"Age and truth. Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity.
People as bad poets. Just as bad poets, in the second half of a line, look for a thought to fit their rhyme, so people in the second half of their lives, having become more anxious, look for the actions, attitudes, relationships that suit those of their earlier life, so that everything will harmonize outwardly. But then they no longer have any powerful thought to rule their life and determine it anew; rather, in its stead, comes the intention of finding a rhyme."
From Human, All Too Human, Part I, # 609-10.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Nietzsche on life stages
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4 comments:
Nietzsche is one of those names nobody can pronounce. Heck, I can barely spell it.
This brings to mind another philosophical text, which a wise person recently pointed me to:
“What is REAL?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day... "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.
"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
""Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.""
That's why abortion's okay, right?
The thing about poetry is interesting, but it's the opposite of how I've felt in early life and later life.
In early life, you're aware that what you do now will determine and affect many later stages of your life, so you are anxious and you try to set things up so it will work out well. Later in life, those things have already happened, and there's not much to influence, so you're more free to be spontaneous.
We should be good poets, handling the first part very well so the later part won't be unduly constrained. In this view, getting a good and secure career that you enjoy and can do for a long time is like ending the first line with a word like "blue."
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