That There May be The Eternal Joy of Creating

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher (1844-1900) who was influential in existentialism and still is.  He wrote quite critical philosophy on religion, morality and the culture and science of his time.  He might be familiar with the concepts of will to power, the overman, the eternal recurrence and of coarse ‘god is dead…. We have killed him’.  I am only going to mention but a slice of his work and in particular the notion that we create ourselves.

“Saying Yes to life even in its strongest and hardest problems, the will to life rejoicing”, (Nietzsche, p. 562).

“And we should consider everyday lost on which we have not danced at least once.”, (Nietzsche, p. 322).

There are many things we could take from reading Nietzsche, but I am only going to mention one brief concept via my own interpretation: the idea that we create ourselves. “That there may be the eternal joy of creating, that the will to life, may eternally affirm itself.”, (Nietzsche, p. 559). Some might say that this makes life very subjective. I see it as being more free and empowering. Static concepts and rigid ideas tend to dampen life’s possibilities. For instance we label things all the time and that is what they are to us through that label. But when people label us as something and we accept that then that limits who we could be. All these static labels and ideas are literally a burden to us and we make ourselves heavy with them: “he loads too many alien grave words and values on himself, and then life seems a desert to him.”, (Nietzsche, p. 305). The will to power is partly the acknowledging of what we have been told is not necessarily true and that we can become what we will: for “To will liberates, for to will is to create.”, (Nietzsche, p. 31 . So what Nietzsche considers to be ‘good’ is “Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself.”, (Nietzsche, p. 570).

The ‘herd’ is the essence of people that do not think about the information that is given to them and want to accept and obey the norms of society. We all have some herd mentality in us, it is probably inevitable. We have all been socialized and we cannot completely free ourselves from this. But we can ‘dance’ in those ‘chains’ and we can try and eliminate as much of the herd mentality in us by thinking about the ‘given’. Part of this is accepting that we create how we view reality and we create images of ourselves as well; from facades to necessary fictions. One thing that caught me by surprise was his feelings on equality. I was raised in a liberal environment and socialized to believe that equality is very important, we all have rights and we are all the same. On the other hand I have always thought that we are also all unique individuals. He states, “’Equality’, as a certain factual increase in similarity, which merely finds expression in the theory of ‘equal rights’, is an essential feature of decline.”, (Nietzsche, p. 540). This forces people into sameness, which naturally tries to eliminate conflict and would dampen one’s will to power. But when I thought about it, for society as a whole notions of equality are useful fictions that makes society run more smoothly. To the extreme of trying to make everyone the same, I would also resist, but then making everyone equal is probably impossible anyway. Perhaps there is a similarity between equality and conformity. I always resisted conformity at all costs. But then feminist movement which attempted to gain equality for women was a manifestation of their will to power.

So overall I think humans are essentially creative beings and as Nietzsche states “both the artist and the artwork.” That is the lesson worth celebrating. As any existentialist would say, you should not be afraid of your freedom to choose, your freedom to create yourself and your own will to power. Unfortunately, I would say, for society as a whole we need notions of equality, because most people do not think about what has been given to them, there preconceived notions, biases and prejudices. However, as Nietzsche suggests here even the safety net of equality, which protects us against undesirable herd mentality notions can eventually suffocate our freedom. But really the true thing that holds us back is ourselves and our fear. Our fear that if we choose one path we cannot choose the other. Our fear if we cannot blame something or someone else for our own mistakes or faults we will have to look within ourselves and find what? Well the fact is we are not a blank slate and we do not have limitless possibilities in which to choose from in our lives. But we can deconstruct our preconceived notions, we can introspectively review our own actions and we do have the freedom to re-create ourselves to an extent.

Creating ourselves and will to power is a process that is beautifully rendered in the metaphor of the three metamorphosis in ‘Zarathustra’. “There it was that I picked up the word ‘overman’ by the way, and that man is something that must be overcome – that man is a bridge and no end”, (Nietzsche, p. 310). In this process there is creation and destruction of self, for “how could you wish to become new unless you had first become ashes.”, (Nietzsche, p. 176). The three metamorphoses are first the camel, then the defiant lion and finally a child. The camel is weighed down with ideas and knowledge given to him by others; "But only man is a grave burden for himself! That is because he carries on his shoulders too much that is alien to him. Like a camel, he kneels down and lets himself be well loaded.", (Nietzsche, p. 305). From there one becomes a lion "who would conquer his freedom and be master of his own desert.", (Nietzsche, p. 13 . The lion shakes off his burden and tries to will his own way, "But the spirit of the lion says, 'I will'. 'Thou Shalt lies in his way.", (Nietzsche, p. 139). Finally one becomes a child, for "The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred 'Yes"",(Nietzsche, p. 139). And in this stage "the spirit now wills his own will, and he who has been lost to the world now conquers his own world.", (Nietzsche, p. 139). I think this illustrates how we live. At times we become burdened; we can be burdened with vast knowledge, with life itself in gravity and seriousness, many things can become burdens. And when our everydayness weighs upon us this too seems a burden. At some point though we get defiant and we through these burdens off and rebel against the system simply to express our freedom and frustration. After that we laugh, we laugh at the fact that we took things so seriously and we laugh because we realize that we can choose what we want to will. And then as we settle back into habitual life, slowly we become burdened again. . I think this is a continuous cycle, but one where you can spend little time or a great amount of time in each stage. Society creates many burdens and they are difficult to shake off. I think the attempt to become an overman is a process, that even once you achieve it you cannot maintain it; it is a noble effort but the goal is never maintained.

Which leads to the eternal return of the same. Everything is becoming in a constant cycle. The best to illustrate this is a long quote from when the animals are talking to Zarathustra:

"all things themselves are dancing: they come and offer their hands and laugh and flee- and come back. Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of being… In every Now, being begins; round every there rolls the sphere There. The centre is everywhere. Bent is the path of eternity.", (Nietzsche, p. 329-30).

It sounds quite similar to Heraclitus's becoming, where being constantly unfolds its self in every moment, revealing and concealing continuously. We are part of this eternal cycle, we create and destroy parts of ourselves, we continuously move from camel, to lion, to child, and camel again.

Notes

Nietzsche. "The Portable Nietzsche"