When I was a teenager, there was a guy from my old neighborhood who had developed an addiction to crack cocaine.\u00a0 Given that he didn\u2019t have much in the way of steady employment, to support his habit, he acquired another: he became hooked on thievery.<\/p>\n
Not before long, this junkie and thief was known by everyone for who and what he was, for there wasn\u2019t a single person among his family, friends, and acquaintances upon whom he didn\u2019t set his sights.\u00a0 He stole, or at least tried to steal, from everyone<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n One night, he tried to steal from me.<\/p>\n As was our way, a group of us\u2014including the junkie and thief\u2014was gathered at our neighborhood park.\u00a0 He decided that it was about that time for him to get high.\u00a0 Being without any cash of his own, he tried to prevail upon me to \u201clend\u201d him some funds.\u00a0 When I refused, he persisted.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t be greedy,\u201d he admonished me.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t be greedy.<\/p>\n My cousin is currently married to a good woman with whom he shares a nice home and two beautiful children.\u00a0 But before he met her, he was married for a brief time (not briefly enough) to another woman who wasn\u2019t all that good.\u00a0 On more than one occasion, she was unfaithful to him.\u00a0 He discovered her last indiscretion by either reading her diary or tracking her down, I don\u2019t recall which. \u00a0The point, though, is this:<\/p>\n When he confronted her, she castigated him for \u201cviolating her privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n Both my selfish, dishonest friend and my cousin\u2019s selfish and dishonest ex-wife sought to cloak their selfishness and dishonesty behind a veil of objectivity<\/em>. Both sought to advance their subjective interests by invoking the language of right and wrong: greed is wrong, violating another\u2019s privacy is wrong, etc.<\/p>\n But it isn\u2019t just thieves and whores who seek refuge in the rhetoric of moral objectivity.\u00a0 This is the tried and true strategy of everyone. <\/em>\u00a0This, at any rate, is the verdict of the nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.<\/p>\n Nietzsche insisted that, the declarations of such venerable Western philosophers as Plato and Aristotle aside, human beings do not <\/em>want happiness<\/em>.\u00a0 The claim that they do<\/em> want happiness is itself just another illustration of this universal predilection to advance one\u2019s interests without detection.\u00a0 The philosophers who posit happiness as man\u2019s ultimate end are guilty of deception, for their hearts\u2019 desire is that of every other.\u00a0<\/p>\n What human beings ultimately want, Nietzsche tells us, is power.\u00a0 <\/em>Things can\u2019t be otherwise, for \u201clife is<\/em> precisely Will to Power.\u201d\u00a0 What this means is that in spite of \u201cthe disparaging purpose\u201d with which \u201cages\u201d have associated these activities, life is \u201cappropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation (emphasis original)[.]\u201d\u00a0 The Will to Power is nothing more or less than the Will to Life.<\/p>\n Our moralizing to the contrary notwithstanding, \u201c\u2018exploitation\u2019 does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the nature <\/em>of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life (emphasis original) [.]\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Nietzsche concedes that \u201cas a theory,\u201d this concept is \u201ca novelty.\u201d\u00a0 However, \u201cas a reality it is the fundamental fact <\/em>of all history (emphasis original).\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Upon canvassing the history of morals, two tolerably distinct visions of morality emerge.\u00a0 The one originated with aristocrats.\u00a0 Nietzsche calls this \u201cthe master-morality.\u201d\u00a0 The other belonged to the masses.\u00a0 This he refers to as \u201cthe slave-morality.\u201d\u00a0 The differences between the two couldn\u2019t be more glaring.<\/p>\n The master-morality springs from \u201cthe noble type of man.\u201d The latter is honest, brutally honest, inasmuch as he recognizes in himself the wellspring of all values.\u00a0 Seeing himself as a \u201ccreator\u201d and \u201cdeterminer\u201d of worth, he looks to no one for self-affirmation.\u00a0 For the noble man, those things like power, cunning, intelligence, hardness, and severity are deserving of honor because and only because he decrees them as such. The master-morality is the morality of \u201cself-glorification.\u201d<\/p>\n The slave-morality, in stark contrast, takes flight from \u201cthe resentment\u201d of the masses of human beings who are too weak and too stupid to get along without the assistance of others\u2014particularly the assistance of the aristocrats.\u00a0 It is designed to subvert the master scheme of value while advancing the interests of the masses.<\/p>\n Everything that is deemed \u201cgood\u201d within the master-morality is regarded within the slave-morality as, not just \u201cbad,\u201d but \u201cevil.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 Nietzsche writes that according to \u201cthe morality of resentment,\u201d the evil man is none other than \u201cthe good man of the other morality [.]\u201d\u00a0 The evil one is \u201cthe aristocrat, the powerful one, the one who rules\u201d who has been \u201cdistorted by the venomous eye of resentfulness, into a new color, a new signification, a new appearance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The slave-morality affirms just those qualities that promise to alleviate its proponents\u2019 suffering: \u201csympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness [.]\u201d\u00a0 Because these are the characteristics that supply \u201cthe only means of supporting the burden of existence,\u201d they are elevated to the stature of universal human excellences.<\/p>\n Nietzsche identifies two versions of slave-morality: Christianity and socialism.\u00a0 As we would expect from any species of the slave-morality, both promote altruism or selflessness\u2014<\/em>a \u201cway of valuing\u201d that <\/em>arises from \u201ca consciousness of the fact that one is botched and bungled.\u201d\u00a0 This consciousness, in turn, engenders an aching need to assign blame for one\u2019s condition.<\/p>\n In the case of the Christian, the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the botched himself, i.e. the sinner.\u00a0 <\/em>The socialist, on the other hand, holds \u201csociety\u201d responsible for his plight.\u00a0 Whatever their differences, though, it is \u201cthe instinct of revenge <\/em>and resentment<\/em>\u201d that animates Christian and socialist alike.<\/p>\n Man, like every other type of living organism, strives to dominate his surroundings.\u00a0 Some forms of domination, like war, say, are overt.\u00a0 But even when we are not conquering one another via violence, we nevertheless continue the quest for domination through more subtle means\u2014like invocations of objectivity.\u00a0 Appeals to Reason, the Bible, the will of God, Equality, Liberty, Truth, Justice, Natural Law, the Moral Law, the Principle of Utility, the Categorical Imperative, the Form of the Good, Natural Rights, Human Rights, Democracy, Happiness, and so forth and so on, are just some of the examples of the instruments that have been enlisted in the service of advancing partisan and individual interests. If Nietzsche is correct, these are smokescreens intended to hide that which drives every living thing: the Will to Power.<\/p>\n Even if there is much to criticize in Nietzsche\u2019s thought, there is also much from which to learn. He is a provocative and bold thinker who seldom fails to leave an indelible impact upon his readers.<\/p>\n Given the recent reelection of President Obama and his fellow partisans, this just might not be a bad time to acquaint ourselves with Nietzsche\u2019s writings.\u00a0 Socialist rhetoric is in the air, and the air is thick. Rather than be burdened with guilt (and taxes) for our \u201clack of compassion\u201d for \u201cthe disadvantaged,\u201d we would be better served to call to mind Nietzsche\u2019s contention that the socialists (or welfare-statists or \u201cliberals\u201d) among us are motivated first and foremost by their aching need for ever greater power. <\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n To those who will object that this is too much to accept, Nietzsche responds bluntly and succinctly: \u201cthe truth is hard.\u201d\u00a0 Then, as if to scream from the top of his lungs, he implores us to be \u201chonest towards ourselves!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was a teenager, there was a guy from my old neighborhood who had developed an addiction to crack cocaine.\u00a0 Given that he didn\u2019t have much in the way of steady employment, to support his habit, he acquired another: he became hooked on thievery. Not before long, this junkie and thief was known by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n