(Correa, Jacob): Sam McCarty's Discussion (Decon. Diff & Nietzsche)- Relation

Within our April 24th class session, Sam McCarty led discussion relating her EDUC: Deconstructing Differences classes and Nietzsche. Specifically, Sam delves into Michael Foucault and his deconstruction of the power dynamics for sexuality by relating it back to Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. The class discussed some norms that we live in that often tend to limit our life by putting ourselves in a "box." Another student related the idea of work to these harmful social norms. 

The idea of work, in my opinion, is absolutely absurd. FUCK WORK. Literally, please read this article, "Fuck Work." 

Discuss this potential question: 

-The very first few lines of the Fuck Work article states that “Work means everything to us

Americans. For centuries – since, say, 1650 – we’ve believed that it builds character”

(Livingston). Work is associated with the character and our level of virtue. How would

Nietzsche respond to our society stating that work defines who we are (character/virtue)?

Nietzsche, Kafka, and Marina Abramovic

I first brought up Marina Abramovic a while back in class, and I plan to discuss her work again during my class discussion. I first learned about her and her performing art pieces during my junior year of high school, and her pieces still haunt me. Because many of her pieces are linked to the individual, society, and connections between people, I think that she's very relevant to both Nietzsche's and Kafka's works.

In particular, her Rhythm series (Rhythm 10 in 1973, Rhythm 5 in 1974, Rhythm 2 in 1974, Rhythm 4 in 1974, and Rhythm 0 in 1974) is evocative for me.

Through these performances, which I recommend looking up because they really are strange and fascinating and scary, she not only explores her physical limits but also how far an audience is willing to go during a performance, especially if they don't expect any consequences for their actions. Abramovic's performances span the spectrum from Rhythm 0—where she said that she was an object that anyone could do anything to do for six hours—to The Artist is Present—where anyone could sit across from her for a minute and look in her eyes in silence. These two performances show a sharp contrast of what people will do and what they desire. Abramovic explored the violence and danger of group think and objectification in Rhythm 0, but she showed the public's thirst for connection and being seen in The Artist is Present.

Known as the "grandmother of performance art," I think that Nietzsche and Kafka would have been fascinated by her pieces, especially Kafka. Her career began in the 1970s, and, like Nietzsche and Kafka, I think that many of her pieces have come before their times; her over 40 year career ushers in a new phase of performance art. Her pieces explore the limits and endurance of her body, comment on the individual and society, and explore the relationship between the audience and the artist. Many of her pieces also involve different senses.

I look forward to discussing what we all think about performance art and Marina Abramovic, especially related to "A Hunger Artist" and Nietzsche and Kafka's writings.

The Trial - Opera by Philip Glass

Here's a little video of an opera adaptation of The Trial. I saw it a couple years ago, when I new little about Kafka and even less about this story. Looking back, everything about the production captures the Kafaesque so well. This video shows an opera company doing a very similar production to the one I saw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVEAi0lUI98

Also, here's the whole first act (audio only) because why not. The music is really great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fmakaK9o_M

Princess Snowbird Vs. Nietzsche

Hello, and welcome to Maggie's weekly thought spiral. Today's match is between the brave and beautiful Princess Snowbird and the one and only, lonely Nietzsche.

Years ago, in that strange and mysterious time known as high school, a younger Maggie read a series about aliens. To give the author her due, the first novel is called Obsidian and is by Jennifer Armentrout. The series was one of of my favorites, so don't judge the cringy cover and description if you actually look it up. It actually gets into some pretty interesting topics about humanity and if it's worth saving. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I also emailed Armentrout to ask her about writing advice (and to fan girl) at one point and she wrote me a kind email in return, so she holds a special place in my heart. Anywayyy, back to my point.

Near the beginning of the series, the narrator is told of a legend about a woman named Princess Snowbird. When I remembered her story, I looked her up, so a lot of the following info is what I found. (I've attached the link to the blog I read below.) Princess Snowbird wintered in the Seneca Caverns in West Virginia and was the daughter of Chief Bald Eagle and his wife, White Rock. Not only was she the only child of the chief, she was a woman of both great beauty and great courage. Often, she would climb the Seneca Rocks, "900 feet of vertical stone," and she was the only person able to do so with just her hands (Mountainword blog). When it eventually came time for her to choose a husband — ughhh, why couldn't she lead by herself??? *sigh* — she decided to test the men who wanted her hand. After all, she wanted a man equal to herself to lead! She declared that she would marry the man who successfully climbed the Seneca Rocks with her. Out of seven suitors who began the climb with her, eventually one was left. However, with only a few feet until he reached the summit, Princess Snowbird looked back to see the man slipping. She felt conflicted. Should she save the man? Should she marry him even though he wouldn't have made it on his own? Thankfully, she decided to save and marry the brave man. After all, his bravery had led him thus far, and strengths come in all shapes and forms. Not long after, the chief married the happy couple, and Princess Snowbird had someone to co-lead with her.

On page 417 of Basic Writings of Nietzsche, as part of "What is Noble" from Beyond Good and Evil, in aphorism 286, Nietzsche proposes:
""Here the vision is free, the spirit exalted."
But there is an opposite type of man that is also on a height and also has free vision—but looks down."

This short aphorism brought me all the way back to Princess Snowbird and her internal conflict. Thankfully, she decided that to be her equal did not mean that the man needed to reach the peak by himself. His bravery and determination were enough for her, and what would it say about her if she just let him fall? Snowbird found a happy medium. In thinking about Nietzsche, it seems like he is never content with a "happy medium." I don't think he would be one to compromise either... Why can't a person look up and down? Why can't they be aware of the freedom of a good view but also be aware of the dangerous drop below? I think either end of the spectrum has its drawbacks. One should always be aware of context, of different perspectives. I might be too harsh on Nietzsche here, but I think that he would have benefitted from letting himself have companions who did not think exactly the same way that he did. He might have had more friends if he, like Princess Snowbird, had recognized people's different strengths.

Blog post about Princess Snowbird: http://wordsfromthemountains.blogspot.com/2009/05/legend-of-princess-snowbird.html

Nietzsche - The Composer

So I remember hearing in passing that Nietzsche dabbled in music composition at one point in his life. A quick Google search brought me here:

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/friedrich-nietzsche-composer/

This article was enough to pique my interest further, so I followed the author's advice and found some of his music on Spotify. The fact that Nietzsche has his own Spotify profile is quite surreal, it felt like as if somebody were putting Pythagoras's music on Soundcloud. A strange combination of new and old.

Anyway, I gave the top five most listened-to tracks a listen. I liked them! They're pretty accessible and average about 5 minutes apiece, so I'd encourage anyone to try them out. The "Einleitung" pieces are my favorite, I'd say. They evokes a lot of emotions in me for how brief they are.

I would love to dive into these pieces and analyze them. There is definitely an amateurish quality to the music, and I want to find out what exactly that is. Are they so unworthy that I would roll around on the floor laughing at them with Wagner? Maybe, Wagner's opinion on composing is a lot more informed than mine.

However, now that I know how toxic their relationship was, I'm tempted to think that Wagner cared more about keeping Nietzsche down than seriously evaluating his compositions. I'm interested in finding what other people's opinions on his music were.

Seeing as how this is the perfect synthesis of music and philosophy, a big alarm is going off in my head: HOSCHO THESIS ALERT.

THE INCREDIBLES and Nietzsche

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra asks the people, "Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue? Where is the frenzy with which you should be inoculated?" Then he proposes, "Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this lightning, he is this frenzy" (126). While I wasn't quite sure how to react to Nietzsche's bold statement, I knew it reminded me of something.

At the very end of The Incredibles, the family is faced with a new threat: the Underminer. When he first appears, he declares, "Behold, the underminer! I am always beneath you, but nothing is beneath me!" I think it was the "behold" that made me draw the parallel, but once I found the scene on Youtube I couldn't help but also notice the relation between "overman" and "underminer." The words are almost exact opposites!

Now, I know that I'm noticing what is most likely an accidental similarity, but I also can't let it go. After all, there are always "adult" references in kids movies. I can't help but wonder if the writers decided to make a clever reference. The overman is supposed to bring new meaning to life and be better than everyone else, right? Well, the underminer remarks that he's beneath you but nothing is beneath him. In a way, then, he's the exact opposite of the overman. Who knows? Maybe I'm reading too much into everything.

I'm still having an iffy time of understanding the overman, but I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation about the concept. I find the whole idea of rebelling against group think and common ideas interesting. Of course, it's good to form your own opinions and a necessity to rebel against group think. However, in rebelling against group think, what if people then have another common idea but fall into the trap of group think by thinking that it's different? We have to be careful to not fall into group rebellions just to rebel. To go back to the underminer one more time, he spends his time underground, which is a common term for where rebellions begin... I feel like my thoughts are spiraling now so I'm going to stop here. Anywaysss, I look forward to reading more!

Here's the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkhwlcVAClk

Rabi'ah al-Adawiyya and The Madman

The other day in class I mentioned a parable in the Bible about a woman who wants to burn down the gates of heaven and hell so that people will do the right thing because they want to, not because they’re told to. I spent some time trying to find this parable, but strangely, it eluded me. Eventually I found it, but not in the Bible: instead, in John Green’s Looking for Alaska.

Needless to say, I’m thoroughly embarrassed. This is one of those times when you think you remember hearing something somewhere but it’s not from an actual credible source, just something you read in a Buzzfeed article, but you tell all your friends anyway because you don’t know the difference.

Here’s the passage from the novel:

But Dr. Hyde was telling a different story, one that I’d skipped. “Karl Marx famously called religion ‘the opiate of the masses.’ Buddhism, particularly as it is popularly practiced, promises improvement through karma. Islam and Christiaity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there’s a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, ‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.’” (Green 174)

I actually was able to find evidence of this story somewhere else, and to me it’s still eerily similar to the tale of the Madman, though if it comes from a Sufi story, there’s much less of a chance of Nietzsche having heard of it than if it had come from the Bible.

Here’s a section from a biography on Rabi'ah al-Adawiyya, the woman saint:

She taught that repentance was a gift from God because no one could repent unless God had already accepted him and given him this gift of repentance. She taught that sinners must fear the punishment they deserved for their sins, but she also offered such sinners far more hope of Paradise than most other ascetics did. For herself, she held to a higher ideal, worshipping God neither from fear of Hell nor from hope of Paradise, for she saw such self-interest as unworthy of God's servants; emotions like fear and hope were like veils -- i.e., hindrances to the vision of God Himself. The story is told that once a number of Sufis saw her hurrying on her way with water in one hand and a burning torch in the other. When they asked her to explain, she said: "I am going to light a fire in Paradise and to pour water on to Hell, so that both veils may vanish altogether from before the pilgrims and their purpose may be sure..." (187-188). (Rabia Stories)

From http://www.rabianarker.com/html/rabia_stories.html.

Eternal Return and Russian Doll

So, yeah, I'm completely hooked on this show.  Thought I'd share this article (though there appear to be some spoilers):

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/russian-doll-netflix-tv-to-watch_us_5c58b876e4b087104756c03a

My question:  Is this a concentrated version of the eternal return?  What does it mean to make the death day the day that eternally recurs?

Nietzsche and Dostoevsky

So, we're reading Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground in my course on the literature of existentialism right now.  Nietzsche was fascinated with Dostoevsky, particularly his psychological insights (which are... well... so realistic it's terrifying).  I keep thinking about the intersections of this book and Dawn, which begins with this passage:

In this book you will discover a 'subterranean man' at work, one who tunnels and mines and undermines. You will see him  presupposing you have eyes capable of seeing this work in the depths  going forward slowly, cautiously, gently inexorable, without betraying very much of the distress which any protracted deprivation of light and air must entail; you might even call him contented, working there in the dark. Does it not seem as though some faith were leading him on, some consolation offering him compensation? As though he perhaps desires this prolonged obscurity, desires to be incomprehensible, concealed, enigmatic, because he knows what he will thereby also acquire: his own morning, his own redemption, his own daybreak? . . . He will return, that is certain: do not ask him what he is looking for down there, he will tell you himself of his own accord, this seeming Trophonius1 and subterranean, as soon as he has 'become a man' again. Being silent is something one completely unlearns if, like him, one has been for so long a solitary mole.

In Notes from Underground, the main character is so completely disheartened with society that he takes himself out of the game, as it were.  Not suicide, just social suicide (which he describes in excruciating detail... ugh it's so painful... it makes Nietzsche's relationship with Wagner seem almost healthy).  This reminds me very much of our conversation in class yesterday... is it inevitable, when a person sees the world the way Dostoevsky or Nietzsche does, with a kind of magnified clarity of the games we play to make meaning, that that person is going to end up completely alienated, isolated, incapable of intimacy?  

I came across this article, which may or may not be interesting:
https://www.mentschmagazine.com/home/2018/2/3/dyvs08zmioeq77elhouc5zseecjvti

The whole notion of transhumanism, and how this might relate or not relate to the ubermensch is fascinating to me.  I tend to think that both Nietzsche and Dostoevsky would be really put off by this.  Not connecting my thoughts particularly well... just throwing these ideas out there!