Speaker 1: Why do you keep choosing what destroys you? Nietzsche spent
Speaker 1: his life observing a pattern that repeats. Infinitely intelligent and
Speaker 1: capable people who never get anywhere, and not because the
Speaker 1: world conspired against them, not because they had bad luck,
Speaker 1: not because they lacked opportunity, but because they themselves, choice,
Speaker 1: by choice, day after day, built their own prison. The
Speaker 1: key is in their hands, it always has been, but
Speaker 1: they're afraid to use it, afraid of what they'll find
Speaker 1: on the other side of the door. Nietzsche wasn't just
Speaker 1: the philosopher who declared the death of God. He was
Speaker 1: someone deeply concerned with what makes a human being truly unhappy.
Speaker 1: While other thinkers fantasized about what makes us happy, he
Speaker 1: studied the opposite, what destroys us from within, And the
Speaker 1: answer he found is brutal. We are not victims of life,
Speaker 1: We are victims of ourselves. If you constantly seek pleasure
Speaker 1: and comfort, Nietsch think you may have already lost, because
Speaker 1: the first step toward misery is pursuing comfort as the
Speaker 1: ultimate goal of existence. He saw in this a terrifying
Speaker 1: warning about humanity's future. The image of the last man.
Speaker 1: The last man is a creature that emerges when old
Speaker 1: values disappear with nothing to replace them. He's someone reduced
Speaker 1: to seeking only comfort and avoiding any discomfort, without general
Speaker 1: direction in life, without purpose that justifies the effort. For
Speaker 1: nietzsure this was an enormous opportunity in the fall of
Speaker 1: traditional values, but also a terrible prospect that we all
Speaker 1: become passive and lazy people. The last man desires comfort
Speaker 1: in all things. He sees no meaning in struggle or effort.
Speaker 1: He's not creative enough to create his own values. His
Speaker 1: will is not strong enough to motivate him to action.
Speaker 1: He allows life to pass without taking any control over it.
Speaker 1: He has no mastery over himself or the world, and
Speaker 1: so he moves through existence in a form of gentle despair.
Speaker 1: And the most terrible thing is that the last man
Speaker 1: doesn't perceive his own misery. He blinks, he smiles, He says,
Speaker 1: we invented happiness. But this happiness is empty, its absence
Speaker 1: of pain, not presence of meaning, its comfort not fulfillment,
Speaker 1: its distraction not purpose. Nietzsche saw the last man as
Speaker 1: the greatest danger to humanity, not because he's monstrous, but
Speaker 1: because he's mediocre. Because he represents the systematic waste of
Speaker 1: all human potential because he transforms creatures capable of greatness
Speaker 1: into passive consumers of comfort. And the worst part, because
Speaker 1: he's satisfied with it. He seeks nothing more. He misses nothing.
Speaker 1: He just exists, comfortably empty. Each day is apparently pleasant
Speaker 1: due to the endless pursuit of comfort, but in the
Speaker 1: long run, there's a huge hole, a void that cannot
Speaker 1: be filled with more comfort, because what's missing isn't pleasure,
Speaker 1: its meaning, its purpose. It's the feeling of building something
Speaker 1: that matters, of becoming someone, of living, not just existing.
Speaker 1: It's not clear if one day this person will wake
Speaker 1: up and realize their existence was for nothing, or if
Speaker 1: they'll persist in this unhappiness until death, but one thing
Speaker 1: is certain, it would be a tragic waste of human potential.
Speaker 1: Nietzsure thought that to access great joys, we must seek
Speaker 1: great discomforts. This is a central theme throughout his philosophy,
Speaker 1: whether in the image of Zarathustra descending from enlightenment to
Speaker 1: be despised by the world, or through the joyful and
Speaker 1: powerful person who strengthens their resolve through continuous suffering. For
Speaker 1: him truly valuable happiness only comes through the conscious choice
Speaker 1: to suffer, and this for two fundamental reasons. The first
Speaker 1: is quite straightforward. Too much comfort makes us fragile. Nietzsche
Speaker 1: had no optimy, mystic vision of the world. He knew
Speaker 1: that suffering is inevitable, that life will bring difficulties whether
Speaker 1: you're prepared or not, and that these difficulties will be
Speaker 1: even more painful and destructive if they catch us unprepared,
Speaker 1: if we don't develop the capacity to endure them. The
Speaker 1: only way to become strong enough to endure life's inevitable
Speaker 1: suffering is to choose the path of suffering voluntarily. It's training,
Speaker 1: it's gradually exposing ourselves to increasing discomforts. It's building tolerance.
Speaker 1: Just as you can't expect to run a marathon without training,
Speaker 1: you can't expect to endure life's crises without having developed
Speaker 1: emotional and psychological resistance. Just as a new song can
Speaker 1: seem annoying at first, but over time we come to
Speaker 1: love it through familiarity, Nietsure wants us to learn to
Speaker 1: appreciate discomfort through continuous exposure. Not because suffering is good
Speaker 1: in itself. He doesn't romanticize pain, but because it prepares
Speaker 1: us for the inevitable, because it makes us capable of
Speaker 1: facing whatever comes without breaking. The second reason is more
Speaker 1: subtle but deeply insightful. The more pain we endure, the
Speaker 1: more our freedom increases. After all, to do anything worthwhile,
Speaker 1: we have to be able to endure suffering. Whether it's
Speaker 1: building a great project like Alexander the Great, creating fantastic
Speaker 1: art like da Vinci, or simply becoming masters of our
Speaker 1: own lives, will have to endure difficulties. For nietzsure, only
Speaker 1: through learning suffering do we cultivate the strength to be
Speaker 1: truly free. How autonomous we are is directly proportional to
Speaker 1: how much we're willing to endure to achieve our will.
Speaker 1: And if we can't endure discomfort, then we won't be free.
Speaker 1: We'll be slaves to our own limitations, prisoners of our fragility.
Speaker 1: Think of it this way. Someone who can't endure criticism
Speaker 1: can't build anything public. Someone who can't handle physical effort
Speaker 1: can't sculpt their own body. Someone who can't tolerate financial
Speaker 1: risk can't be an entrepreneur. Someone who can't endure temporary
Speaker 1: solitude can't do develop independent thinking. In each case, the
Speaker 1: inability to endure specific discomfort becomes a prison that limits
Speaker 1: what that person can do or become. And the more
Speaker 1: we expand our capacity to endure different types of discomfort,
Speaker 1: the more possibilities open up. Not because discomfort itself is valuable,
Speaker 1: but because it's the price of admission for almost everything
Speaker 1: worthwhile in life. It's the toll we have to pay
Speaker 1: to cross the bridge between who we are and who
Speaker 1: we could be. But why so much emphasis on strength?
Speaker 1: What is this power? For? Nietzschere is often presented as
Speaker 1: a philosopher obsessed with power, and there's truth to that.
Speaker 1: He thought we all have a will to power that
Speaker 1: wants to exercise itself in the world and in ourselves. However,
Speaker 1: he's not a fetishest of power. He thinks power and
Speaker 1: strength are important prerequisites for human flourishing. This is best
Speaker 1: illustrated in how he thinks people behave when they're powerless.
Speaker 1: For him, powerlessness is not not virtue. It brings out
Speaker 1: the worst of human nature, and this manifests primarily in
Speaker 1: his concept of resentiment. Resentiment is an emotion we're all
Speaker 1: familiar with. Envy arises when we see someone more prosperous
Speaker 1: or successful in a field we value. But envy is
Speaker 1: not motivational, it's destructive. Its goal is not to elevate
Speaker 1: us to their level, but to bring them down to ours,
Speaker 1: to relieve our resentment without having to face the fact
Speaker 1: that we may be inadequate according to our own standards.
Speaker 1: This is evidently an unpleasant emotion to feel, and Nietzschure
Speaker 1: isn't the first to point it out. The resentful person
Speaker 1: lives in a constant state of denial about what they
Speaker 1: really want. If I resent a person with a better
Speaker 1: body than mine, this reveals that I desire the physical
Speaker 1: position therein, but if I'm powerless, I don't have the
Speaker 1: capacity to achieve that success. Instead, the only route is
Speaker 1: to declare that it's not a position worth having. We
Speaker 1: become the fox from Aesop's fable, who, when he can't
Speaker 1: reach the desired grapes, declares they were probably sour anyway.
Speaker 1: But this self deception cannot bring true satisfaction because it
Speaker 1: represses what we truly desire. If we resent something, we
Speaker 1: can't strive for it, even if deep down it's our
Speaker 1: truest desire. And the cruelty of this trick is evident.
Speaker 1: It converts what could have been motivation to strengthen our
Speaker 1: will into a guarantee that will never be satisfied. What
Speaker 1: could have been a temporary obstacle becomes permanent amputation of
Speaker 1: our route to happiness, and it doesn't stop there. Resentiment
Speaker 1: also encourages us to hate the object of our repressed
Speaker 1: desire and try to take revenge on a life we
Speaker 1: feel has wronged us. We start developing entire moralities based
Speaker 1: on our powerlessness. We declare that what we cannot have
Speaker 1: actually shouldn't be desired by anyone, that it's immoral, that
Speaker 1: it's superficial, that it's empty. And so the resentful person
Speaker 1: becomes a preacher not of virtues he genuinely values, but
Speaker 1: of prohibitions based on his own incapacities. He builds an
Speaker 1: entire philosophical system to justify why everyone should avoid what
Speaker 1: he secretly desires but cannot achieve, and the more people
Speaker 1: he convinces, the more validated his narrative of self deception feels.
Speaker 1: This is one of Nietzsche's most brutal psychological insights because
Speaker 1: it forces us to question how many of our moral
Speaker 1: beliefs are genuine and how many are just rationalizations of
Speaker 1: our powerlessness, and according to Nietzsche, we fall into this
Speaker 1: state of powerlessness because we fear power. We associate it
Speaker 1: with some of history's greatest atrocities without recognizing that all
Speaker 1: of humanity's great goods also required power. And the power
Speaker 1: Niature has in mind is not merely physical. It implies
Speaker 1: a kind of personal overcoming. It means reft using to
Speaker 1: submit your will to another's, recognizing yourself as sovereign of
Speaker 1: your own life with all the crushing pressure and radical
Speaker 1: freedom that implies. It means not allowing others, morality, or
Speaker 1: taste to dictate what you do, being completely in control
Speaker 1: and taking full responsibility for existence. It's easy for this
Speaker 1: to become superficial wisdom. But let's pause for a moment
Speaker 1: and consider how radical this idea of freedom is. According
Speaker 1: to Nietzsche, the truly free are not subject even to
Speaker 1: the rules of morality. We would take full ownership of
Speaker 1: our decisions and refuse to submit our will to anyone else's.
Speaker 1: It's an independence of thought, will, and action greater than
Speaker 1: that proposed by almost any other philosopher. And yet it's
Speaker 1: what Nietzschure suggests we begin to do in order not
Speaker 1: to be consumed by resentment and weakness, and, contrary to
Speaker 1: popular belief, this form of power eventually becomes benevolent by itself.
Speaker 1: As he expresses, the state in which we harm others
Speaker 1: is rarely as pleasant as the one in which we
Speaker 1: benefit our peers. This may seem counterintuitive. How would someone
Speaker 1: completely free of moral restraints not become a tyrant? But
Speaker 1: Nietzsche had an answer for this. He believed that the
Speaker 1: truly powerful person doesn't need to dominate others, doesn't need
Speaker 1: to prove anything, doesn't need to compensate for internal insecurities
Speaker 1: through external displays of strength. True power, for Natsure, is
Speaker 1: silent and self contained. It's the capacity to say no
Speaker 1: when necessary, to establish boundaries, to stand firm in your convictions.
Speaker 1: But it's also the capacity to be generous without expecting
Speaker 1: anything in return, to be kind without it being interpreted
Speaker 1: as weakness, to help others, not out of moral obligation,
Speaker 1: but from an overflow of internal strength. The resentful and
Speaker 1: weak person needs external moral rules to behave well, because
Speaker 1: without them, their envy and bitterness would lead them to
Speaker 1: destructive actions. But the truly power person doesn't need these
Speaker 1: chains because their inner strength is so abundant that it
Speaker 1: naturally expresses itself constructively. This is the paradox of Nietzsche
Speaker 1: in power. The more you have, the less you need
Speaker 1: to display it or use it against others. But I
Speaker 1: want to dig deeper into this theme of independence, because
Speaker 1: if there's something Nietzsche considers a sure route to despair,
Speaker 1: it's being too influenced by the crowds. In Satra's play
Speaker 1: No Exit, the character Garsan famously closes the drama by saying,
Speaker 1: hell is other people. This line was taken out of
Speaker 1: context and misinterpreted to portray Sarcha as a profound misanthrope,
Speaker 1: But the truth is more complicated. Sartra was referring to
Speaker 1: the human tendency to fear other's judgment and for our
Speaker 1: self image to be regulated through our peers opinions. Nietzsche
Speaker 1: shares this concern, and he points out a human tendency
Speaker 1: that can cause us much misery, remaining too long in
Speaker 1: others company, so that we become alienated from our own character.
Speaker 1: One of the images nietzsure uses repeatedly is that of
Speaker 1: the herd. This concept encompasses most of society, and he
Speaker 1: saw them as having broadly speaking, the same opinions and
Speaker 1: life perspectives. But he didn't think people were naturally this way.
Speaker 1: He said, it's within almost anyone's power to cultivate their individuality,
Speaker 1: to be more satisfied, to achieve a greater level of
Speaker 1: self development and understanding. However, in his opinion, the herd
Speaker 1: has a violent reaction to any attempt to differentiate oneself.
Speaker 1: Above all, the herd values predictability, and the more similar
Speaker 1: people are to each other and to their own pasts,
Speaker 1: the more predictable they can be. Therefore, the herd is
Speaker 1: an obstacle for anyone trying to embrace radical freedom and individuation,
Speaker 1: and it will exert social and physical pressure to return
Speaker 1: them to a narrow form of thinking and living. And
Speaker 1: this pressure is incredibly strong because it doesn't come only
Speaker 1: from outside, but also from within. We internalize the Herd's
Speaker 1: expectations from an early age. They become part of how
Speaker 1: we think about ourselves, of what we consider possible, of
Speaker 1: what we consider acceptable. And when we try to differentiate ourselves,
Speaker 1: we're not just fighting external pressure, we're fighting an entire
Speaker 1: internal structure we've built based on others expectations. This is
Speaker 1: why individuation is so difficult. It's not just a matter
Speaker 1: of doing different things. It's a matter of completely rebuilding
Speaker 1: your internal value system, of questioning every belief you have,
Speaker 1: of asking is this really mine? Or did I just
Speaker 1: internalize it from my environment? And in most cases you'll
Speaker 1: discover that much of what you think is you is
Speaker 1: actually a reflection of others expectations. By itself, this social
Speaker 1: pressure wouldn't necessarily be seen as a bad thing, after all,
Speaker 1: every society needs certain norms to function. But Nietzsche doesn't
Speaker 1: see this as the subject genuinely overcome whatever impulse they
Speaker 1: have that's unacceptable to the herd, but rather repressing those impulses,
Speaker 1: pushing them down, denying they exist. And it's this repression
Speaker 1: that causes deep dissatisfaction and unhappiness. It can even reach
Speaker 1: unconscious levels, and we'll spend our entire lives seeking an
Speaker 1: itch we can't find or scratch, in constant dissatisfaction without
Speaker 1: any clue about the cause. This is the fate that
Speaker 1: awaits us if we give ourselves completely to the crowd.
Speaker 1: It's no wonder that later psychoanalytic thinkers like jung admired
Speaker 1: Nietzsche's insight into the inner workings of the mind itself. However,
Speaker 1: unlike some monastic thinkers, Nietzschea doesn't believe we should spend
Speaker 1: our entire lives in solitude. One of the main conflicts
Speaker 1: within Zarathustra's character is the tension between his impulse to
Speaker 1: go out and interact with people due to his great
Speaker 1: love for humanity, and his impulse to withdraw to his
Speaker 1: cave in perfectly individuated solitude. And this is not a
Speaker 1: conflict that's resolved once and for all. It's a constant
Speaker 1: tension that must be navigated continuously. Zarathustra descends from the
Speaker 1: mountain driven by love and compassion. He wants to share
Speaker 1: his wisdom, he wants to help people become more than
Speaker 1: they are. But when he's among them, he feels the
Speaker 1: weight of conformity, the pressure to adapt, the temptation to
Speaker 1: dissolve into the crowd. So he returns to solitude, not
Speaker 1: out of contempt for humanity, but to recover his essence,
Speaker 1: to remember who he is, to reconnect with his own
Speaker 1: inner voice that was drowned out by the noise of
Speaker 1: other's opinions and then strengthened by solitude. He descends again,
Speaker 1: and the cycle continues. I believe there's a deep lesson
Speaker 1: here for all of us. The question of how to
Speaker 1: balance our individuation with our interaction with others is an
Speaker 1: open question, and it's one that must be constantly reevaluated.
Speaker 1: There's no fixed formula, no perfect balance that works forever.
Speaker 1: It's a continuous dance between connection and solitude, between community
Speaker 1: and individuality, between giving to others and preserving yourself. But
Speaker 1: nietzsure warns us about the possibility of becoming so involved
Speaker 1: in crowds and communities that we forget ourselves. We become
Speaker 1: strangers to our own characters. We lose any awareness of
Speaker 1: what makes us happy or fulfilled, or even of what
Speaker 1: makes us miserable. We become emotionally numb, and we walk
Speaker 1: around with glazed dissatisfaction, aware that something is wrong, but
Speaker 1: unable to identify what. For nietzscha this is a lamentable
Speaker 1: state because it's unpleasant and unsatisfying, But it's also a
Speaker 1: waste of everything unique and wonderful we could have added
Speaker 1: to the world. There are few among us who don't
Speaker 1: have to deal with the trials and tribulations of being
Speaker 1: part of a community. We're social animals, and it's hard
Speaker 1: to live without others company. But Nietzsche reminds us that
Speaker 1: we shouldn't forget our own wills just because we repress
Speaker 1: our desires to please others. And now we'll see a
Speaker 1: warning not always associated with Nietzsche, but which I believe
Speaker 1: is a key part of his overall philosophy. Nietzsche is
Speaker 1: often associated with a particular type of thinker. He writes
Speaker 1: with a passionate and irritated style that gives the impression
Speaker 1: he's an extremely serious man, tormented by what he saw
Speaker 1: as the philosophical foolishness of people and society around him.
Speaker 1: And in this characterization we lose the emphasis Nietzsche placed
Speaker 1: on a light and gentle approach to life, and that
Speaker 1: he saw excessive seriousness as a sure sign of a
Speaker 1: miserable person. But Nietzsche has a very particular view of
Speaker 1: what he considers seriousness. He sees it as an attitude
Speaker 1: toward life that is fundamentally unchangeable and not playful, one
Speaker 1: that considers almost everything as off limits, as something grave
Speaker 1: and heavy that cannot be touched with lightness. According to Nietzsche,
Speaker 1: this permeates us with a kind of artificial seriousness, putting
Speaker 1: too much pressure both on us and on our lives
Speaker 1: to be a certain way, to correspond to certain ideals,
Speaker 1: to reach certain standards, and this can deprive existence of
Speaker 1: its fundamental wonder of its openness, of its possibility for
Speaker 1: surprise and transformation. It means we get so involved in
Speaker 1: how things should be that we forget to enjoy the
Speaker 1: world as it actually exists. We get so caught up
Speaker 1: in our judgments about what's right and wrong, good and bad,
Speaker 1: that we lose the ability to simply experience life, to
Speaker 1: play with it, to dance through it. This observation is
Speaker 1: an extension of many earlier thinkers, from the Buddhists to
Speaker 1: the Stoics. It's been pointed out that our attachment to
Speaker 1: people and things not under our control will bring us
Speaker 1: unhappiness in the long run, that we suffer not because
Speaker 1: of things themselves, but because of our expectations about how
Speaker 1: they ca should be. Nietzsche simply extends this thinking to
Speaker 1: the area of life to which we're very attached, the
Speaker 1: area of morality. For him, calling something good is clinging
Speaker 1: to a particular way the world should be. In this way,
Speaker 1: Nietzsche manages to surpass the stoics and frames our own
Speaker 1: moral system as an attachment that weighs on our characters
Speaker 1: and thoughts, leading us to despair. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: he speaks of the joyful thinker who is free from
Speaker 1: these concerns, who has overcome traditional definitions of morality and
Speaker 1: value and can instead dance through life. This is part
Speaker 1: of the doctrine of amorphati, or love of your fate.
Speaker 1: He says that ideally we shouldn't want anything to be different,
Speaker 1: not forward or backward for all eternity. We should have
Speaker 1: spirits so strong that we could rejoice in what life
Speaker 1: brings us. But this only works if we free ourselves
Speaker 1: from the instinct to judge that we inherited from older
Speaker 1: philosophies and develop the power to rejoice in life unpleasant aspects.
Speaker 1: There's a big difference between someone who is cheerful because
Speaker 1: they've never faced a troubling question and someone who has
Speaker 1: gone through those questions and discovered a deep love for life.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, this doctrine of love of fate
Speaker 1: is what will explore next, and in doing so we'll
Speaker 1: illuminate the final distinction. Niatzsure makes between the miserable and
Speaker 1: the joyful, and that's the difference between saying yes to
Speaker 1: life and saying no to it. If we consider together
Speaker 1: all the things Niatsure thinks are conducive to our pronounced misery,
Speaker 1: things like hatred of discomfort, fear of power, contempt for individualization,
Speaker 1: and refusal to let go of traditional valuations, they all
Speaker 1: have something in common, and that is that they're denying
Speaker 1: some aspect of life, refusing to rejoice in it. The
Speaker 1: one who hates suffering says no to suffering and runs
Speaker 1: from it, while the person who fears individualization or power
Speaker 1: does the same with their object of terror. Finally, the
Speaker 1: person obsessed with morality refuses to acknowledge their radical freedom
Speaker 1: and chains their possibilities with links forged from good and evil.
Speaker 1: In each case, nietzscha thinks we're denying some fundamental aspect
Speaker 1: of life, and therefore the solution is to embrace that
Speaker 1: aspect instead. So he replaces our hatred of pain with
Speaker 1: an active search for it, fear of power with will
Speaker 1: to power, contempt for individualization with love for the individual's idiosyncrasies,
Speaker 1: and obsession with morality with a revaluation of all values
Speaker 1: an embrace of radical freedom. In each aspect. Where we
Speaker 1: have an instinct to feel rejection towards some part of life,
Speaker 1: Nietschure stops us and forces us to face our fear
Speaker 1: and embrace it with love instead. This theme is perhaps
Speaker 1: most marked in his doctrine of eternal recurrence. This is
Speaker 1: Nietzsche's thought experiment that asks us to imagine that time's
Speaker 1: arrow bends into a circle, and that our lives will
Speaker 1: repeat again, again and again for all eternity. Then he
Speaker 1: asks us what our honest emotional reaction is to this situation.
Speaker 1: Are we filled with dread at having to live life
Speaker 1: over and over with no end in sight? Or are
Speaker 1: we filled with joy, loving life so much that we're
Speaker 1: thrilled to reunite with it once more. He says that
Speaker 1: if we adopt the first attitude, we're at a fundamental
Speaker 1: level saying no to life. We're spitting in the face
Speaker 1: of our own existence and participating in a futile exercise.
Speaker 1: Whatever our opinion about the relative value of our lives,
Speaker 1: we're immersed in them now, and the only sensible root
Speaker 1: forward is to embrace them, love them, and say yes
Speaker 1: to them. This is explicitly not a rational doctrine. It
Speaker 1: only makes sense to adopt the perspective on life that's
Speaker 1: most practical, and loving life is the best option available.
Speaker 1: Amor FARTI demands much of our attitude. It suggests that
Speaker 1: we smile at our pain and love whatever tragedy befalls us.
Speaker 1: It means being great grateful that we've endured illnesses, and
Speaker 1: doing all this not with a soft, tranquil heart, as
Speaker 1: a Stoic philosopher might, but with passionate joy. Here's the
Speaker 1: crucial difference between Nietzsche and the Stoics. The Stoics propose
Speaker 1: tranquil acceptance, a kind of serene resignation before fate. They say,
Speaker 1: accept what you cannot change without disturbance. But nietzscha goes
Speaker 1: much further. He doesn't just want acceptance. He wants celebration.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want you to tolerate your life. He wants
Speaker 1: you to love it passionately. It means embracing your suffering
Speaker 1: and kissing it, wishing to see it over and over
Speaker 1: for eternity. It's one of the most radical pieces of
Speaker 1: wisdom Nietzschue wrote, and it seems almost impossible to achieve
Speaker 1: in its perfect form. How can someone genuinely love their tragedies?
Speaker 1: How can they wish for their worst experiences to repeat eternally?
Speaker 1: But perhaps that's exactly the point. Perhaps amor fati isn't
Speaker 1: about achieving perfection, but about the direction you're headed, about
Speaker 1: the attitude you cultivate. Each moment you choose to say
Speaker 1: yes instead of no, each time you choose to embrace
Speaker 1: instead of resist, each time you find gratitude even in difficulty,
Speaker 1: You're moving in the direction of amorphati. However, he thinks
Speaker 1: it's a perspective worth striving to achieve, because the alternative
Speaker 1: is living in constant war with reality. It's spending your
Speaker 1: entire life resisting what is, wishing it were different, and
Speaker 1: that's a guaranteed recipe for misery. Lastly, I want to
Speaker 1: give two warnings about all this advice that are worth
Speaker 1: keeping in mind. The first is that Nietzsche is known
Speaker 1: for directing his advice only to a very particular type
Speaker 1: of person. While stoicism presents itself as a philosophy for everyone,
Speaker 1: slaves and emperors, Nietzscha writes explicitly for a very particular
Speaker 1: type of temperament, one that will only be satisfied by
Speaker 1: squeezing every last drop out of life, that naturally seeks
Speaker 1: to dive into difficulty and pain to strengthen their mind.
Speaker 1: For others, a different path toward happiness might be more advisable.
Speaker 1: The kind of joy Niatsure promises is on the other
Speaker 1: side of a great amount of pain. According to him,
Speaker 1: its pain we'll learn to love. But surely we must
Speaker 1: be very careful before trying to follow this path in life.
Speaker 1: For those who don't desire this extreme pain and this
Speaker 1: extreme joy, Nietzschure suggests that more moderate paths like stoicism
Speaker 1: might be preferable. And the other warning is a brief
Speaker 1: recommendation about how to use Nietzsche's advice in a practical way.
Speaker 1: It's worth keeping in mind that Nietzschure often writes from
Speaker 1: a place of deep frustration, Especially in his later works.
Speaker 1: He seems almost irritated by the GAP's philosophy, left by
Speaker 1: how it ignored other paths toward joy by promoting only
Speaker 1: those in which we renounce our desires and live esthetic lives.
Speaker 1: He saw the Western philosophical tradition as obsessed with the denial,
Speaker 1: with renunciation, with saying no to life in the name
Speaker 1: of abstract ideals, and this frustrated him deeply because he
Speaker 1: saw human potential being wasted. He saw people capable of
Speaker 1: greatness being taught to be small, taught to repress their
Speaker 1: strongest impulses in the name of moralities that weakened them.
Speaker 1: At this moment, I strongly encourage you to think critically
Speaker 1: about which aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy are actually applicable to you,
Speaker 1: and which ones you don't want to accept. Don't accept
Speaker 1: his ideas, blindly question everything, including him, because that's exactly
Speaker 1: what he'd want you to do. He didn't want disciples,
Speaker 1: he wanted independent thinkers. There's also the matter that Nietzsche
Speaker 1: himself was a deeply unhappy man. He spent much of
Speaker 1: his life suffering from physical and mental illnesses. He died
Speaker 1: relatively young, he spent his final years in a state
Speaker 1: of insanity, and perhaps that's relevant. If we're going to
Speaker 1: analyze his advice on how to live a happy life,
Speaker 1: perhaps we should consider not just what he said, but
Speaker 1: how he lived. And to conclude, I quote one of
Speaker 1: my favorite lines from the German thinker, he who fights
Speaker 1: with monsters must be careful not to become a monster himself.
Speaker 1: And remember that if you gaze long into an abyss,
Speaker 1: the abyss also gazes into you. You have one life,
Speaker 1: one single chance to exist in this universe, and it's
Speaker 1: passing right now at this exact moment, while you're listening
Speaker 1: to this time is running irreversibly. Every second that passes
Speaker 1: is a second that never comes back. Never. You stop
Speaker 1: when you realize you're messing up, when you recognize that
Speaker 1: every choice of comfort is killing you slowly, that every
Speaker 1: time you run from discomfort, you build your own prison,
Speaker 1: That every time you lie to yourself about what you want,
Speaker 1: you waste a day that's never coming back. Stop when
Speaker 1: you finally understand that no one is going to save you,
Speaker 1: that there's no perfect moment, that life isn't going to
Speaker 1: get easier, and that every day you wait is a
Speaker 1: day lost forever. The question isn't whether you're going to
Speaker 1: suffer you will. The question is are you going to
Speaker 1: suffer building something worth while? Or are you going to
Speaker 1: suffer wasting your only shot at this existence? You stop
Speaker 1: wasting your life when you finally truly live