/lit/ - Literature

>>8395498
It's comforting to believe there once existed someone smart enough to say "fuck this gay world" in such a way that you can latch onto his books and pretend you're also that enlightened. Because he WAS brilliant, and yet at a certain point you just see the hopelessness and dead-end-ness of his world view. He destroyed Christianity in a way, and yet what he offered in return was a depressing void in it's place. I think he helped me enormously when I was an adolescent, and made me question and refute EVERYTHING, but eventually I found my way past this. Which is vague and unclear, of course, and deliberately so....

Basically I think OP nailed it: it's comforting to believe that someone once existed who verified one's adolescent urges toward blind egotism and superiority, and that being a pretentious übermensch who knows what Ultimate Reality is and can see through it and rise above it is the wisest world-view to attempt to adopt for oneself. Because, o f c o u r s e, people want to aggressively believe they're not dupes, and that by latching onto a legitimately brilliant genius outsider like Friedrich, they're somehow his equal.

I think the most helpful and generous advice I can give to seekers infatuated with Nietzsche is to look as HONESTLY at themselves as they're able to bear, and to realize that they're dead asleep and trapped and know nothing. This is the most positive Life-Urge one can have, because we all must face the reality of ourselves, and we all must begin precisely where we are right now. Are we as awake as we could be? Are we honestly as actualized and alive as we could be? What is a practical way to rise above the dross we find ourselves in? We have to honestly recognize to our core that it is simply wishful thinking to imagine we're somehow übermensches superior to other struggling, baffled humans.

Nietzsche's books are great to ponder at a certain point in our lives, but what we honestly need are METHODS to overcome this body and this prison we find ourselves in.

And there exist people who could you specific names and books to search out, but that isn't the way. There are names and thinkers and people who no one mentions, because to do so would be to shit upon what is beautiful and precious beyond measure. Seekers will continue to seek, which is as it should be. But folks on /lit/ have a huge advantage over others, because they're readers and because they're self-obsessed with finding the core truths of life...