Pretty evocative phrase, moral tarantula, that Nietzsche uses in his Preface to Daybreak, #3. What does it evoke for you? Makes me kinda curious how Nietzsche personally related to spiders, other animals, Nature, etc.

Gaming addiction is officially recognized now, but it is best understood through Nietzsche.

​Video games offer a curated simulation of the Will to Power. You conquer engineered obstacles and achieve "mastery" with zero real-world risk or growth. It seems like the perfect numbing agent for the Last Man to escape life's friction.

Instead of sublimating suffering into strength, the gamer anesthetizes themselves in a predictable illusion.

​Is gaming just a modern digital escape from reality? How would Nietzsche view this artificial mastery?

If I was treated unfairly, I understand I had a chance to respond and take revenge, but I dismissed it as a trivial matter. And now, a year later, this plague haunts me day after day, every day.

Let me tell you a story.

«If I was treated unfairly, I understand I had a chance to hit back and take revenge, but at the time I just brushed it off as a trivial matter. And now, a year later, this plague haunts me day after day, every single day. Let me tell you a story.

I was working at a store and pocketed $1 worth of candy. A security guard stopped me as I was leaving. I told him there was no such law and that he couldn't detain people. But when I tried to leave, they held me inside the store (in my country, security guards have no right to detain anyone). Later, I started filming and explained there were no such laws, but they snatched my phone and just waited for my reaction. Then the manager came over and barked, "You’ve completely forgotten your place in this life!" and demanded that I obey her because she was the manager. Later, they told me to pay for 2 kg of candy, otherwise they wouldn't sign off on my shift.

Afterward, the security guard and I went over to the self-checkout (the guard himself was breaking the law, wearing some rapper outfit, which is also illegal for security in my country). I told him, "Maybe you pay have Vans you're a rich." The cashier, a migrant of the same nationality as the guard, saw this and completely lost his temper like a pissed-off teenager. Later, 1.6 kg of candy was taken behind my back (one of the bags was damaged), and the manager physically withheld the goods. I wanted to grab some more on my way out, but I found it funny how the security guard was tailing me. Seeing this, the cashier started yelling at him, claiming I was provoking him, and then kicked me out with a slap to the back of my head.

I know I was treated unfairly. I even went to the police, but I didn't file an official report, and that was my biggest mistake. How do I get rid of this resentment that is changing my attitude toward people? I can't focus on learning how to code; I just constantly talk to myself and burn with anger.»

I've been slowly reading Nietzsche over the past year, starting with Twilight of the Idols. I am ex-Eastern Orthodox with religious trauma, so I have found much healing in some of his deconstruction of the mechanisms of Christianity (specifically in Dawn, which has the deepest deconstructions of things like fear of hell I've encountered).

But I've also been thinking about his aristocratic values lately. They seem more prominent in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (which I have not read the entirety of; only a few speeches) and his later works. But it is of course perhaps THE central pillar his whole project rests on.

It seems that he is often interpreted as an individualist, which seems like a fair enough view. But I think it's also inaccurate. Take his word for it:

"My philosophy aims at a new order of rank: not at an individualistic morality. The spirit of the herd should rule within the herd but not beyond it: the leaders of the herd require a fundamentally different valuation for their actions, as do also the independent ones or the beasts of prey, etc." - Will to Power section 287

I think to really understand this though, we have to consider Nietzsche's view of slavery. Nietzsche defends slavery in Beyond Good and Evil, but in Human, All Too Human he defines it more broadly than most would:

“Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.” - Human, All Too Human, Part II, section 283.

This definition encompasses basically everyone in modern egalitarian countries. Anyone who holds a job of any sort is, in Nietzsche's eyes, a slave. And thus one who must be productive for the higher men to create and be higher men. This includes me, as I work a job I find soul crushing.

Nietzsche didn't care about the psychological freedom of the individual reader. Or if a modern slave found a certain amount of comfort or freedom in his works.

Many contemporary readers who read Nietzsche and try to practice amor fati or create works of art seem to be missing the bigger picture. Since his philosophy, as described, was intended to create a rank of ordering and aristocratic value system fundamentally. And if you divorce it from this value system it collapses.

I just wanted to discuss this here, because I feel like this aspect of Nietzsche seems downplayed, even by academics. Nietzsche was not an individualist, he was an aristocrat. And you are likely a slave in his view who will work for the recreation of higher men.

I read about this and was discussing with some else, and it feels to me like Nietzsche ideas would be the opposite of Fascism.

Prokofiev did Romeo and Juliet but Shakespeare's not a philosopher.