2 Essays for Essa

And that’s it, and you’re good to go through your life towards the mutual goal of individual monetization. You’re equipped, completely, with well-framed values. You know: Nietzsche and the ancient Romans are the most obnoxious culprits. Who else? Just look at that gesture with which they, the Romans, greeted and responded to each other at the Forum! Huh? They copied the fascist Heil!

'Heil, Julius Caesar!'

'Heil, Cicero!'

These are the roots of gas chambers, crematoriums, and other Holocaust horrors…

Riding the wave of that prejudice, my eyes had chosen to simply indulge in smooth surfing until they hit the reef of a cool life hack:

‘Going beyond good and evil is a piece of cake; it's enough to grasp that lies are as necessary as truth, and they contribute to the species' survival no less than the multiplication table.’

What's he talking about?… My optics shook like a wet dog, splashing everyone in sight…

'Truth is a legalized lie.'

And where does the criminal charge for perjury go now? Now, a perjurer gets the certified right to wear the 'True Lover of the Red Combat Flag' badge…

Where there is neither good nor evil, the calls of the notorious dissident Solzhenitsyn dangle in the void. And right there goes all the rhetoric of the emeritus 'writers' of the USSR and the Russian Federation. And that’s a shame, for their production volume surpasses that of the global oil tanker fleet by 55%.

However, Friedrich was lucky to stay at large in the 19th century—who'll reach him there? On the other hand, so tremendous a loss of percentage leaves one sad, yet there's nothing to be done—the fetters broke, our nostrils flaring in rapture: man, you're something else!

1:7

The fact that every philosopher rolls out universal moral laws hewn down to their personal instincts and preferences is veteran news. It won't make a splash. Any wild guess or sophisticated extrapolation is nothing but an order to the outside world: 'Conform to what I say!'

But how to make them obey?

Nothing easier! Stir up their envy of your suit, your limousine, your whore, and other gadgets, right up to your retinue of bodyguards.

Exactly that is what Nabokov tried to teach me in his Ada, where he took a shot at making me a follower of his case. A good try. However, the attempt failed. Still, a negative result can serve educational purposes just as well. He spread it thick, all too clearly—his yearning to be considered a Russian aristocrat in possession of a twelve-digit bank account and a secured lifespan of at least 97 years.

But one can't push me around: 'Do as I do!' They have to approach a bit more politely…

1:8

With the utmost tenderness, F. Nietzsche inquires in this here Chunk if a philosopher might be allowed to have any 'convictions'.

A prudent counter! The fellow shows an exemplary wisdom of judgment inherent to the end of the Victorian era. After 1914, even asking such a question would get you thrown in jail—by the Cheka, the Gestapo, or the competent organs of various other states. But even there, in the unattainable 19th century, equating 'conviction' with foolishness, Nietzsche hid his audacity behind lines in Latin. Better be safe than sorry.

1:9

Here, Friedrich, for the sake of appearances, goes through the motions of criticizing the Stoics for their advocacy of 'living in accordance with nature', which knows no justice and has no moral principles. It exists, in fact, beyond good and evil. That's why he didn't particularly attack his potential allies.

However, he did hint subtly that the self-tyranny they practiced smacks of a means to achieve world domination. The goal of every philosophical system is to create (explain) the world in its own image and likeness, establish laws within it, and develop a moral code.

1:10

Rather skeptically speaks he of skeptics. To the solipsists, Nietzsche advises taking baths and showers oftener, and to grope their bodies while at it to make sure everything is in place. The positivists are nicknamed by him 'fools in a motley crew’.

He provided, in short, birds of any feather with a good thrashing.

1:11

A frontal attack at the foundations of the philosophical world starts. He takes a dig at Kant, the guy who was Berdyaev's first love, and one of whose books (according to unconfirmed reports) is half a meter thick!

Someone saw it in some museum and bragged to me. I just wish I could remember who, namely. Doesn't matter, on second thought; he'll get by without it; he's not a big enough deal to bother with mnemonics. More importantly, a tome of that size would definitely weigh 20 kilos. Not everyone can lift it, but the old man managed to pull off 20 kilos of pure philosophy. And you ridicule him, comparing him to the doctor found in Molière's comedies.

When asked 'Why does opium make you slumberous?', the specialist responded with deportment proper to his profession, 'Because opium has a quality of being slumberous.' So, now you don't even have to strain yourself—just strain the answer out of the question.

For me personally, 'why?' has always been the most insoluble stumbling block. There's no answer. Or rather, there are so many variants of the answer that it means having none at all. For example, to the question 'Why were you late for class?' you could say, 'Because the alarm didn't ring,' or you could say, 'Because long ago some damn monkey climbed out of the trees to pick up a stick.' Both answers are valid, whether it's a broken clock mechanism or arming monkeys that started the development of civilization, which has devolved into nagging people for being late.

Both are quite suitable for explaining causes. And with enough effort, the number of answers to 'why?' can be increased exponentially. But the simplest is, in Molière's style:

‘Why are you so stupid?’

‘Because I have the quality of being stupid.’

And that's it! The question is exhausted beyond belief.

(Still, I prefer Kant's formulation 'by virtue of', although ridiculed by Nietzsche.)

‘By virtue of my quality to be stupid.’

1:12

And then he starts playing tricks on all sorts of philosophical branches I've never even heard of, and even if I have, I can't remember when, who with, or to what degree of intoxication.

Okay, if such is his mood—let him have fun. Although I feel sorry for the poor guys too. But no! Fritz is even rolling them into the asphalt for a bye-bye prank, with a warning: sit tight at home and don't hang about the philosophical jungle. All those atomists and positivists, and who knows what other Chekists… eh?… well, something like that, anyway.

He simply tears those psychologists apart, like a puppy ripping a sweatshirt, then flaunts random shreds of their abstruse crap like: 'the soul as a multiplicity of subjects' or 'the soul as a social structure of instincts and affects’.

(Damn! And they still have patients?! Who pay them for these parrot cries?)

In short, the kid is having fun like a foal in fresh grass, all but hooting and hollering.

1:13

A heap of rebukes to Spinoza for the latter’s being overly concerned with the instinct for self-preservation. What hinders him from tracing it down to the desire for power? That’s what urges all living things to demonstrate their strength.

Spinoza should have limited himself to a closer consideration of draft animals, if he’s so keen on piling up the principles in a rationally economic way. At least, that's how my head interpreted this Chunk 13.

And—hello again!—he finally got to the Semites. Wrist-rapping Spinoza for overmuch fixation on the instinct for self-preservation, even though he himself had suggested we should limit pushing principles. Not that Spinoza was a relative of mine (although who the hell knows in this best of all possible worlds), but simply to avoid turning into a stenographic note-taker, I'll allow myself to express a separate opinion on the principles that Friedrich suggests to cull out for their mutual counterproductivity:

1. the desire to play, inherent in all living things;

2. the desire for power, of the same location;

3. the instinct for self-preservation.

Incompatible? No way! If you look closely. Gamblers are certainly drawn to power (remember the chicken coops of the playful Louis XIV and Nicholas I). The gambler Dostoevsky became a writer so he could autocratically control the destinies of his characters. And so on, and so forth.

The instinct for self-preservation is expressly present in those in power. Hence the growth in the number of bodyguards from the ranks of the Airborne Forces and the obvious penchant for underground bunkers.

Thus, this trinity of principles is intertwined into an inseparable triad.

So leave Spinoza alone, even though I don't even know him.

(But then a thought occurred to a layman from the outside: an invisible chain of three principles keeps the entire visible world on a leash.

But how many more trinities like this are there? And what is its power? It's that they all share a common principle of action, and all existents obey them. And by the by, it was philosophers who dug up the fact. Damn! There is no more terrifying force than philosophy!)

1:14

Popular sensualism is as simple as truth: where there is nothing to see or grab, there is nothing to do or think. Plato, the damn aristocrat, casts his fine gray net of ideas wherever it comes into his head, even where it's dark and empty to the touch.

For this, Fritz nicknames physicists and Darwinists 'road-layer laborers', toiling for a future in which, perhaps, we'll even become noble.

1:15

Now he obscenely forces sensualism to dance a striptease to it's own tune.

If the external world is created by the senses informing us of it, then our body, being part of the external world, is also a product of the activity of our organs. And the organs of the body (which exist out there!) are created by our organs. Which maintains that our organs are capable of organ-creating! Having lost your sight, you can create new optic organs.

Dance, sensualism! You're so sexy a slut when stark naked!

1:16

The most seductive line in all of philosophy begins with the words 'I think…' For centuries, it has been proudly repeated by those who are at least somewhat involved in the science of philosophy (which every existing science tries to make its handmaid). A beautiful line, undeniably, and there's nothing to object to, sort of… until the juicy lass ran into Friedrich, who thoroughly poked her sides and her bones.

'I think' – what is that? You proclaim knowing what 'I' is? Then explain it to me clear and concise, without averting your honest blue eyes. Or maybe you’ve found out what 'thinking' is? Is it an action? Or is it a state?

(It's absolutely certain that any housewife, not to mention a plumber at the end of the work week, will instantly answer these three questions. It's just that not everyone has the courage to ask them. However, if you're a philosopher, prove it!)

And 'I think'—is it really 'I think' or something else? If I think, 'Wow, what a hot thing!', is that thought really a thought or a desire? But then the whole line changes to 'I want, therefore I am.' So, does that mean I exist because I want to, and not because my parents wanted it?

And an honest philosopher would have to spend their entire life solving that last question. But when is he supposed to make a career, erect a monument to his own self, and so on?

Oh, so precarious everything is in this philosophy! It's much safer to get a PhD degree and teach it at some university or college.

1:17

He gave a mocking pat on the back to the scholastic logicians who, in their sacramental love for the line, translated it into grammar for transformation into 'It seems to me…' Oh, screw that damn 'I' that hasn't been defined for millennia.

'No point, smartasses,' Nietzsche explained to them. 'With your tricks, you've simply stuffed the 'I' into the three shorter 'i's comprised in small 'm' and think it's not noticeable?'

1:18

The idea of 'free will' is so shaky that every idle yokel has shagged it like a just-for-asking slut.

1:19

'I came, saw what was going on, and conquered,' General Julius reported to the Senate.

But coming without the Roman legions, would he have defeated even a couple of the enemy's new recruits? And what would he have seen there without sight? And how would his ‘I’ even get there? (The most IQ-savvy citizens in the audience offer suggestions.)

We also shouldn't forget the innumerable components covered by a single 'synthetic' (a favorite term of Nietzsche’s) – 'I'. Some part of the 'I' has to want to go there at all. Another part has to uphold the move. A third one has to figure out what we'll eat along the way to avoid diarrhea or, conversely, constipation.

In other words, 'free will' can be decomposed into who knows how many parts. And only stubborn asses like Schopenhauer are capable of naively or maliciously proclaiming it a unified concept and writing several volumes of philosophical shit on it.

Yeah, right. So what? (I'm speaking for myself.) Let him write, if he wants to. But when I was distilling wheat alcohol in the village (I had a still with a copper distillation column), the process of brewing the mash and waiting for it to drip (they are separate processes) took a considerable amount of waiting, during which the guy was my support. Therefore, Friedrich, I agree with your anti-synthetic arguments, but deep in the heart of my complex self, I reserve a corner for good old Schoppy, whose never-ending works shortened the periods spent idle…

1:20

The development of philosophical thought is quite predictable. It moves in circles. (Here, to clarify, he compared it to fauna.)

'But, Teacher!' I cried out. 'How can circularity be counted as development?'

And silence followed—Sensei gave me a chance to think more deeply and answer my own question. Philosophers don't make discoveries, but rather seem to recall what was already known. Why has Indo-Greco-Germanic philosophy exhausted the breakthroughs into the unknown available to it? 'My language is my enemy' – all approaches to questions are predetermined by the structure of the language in which you philosophize. What's the highest you can jump?

(Did someone say, 'your own ass?')

The answer is wrong – you can't jump above the grammar of a language. So sit back and wait for insights from philosophers having command of the Ural-Buryat dialects, or from Polynesian ones. But what if they don't give a damn about philosophy? Maybe they're more interested in fishing. If so, they're wiser than philosophers. Also known as players with the empty-shell set of rote terms: 'free will', 'necessity', 'cause and effect', 'direct perception', and other old jingle-brained jargon accumulated over centuries of philosophical development.

But it’s not alone! People tend and need to unite in flocks, and—who would imagine!—rejoice: packs of theological blah-blah-baaers juggling their own vocabulary: 'sin', 'atonement', 'suffering', 'end of the world', 'faith'—though inferior to the philosophical herd in antiquity, but not in ardor. (Sweetheart Berdyaev mastered the cant of both groups and had a good time, and his legacy is a perfectly acceptable time-filler.)

1:21

There are many philosophical sects, but philosophy’s bread (terminology) is the same for all. Each confession simply constructs its own mythology from the universal principles of 'cause and effect', 'things-in-themselves', and so forth.

[Essentially, everyone relies on 'faith' for everything. Believe in the truth of our neo-Kantian, anarchist, communist, and other-ist interpretations, memorize the terminology to the point of flawless juggling, and you're a new herald, genius, and savior.]

Returning to the term 'will' (it would be a shame to abandon such a SOB), Nietzsche combines it with a couple of new adjectives in place of the compromised adjective 'free', resulting in the combinations 'strong will' and 'weak will'. The former is willing to take responsibility for things it hasn't even done, while the latter prefers clinging to the weak, mostly criminals. Seems like here we have a dig at anarchism, the 'religion of human liberation'.

1:22

The author announces the hunting season open for the philosophical springy beast—among seasoned poachers, the game is referred to as 'natural laws'. He seeks to help these narrow-minded blockheads in latching onto the idea that only naming a thing lawful makes it such. What if another, more agile interpreter comes along and reshuffles the laws to suit his own preferences?

In Russian: 'The law is a shaft; wherever you turn it, that's where it goes.'

1:23

For latching onto psychology (another piece of mutual bread), the author introduces a couple of concepts:

(1)

morphology

(2)

and the doctrine of the development of the 'will to power.

Here I had to recollect that 'morpho' is just 'form', so according to Nietzsche, psychology is nothing more than:

(1)

an evening roll call of present forms; and

(2)

tracking how this or that form develops, rolling down the slope of the will to power.

(Ha! I even know where this development begins! With the word 'mine' – my doll, my bike, my mom, etc.)

He claims to be the only one who has matured to view psychology from this angle. No one else had the nerve and stuck (in his time) at defining it as the relationship between 'good' and 'evil' instincts in the 'heart' of man. Nietzsche notes that they could just as nicely have gotten by with only the 'evil'; it’s just a question of getting used to constant toxicosis (the quirky way among eggheads to say ‘I wanna puke’).

O, Prophet! Prophet! He’s just foretold the onset of the 'theory of the subconscious' put forth by Mr. Freud and his ilk. The illustrious Nausea-Promoters.

He also remarks that psychology becomes a fashion and, in its next step, it will declare itself the master of all sciences. The attempt to make a skivvy of philosophy will follow, as psychology aspires to take upon itself the fundamental questions of existence (man and the world around him).

Conclusion to Section One:

Friedrich’s reasons click perfectly into place: the Section’s meant for a technologically justified clearing of a construction site, moving away the overgrowth and layers of garbage piles to start construction of his own philosophy.

The author has arrived and bulldozed the top achievements of previous philosophers, disclosing their follies. Giving quite a shock for well-behaved public, with the Section’s title. From the pioneer of shock therapy, with love.

Chunk #16 is a truly mind-bending tidbit.

First, Friedrich flogged the pink ass of Emmanuel, when, with the profound absentmindedness of a true philosopher, the Konigsberg sage left it unprotected from both the flanks and the rear launching his philosophical folly on just one (!) home-spun syllogism.

(Syllogism, huh? How much garbage I have in my word stock… But I also want to seem smart. Now and then.)

'I think, therefore I am'

(Oh dear! What a hell of a lot of doctoral theses have been scribbled out, either refuting or extolling just this one line, evolving into an entire worldview: Kantianism!

[Aside note:

With indelible gratitude to S. Romanenko, who rubbed my nose in a glaring inaccuracy: it was Descartes who was clever about Cogito ergo sum, not Kant! — I am making this correction here.

And regarding the silent majority, I note: either they didn't know (the ignoramuses!), or, out of habit, were afraid to stick their neck out from under their turtle shell even a millimeter.

Thank you, Svetlana! Not all is lost, as long as there are erudite and brave souls like you!]

So this Fritz (who is Nietzsche) sarcastically asks if it suits the most fundamental philosophical constant to have so too flimsy base? Consult any construction engineer about the fate of architectural follies upon quicksand!

Nope, the Kantians don't stoop to such interviews.

Alas, no decisive voices were raised, and Kantianism (with all its subsequent superstructures), due to its elusive gaseous nature, has become suspended and bobbing like a weather balloon, an inflatable milestone on the path of philosophical thought.

(Regarding the suspended weather balloon, it's worth recalling that in military terminology, such a balloon is called 'condom'; anyone who served in the relevant troops knows.)

Friedrich's undoubted merit in pointing out that a 'condom' will remain a condom (he's probably means the probe) and is unfit for foundation.

But even more noteworthy is his statement that people are incapable of thinking at all, as evidenced by

'… the tiny fact… that 'thought' comes when 'it' wants to, and not when 'I' want to…' (end of quote).

That's what stunned me. Specifically.

But at the same time, this quote inspires optimism. Great consolation for thinkers across all continents and states.

None of your thoughts are lost. They, your ideas, are more immortal than even the mafia. Because they're not yours.

Let's take a simple but striking example – me.

In Chapter 12 of 'The Algorithm of Chaos' (aka AC), I detail the process by which ideas emerge in people who (let's be frank) are incapable of thinking. Their function is that of a flash drive onto which a file with an idea is dumped. It's a shame, but try to refute it, I'm all ears.

And here's where the fun begins! Chapter 12 in AC was written before (!) my encounter with Nietzsche. I'm not going to swear by anything, but it's a fact.

Which means, consequently, that even without Nietzsche or me, there still comes a moment when something unavoidable is downloaded to some or other flash drive.

From where? By whom? Why? —

These are interesting questions, but I'm not greedy – we need to leave food for thought for future generations, so they too have something to puzzle over… Until that moment, when it's downloaded to them too.

And now the quote from AC, Chapter 12:

'Your role is that of a fisherman awaiting the bite. Just a moment ago, you couldn't even imagine how it was even possible… and all of a sudden – it strikes! That’s it! Holy shit… how simple!'

And, to wind it up, one more quote. This time from the immortal 'The Rascally Romance' (because online works don't burn; the internet is no stove for the nuts).

So, RR, Ch. 'The eastern Corridor':

'… all wheels were invented long ago… every super-new idea has more than once swarmed in the mind of a Chaldean magician… or a Greek sophist… a medieval alchemist… an Aztec knot-weaver… a prophetic Brahmin-Vedaist… or a Tibetan sage… all discoveries and uber-super ideas are nothing more than rolling out, in other words or symbols, the same truths, old as the hills… unchanging as the shift of seasons, the phases of the moon, day and night… every day new and unique, every day a repetition of the many exactly same days…'

P.S.:

This finale to the Conclusion to Section One smacks of self-promotion, if you think about it. However, advertising fiction to readers of a philosophical work (Ha! As if those exist!) is endlessly naive.

No, the purpose of these quotes is to show that one and the same pipe can be used to convey texts of various genres.

From whence, to where, why? –

I don't know. So I won't erase the written with an ax.

And besides – 'pour quoit pas?', M. Boyarsky used to say in Lady de Winter's ear when the lights on the film set went all of a sudden out.