize the Apollonian lens. Trapping us in a un-satsifiable metabolic state. We must continually apply both sides against each other to make something we can honestly consider valuable, to be satisfied. Doing so is accepting the suffering of life and rising to its challenge. This doesn't apply to all music, recent or not. It just applies to most music. And as the trend continues we have to continually find more ways to fight against decadence as it applies to our society. And it is a process which has been happening for hundreds of years, so it is ingrained very well into us, making it difficult to break the cycle. I could continue to extrapolate until I've covered every inch of our culture, but I've covered the key points and made some examples on the way. I found this gem today, it literally covers every point I have made in this thread. If you are even slightly curious about these ideas I would highly suggest a watch. 3:10 if you want to skip credential introductions.
Is this really the truth? He also seemed to think that mankind was doomed to some great crisis if they didn't pay attention to his ideas. 'I know my fate, one day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous, a crisis without equal on earth; the most profound collision of consciousness conjured against everything that has been believed so far. I am no man - I am dynamite'. But he did not believe in free will. It is almost like it doesn't matter anyway, because all we have to do is wait for the universe to be reborn and all the talk on Nietzsche's ideas can start again - there is an essential contradiction here, is there not?
It is present in all people, not just the old. It is human nature to be resistant to change, there is a preference to retain that is familiar. On some occasions it is a good thing, not all change is for the better.
damn theres certainly some small essays on this. My question is what exactly is art? and what qualifies for art? what i can gather the answer to said question is, is that art itself is subjective (as someone who studied graphic design and love photography) and each person has a different view on it. one person may say that art is degrading, when others say, wait hang on, it isnt! i'm not going to go much further - otherwise i will go into sociology class mode and then use all these ridiculous terms (Proletarianisation & Embourgeoisiment spring to mind) that really have no use within this thread (or forum for that matter)
I don't mean to be rude but we're done. That is a wall of text I am not even interested in reading. You repeatedly resort to ad hominem suppositions and then try to beat any other view point into submission with unnecessarily lengthy and meandering responses. You have already attributed several arguments to me I have never said, no doubt you do so here. I am just bored reading about it so I won't know.
@Chinspinner, such a thing isn't exactly not in line with Nietzschian thought. Blocking out the opposition with force. Nietzsche himself thought the best form of power was military strength. Nietzsche's 'Will to Power' in all the many different versions and descriptions you can give it, never loses something of what might be called a 'drive to dominance'. Also, @Megalith, a question: how can a guy who had such distrust of democracy and the common rabble really talk for the fundamentals of all societies everywhere? Part of the reason he had such a strong dislike for Socrates was because Socrates introduced dialogue and argument to power relations. It was more right the strong do what they must to impose their own view on things than to have the common people doing something silly like have conversations, they are so easily lead down the wrong paths because they are not Napoleon or Caesars - the great people of history. Don't believe me, check out the first part of Twilight of the Idols. Face it, Megalith, a lot of Nietzsche is sheer pretense - you really need to be more selective and critical with the guy.
Wow you guys are really turning me off from philosophy. I thought philosophy had to be either rooted in some combination of historical, psychological, scientific, or logical context. Every theory I have seen posted here thus far just sounds like some random idea. Castiglione said men have lamented the young for ages. OK,that doesn't mean nothing ever changes. Take the dark ages, the enlightenment, Renaissance, etc. Saying something in a fancy way doesn't make it true. Basically everything Nietschze said could be inferred from an evolution text book.
Well, to give him some more context, he was a philology lecturer - considered an impossibly brilliant one too. The height of his career in philology was his first book, The Birth of Tragedy: Out of the Spirit of Music, which frankly is a pretty decent book of Classical criticism when it's not sucking the **** of Richard Wagner. Philology was basically the study of classical languages, and he read the corpus of Ancient Greek literature by the time he was about 23. You can see where a lot of his ideas come from in this, mostly from Ancient Greek philosophy, especially the pre-Socratic philosophers. It's philosophy so old it's alien.
I'm sure he was very smart. But ideas need to be backed up, especially if they're so old they're alien. Otherwise, chaos. Dawkin's selfish gene to me is a good example of philosophy done intelligently. It's backed up with science and game theory. I'm not saying Nieszche didn't back up his ideas. I just don't feel they're backed up, as presented here, and so far no one has offered me any contradictions.
Oh, don't worry about that. Nietzsche is pure conjecture. He even had issues with Darwin's theory of Evolution, not because as they had it back in the day it was incomplete, but because it didn't account for the 'Will to Power'. His Master and Slave model of society seems utterly without base when you look at it, and he himself didn't have the ability or really the knowledge to even attempt to actually prove it. Even when his writing touches on psychology, he is only ever using either himself or Richard Wagner to base his understanding of psychology on. There is a lot of Freud to be found in Nietzsche if you look for it, actually. Wagner (as you might have guessed) was practically the only friend Nietzsche ever had.
In case anyone is interested, Rick Roderick was one of the best Nietzsche scholars until his death back in 2002. Here, he talks about Nietzsche as an artist:
Allow me to say one thing here: I am being rather hard on Nietzsche. I used to be quite the fan of him though, but over the years I've noticed he and I are growing further apart.
I'd say, if you're looking to philosophy for material evidence, you'll be disappointed in a lot of ways. Philosophy isn't science and science isn't the end all. Though, I'm sure the more modern the philosophy the more scientific it is.
No, no. It doesn't have to be science. "I think therefore I am," has sound reasoning behind it. And I don't think science is the end all.
v Yes he did. As long as you were satisfied, he had no qualms about how you lived your life. His idea of recurrence was really more of an artistic vision. He wasn't totally concerned with it's validity like was with his thoughts of ‘Will to power’ and ‘decadence.’ “What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence -- even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine"? If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you” This was the life meter test. If you would think it a blessing then you’ve lived a worthwhile life and Nietzsche would say nothing about devaluing such a life. He believes socrates was the beginning of the end. And his distrust in democracy is well placed. Even today it isn’t such a well devised tool that it actually speaks for the people. If politics accepted the Dionysian and Apollonian struggle, it could become a system that Nietzsche could praise. Nietzsche wasn’t so closed minded as you are making him out to be. He saw problems and he used his resentment and hatred to try and solve them. That probably was a little confusing for everyone else… I mean he himself was subject to bias, like we all are. Even with these ideas it is quite possible he couldn’t fully apply them himself. His understanding of culture, within the subjective sphere, was probably insufficient. But he looked outside of that sphere and defined the sphere itself. Today our connectedness gives us huge insights into our sphere that didn’t exist before. Not with he variety and knowledge we have today. But the fact that it is still applicable tells me he might still be onto something. If you discount his ideas on every thing he thought or said, it will take away from his progress.
Ok, I misinterpreted the Dawkins. My bad. I'm glad you don't think that science is the end all. A side note: A problem, depending on one's view, with any of it, is that it can all rather be unraveled.
There are only a limited number of notes on the scale. I hardly think because a lot of songs use the same chord progressions that makes them all mediocre songs. Blues and Country both use a limited number of chord progressions in a specific pattern. Song stanzas with a chorus is a repeating pattern. I'm not feeling the disdain.
People often say the Eternal Recurrence was nothing more than a thought experiment, but it's simply not true. He thought the idea was horrifying, and called it das schwerste Gewicht - the heaviest test of a person's life. If a life wasn't worth returning to eventually, it wasn't worth the trouble - hence his dislike of the common people. Nietzsche wasn't very interesting as a political philosopher, but I don't think he never intended the Dionysian/Apollonian contrast to be used in politics. I mean, what does his assertion that Democracy is a result of Christian morality really mean? What he respected more would be a Plutocracy I guess, or an Oligarchy more exactly - a society with the brightest and strongest at the top. He was an elitist, pure and simple. So yeah - it seems he was pretty closed minded. Well, I'm not sure if I'd say he's totally useless to read. No philosopher is total rubbish who has earned their name in the annuls of history. But as I'm sure I've already said, I wouldn't exactly go to him for great philosophic insights because really - what is there that Continental Philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre have not improved on?
Neither am I. We all know that many catchy tunes tend to use the same chord progressions. That is not disdain, that is just apparent from listening to the charts. It is what makes those tunes catchy after all. I own some of the songs they sing here as well.
Well music was the example we went through but I honestly think it is one of the more innocent offenses, despite what Nietzsche thought. And I think it says something greater about the state of our society than the destruction of music as a media. Nietzsche’s idea can easily be applied to just about any genre, in music or otherwise. And in fact the creation of so many genre’s might be the Dionysian struggling with itself in place of the Apollonian who has becomes a bystander in the process. It sounds random but it is based in logic just as much as ‘I think therefore I .’ Nietzsche uses a combination of historical, psychological, scientific, and logical context to come to these conclusions. And it’s amazing he figured this much with the knowledge and resources he had. If you want to understand every detail you are looking for, you will need to read or listen to the ‘Will to Power.’ If you want the long & short of it in an hour, that video at the end of my example post will do much better than I could in this thread. But if anything of what I said got through then that video will surely give you some answers, and how this relates to your perception of our decadence.
Now there are other theories which don’t require to imagine such a scenario. Our understanding of quantum mechanics has dispelled much of what Nietzsche spoke of here. what is funny the same concepts of QM give credence to his idea that reality is merely force on force and nothing more. I think this is a great example of how the struggle between Dionysian and Apollonian can manifest itself in everything. This is proof that even with the best struggle he could muster he couldn’t rise above the Apollonian lens. To his defense such ideas where still archaic and underdeveloped. But it’s this type of struggle that allows development and that is part of the point he is trying to make. Strength is progress. Not in his early life but by the end he realized his naïveté and even wondered whether humanity could rise through their weakness and find strength again, on the path it finds itself on. He may have been an Elitist for a lot of of his life, but that isn’t how it ended. And his ideas don’t require to adopt his younger elitist concepts. By the end he realized how fundamental his ideas were and expounded them to fit into every faculty of our culture, including politics. Unfortunately he never got to print these new ideas. His sister got a hold of his notes and changed them to fit the Nazi Regimen. The original was lost to time, and we have been reworking his most evolved ideas from the Nazi sophism that was integrated into his ideas. Even when reading the revised version that tried to remove that Nazi flavor, you can still find it blatantly speckled within. This gave the impression that he was not as open minded as he seemed. Maybe, I’m unfortunately not as well versed with him. I will probably at some point. and who knows what that will do, but still I see the mediocrity, and the examples of things breaking from that, and the process there involved. Nietzsche resonated with plenty of strength to give me insight into this perceived strength, through the ‘breaking of the mold’ and how it was done. To this extent his ideas are plenty useful to anyone who is trying to do this. To separate from the Dionysian mass and become individual again. The original problem was that society was too coalesced and the individual was rare because standing for something required something to attach value. Now the Apollonian is having the same effect. As people adopt basic and un-evolved Apollonian ideals they believe they are standing for something but actually become coalesced again, losing individuality. It’s a balance we need to find to keep our growth steady, strong and satisfactory.
