Guide to Friedrich Nietzsche

With Slappy gone, my soul searching continues. Perhaps this classic jiggscasey.com article on Friedrich Nietzsche will lead me to my own inner superman.

Jiggscasey.com Guide to Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche was a deeply insightful, and yet extremely enigmatic late 19th century philosopher. Most people know of his greatness, but very few truly understand the man. After having read his Wikipedia entry, I feel extremely qualified to explain Nietzsche's genius to all you dumbasses.

Nietzsche grew up fatherless from the age of four after losing his father in a horrific trouser accident. Upon his father's death, he became the only male in a household including five women. Thus one can immediately see the motivation for his latent misogyny.

Nietzsche's work is broadly categorized by philosophers into two periods: his early or "formative" period lasting from 1865 to 1885 and his late or "crazy" period lasting from 1885 to his death in 1900.

Nietzsche's early professional career was spent at the University of Basel where he was a professor of classical philology. Classical philology is the interdisciplinary study of ancient texts and Phil Collins. While teaching at Basel, Nietzsche met composer Richard Wagner, the musical genius who finally gave Nietzsche an outlet for his latent anti-semitism.

It was during this phase in his life that Nietzsche became known as "Wagner's Monkeyboy". While such criticism completely overstated the role that Wagner had in Nietzsche's life, Nietzsche exacerbated such criticism in 1874 when he became president of the Richard Wagner Cocksucking Society.

Nietzsche's role in the Richard Wagner Cocksucking Society was a major influence on his work "The Gay Science" (1882). "The Gay Science" is an insightful study of lisping, interior design and man-on-man sex from an 1880's philosophical perspective.

Nietzsche's other major work from his early period is also one of his most well known: "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (1885). It is in this work that Nietzsche introduces the concept of the Uebermensch (which is translated variously as the "over-man", the "super-man" and sometimes as the "piano-man".)

In this work, the main character Zarathustra is sent away from his home planet by his father Jor-El when Zarathustra is just a baby. Zarathustra's spacepod crashes into earth and to make a long story short, Zarathustra uses his super human abilities to battle criminal masterminds. As you've probably already guessed, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" was an important influence on the comic book "The Silver Surfer".

It is at this point in Nietzsche's life when insanity really starts to kick in. Scholars argue about the cause of Nietzsche's madness, with some chalking it up to syphilis. Others, however, argue that the true source of Nietzsche's madness was his inability to get laid which, of course, further compounded his latent misogyny.

In 1888, Nietzsche published "Ecce Homo" which unlike "The Gay Science" ironically has nothing to do with homosexuality. "Ecce Homo" hit the trifecta of insane self-involvement as Nietzsche included chapters entitled "Why I Am So Wise", "Why I Am So Clever" and "Why I Write Such Good Books". In "Why I Am So Wise", Nietzsche finally reveals the secret that his "genius lies in his nostrils." Clearly, at this point, he was completely bonkers.

The last ten years of Nietzsche's life are spent in the care of his sister. And while his sanity deteriorated until his death, he spent every lucid moment feverishly working on his grand unifying theory, "The Will To Power". In the posthumously published notes(1901), it is revealed what his will to power is: a huge creepy moustache.

Clearly Nietzsche was one fucked up dude.

Maxims and Interludes

I've been dividing my time evenly between trying to figure out why delicate electronics aren't working and lifting very heavy vacuum pumps. So I have nothing for the blog. Instead, enjoy this piece of randomness I threw together some years back:

Friedrich Nietzsche published Beyond Good and Evil in 1886, a stinging rebuke to the Western concepts of morality. Within its short essays is a chapter called "Maxims and Interludes," where Nietzsche strings together dozens of aphorisms, one-liners, and non-sequiturs for no apparent reason. I always admired the blatant disregard for the flow and continuity of his arguments, so I decided to update the format for this century. I hope that mine is more timeless than Nietzsche's.

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The profound and choking loneliness of existence is no excuse to surround oneself with morons.

Renee Descartes postulated the existence of an objective reality independent of our own observation. Then again, Descartes was an idiot.

There is no greater form of conceit than declaring yourself better than the sum total of humanity.

The human body is a beautiful thing, but not in the fresh produce aisle at Safeway.

I am tired of every Republican, Libertarian, and anarchist claiming that government has no role in society and all things are better on the free market. We must not worship the free market, because that would really piss off God.

Some nights when I cannot sleep, I envy men who do not suffer from insomnia. Their penises are probably bigger than mine.

When I walk under a streetlight and it burns out, I think I caused it.

Stream of consciousness is just an excuse to avoid editing.

The most important public works project a government can pursue is subsidized high-speed rail, for low cost transportation, pollution prevention, and phallic implications.

I don't think you need 57 varieties of anything.

When a boy is raised with caring and understanding, he is completely unprepared for junior high school.

I like to pee at the kids urinal. It makes me feel like a giant.

The transition from badass to kitsch should be described using the verb form of Billy Idol.

Maybe no one wants to hear what you think is wrong with the country. Did you ever think of that? Jerk.

The condition of a nation can best be determined by the quantity and quality of their shopping districts geared to the middle class.

I'm not sure Albert Brooks and Steve Gutenberg are different people.

Perhaps there are more elegant solutions to the problem of being in the land of Truthtellers and Liars, but it seems you could just as easily beat the truth out of either of them.

Why is cannibalism wrong? Murder definitely is wrong, but after the fact, why is eating the corpse so much worse than burying it, burning it, or dissolving it in a tub of lye? I think it's a conspiracy by the beef industry.

Remorse is unbecoming in a politician. The people punish not for the indiscretion, but the apology.

What's love got to do, got to do with it? Plenty, Tina. Love has plenty to do with it.