The Nietzschean Facebook

[Layman Pascal]

Herein you will find

an experimental listing of

Mr. Nietzsche's

LIKES (+) / DISLIKES (-)

I have been compiling and analyzing and feeling into Nietzsche's work on tone, mood & aesthetics. When read in depth (and according to his many suggestions about how to read his work) he appears as a great prophet of planetary-scale, post-pluralistic embodied postmetaphysical spirituality in an evolutionary, peak-experience integrating context. Thus his suggestions are of special relevance to integral and meta-integral endeavors.

He demands three things of his readers -- and these demands operate as gargoyles and decoys to waylay those who approach with too much sentimentality or old-school intellectual habits. These demands?

Firstly to enter perspectives without becoming trapped by them. Secondly, to be affirmative and convivial (i.e. to actively presume that concepts are not laden with conventional social associations. He would probably use terms like "faggot" and "nigger" a lot if he was writing today -- requiring the reader to do the work of separating the energy and structure from the popular moral connotations). Thirdly, to give equal weight to concepts and tone/rhythm/mood. Perhaps even to understand these as mysteriously the same thing -- rooted in the emergent bio-psychology, energetic sensitivity, deep ancestry and altitudinal tempo.

So I will be imaginatively updating this thread to provide an creative output for the sense I am developing of what N. was trying to specify about the tempo and aesthetic ethos appropriate to vision-logical worldspaces and healthy post-pluralistic civilization. I will try to put the affirmations and negations on roughly the same level to highlight their potential differences. Some are based directly upon his remarks and cultural analysis -- others are obviously highly speculative.

Please feel free to add, contest or inquire. I will be modifying this "opening post" as I go...

LIKES / DISLIKES

Brad Pitt in "Fight Club" / Brad Pit in "World War Z"

Full Metal Jacket / Platoon

Mozart / Beethoven

Bizet / Wagner

Star Wars / Return of the Jedi

Heraclitus / Socrates

Touch of Evil / Citizen Kane

Seinfeld / Friends

V.A.L.I.S. / Total Recall

Voltaire / Zola

Inside Amy Schumer / Ellen

Castro / Stalin

Caesar / Nero

Napoleon / Hitler

Depth / Purity

Conviviality / Devotion

Sensualists / Virgins

Tom Cruise in "Tropic Thunder" / Tom Cruise in "Top Gun"

TV's The Borgias / TV's The Tudors

Dianetics / Scientology

Marx Brothers / Three Stooges

Son House / Bob Marley

Jews / Germans

Classic TV Star Trek / Star Trek films

Lady Gaga / Taylor Swift

George Carlin / Bill Hicks

Norm MacDonald / Adam Sandler

Charlie Sheen / Two and a Half Men

Beatles / U2

Dylan / Joplin

David Lynch / James Cameron

Einstein / Bohr

Schrodinger / Heisenberg

Gurdjieff / Bahaullah

Osho / Krishnamurti

Adi Da / Ammaji

Catholics / Protestants

Accordion / Guitar

2001 / 2010

Breaking Bad / The Wire

Timothy Leary / Deepak Chopra

Maharshi / Maharishi

Good Europeans / Fatherlands

Reich / Freud

Obligatory Military Service / Pacifism

Mary Magdalene / Virgin Mary

Old Testament / New Testament

Rome / Judea

Jimmy Page / Eric Clapton

Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles / Mel Brooks' Spaceballs

Bill O'Reilly / Glen Beck

War-Like Democrats / Sympathetic Republicans

Pentacostals / Jehovah's Witnesses

Aristophanes / Euripides

Gorillaz / Nickelback

Foucault / Derrida

Beastie Boys music / Beastie Boys singing

Stendhal / Rousseau

Waltz / Ballet

Manet / Monet

Religious Dali Paintings / Psychoanalytic Dali Paintings

Drug Legalization / Drug Abuse

Ghostbusters / Ghostbusters 2

Emperor Augustus / St. Paul

Jesus / St. Peter

Machiavelli / Mother Theresa

Hitchens / Dawkins

Lamarck / Darwin

Donovan / Cat Stevens

American Hustle / 12 Years a Slave

Music of Beck / Music of Jeff Beck

Nancy Sinatra / Patsy Cline

Hafiz / Rumi

Chogyam Trungpa / Thich Nhat Hanh

Hannibal Lecter / Charles Manson

Eagles / CCR

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly / Dirty Harry

Sex, Ecology, Spirituality / The Essential Ken Wilber

Grace & Grit / Boomeritis

David Deida / John Gray

Hakuin / Dogen

Anaximander / Epicurus

Jimmy Carr / Dylan Moran

Lee Lozowick / Robert Augustus Masters

Byron Katie / Carolyn Myss

Jon Stewart / Stephen Colbert

Alpine Climates / Swamps

Soup After Meals / Soup Before Meals

Drunkenness / Drinking

Martin Luther's German prose / Martin Luther's philosophy

Quentin Tarantino / Spike Lee

Ken Wilber's commanding instincts / Ken Wilber's literary instincts

Shakespeare / Dickens

Paglia / Dworkin

Suzuki Roshi / DT Suzuki

Hearty Pessimists / Sentimental Optimists

Reason is Diverse / Reason is one truth among many

Wolfram / Zuckerberg

to be continued...

[Balder]

What everyone is wondering is, Where does he stand on Honey Boo-Boo?

[Layman Pascal]

Given the relativity of Likes & Dislikes we are always facing the issue of contextualization. For example, in the category of lame-American-pseudo-reality-exploitation, he would probably prefer "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" to Farrah Abraham's "Backdoor Teen Mom". However that does not place Honey Boo Boo very highly.

From the Nietzschean standpoint there is a tremendous value in (a) having all forms of decadence reach their nadir with a good conscience (b) experimentally delighting in the caged ugliness of grotesque exemplars (c) producing balanced emotional states -- even if that balance is between mild amusement and mild horror.

However to be flat, pushy, bloated, lacking in all capacity for conscious irony or nimble gestures of the soul, drowned in the toxic national dreamworld of a culture that has lost its way... these are obviously opposed even to healthy self-affirmation of the ignorant and obnoxious.

Looking for something that more closely approximates an apotheosis or hearty glorification of seemingly degenerate Americana, I'm sure Mr. Nietzsche would encourage us towards the offensive carnival of Tosh.O rather than the poisonous toad-world of Honey Boo Boo.

[Balder]

I'm impressed with your knowledge of American decadence!  I am happy to confess that I haven't heard of the other shows you mention.

Honey Boo Boo aside, your list above is pretty entertaining.  (I don't notice any Wilber / Integral crowd productions or players yet).

How do you think the Nietzsch would vote on the two Sex and Zen movies? 

How about his ranking of "spiritual" movies?  Zen Noir, Cloud Atlas, Samsara, What Dreams May Come ...

[Layman Pascal]

"Backdoor Teen Mom" was widely considered to be the worst porno film of 2013 CE. That's almost intriguing. It is an anal-focused feature made at the behest of reality TV star Farrah Abraham (the widowed breakout star of the TV show "Teen Moms"). Presumably she felt this would take her "career" to the next level because she designed it to seem like it was a "leaked sex tape". It is awkward, unsexy, and her famous male porn co-star is disturbing flaccid for most of the show.

While "Tosh.O" is the "America's Funniest Home Videos" of the internet -- examining, mocking and often getting involved with the most obscene, self-destructive, bizarre and surrealistic viral videos.

I am not familiar with "Sex and Zen" but I'll check it out.

Nietzsche would, of course, argue that most "spiritual" movies are anything but that -- quasi-Christian, populist, sentimentalist arousal of vague and metaphysical faux-inspiration. So most movies which would make a list of that kind would strike him as both unhealthy and decidedly anti-spiritual. Yet from among the films you mention, the dry, classical and visionary expanse of Samsara would clearly be preferred over the mawkish herd-fantasies of What Dreams May Come and the ponderous, forced profundity of Cloud Atlas. These latter two feature many of elements which N. diagnosed as pathological in Wagner's work.