ZARATHUSTRA: The Original Post-Metaphysical Saint - Integral Post-Metaphysical Spirituality2024-03-28T11:14:48Zhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/zarathustra-the-original-post-metaphysical-saint?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A59172&feed=yes&xn_auth=no"Dionysus is the "range" of h…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-12-06:5301756:Comment:592472014-12-06T02:49:01.008ZAmbo Sunohttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/AmboSuno
<p>"Dionysus is the "range" of happiness. This is deity understood as a spectrum (the whole, long, tremendous light and color scale of happiness)."</p>
<p>Layman, this touches closely enough with a couple of phenomena/events in my immediate life that I feel inspired to talk about me, my self. Hah (these happenings also seem to relate some, within myself, to, "Depth must learn to hide, play, mock. It must protect itself from its intense seriousness by taking serious things lightly. It must win a…</p>
<p>"Dionysus is the "range" of happiness. This is deity understood as a spectrum (the whole, long, tremendous light and color scale of happiness)."</p>
<p>Layman, this touches closely enough with a couple of phenomena/events in my immediate life that I feel inspired to talk about me, my self. Hah (these happenings also seem to relate some, within myself, to, "Depth must learn to hide, play, mock. It must protect itself from its intense seriousness by taking serious things lightly. It must win a space for its whims so that a deeper will has room to operate. Etc.")</p>
<p>This morning was a skate sandwich - on surfbread.</p>
<p>I did a dawn patrol session alone - only one out in the high-tide reverb zone by shore. When done a skate and surf buddy texted me about having tea - I countered with, how bout a skate at the mall parking lot. Did some shopping then met for a few groovy runs before we acquiesced to a circling security vehicle. Next we sandwiched with a surprisingly sweet and glassy session of nicely shaped waves around 11 am. Ok, good and pretty unusual for me to double-dip.</p>
<p>What my energy, affect, arousal, and "surplus coherence" was doing almost incrementally after each progressing episode was to climb.There was a trackable spectrum of happiness-likeness occurring right inside this bag of skin over a noticeable time period.</p>
<p>Let me go back further to the rain and poor wave conditions for a couple of days, staying out of the H2O and working on some integral powerpoint applications for Hospice training and Osteopathy training for a friend. Though yesterday I surfed, my head uncharacteristically ached and felt thick from, I speculated, too much brain and eye work and my habitual associated concentration constrictions/contractions. I slept barely ok last night and during my common 3:30-4:30 am casual meditation/contemplation/prayerish/breathwork time I felt like there was maybe some depth and yet personalization, but nothing I would call happiness - yet it and the heavier crappiness from prior days is within a lower range of spectrums of happiness (affect etc.)</p>
<p>I didn't feel quite like surfing this am, though it was gonna happen, and I actual felt pretty poor viscerally and about my general state and life as I made my way to the uninviting surfline. Noone was out - that must mean something. I suited up anyway. I semi-consciously monitored my well-being and happiness gauges as I often do, while I paddled out.</p>
<p>Eh, meh. Got dumped a couple of times in my disarray and in the high-tide backwash turbulence. Then got a few ok rides. I was feeling a little better inside myself physically and mentally. I did a short session and got out. What I concluded was, "I feel pretty good - yeah - smooth and good and a bit mellow. Yay, because I haven't been."</p>
<p>Low key well-being accompanied me as I did my trader joes' shopping run and getting my first caffeine of the day with a free sample. I cruised the lot, feeling smooth (that seems to be an operative description for this moment on the spectrum), went to WinCo, got the frozens, and returned to meet the skater brah.</p>
<p>He was late so I tried some cheater hang-tens on the longboard without bustin dees ole bones, and was feeling mellow good. Don shows up and we carve some lines, him in his usual elegant, low, and powerful speed generations. When we call it off because the security van had been riding right behind me as I played my way back up the hill, I was feeling quite well, indeed.</p>
<p>"Hey, shall we check out C st?" "Yeah, when I got out and the tide was turning around, some sets were coming through, and the wind wasn't on it - could be really good." "Hey, you wanta take me over and get my board and gear and we'll go in." [Brief hesitation, I say] "Yeah - let me put my frozen stuff in the freezer first."</p>
<p>We get there (skipping a lot of poignant micro-story-details), suit up uncharacteristically fast for me and paddle out. Sweeet! [said in clipped, faux high voice] After the skate sandwich with surf bread, I was almost bursting with affective charge, thinking in various permutations and saying some of them aloud, "I can't believe how lucky we are! I can't believe this is me doing this!" Bubbling like a happiness cauldron. WTF, laughter, a little disorientation - is this really me? Is this ok that I feel so giddy-good?</p>
<p>I'm then thinking, ok, I have spent my allotted wad and received way more than my allotted happiness contract, I'm gonna go home and eat and lay down for a read and a nap - let this ungodly joy-like happiness thing calm down and balance it with some dread-time. Shheet! D, says, "You want to stop for a breakfast burrito and I, after a nano of reluctance, say, guess what. Sure!" And in my surpluses of various denominations, drive a bit maniacally quick, reflexive, and erratic to Los Corales. D's laughing but glad to climb down from the jeep after it catches a curb corner turning into the parking lot.</p>
<p>He asks if I want to come over to his back yard to eat the burritos. I said, after a mini-nonce, OK. We chuckle and churtle and chew before I get to finally escape this scary level of happiness, fun, and deliciously regressive camaraderie.</p>
<p>I get home, recline, and begin to cooperate with a re-setting of the biopsychophysiological rheostat to light up this reality tunnel at levels that are familiar.</p>
<p>Like the goldilocks spectrum - too little happiness, too much happiness, and, ahh, there I am under the safe umbrella of a well-visited bell-shaped curve.</p>
<p>Don's reality corroborating text in low key: "Fun day Sir <em>'</em>Ambo<em>'</em>. Real fun."</p>
<p>If you know what I mean. ambo</p> $33. From the notebooks -- a…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-12-05:5301756:Comment:590792014-12-05T22:45:44.729ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p><strong>$33. From the notebooks -- a fascinating definition of "Dionysus":</strong></p>
<blockquote><p>From [that] height of joy where man feels himself to be altogether a deified form and a self-justification of Nature, all the way down to the joy of healthy peasants and healthy half-human animals, this whole, long, tremendous light and color scale of happiness, the Greeks, not without a grateful shudder of him who is initiated into a Mystery, not without much caution and pious silence,…</p>
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<p><strong>$33. From the notebooks -- a fascinating definition of "Dionysus":</strong></p>
<blockquote><p>From [that] height of joy where man feels himself to be altogether a deified form and a self-justification of Nature, all the way down to the joy of healthy peasants and healthy half-human animals, this whole, long, tremendous light and color scale of happiness, the Greeks, not without a grateful shudder of him who is initiated into a Mystery, not without much caution and pious silence, called by the Divine Na<span class="text_exposed_show">me: DIONYSUS. What do any latter day men, the children of a fragmentary, multifarious, possibly sick and strange age, know of the sheer RANGE of Greek happiness; what could they know of it!</span></p>
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<div class="text_exposed_show"><p>This slice out of a longer passage is remarkable for its articulation of a central principle of Integral Spirituality. Dionysus is the "range" of happiness. This is deity understood as a spectrum (the whole, long, tremendous light and color scale of happiness).</p>
<p>Those who have glimpsed the potential validity of every value can relate easily with this position. This is not a God beyond or atop the spectrum of realities but one which already is the diverse self-authenticating and healthy happiness which manifests in various degrees and ways. The peasants and humanimals are as Dionysian as the sages and seer... when they are "healthy". Any doctrine of the "whole Spiral" must think in this form. Our God is something alive that works same-differently in all perspectives, quadrants, levels, etc. Dionysus.</p>
</div> $31. THE NOBLE BUFFOON.
If yo…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-12-05:5301756:Comment:592462014-12-05T22:44:52.754ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p><strong>$31. THE NOBLE BUFFOON.</strong></p>
<p>If you read Nietzsche's summary analysis of "noble qualities" from cultures around the world (present in his "Will to Power" notebooks) you will find, interestingly -- dandyishness, foppishness.</p>
<p>He says that depth naturally feels the need to veil itself in frivolity. This is often overlook as a sign of a "noble nature". However we may read that Julius Caesar first became well-known in Rome for his outlandish dress sense.…</p>
<p><strong>$31. THE NOBLE BUFFOON.</strong></p>
<p>If you read Nietzsche's summary analysis of "noble qualities" from cultures around the world (present in his "Will to Power" notebooks) you will find, interestingly -- dandyishness, foppishness.</p>
<p>He says that depth naturally feels the need to veil itself in frivolity. This is often overlook as a sign of a "noble nature". However we may read that Julius Caesar first became well-known in Rome for his outlandish dress sense.</p>
<div class="text_exposed_show"><p>Likewise we might also think of Hugh Laurie & Stephen Fry -- whose early escapes of utter silliness gave way to Laurie's brooding complexity of "House" and the serious civilization-building efforts of Fry.</p>
<p>There is a saying in Europe that the only real philosophers in America are comedians. And that is no surprise to anyone in America!</p>
<p>Depth must learn to hide, play, mock. It must protect itself from its intense seriousness by taking serious things lightly. It must win a space for its whims so that a deeper will has room to operate. Etc. Again I would point to the critical section in Zarathustra concerning "The Ass Festival" as the temporary solution to the problem of the Higher Human Being.</p>
</div> $32. SELF-UNFOLDING EPISTEMES…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-12-05:5301756:Comment:590782014-12-05T22:44:08.669ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p><strong>$32. SELF-UNFOLDING EPISTEMES</strong></p>
<p>Nietzsche proposes that the normal (i.e. non-pathological, non-nihilistic) form of cultural evolution involves qualitative upgrades and complexification in which things are born out of their apparent opposites. His primary example is the way that "modern values" emerge naturally from "christian theocratic values". To whit:</p>
<p>The notions of equality before God, a Law higher than politics, Ultimate Truth & and the death of the…</p>
<p><strong>$32. SELF-UNFOLDING EPISTEMES</strong></p>
<p>Nietzsche proposes that the normal (i.e. non-pathological, non-nihilistic) form of cultural evolution involves qualitative upgrades and complexification in which things are born out of their apparent opposites. His primary example is the way that "modern values" emerge naturally from "christian theocratic values". To whit:</p>
<p>The notions of equality before God, a Law higher than politics, Ultimate Truth & and the death of the mythological God in <span class="text_exposed_show">the form of the divine human being (Jesus) are all factors which almost predictably become the rational enlightenment -- with its notions of individual equality, freedom from ethnic customs, the radical search for truth and the divinity of Man freed from myth.</span></p>
<div class="text_exposed_show"><p>The same understanding is presented in his frequent discussions about how hypocrisy, hype and deception are creative conditions that give rise -- over time -- to truth, authenticity and new structures. We are reminded immediately of Marx's belief that the implicit structural contradictions within Capitalism would press forward naturally toward a more Socialist society -- wherever they are not thwarted.</p>
<p>Anyone conscious of the unfolding-emergent "vertical" axis of personal and cultural levels of cognition and values will resonant with this idea that the "next vMeme" naturally unfolds from even the problematic or superficial structures of the previous level. And when this does not happen we should suspect nihilism/pathology.</p>
</div> Well, said, layman - makes se…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-12-02:5301756:Comment:590742014-12-02T13:32:56.126ZAmbo Sunohttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/AmboSuno
<p>Well, said, layman - makes sense. Thank you.</p>
<p>Blessings with us, d<br></br> <br></br> <cite>Layman Pascal said:</cite></p>
<blockquote cite="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/zarathustra-the-original-post-metaphysical-saint?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A59238&xg_source=activity#5301756Comment59238"><div><div class="xg_user_generated"><p><br></br> <cite>Ambo Suno</cite></p>
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<p>This is the one of rare and beautiful about Nietzsche's work -- that we are continually…</p>
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<p>Well, said, layman - makes sense. Thank you.</p>
<p>Blessings with us, d<br/> <br/> <cite>Layman Pascal said:</cite></p>
<blockquote cite="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/zarathustra-the-original-post-metaphysical-saint?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A59238&xg_source=activity#5301756Comment59238"><div><div class="xg_user_generated"><p><br/> <cite>Ambo Suno</cite></p>
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<p>This is the one of rare and beautiful about Nietzsche's work -- that we are continually asked to operate with a good conscience beyond our conventional connotations. Your description of indigested left-overs of experience, however much that is true of you, is true of everyone. And anyone with a fairly healthy psycho-organism must come to trust that, like digesting solid food, it kinda goes by itself. The churning is part of the process. On the other hand, surely, we are all too lazy and prone to various levels of despair in the face small and large forms of vital shock. </p>
<p>We are led, in a way, to that familiar crossroads between "going through" and "changing direction". I believe the world has yet to make a decision on that...</p>
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This is the one o…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-11-30:5301756:Comment:592382014-11-30T23:55:40.876ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p><br></br> <cite>Ambo Suno</cite></p>
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<p>This is the one of rare and beautiful about Nietzsche's work -- that we are continually asked to operate with a good conscience beyond our conventional connotations. Your description of indigested left-overs of experience, however much that is true of you, is true of everyone. And anyone with a fairly healthy psycho-organism must come to trust that, like digesting solid food, it kinda goes by itself. The churning is part of the process. On the…</p>
<p><br/> <cite>Ambo Suno</cite></p>
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<p>This is the one of rare and beautiful about Nietzsche's work -- that we are continually asked to operate with a good conscience beyond our conventional connotations. Your description of indigested left-overs of experience, however much that is true of you, is true of everyone. And anyone with a fairly healthy psycho-organism must come to trust that, like digesting solid food, it kinda goes by itself. The churning is part of the process. On the other hand, surely, we are all too lazy and prone to various levels of despair in the face small and large forms of vital shock. </p>
<p>We are led, in a way, to that familiar crossroads between "going through" and "changing direction". I believe the world has yet to make a decision on that...</p> Hi Layman - I just noticed yo…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-11-29:5301756:Comment:589962014-11-29T01:23:15.762ZAmbo Sunohttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/AmboSuno
<p>Hi Layman - I just noticed your reply.</p>
<p>OK - to follow this, I need again to come loose from my and the conventional connotations of 'will' and willing something into being. Will, some might observe, is a coincidence of intention, action, and circumstance. It is not simply intentionality toward self-satisfying, on steroids. Somewhat like 'power' is not just the exaggerated capacity towards force - another word that elicits conventional connotations in me.</p>
<p>"<strong>Which means…</strong></p>
<p>Hi Layman - I just noticed your reply.</p>
<p>OK - to follow this, I need again to come loose from my and the conventional connotations of 'will' and willing something into being. Will, some might observe, is a coincidence of intention, action, and circumstance. It is not simply intentionality toward self-satisfying, on steroids. Somewhat like 'power' is not just the exaggerated capacity towards force - another word that elicits conventional connotations in me.</p>
<p>"<strong>Which means that over-identification and failure to process the energies of the events of our life leave us unable to responsibly incorporate them (naturalize them) into our general self-definition.</strong> And that naturalization is essential for restoring the flow of our good-timing and sense of empowerment." </p>
<p>Yes - I am wondering about this more than ever lately. From everyday interactional glitches, to common neurotic fixations and worries, to vague existential collapses, shutterings, and full-imbueing dreads, there is the challenge to process and maybe integrate. For me, I spend quite a lot of time (again, for me, relatively) allowing these left-overs from yesterday to surface and pester, gut-and-mind-grip, and swirl about me. I am often reticent to, or unable to, address these in systematic even 'therapeutic' ways because it is the surround of tumult that seems to be an important part of it all. Often I am reticent to or unable to organize the tumult - sorta trusting (perhaps over time and perhaps in the slightest faithes of grace) that there is a level of 'self'-organization that is effectuating the integration. (Or in the face of huge angst or overpowering nihilism, I feel lazy, impotent, collapsed - I'm not sure. This manner of being with the mess, especially in the early morning hours, may be proving to be of some value - TBD)</p>
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<p>eh, ambo</p>
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<p><br/> <br/> <cite>Layman Pascal said:</cite></p>
<blockquote cite="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/zarathustra-the-original-post-metaphysical-saint?xg_source=activity&id=5301756%3ATopic%3A53877&page=4#5301756Comment59216"><div><div class="xg_user_generated"><p><br/> <cite>Ambo Suno said:</cite></p>
<blockquote cite="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/zarathustra-the-original-post-metaphysical-saint?page=4&commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A58978&x=1#5301756Comment59049"><div><div class="xg_user_generated">Do you feel seriously ambivalent about, "I WILLED IT THUS"? I do. <br/><br/></div>
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<div><div class="xg_user_generated">The notion of will can be misleading (even when we are Friends of Ambivalence). It seems to imply a forceful and decisive do-er... but actually it is observed to mean a kind of co-incidence between intention and action. Babies learn to move their limbs before they learn to move them "on purpose". Purpose can come after the fact. For Nietzsche this means almost the same thing as "integration" -- in the sense of assimilating, digesting, working an event or quality into the weave of your life until it has a natural charm to it. Making it mutual with your other experience. And only sometimes does this involve a spiritual practice of "allowing, welcoming, affirming". </div>
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<div class="xg_user_generated">To quote Lester Levenson -- What we resist, persists. Which means that over-identification and failure to process the energies of the events of our life leave us unable to responsibly incorporate them (naturalize them) into our general self-definition. And that naturalization is essential for restoring the flow of our good-timing and sense of empowerment.</div>
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</blockquote> We first discover thresholds…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-11-28:5301756:Comment:589952014-11-28T00:07:07.868ZLayman Pascalhttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/LaymanPascal
<p><br></br> We first discover thresholds either by virtue of the intimidating admonitions of others -- or by having noticed that we have already crossed them. Many thresholds are retroactive. Enough of these and we become convinced that the process will happen again...<br></br></p>
<p>The entry on N's "hierarchy" hints at the different ways he envisioned the clearing being held. It is, shall we say, assimilated into the overman, approximated by the integral higher man, experimented with by the free…</p>
<p><br/> We first discover thresholds either by virtue of the intimidating admonitions of others -- or by having noticed that we have already crossed them. Many thresholds are retroactive. Enough of these and we become convinced that the process will happen again...<br/></p>
<p>The entry on N's "hierarchy" hints at the different ways he envisioned the clearing being held. It is, shall we say, assimilated into the overman, approximated by the integral higher man, experimented with by the free spirit and dismissed or ignored, cleverly, by the "folk". Etc. </p>
<p>As we grow into the Emergent it becomes a more obvious, less abstract fact of ordinary life. We could say that the Zen masters find it present while chopping wood & carrying water. Yet when it still remains a kind of alternative to daily life then we must not contaminate our response to everyday crises by a moot contrast against quasi-being. Up to a certain point the logic associated with the stabilization of any given situation must hold true... until we look back and see that no longer happening the same way.</p>
<p>However the emergent or the overman or the clearing are, for N, only valuable and interesting insofar as they represent new peak depths of the healthy empowering integration of our parts, our instincts. So they obey the same logic as the one which drives all other behavior. Every little success shows the same form. The tightly regulated life has a certain victory to it. We would be fools to abandon this unless we felt we might have some success in embracing fluidity and mystery. Each potential increase comes with a risk (as Wilber is always saying about the "levels").</p>
<p>To go along with destiny, to "amor fati", is a more graceful packaging which is healthier and amplifies the beingness-empowerment more coherently. But, of course, if our beautiful story involves the grace of being dragged kicking and screaming (as we all might do under certain conditions) then we have transmuted that into destiny. </p>
<p>The old (normal) experience of Gods gives us a way to enfold the daily fates that encroach upon us...</p>
<p></p> "N. asks us to hold open a "c…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-11-26:5301756:Comment:590652014-11-26T18:56:53.584ZAmbo Sunohttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/AmboSuno
<p>"N. asks us to hold open a "clearing" for what is beyond us, next, strange, trying to emerge -- the ones to whom Man is like an Ape."<br></br> <br></br></p>
<p>Yes, great enjoining by N.</p>
<p>Often we don't really know what possibility is portended by our getting mixed up at a boundary situation - except, maybe, later, no? Often we begin to sense the innumerable shifts, imbalances, disruptions, confusions, and then often the quickly and almost intrinsically associated anxiety and fear. These…</p>
<p>"N. asks us to hold open a "clearing" for what is beyond us, next, strange, trying to emerge -- the ones to whom Man is like an Ape."<br/> <br/></p>
<p>Yes, great enjoining by N.</p>
<p>Often we don't really know what possibility is portended by our getting mixed up at a boundary situation - except, maybe, later, no? Often we begin to sense the innumerable shifts, imbalances, disruptions, confusions, and then often the quickly and almost intrinsically associated anxiety and fear. These dreaded emotions channel us down familiar grooves, wash us down familiar currents of interpretation and thought. In the midst of the real deal, and not just the projected thought of a new strange trying to emerge, we miss this injunction to see/feel/know that a "clearing" in which to settle may be latently present.</p>
<p>We are overwhelmed by the apparati of biopsychosocial self. It is so understandable.</p>
<p>Yet I suppose that you, and N, are suggesting that we might come to 'know' the clearing early on. This is not to say that the next best thing to know this from a distance and maybe largely in retrospect is not something.</p>
<p>I'm supposing that N's and your sense of contemplation is a means of coming to feel the clearing when not in the midst of everyday crises. Maybe this clearing to live with a strange emergent becomes more possible in these deep moments of recognition, before the very ordinary freak-outs. Maybe new swales in the behavioral epigenic landscape begin to form and invite us.</p>
<p>It's cheating a little, perhaps, when one has one's life tightly regulated, modulated, and circumscribed as this avoids the feelings of impending doodoo and might lead one to imagine that they are so open to the unknown being who will replace the man who replaced the ape. Isn't it similar to Jung's metaphor that if we can go along with destiny, we don't need to be dragged kicking and screaming at the daily fates that ever encroach on and reverberate through us?</p>
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<p></p> As the fierce dragon with his…tag:integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com,2014-11-21:5301756:Comment:592282014-11-21T12:13:38.492ZAmbo Sunohttp://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/profile/AmboSuno
<p>As the fierce dragon with his looming haughtiness dwarfs the plain smiling man, this Mr. Small glances towards the mixed group of onlookers who have fear, envy, and bloodlust in their eyes and postures. He can see that they are not all for him, and he is not distracted by that nor by the whole emergent situation. He half-grins and says, "Hah, I have him right where I want him."<br></br> <br></br> <cite>Layman Pascal said:…</cite></p>
<p>As the fierce dragon with his looming haughtiness dwarfs the plain smiling man, this Mr. Small glances towards the mixed group of onlookers who have fear, envy, and bloodlust in their eyes and postures. He can see that they are not all for him, and he is not distracted by that nor by the whole emergent situation. He half-grins and says, "Hah, I have him right where I want him."<br/> <br/> <cite>Layman Pascal said:</cite></p>
<blockquote cite="http://integralpostmetaphysics.ning.com/forum/topics/zarathustra-the-original-post-metaphysical-saint?commentId=5301756%3AComment%3A59188&xg_source=activity#5301756Comment59056"><div><div class="xg_user_generated"><p><strong>$29. EVOLUTION</strong></p>
<p>All "evolutionaries" are Nietzsche's grandchildren in a sense.</p>
<p>Although he picks up Hegel's narrative of socio-cosmic self-overcoming he places his unique & special stress upon the unknown character of what is yet to emerge.</p>
<div class="text_exposed_show"><p>While one often gets the impression that Hegel is using the phenomenology of the present moment to affirm modern humanity as the jewel of evolution... N. asks us to hold open a "clearing" for what is beyond us, next, strange, trying to emerge -- the ones to whom Man is like an Ape.</p>
<p>He was an early pro-evolution advocate... but also a harsh critic of Darwinists. Their position was too "positivist" and "naive" and "English utilitarian" to encompass the complexities of the evolutionary mechanisms.</p>
<p>Like the epigenetics researchers of the 21st century, Nietzsche tends to favor a nuanced reading of Lamarck -- for there is clearly a range of subjective, social & biological interactions which drive mutation in a number of different "artistic" styles.</p>
<p>One of the most common mystical articulation is the one we might today associate with scientific documentary entertainment about evolutionary history and the tree of life. Nietzsche often says, privately and publically, that he feels the entire history of life, all the beasts and plants and stars, living in him -- living AS him -- rushing forward through Time in one glorious and monstrous dance of organismic ecstasy.</p>
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