in every age the so-called wisest have passed an identical judgment on life it is worthless friederick ner is known as many things he is the man who wanted to destroy Christian values and build the Uber mench in its place who proclaimed that God is dead and we have killed him and a philosopher whose thoughts have been misused by some of the greatest monsters in history but he was also someone who cared deeply about the philosophy of happiness and thought more than almost any other thinker about what made a human truly miserable and that is just
what we will discuss in this video whereas the stoics epicurian and N himself all had fantastic thoughts on what made someone joyful and happy we will instead look at what nature thought made a person miserable depressed and self-destructive our primary source for this will be the gay science but we will draw upon Nature's other works when needed we will learn how fear of power breeds resentment how other people can plunge us into confusion and despair and while striving for happiness directly makes it impossible to achieve as always I encourage you to critically examine each of
these ideas to see if they ring true for you and not to take my interpretation of nature at face value as there is almost certainly a richness in his philosophy that I have missed but first are you sitting comfortably if so n thinks you may have already lost because the first step to misery is one pursuing Comfort n's philosophy is full of warnings but perhaps the most important of them all comes in the form of the last man a terrifying image of what mankind could become with all of its access to Modern Comforts and pervasive
nihilism the last man is a creature created after religious values have fallen away but without anything to take their place thus we would be reduced to our basis desires seeking comfort and avoiding discomfort with no General orientation in our life this is why NE sees in the downfall of Christian values a great opportunity but also a terrifying prospect that we will all become passive lazy nihilists the last man desires comfort in all things they do not see the point in struggle or striving because they are not creative enough to make their own values and their
will is not strong enough to motivate them to action they allow their life to pass by without seizing any control over it they have no Mastery over themselves or the world and so they drift through existence in a form of gentle despair each day is Pleasant because of their endless pursuit of comfort but in the long run a gaping hole is left in their life it is not clear whether nature thinks that one day they will wake up and realize that their whole existence has been for nothing or whether they will persist in this gentle
unhappiness right up to their death but he is certain on one point this would be a tragic waste of human potential n thinks in order to gain access to Great Joys we must seek great discomforts this is a theme throughout all of his philosophy whether it's in the image of zarathustra descending from Enlightenment to be scorned by the world or through the powerful joyful person strengthening their resolved through continuous pain nature thinks that true valuable happiness only comes through the conscious choice to suffer and his reasoning behind this is twofold the first reason is pretty
straightforward too much comfort makes us fragile nature does not have a Rosy view on the world he knows that suffering is inevitable and it will be all the more painful if it catches us unawares the only way to make ourselves strong enough to Bear the suffering of life and even to celebrate it is to choose the path of suffering ourselves just as a new piece of music might at first seem unfamiliar and irritating but over time we grow to love it through familiarity nature wants us to learn to appreciate pain through continual exposure the second
reason is a little bit more subtle but is ultimately very insightful the more pain we endure the more it will increase our freedom after all in order to do anything worthwhile we have to be able to Bear suffering whether we want to carve a great Empire like Napoleon create fantastic Arts like Gerta or simply become the master of our own Leisure we are going to have to endure hardship if happiness was easy then everyone would do it for nature it is only through learning to suffer that we will cultivate the strength to become truly free
for him how autonomous we are is directly proportional to how much we're willing to endure to attain our wills and if we cannot stand discomfort then we won't be very free at all but why all this emphasis on strength what purpose is this power going to serve well that brings us nicely onto our next point and the next step on the road to human misery if you want more on flossophy and the art of learning subscribe to my email list and my patreon the links are in the description two the fear Fe of power nature
is often painted as a power obsessed philosopher and there is some truth in this he did think we all had a Will To Power inside of us that wanted to exert itself on the world and on ourselves however n is not a mere fetishist of power as some have accused him of being he thinks that power and strength are important prerequisites to human flourishing and this is best illustrated by how he thinks people behave when they are powerless in ne's view powerlessness is not a virtue but instead brings out the worst in human nature and
this comes out most of all in his concept of resentment resentment is an emotion that we're all familiar with it is what happens when we see someone more accomplished than us in a field we value and envy Burns inside of us but the Envy is not aspirational but destructive it does not aim at building us up to their level but tearing them down to ours so that our resentment is alleviated without having to face the fact that we might be inadequate by our own standards this is self-evidently an unpleasant emotion to feel and nature is
hardly the first to point it out both both early Buddhist thinkers and church fathers saw it as an emotion standing in the way of any spiritual goal but nature truly brings to life the poisonous effects of resentment the reenter lives in a constant state of denial about what they actually want in truth they aspire to become the object of their resentment if I resent a more successful philosophy Channel than mine then what that tells you is that I desire their position but if I am powerless then I don't have the ability to attain that success
instead the only route forward is to declare that it's not a position worth having in the first place we are like the fox in eso's Fable who when they cannot get their desired grapes declare that they were probably sour anyway but this selft trickery cannot truly bring fulfillment because it's a repression of what we actually desire if we resent something we cannot strive towards it even if deep down it is our truest want and the cruelty of this trick is evident it turns what could have been a motivation to empower our wills and so achieve
our heart's desire into a guarantee that we will never be fulfilled what could have been a temporary obstacle instead becomes a permanent amputation of our root to happiness it also encourages us to hate the object of our resentment and to try and take revenge on a life we feel has wronged us and according to Nature we fall into this powerless State because we fear power itself we associate it with some of the greatest atrocities in history without recognizing that all of the great Goods in history also required power and the power n has in mind
is not merely physical but involves a sort of self-overcoming that is difficult to put into work but it partly involves a refusal to submit your will to that of another it involves recognizing yourself as The Sovereign of your life with all of the crushing pressure and radical Freedom that that brings it means not letting the morality or taste of others dictate what you do but instead being in full control and taking full responsibility for your life it is easy for this to be turned into a bit of clickable wisdom but let's stop for a moment
and consider just how radical this idea of freedom is according to Nature the truly free aren't even Bound by the rules of morality we would take full ownership for our decisions and refuse to submit our will to anyone else's this is a huge change from the way that many of us live our lives and at points n hints that if most people thought this way it would be an out andout disaster it is an independence of thought will and action that is greater than that proposed by almost any other philosopher and yet it is what
n suggests that we begin to do in order to not be eaten up by resentment and weakness and contrary to popular belief this form of power eventually becomes benevolent all by itself without the need for external compulsion as n puts it the state in which we hurt others is rarely as agreeable as that in which we benefit others it is a sign that we are still lacking in power or it shows a sense of frustration in the face of this lack of power but I want to delve a little more deeply into this theme of
Independence because if there's one thing that NE considers a Sure Fire roots to despair it is being too influenced by crowds and that is just our next point three hell is other people in jeul sra's play no exit the character of gasar famously closes the drama by saying Hell is other people and this line has been taken out of context and misinterpreted to paint satra as a profound misanthrope but the truth is a little bit more complicated satra was referring at least partly to the human tendency to fear judgment from others and for our self-image
to be regulated through the opinions of our peers n shares this worry and he points out a human tendency that can bring us all great misery dwelling too long in the company of others such that we become alien ated from our own characters or in his words becoming actors playing ourselves one of the images n turns to repeatedly in his philosophy is that of the herd that is the majority of society who he viewed as having roughly speaking the same opinions and outlook on life but he did not think that people were naturally like this
n said it is in the power of almost anyone to cultivate their individuality and be both more fulfilled and achieve a greater level of self-development and understanding however in his view the herd has an outright violent reaction to anyone attempting to differentiate themselves above all the herd values predictability and the more similar people are to each other and their past selves the more predictable they can be thus the herd is a hindrance to anyone attempting to embrace radical freedom and individuation and it would exert social and physical pressure to re them back in to a
narrow way of thinking and living in and of itself this sort of social pressure might not necessarily be seen as a bad thing but nature does not see this as the subject genuinely conquering any Drive they have that are unacceptable to the herd but instead much like our renter in the previous section they repress those drives and it is this repression that causes such unfulfillment and unhappiness it may even reach the unconscious levels and will spend our entire lives searching for an itch that we can neither find nor scratch in constant dissatisfaction with no clue
as to the cause such a fate awaits us if we give ourselves wholeheartedly to the crowd it is no wonder that later psychoanalytic thinkers like Freud admired the Insight that had into the inner workings of his own mind however unlike some monastic thinkers nature does not think that we should spend our entire lives in solitude either arguably one of the key conflicts within the character of zarathustra is the tension between his urge to go out and interact with people because of his great love for mankind and his urge to retreat back into his cave into
perfect individuated Solitude I think there is a lesson in here for us all the issue of how to balance our individuation with our interaction with others is an open question and it's one that must be constantly re-evaluated but nature warns us of the possibility that we'll become so Ed in crowds and communities that we will forget ourselves we will become unfamiliar with our characters and thus lose any awareness of what makes us happy or fulfilled or even what makes us miserable we will become emotionally stilted and will trudge around in glassy eyed dissatisfaction aware that
something is wrong but unable to put our finger on what it is for nature this is a sorry state for two reasons it is unpleasant and unfulfilling but it's also a complete way of everything unique and wonderful we could have added to the world it takes everything about us that would be peculiarly us and crushes it into a mold for the benefit of others and this is one of the most applicable pieces of wisdom that n ever wrote there are few Among Us who don't have to deal with the trials and tribulations of being part
of a community we are social animals and it's difficult to live without the company of others but nature reminds us not to forget our own Wills just because we repress our desires to please others doesn't mean that they will go away way and if we become unconscious of them then we can't even gently let them go in the way that shophow might want us to we will be stuck in lives peppered with holes wondering why we are so sad but next we will look at a warning that's not often associated with nature but I think
is a key part of his overall philosophy four excesses in seriousness nature is often associated with a very particular type of thinker especially in his later writings like Twilight of the idols or the Antichrist he writes in such a passionate and angry style that he gives the impression that he's a supremely serious man tormented by what he saw as the philosophical foolishness of the people and society around him and there is no doubt a little truth in this though some have argued that his later emotional instability was just evidence of his syphilis reaching the neurological
stage nonetheless in this characterization we lose the emphasis that n placed on a light-hearted and genial approach to life and that he saw an excess in seriousness to be a sure sign of a miserable person in some ways this is obvious if someone can't laugh then chances are they're very sad but n has a very particular view on what he takes seriousness to be he sees it as an attitude to life that is fundamentally unplay and unper one that regards almost everything as off limits in one Illuminating passage in the gay science nature characterizes 19th
century Europeans as weighed down by obsessions over value judgments we have become completely enraptured with the ideas of Good and Evil and we regard any action even a mere Act of thinking as falling into one of these camps burdening everything with a moral moral label according to n this imbus us with a sort of artificial seriousness it puts a lot of pressure both on us and our lives to be a certain way and this can rob life of its fundamental wonder it means we get so wrapped up in how things should be that we forget
to enjoy the world as it actually exists this observation by nature is an extension of many previous thinkers both Buddhist philosophers and stoics have pointed out that our attachment to people and things not in our control will bring us unhappiness in the long term nature just extends his thinking to an area of life that we are very attached to indeed morality for him calling something good is clinging to a particular way the world should be in this way n managed to out stoic the stoics and frame our very moral system as an attachment which weighed
down our characters and our thinking leading us into despair on the flip side nature talks of a joyous thinker who is unburdened by these concerns they have pushed past traditional definitions of morality and value and can instead dance through life this is part of n's doctrine of Amo FY or loving one's fate he says that ideally we should want nothing to be different forwards or backwards for all eternity we should have such strong spirits that we should be able to take joy in whatever life throws at us but this only works if we unburden ourselves
of the judging Instinct that we have inherited from older philosophies and develop the power to Rejoice at the unpleasant aspects of life for nature there is a world of difference between someone who is cheerful because they've never confronted a troubling question and someone who has gone through these questions and discovered a deep love for life on the other side and this doctrine of amarati is what we shall explore next and in doing so we will illuminate the ultimate distinction that nature makes between the miserable and the joyous and that is the difference between saying yes
to life and saying no to it five Amor party if we consider together all of the things that nature thinks are conducive to our pronounced Misery the hatred of discomfort the fear of power the disdain for individuation and the refusal to unburden yourself of traditional valuations they all have one thing in common they are denying some aspect of life refusing to take joy in it the hater of suffering says no to suffering and runs away from it while the person who fears individuation or power does the same to their object of Terror finally the person
obsessed with morality refuses to recognize their radical freedom and chains down their possibilities with links forged from Good and Evil in each case nature thinks we would be denying some fundamental aspect of life and in each case the solution is to embrace that aspect instead thus he replaces our hatred of pain with the active quest to seek it the fear of Power with the will to power a disdain for individuation with a love of the idiosyncrasies of the individual and an obsession with morality with the revaluation of all values and an Embrace of radical freedom
in each case where we have the instinct to say no to some part of life nature seizes Us by the shoulders forces us to look our fear in the face and to embrace it with love instead and this is what I take to be the Cornerstone of his philosophy of Happiness the the ability to say yes to anything in life this theme is perhaps starkest in his doctrine of the Eternal recurrence this is a thought experiment by Nature that asks us to imagine that the arrow of time bends in a circle and that our lives
will be repeated again and again for all eternity he then asks us for our honest emotional reaction to this situation are we filled with fear at having to live life over and over again without an end in sight or are we filled with joy loving life so much that we were excited to be reunited with her once again nature says that if we take the first attitude we are at a fundamental level saying no to life we are spitting in the face of our own existence and engaging in a futile exercise whatever we may think
about the relative value of Our Lives we are in mesed in them now and the only sensible route forward is to embrace it love it and say yes to it this is explicitly not a rational Doctrine nature thinks there can be no rational doctrines about the value of life itself because none of us are disinterested parties it only makes sense to take the outlook on life life that is most practical and loving life is the best option on offer and amatti Demands a lot of our attitude it compels us to turn every negative experience into
a positive one it suggests that we smile on our pain and love whatever tragedies befall us it means being thankful that our loved ones have died that illnesses have been endured and doing this all not with a gentle or calm Heart Like A stoic philosopher might but with passionate Joy it means grasping your suffering and kissing it wishing to see it over and over again for eternity it is one of the most radical pieces pieces of wisdom n ever wrote and it seems almost impossible to achieve in its perfect form nonetheless he thinks it is
an Outlook worth striving towards n is again pushing ancient wisdom to its extreme here whereas a Buddhist or a stoic might encourage us to be indifferent to the sufferings of Life n asks why we should stop at indifference if we can train our attitudes in this way why not train them to actively love everything awful that's happened to us I will leave it up to you to decide how realistic a prospect this is and lastly I want to give two caveats to all of this advice that are worth taking on board the first is that
n is notorious for his advice only being aimed at a very particular kind of person whereas stoicism pitches itself as a philosophy for everyone slaves and Emperors nature explicitly writes for a very particular sort of temperament one that will only be satisfied draining every last drop from life one that naturally seeks to plunge itself into hardship and grief to toughen up its mind for others a different route to happiness might be best recommended in Nature's own words in one person the health of their soul could look like its opposite in another person the kind of
Joy n promises is on the other side of an awful lot of pain according to him it is pain that we will learn to love but we should surely be very careful before attempting to follow this path through life for those who do not desire this extreme pain and extreme joy n suggests that more moderate paths like the stoic or epicurian one might be preferable and the other caveat is a short recommendation about how to use n's advice in a practical way it's worth bearing in mind that n often writes from a deep place of
frustration especially in his later works he comes across at almost angry at the gaps philosophy has left at how it has ignored other paths to Joy by only promoting ones where we renounce our desires and live aesthetic lives to that extent we may want to take the extremes of n's philosophy with a pinch of salt in this video perhaps more than any other I encourage you to think critically about what aspects of n's philosophy are truly applicable to you and which you do not want to take on board there was also the matter that n
himself was a deeply unhappy man and perhaps that's relevant if we're going to look at his advice on how to live a happy life but if you want more controversial Philosophy from n check out this video on his analysis of our moral system and how he thinks it's not fit for purpose and stick around for more on thinking to improve your life
