Got introduced to Nietzsche by this link

Shook me with value.

Nietzsche is a lot of fun. I encourage reading some of his writings as well, particularly, The Will to Power, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and On the Genealogy of Morality. Many of his other works are pretty intriguing and fun too, but these are some of my favorites.

One love

Thank you for sharing! This is indeed a very good introduction or perhaps even an interpretation.

Nietzsche's Antichrist made a profound impact when I was going through a religious crisis. It's fascinating that Nietzsche doesn't really make any metaphysical statements about the existence of God, but rather the cultural concept as the object of faith. I find his criticism still very valid, even though I have become to value the concept of God again.

Nietzsche was a funny character. A couple of my friends are into philosophy and really enjoy his work. Personally, while I'm open to philosophical discussion, I could not sit through Thus Spoke. I tried reading it and found it to be among the most boring and tiresome books I've picked up.

I feel his sympathy for the horse, though.

Nietzsche definitely resonated with me in my late teens, still does to some extent. Will to Power and The Antichrist were my preferred works.

Thank you people for the additions.

Nietzsche was cutting corners by taking alcohol and religion as measures for drugs in general, a sign of his times? (source)
...Nietzsche is profoundly opposed to the use of drugs—alcohol in particular. He claims that drugs have a
numbing effect which stifles man’s will to power: his willingness to suffer gladly. On account of Germany’s
decadence in his time, he asserts that “nowhere else are the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity,
so viciously abused.”For Nietzsche, drugs have the same nihilistic roots as Christianity: they negate the real world
by replacing pain with an illusory world of decadence. Indeed, “stimulants and brandy” amount to a “forgery in
ideals,”as they veil suffering in the real world and divorce their subjects from intrinsic meaning...

Yet he did some for addressing troubles (source):
...He was always rather sickly, had trouble sleeping, and suffered from crippling migraines. In the search for pain relief before the invention of Aspirin, he turned to opium. He also took chloral hydrate as a sleeping aid. He later became such a fiend for the stuff that he forged prescriptions for himself, signing as “Dr. Nietzsche,” which was technically accurate...

Yes that was very touching, his understanding and love for a suffering being. He started to decline after that, one drop too many? Gradually signing out, logging off.

I find his observations about the similarities between christianity and socialism quite interesting.
You cannot realy look inside peoples heads and tell if they are true regarding deeply personal motives, but the simmilarities are definately there on the outside.

But there is an important difference between solidarity and empathy on the one hand, and the veneration of victimhood and weakness on the other hand.
Or at least, i personally don't think you should always presume hidden, impure motives behind acts of charity. That's maybe a bit too cynical for my taste.

I wonder btw, if people agree that jordan peterson sometimes seems to be bit of a contemporary, somewhat shallow and simplified version of nietzsche. A sort of "meme-nietzsche" if you will. (Wich would say everything about meme-culture)

There are some striking simmilarities, not just in some of his messages, but also in that he is a tragic figure most known for being controversial and that to a certain degree, some of his followers resemble a kind of cult, and that he's a bit off the track mentally.
And also that some people on the radical right, halfheartedly (wich is ofcourse what you'd expect from the people who made halfheartedness a specialism) embrace him.

I think Jordan Peterson is more of an analyst than a philosopher. He is, after all, a professor and former clinician. I think the work he does with young men is fantastic and I find his lectures wonderfully interesting.

That said, he has taken on a kind of shallowness after his rise to fame... somehow like all things, he's lost what made him special after becoming commercialized. I follow him on ig and when I see the posts on his account (which I'm sure he doesn't even make himself), I think:
"Yeah, I agree. But I don't really care anymore". It seems to just go over my head, even though what he's saying is solid.

Oversaturation? A symptom of the medium? Of culture? All the above and more?

It's sometimes difficult for great intellectuals who see sharply what is wrong in the world to reconcile with it and find peace in themselves.

Yeah, i feel the same way. I watched some of his talks about jungian psychology, wich i found very interesting. But compared to nietzsche he is a lightweight, and it seems he got caught up with the hype around his person himself.

Still, it's intriguing how someone like him can become so controversial, so hated and so adored.

Says a lot about the dystopian shithole society has become lately, under the influence of social media.

J.Peterson is a Nietzsche fanboy. Opposites I can think of:

1) JP grasps for christianity or at least tries to tap values thereof;
2) JP is open towards the benefits of certain 'drugs' (he speaks positive about e.g. shrooms)

I find 1) difficult to follow, christianity is stained beyond measure, as are other religions. A counsel I do take of JP is "Clean up your room". It's neutral and goes for your literal life stage, the room in your heart and the room in your head. Just clean up your own very status. That first before seeking external shame 'n blame games, to get that priority right.

With 2) I think Nietzsche (sign of his times?) had no real knowledge/access of beneficial 'drugs/use', I'm afraid he only saw the saddest side of his limited scope on the subject.

The drama of ethics, at war with the inherent brutal segments of nature itself.

Bismillah: I also think JP gradually hollowed out his own values by overly clickbaiting advertising, too much of branding.

Yes, that "clean up your room" message is a very sound advice. Not just for young people.

And also very nietzschian.

The christianity thing may have something to do with the specific brands of christianity. But in general i think you can say that the history of christianity is full of both good things as well as awfull things. It is easy, especially in a secular nation like modern canada, to only focus on the good things and not to see the dogmatism, the hypochrisy, and the politics of power and corruption, interwoven with it.

But i also think that JP's interactions with the woke lynchmob, may have pushed him towards more conservative worldviews. He definately is an interesting character, but i also believe that the hype and the media persona "jordan peterson" was entirely created by that peculiar cult of wokism.

They've made a "martyr" out of him, and it looks like at some point he started to believe in that very dramatic martyr character himself. Wich is why i think he has become shallow now, to people like bismillah and me.

If they would't have attacked and demonised him so much, we would probably never have heard of him, and he still would be teaching jungian psychology somewhere in canada.

It's too bad, because from what i've seen from him, he probably was a very good and passionate teacher.

And the world needs good teachers much more, than social media martyrs.

Nietzsche is absolutely brilliant and I highly recommend going into deeper study of his works. What I would add to other posts is that many of Nietzsche's books are quite hard to read (Unlike people like Hegel, Nietzsche was an exceptional writer, he writes his works in a highly poetic style with the explicit intention of making it hard to parse for the 'lazy readers' as he calls them). A good start to Nietzsche would be to buy The Portable Nietzsche by Walter Kaufmann - it has four books of Nietzsche's by the best English translator. It has the best starter book (Twilight of the Idols) which is short, easier to read than the other works, and contains most of his main ideas. There is also a YouTube series that goes through the book by a philosophy professor if people still find it hard, which they may well do.

Another thing worth mentioning about Nietzsche is that due to his style, he has created different classes of readers which is a less pronounced phenomenon among other philosophers. As I've mentioned, his poetic style makes his works hard to interpret, what you tend to see is that late teenagers read him and come out with the very standard interpretation of the edgy individual who is too BASED for Christianity and does whatever he likes. I actually have no issue with this as a general rule, young people (probably men in particular) are most certainly searching for meaning and a father figure at that age, Nietzsche is not a bad choice in that regard. The problem is that this "class" of reader has come to define Nietzschean philosophy which is an unfortunate development. You then have the other kind of reader which tends to be quite a bit older, they've either returned to Nietzsche later on in life or perhaps started reading him after having read other philosophers.

Nietzsche is actually a very nuanced guy and there is many more readings of him you can do which can be very meaningful and thought provoking. As a "Nietzschean Psychonaut", I've managed to apply Nietzschean philosophy onto Psychonautics and have written about it before (I may make a forum post about that at some stage). There's a very good talk on Nietzsche which has some novel interpretations on Nietzsche and some of his more philosophical observations which are less known in the mainstream and among his younger fans . There's also a great podcast on Nietzsche from a guy called 'essentialsalts' which I highly recommend.

Reading back what i wrote two years ago now is kinda weird, because JP has now completely lost it. The only excuse for the things he is saying these days, is that he has gone totally insane, and even an insanity plea does not get him off the hook completely, because even for an insane person the things he is saying now are quite bizarre and most of all immoral.

Sorry for derailing the nietsche topic, because nietsche has infinitely more depth than JP.

It's a long time ago i read his works, but i remember realy enjoying it, and sometimes he just totally nails it.

Maybe he's a bit too negative about christianity, but i remember finding his observations about the comparizons between especially protestantism and socialism quite funny and not entirely unfounded.
And also quite topical these days with that whole woke movement. There's a bit of fire and brimstone preachery going on there sometimes.

Indeed, JBP is quite the mixed bag. Prior to his controversy surrounding Bill C16 and his subsequent celebrity status, I would say that his intellectual content was actually top tier. I've watched his entire Maps of Meaning series on YouTube and it is well worth a watch.

Regardless of what people think of his politics, he does Psychology/Psychoanalysis/Nietzsche very well. He should have stuck with that and perhaps made a name for himself doing deeper explorations into those fields. He has a video where he spends 45 minutes analysing a single paragraph of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil and it is fantastic - there's great potential there for a long podcast series running through Nietzsche's books.

Instead, he decided to get into the culture wars. He understood the need for adultification in society. He is also quite aware of the modern existential crisis we face today. Overall, there's no doubt he's made a big impact on many young people today, however, it was perhaps inevitable that Peterson would hit a wall. I believe his issues with his health and that of his family's health took a big toll on him. When you take into account his experience trying to detox from benzos, as well as all the hate he's gotten online and irl, I think it's fair to say it's turned him into a deeply bitter old man. That's not to excuse his behaviour but simply as a means of offering an explanation for it.

Let's hope that another viable role model for young people turns up in the next few years, god knows it's dearly needed, let's just hope it's not another Andrew Tate.

We are one of the few, if not the only, species on earth in which the beta males formed enough trust in communication to dispose any alpha who attempted to take the top spot.

This is a blessing if you are a beta specimen who still wants to hold power and claim mating rights. It is also a giant weakness as a species.

We are controlled by increasingly underhand humans as the game to stay in power becomes more and more cut-throat.

The meek shall inherit the Earth indeed.

But before I go on another tangent; I do believe that some part of Peterson and of Tate is appealing to the strong leaders among us who have been brainwashed into obscurity. This is one of the primary reasons why both characters have been assaulted heavily by the system in recent years.

Influence is more valuable that any other commodity.

Nietzsche is good for the rebellious teenage phase... I used to be a fan but now I find his philosophy to be... too egocentric! His praise of the powerful and strong seems merely an expression of his personal insecurities. Whoever is looked down upon by the world knows this, this burning desire to be great, to show the world, to prove them all wrong and so on. Most of the "find your true self" philosophy, at least in my opinion, stems from that desire.

I think that ultimately, the dreams of power and greatness are something that need to be let go of. If it comes to you, so be it! but why bother strive for it? Roll in the dirt, be one with the dirt, be Diogenes the dog and have no regard for anything the world deems valuable. There's nothing that needs to be proven, and no matter how great a mark you leave in this world, it will all be, as if it never was. Yet, I won't accept the cynicism of Diogenes wholeheartedly. I have been told that love is the greatest of virtues, it warms your heart, it teaches you how to suffer, shows you the value of sacrifice, of letting go of oneself and all the desires which bind one to one's ego. Nietzsche may preach all sorts of wisdoms, but I find that true love is something that is lacking in his philosophy.

His musings spoke to power, and were embraced by many luminaries in art and music for their anti-establishment tones. I found his works not unlike some aspects of zen buddhism. He'll always be a favorite of mine, along with Robert Anton Wilson, and Terrence McKenna.

Great perceptive, thanks.

There's no recipe best for all. This is exactly what you say concerning Nietzsche-ism, but also please apply this to the love-ism, let-go-ism, etc

Some people are wired alpha/rational, others not so. Likely they both are going to occupy different professions. If both can find the frequencies of life that jives best with their being-wired, the more they will excel in that. I think Nietzsche is good to clean out the alpha/dry rational personality treats, to get these on a worthy track. To the mere social emotional personalities this striving aspects might be less called for, perhaps even looks a waste of time.
I'd like to see people in power positions to be gone trough a Nietzsche wringer foremost.

I know, it's not all black and white. We all have bone dry personal rational and compassionate factors. Within myself I feel Nietzsche is teaching my rational active parts, although my relativistic emotional parts at the same time looking like... really?

I've come to embrace these felt contradictions as not opposing at all, rather complementary to the whole. I don't have to choose, I have/am both.

There's a lot of pressure out there, especially from the ethic and politic fractions to make a battle of the values, a 'who's right?' splitting. I'd like to see overcoming that, when the fascist right hugs the fascist lefty, looking in each others eyes and say: 'I recognize you within myself.'

The point with nietzsche is though, how you define "strength" or "power".
I think that nietzsche probably would have considered diogenes a powerfull man.