Amorfati

 In a meta sense, the entire purpose is to push the perspectivist view (that you, the reader with the power, creates your own truth)  
 
"All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth." 
 

 
The most important figures in history are clearly the historians, all the people who write down their interpretations of events. Every other person is of secondary importance.
 

@lilburtonboy7489

Jesus
Plato 
Julius Ceasar 
Darwin 
Leibniz
Newton  
Carl Menger
Adam Smith 
Marx 
Maynard Keynes
John Locke  
David Hume
Immanuel Kant 
Muhammed 
Einstein 
Woodrow Wilson
Stalin 
Aristotle 
Hitler 
Descartes 
Augustine 
Freud 
Galileo "

@lilburtonboy7489

" @roofy said:

" @lilburtonboy7489: you seriously dont think Nietzsche is one of the most important philosophers in history?  if not now, his influence would be almost impossible to deny into the future (look at the state of society and the general nihilistic tone its taken in the last decade)  if not that, name me any philosopher thats had more of an influence on how we fundamentally understand human behaviour, motivation, and desire.  he didnt just influence Freud and Jung, but was the catalyst for a completely new way of thinking.  how many other philosophers can you say directly inspired new forms of art?  all of this influence within a hundred years "

He was a continental philosopher. They are to philosophy as blogs are to the internet. Nietzche rants and makes claims, nothing more. He flat out rejected arguing in a logical form. I could see the sense in arguing that he was influential on the world through Hitler, who was obviously influenced by Nietche's nonsensical rants. But as far as philosophy is concerned, he made minimal contributions. There is a reason why no one tries to refute him: He doesn't even try to back up what he writes with deductive arguments. Instead, he rants about how people are by making broad and sweeping generalizations based on nothing other than his personal opinions.   And the most undeserved attribute to Nietzche, is his originality. Tell me how he was so original. Not only was he NOT the creator of existentialism, but his beliefs were almost purely formed off the claims made by Darwin. Kierkegaard was much more original that Nietzche. The reason he never got as much credit is his writing style. Nieztche had an attractive style of writing. That's why he got so popular.  He's more of an entertainer than academic.   Sure, you're right, he inspired all kinds of art. But last time I checked, art isn't exactly critical to mankind. And his following by artists rather than philosophers further supports my claim that he was purely emotional in his arguments. His blatant disregard for logic is prevalent in his books. So I really don't see his importance.  "

Against Darwinism.— The utility of an organ does not explain its origin; on the contrary! For most of the time during which a property is forming it does not preserve the individual and is of no use to him, least of all in the struggle with external circumstances and enemies.
What, after all, is "useful"? One must ask "useful in relation to what?" E.g., that which is useful for the long life of the individual might be unfavorable to its strength and splendor; that which preserves the individual might at the same time arrest and halt its evolution. On the other hand, a deficiency, a degeneration, can be of the highest utility in so far as it acts as a stimulant to other organs. In the same way, a state of need can be a condition of existence, in so far as it reduces an individual to that measure of expenditure which holds it together but prevents it from squandering itself.— The individual itself as a struggle between parts (for food, space, etc.): its evolution tied to the victory or predominance of individual parts, to an atrophy, a "becoming an organ" of other parts.
The influence of "external circumstances" is overestimated by Darwin to a ridiculous extent: the essential thing in the life process is precisely the tremendous shaping, form-creating force working from within which utilizes and exploits "external circumstances"— The new forms molded from within are not formed with an end in view; but in the struggle of the parts a new form is not left long to its use, develops itself more and more completely.

Anti-Darwin. The domestication of man: what definite value can it have? or has domestication in general any definite value?— There are grounds for denying the latter.
The school of Darwin certainly makes a great effort to convince us of the reverse: it wants to show that the effect of domestication can become profound, even fundamental. In the meantime, we stick to our old opinion: up to now, domestication has produced only quite superficial effects—when it has not produced degeneration. And everything that eludes the hand and discipline of man returns almost at once to its natural state. The type remains constant: one cannot "'dénaturer la nature."
One counts on the struggle for existence, the death of the weaker creatures and the survival of the most robust and gifted; consequently one imagines a continual growth in perfection. We have convinced ourselves, conversely, that in the struggle for existence chance serves the weak as well as the strong; that cunning often prevails over strength; that the fruitfulness of the species stands in a notable relation to its chances of destruction—
One credits natural selection at the same time with the power of slow and endless metamorphosis; one wants to believe that every advantage is inherited and grows stronger and stronger with succeeding generations (whereas heredity is so capricious that—); one observes the fortunate adaptation of certain creatures to very special conditions of life, and one explains that these adaptations result from the influence of the milieu.
But one nowhere finds any example of unconscious selection (absolutely not). The most disparate individuals unite with one another, the extremes are submerged in the mass. Everything competes to preserve its type; creatures with exterior markings to protect them from danger do not lose them when they encounter conditions in which they live without danger— When they live in places in which their dress ceases to hide them they do not by any means adapt to the new milieu.
One has so exaggerated the selection of the most beautiful that it greatly exceeds the drive to beauty in our own race! In fact, the most beautiful mate with utterly disinherited creatures, and the biggest with the smallest. We almost always see males and females take advantage of any chance encounter, exhibiting no selectivity whatsoever.— Modification through food and climate—but in reality a matter of complete indifference.
There are no transitional forms.—
Different species derived from one. Experience says that one type becomes master again.
One asserts the increasing evolution of creatures. All grounds are lacking. Every type has its limits; beyond these there is no evolution. Up to this point, absolute regularity.
Primitive creatures are said to be the ancestors of those now existing. But a look at the fauna and flora of the Tertiary merely permits us to think of an as yet unexplored country that harbors types that do not exist elsewhere, while those existing elsewhere are missing.

[. . .]

Anti-Darwin.— What surprises me most when I survey the broad destinies of man is that I always see before me the opposite of that which Darwin and his school see or want to see today: selection in favor of the stronger, better-constituted, and the progress of the species. Precisely the opposite is palpable: the elimination of the lucky strokes, the uselessness of the more highly developed types, the inevitable dominion of the average, even the sub-average types. If we are not shown why man should be an exception among creatures, I incline to the prejudice that the school of Darwin has been deluded everywhere.
[. . .] . . .the strongest and most fortunate are weak when opposed by organized herd instincts, by the timidity of the weak, by the vast majority. My general view of the world of values shows that it is not the lucky strokes, the select types, that have the upper hand in the supreme values that are today placed over mankind; rather it is the decadent types— [. . .]
[. . .] If one translates reality into a morality, this morality is: the mediocre are worth more than the exceptions; the decadent forms more than the mediocre; the will to nothingness has the upper hand over the will to life—and the overall aim is, in Christian, Buddhist, Schopenhauerian terms: "better not to be than to be."

[. . .]

That species represent any progress is the most unreasonable assertion in the world: so far they represent one level. That the higher organisms have evolved from the lower has not been demonstrated in one single case. I see how the lower preponderate through their numbers, their shrewdness, their cunning—I do not see how an accidental variation gives an advantage, at least not for so long a period; why an accidental change should grow so strong would be something else needing explanation.
[. . .]In summa: growth in the power of a species is perhaps guaranteed less by a preponderance of its children of fortune, of strong members, than by a preponderance of average and lower types— The latter possess great fruitfulness and duration; with the former comes an increase in danger, rapid wastage, speedy reduction in numbers

Anti-Darwin. — As for the famous “struggle for existence,” so far it seems to me to be asserted rather than proved. It occurs, but as an exception; the total appearance of life is not the extremity, not starvation, but rather riches, profusion, even absurd squandering—and where there is struggle, it is a struggle for power. One should not mistake Malthus for nature.

Assuming, however, that there is such a struggle for existence—and, indeed, it occurs—its result is unfortunately the opposite of what Darwin’s school desires, and of what one might perhaps desire with them—namely, in favor of the strong, the privileged, the fortunate exceptions. The species do not grow in perfection: the weak prevail over the strong again and again, for they are the great majority—and they are also more intelligent. Darwin forgot the spirit (that is English!); the weak have more spirit. One must need spirit to acquire spirit; one loses it when one no longer needs it. Whoever has strength dispenses with the spirit ("Let it go!” they think in Germany today; “the Reich must still remain to us"). It will be noted that by “spirit” I mean care, patience, cunning, simulation, great self-control, and everything that is mimicry (the latter includes a great deal of so-called virtue).

 

• Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?
  It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions.

• The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The "thing in itself" (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors.' To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred into an image: first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one.

• We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.
• Nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.

• Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases — which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects.

• We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.

• What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

• We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth.

• The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes. As a "rational" being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions.

For, in just the same way as people separate lightning from its flash and take the latter as an action, as the effect of a subject which is called lightning, so popular morality separates strength from the manifestations of strength, as if behind the strong person there were an indifferent substrate, which is free to express strength or not. But there is no such substrate; there is no "being" behind the doing, acting, becoming."The doer" is merely made up and added into the action – the act is everything. People basically duplicate the action: when they see a lightning flash, that is an action of an action: they set up the same event first as the cause and then yet again as its effect. (...) "We weak people are merely weak. It's good if we do nothing; we are not strong enough for that" – but this bitter state, this shrewdness of the lowest ranks, which even insects possess (when in great danger they stand as if they were dead in order not to do "too much"), has, thanks to that counterfeiting and self-deception of powerlessness, dressed itself in the splendour of a self-denying, still, patient virtue, just as if the weakness of the weak man himself – that means his essence, his actions, his entire single, inevitable, and irredeemable reality – is a voluntary achievement, something willed, chosen, an act, something of merit.

Plato is boring. --Nietzsche

" @TheLark: Well, seeing that your avatar is that of a communist war criminal who killed thousands of people, and 2 of your three most "important figures" where Karl Marx and Hitler, I would assume that you are a Marxist yourself, no?   I don't understand how people go around wearing Che T shirts and whatnot. Eveveryone who knows anything about history knows that Che was not a revolutionary, but a sadistic, racist war criminal.  The most important people in history are  - Thomas Jefferson, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.  "

@Alex_Murphy

" @TheLark said:

" Granted che certainly isn't but still a very important person in 20th century history "

Che Guevara was a douchbag.  
 
"The real Guevara was a reckless bourgeois adrenaline-junkie seeking a place in history as a liberator of the oppressed. But this fanatic’s vehicle of “liberation” was Stalinism, named for Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, murderer of well over 20 million of his own people. As one of Castro’s top lieutenants, Che helped steer Cuba’s revolutionary regime in a radically repressive direction. Soon after overthrowing Batista, Guevara choreographed the executions of hundreds of Batista officials without any fair trials. He thought nothing of summarily executing even fellow guerrillas suspected of disloyalty and shot one himself with no due process.  Che was a purist political fanatic who saw everything in stark black and white. Therefore he vociferously opposed freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, protest, or any other rights not completely consistent with his North Korean-style communism. How many rock music-loving teens sporting Guevara t-shirts today know their hero supported Cuba’s 1960s’ repression of the genre? How many homosexual fans know he had gays jailed?"  
 
 "The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. And yet he succeeded in inspiring tens of thousands of middle class Latin-Americans to exit the universities and organize guerrilla insurgencies of their own. And these insurgencies likewise accomplished nothing, except to bring about the death of hundreds of thousands, and to set back the cause of Latin-American democracy—a tragedy on the hugest scale." " "

" One time? Maybe if you got to marry her or something.  I'd take the job. "

 Why should any of the boys be allowed to have long hair?  Hey, let's allow them to have facial piercings and tattoos while we're at it.  Even better, it's all clothing optional.  I mean, it's stupid to argue something like HAIR when you are talking about your CHILD'S EDUCATION!  The school has rules, and this is a fairly common rule for schools in Texas.  If the parents don't want to obey those rules, then they can home-school their kid.  If they can't do that, then they need to get the fuck over it, cut the kid's hair, teach him some goddamn responsibility (especially at the age of 4, when they are incredibly impressionable), and worry more about his education than the length of his hair. 

 i can't believe this whole thing got nearly this much attention. 

" @Amorfati said:

" People have no control over the private sector but they do have at least some control over the public sector;"
 

sweet jesus......   how do some of you people make it through the day with that amount of intelligence.... "

"no.....just no   jesus wants us to help others which is not the same as jesus wants the government to use force and steal our money and redistribute it to the less fortunate.  "

The US is the richest and most powerful country in the world yet it cannot look after it's people, or it's people are not doing enough to look after themselves. The worlds best health care systems are in government control: France is the best in the world. People have no control over the private sector but they do have at least some control over the public sector; the private health care in the US is tyrannical and greedy, they have proven that they care more (like all other "big businesses") about profits than people's lives. It's atrocious when you take into consideration how rich the US is (surely the richest country in the world would have the healthiest people). 
 
 

At least 15% of the population is completely uninsured, and a substantial additional portion of the population is "underinsured", or less than fully insured for medical costs they might incur. More money per person is spent on health care in the United States than in any other nation in the world, and a greater percentage of total income in the nation is spent on health care in the U.S. than in any United Nations member state except for East Timor. Medical debt is the principal cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States.

Active debate about health care reform in the United States concerns questions of a right to health care, access, fairness, efficiency, cost, and quality. Many have argued that the system does not deliver equivalent value for the money spent. The US pays twice as much yet lags behind other wealthy nations in such measures as infant mortality and life expectancy. Currently the U.S. has a higher infant mortality rate than most of the world's industrialized nations. The USA's life expectancy lags 42nd in the world, after most rich nations, lagging last of the G5 (Japan, France, Germany, UK, USA) and just after Chile (35th) and Cuba (37th). The USA's life expectancy is ranked 50th in the world after the European Union (40th). The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study). A 2008 report by the Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among the 19 compared countries.

According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the United States is the "only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage" (i.e. some kind of insurance). The same Institute of Medicine report notes that "Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States." while a 2009 Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health found a much higher figure of more than 44,800 excess deaths annually in the United States due to Americans lacking health insurance. More broadly, the total number of people in the United States, whether insured or uninsured, who die because of lack of medical care was estimated in a 1997 analysis to be nearly 100,000 per year.

 
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States

  @lilburtonboy7489:

 I'm starting to wonder if you have actually read it. There is no work ever published by Rothbard which defends the social elite or the wealthy. He wants systematic equal treatment for all people and finds the results of society to be irrelevant.

-Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, Murray Rothbard

George Orwell - Animal Farm
George Orwell -1984,

" @AgentJ said:

" ... I don't know what to say. You have Keynes on your reading list. Now I've seen everything "

Well, considering he's the most relevant economics author to this day, EVERYONE should read the utter garbage that he wrote. The better you understand him, the easier to refute.   Anyone interested in economics will inevitably be taught keynesianism anyways, so you might as well get ahead on it. Not reading him would be like studying philosophy without ever reading Karl Marx.  "

Nope, haven't seen it.