Outlooks of the String Pullers

Part III

What They Teach Their Children

March 31, 2000

In the first two parts of this series, I decided to put forth what has been and still remains that which is most dreaded and hated among the string pullers and their supporters, namely Christianity, its morality, its institutions and its God. They used to give some lip service to belief in God, but one hears less and less of this now. Their first coup was in the domain of science; being able to use materialist philosophy as a club over organized religion to such an extent that much of the latter has by this time lost its social significance as well as its moral authority; Christianity has been sidelined, rendered irrelevant to the social consciousness of most common people today. Within a generation perhaps the belief in God itself will dwindle to the vanishing point, leaving the stage open for an interloper of the string puller's creation or choosing to step in and assume the role. The cults of pop stars of all sorts are attempts by the string pullers to "test the waters" for the time when a real interloper will be presented to the world as its rightful king and God. Since these unseen powers know full well who the rightful, but physically absent, king of this world really is, they think nothing of promoting contending popular religions, especially those of a more pacific nature such as Buddhism, Hinduism or New Age occultism, anything to further the decline of Christianity's power and influence.

To begin with, we have something peculiar. I said in the two earlier pieces that the string pullers use materialism as a club against popular religion. But are they materialists themselves, or do they adhere to another older and darker metaphysics?

What? And others even say that the external world is the work of our organs? But then our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves would be the work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a complete reductio ad absurdum - assuming that the concept of a causa sui is something fundamentally absurd. Consequently, the external world is just the work of our organs?

Beyond Good & Evil #15

Is he asking or telling? He's telling! What Nietzsche was aware of is the fundamental impossibility of materialism that lies beyond the understanding of the simple; that one cannot have a materialist basis of reality and an observing consciousness operating from within that material continuum simultaneously. Of course some highly educated dolts like Dr. Crick will still try to have it both ways and insist that his pursuit of the origins of consciousness in the human brain have merely a materialist aspect; that our thoughts are nothing but chemical reactions. Nobody who has any sense or experience of life can really believe this.

Therefore, there must be a more complete explanation including both the material reality and consciousness. This hasn't arrived yet in the popular mind and may not if the string pullers have their way, since they always want to be in control lest some other group vie with them for control, which aside from defying the rightful but absent king of this world, is one of their primary worries. Therefore we can assume that privately the string pullers have a metaphysics, and we can further guess that it is shamanistic in character.

The hints that this is so are everywhere in the popular media; ghosts, "others", vampires, witches, spells, special or magic powers, magic places, past lives, sliders, etc. It is easy to guess that the string pullers and in particular their backers, are keenly interested and deeply involved in the occult metaphysics. This shamanism was the earlier old religion hidden and submerged by Christianity for most of the past fifteen hundred years, but practiced widely before the advent of Christianity for as far back as history records and during most of Christianity's public triumph in secret societies away from the prying eyes of the simple or uninitiated.

With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire of emphasizing a small terse fact, which these superstitious minds hate to concede - namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes. and not when "I" wish, so that it is a falsification of the facts of the case to say that the subject "I" is the condition of the predicate "think." It thinks; but that this "it" is precisely the famous old "ego" is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion. and assuredly not an "immediate certainty." After all, one has even gone too far with this "it thinks" - even the "it" contains an interpretation of the process, and does not belong to the process itself. 0ne infers here according to the grammatical habit: "Thinking is an activity; every activity requires an agent; consequently..."

Beyond Good & Evil #17

Now, bearing in mind what I said earlier about the metaphysics of the string pullers, what is Nietzsche saying here? The key is in the words I have emphasized. If a thought is received, it arrives from somewhere and may or may not be acted upon. But who does the acting, the deciding, who is responsible?

It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself when a thinker senses in every "causal connection" and "psychological necessity" something of constraint, need, compulsion to obey, pressure, and unfreedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings - that person betrays himself.

Therefore all the thoughts of an opposite character are granted ready acceptance often for them and theirs only; unregulated, uninhibited action of all kinds, the feeling of supremacy and independence from all others, the right to disobey, the feelings of release from any and all pressure or "stress" and generally the freedom to go, be and do as one pleases. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" as Allister Crowley put it. But this "freedom" is emphatically not for everyone, but reserved only for the few at the top.

And in general, if I have observed correctly, the "unfreedom of the will" is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but always in a profoundly personal manner: some will not give up their "responsibility," their belief in themselves, the personal right to their merits at any price (the vain races belong to this class).

I am not sure whether Nietzsche really means "races" or "castes" here. But since he is talking about the problems of "constraint, need, compulsion to obey, pressure, and unfreedom" as applied to the outlook of the string pullers and especially their supporters especially those on "the barge," we may suppose the outlook described as closest to the "vanity" of supporters of The New World Order. These people feel a keen sense of responsibility for what they are doing. They imagine that what they do really matters, that the world needs their New World Order in order to survive, evolve and progress. That they are the "world savers" and the rest of us should be damn grateful if they let us live at all.

Others, on the contrary, do not wish to be answerable for anything, or blamed for anything, and owing to an inward self-contempt, seek to lay the blame for themselves somewhere else. The latter, when they write books, are in the habit today of taking the side of criminals; a sort of socialist pity is their most attractive disguise. And as a matter of fact, the fatalism of the weak-willed embellishes itself surprisingly when it can pose as "la religion de la souffrance humaine"; that is its "good taste."

Beyond Good & Evil 21

But of course since these people are far less "vain" than the former group, they can be manipulated. Or can they? It is one of my contentions that these are precisely the two groups who have been most "at war" with each other for at least the last 200 years. One group, "the barge" has capital to float wherever it will and to finance whomever it will including the "socialists" whom they imagine they can control. Meanwhile it is the socialists who have always harbored the deepest resentment for "the barge" and all it stands for and they want nothing better than to cause it to "run aground" permanently so they can replace it with their own brand of tyranny. Either way, it will be the Chandala mob at the bottom of society who will suffer the most. It is only the rightful and absent king of this world who has any real care for them. While he is away, these two parties will court their following and play out the events of history.

Need I also remind the reader at this point of a most delicate matter? There is a racial component to all of it; the struggle for world domination between "the barge" and the socialists. I will not at this time go further in this direction but to say that the race most closely associated with the socialist camp have long harbored a resentment that they were excluded from "the barge" while at the same time they have had an equally deep loathing for the society of "the barge". If anyone cares to discuss this issue with me any further, they are free to contact me via e-mail.

Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong. And whoever attempts it even with the best right but without inner constraint proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring to the point of recklessness. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousand fold the dangers which life brings with it in any case, not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes lonely, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing one like that comes to grief, this happens so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize. And he cannot go back any longer. Nor can he go back to the pity of men.

Beyond Good & Evil 29

And in one way or another this is the myth that fathers tell their sons, whether they be of "the barge" or of the rabble of socialist revolutionaries. If one would not be as a sheep, one's only recourse is to become a wolf.

Every choice human being strives instinctively for a citadel and a secrecy where he is saved from the crowd, the many, the great majority - where he may forget "men who are the rule," being their exception - excepting only the one case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a seeker after knowledge in the great and exceptional sense.

Beyond Good & Evil #26

And here lies another widespread myth, that of choice. There is among the vain the desire to be chosen, among the Chandala mob revolutionaries the notion that they are chosen. One wonders what the notion of "being chosen" represents for someone whose outlook is materialist or atheistic, as it still operates? It can be little more or less than the self-congratulation that one finds oneself a well bred animal. As a psychological phenomenon, the idea of being chosen still remains amazingly potent and persistent. There would seem to be some deep need to be recognized, if not by some authority, either coincident or external, then at least by one's contemporaries or perhaps by one's posterity that operates in most human beings as a peculiar motivation to action, even in criminals, as a means to establish a meaning or reason for their existence. Of course what operates in individuals apples also to whole classes, races and nations of people.

The rest of #26 merely relates how a philosopher must get out of his ivory tower or "citadel" and mingle with the masses, especially the cynical, in order to develop a cogent philosophy. Nietzsche develops this notion of "choice" into "the in group" to which "the chosen" aspire to belong or in some instances may be forced to belong by their elders.

Our highest insights must - and should - sound like follies and sometimes like crimes when they are heard without permission by those who are not predisposed and predestined for them. The difference between the exoteric and the esoteric, formerly known to philosophers - among the Indians as among the Greeks, Persians, and Muslims, in short, wherever one believed in an order of rank and not in equality and equal rights - does not so much consist in this, that the exoteric approach comes from outside and sees, estimates, measures, and judges from the outside, not the inside: what is much more essential is that the exoteric approach sees things from below, the esoteric looks down from above.

There are heights of the soul from which even tragedy ceases to look tragic; and rolling together all the woe of the world - who could dare to decide whether its sight would necessarily seduce us and compel us to feel pity and thus double this woe?

Nietzsche, as well as his modern counterparts, would rather that their sons and daughters view "the lower orders" with dispassion rather than pity else they start to sympathize with their plight or in any way identify themselves with them. There is good reason for preserving this dispassionate evaluation as it becomes part of the duties of the higher castes to decide under certain special circumstances who shall live and who must die or less dramatically who shall succeed and who shall fail. Nietzsche wants to increase this "distance" between the castes with reference to just about everything in the world. Again, mostly as a delusion, he places the philosopher at the veritable pinnacle of the heap of humanity. The masters of "the barge" know quite otherwise. The philosopher is merely another of their numerous instruments. These days they are called "journalists."

What serves the higher type of men as nourishment or delectation must almost be poison for a very different and inferior type.

One may well wonder whether Nietzsche includes music in this mix as well, especially that late romantic music of his own time, music that routinely exercises the deepest emotions as well as the highest intellect in its performers and listeners alike. I suspect that he does. Those of us who have any strong interest in classical music should pay close attention to this clue as to why the influence of classical music is not more widespread these days. It's message and activities on the human psyche are far too strong and rarified to be allowed too wide a play among the masses. It has the power to make them noble, something "the barge" simply does not want. Better to have the masses drugged into a stupor by the incredibly vulgar, base and ugly sounds of today's pop music. Let them realize that they are slaves and no better. Let the music scare them into submission and let them defend this music as good. Then the role it plays for the string pullers on "the barge" will be complete. After all, who but themselves should be entitled to hear really great music?

The virtues of the common man might perhaps signify vices and weaknesses in a philosopher. It could be possible that a man of a high type, when degenerating and perishing, might only at that point acquire qualities that would require those in the lower sphere into which he had sunk to begin to venerate him like a saint.

That the lower orders would pity him for having fallen from a great height? Why would they? More than likely they would treat such an instance with indifference.

There are books that have opposite values for soul and health, depending on whether the lower soul, the lower vitality, or the higher and more vigorous ones turn to them: in the former case, these books are dangerous and lead to crumbling and disintegration; in the latter, heralds' cries that call the bravest to their courage.

Nietzsche is clearly specifying books of "hidden knowledge", "inside information", "secrets," and not just books of "higher mathematics" or philosophy. What some of these great secrets would do to the average man is to turn him very quickly into a dispirited useless man, since he would soon realize the enormous extent to which institutions he had formerly respected as "fair" would be recognized in a new light as "rigged" or manipulated. That such "inside information" exists is quite certain. The world at large has not been told the whole truth by a long shot.

Among the would be elitists, one of the more constant complaints against the lower orders is that they stink. In the Old Testament this attitude is even given to the Almighty when he says that a certain tribe of people he has marked for extermination, stink in his nostrils. As against Nietzsche's books of arcane knowledge;

Books for all the world are always foul-smelling books: the smell of small people clings to them. Where the people eat and drink, even where they venerate, it usually stinks. One should not go to church if one wants to breathe pure air.

Beyond Good & Evil #30

Nietzsche always has to get his digs into Christianity. Unfortunately for Nietzsche and his numerous followers, methinks he has already been made the fool.

But in the meantime, Nietzsche instructs his readers concerning independence;

One has to test oneself to see that one is destined for independence and command - and do it at the right time. One should not dodge one's tests, though they may be the most dangerous game one could play and are tests that are taken in the end before no witness or judge but ourselves.

Sounds paternal, doesn't it? He could have attached, "Listen my son," as in the Proverbs as he specifies the lengths of independence;

Not to remain stuck to a person - not even the most loved - every person is a prison, also a nook.

One must not have any attachments to another human being as these are "prisons" and limit one's options for action. This includes especially the love of a spouse. One trend that we can see emerging is a "loveless" trend rising in direct proportion to acceptance of sexual licensee. One may have as much sex as one wishes. Sexual congress is to be enjoyed like any experience, but is not to signify attachment, as in love, which implies a direct bond or connection between two people. That would subvert independence and anything that does that is considered negative in the new scheme of things.

Not to remain stuck to a fatherland - not even if it suffers most and needs help most - it is less difficult to sever one's heart from a victorious fatherland.

One must not have any attachments to a country. Patriotism is also an evil. This is very frequent among denizens of "the barge" as well as of those whose race has for the longest time been without a country. Such people are known to have a "cosmopolitan" outlook; they have no fixed abode, make money anywhere, live anywhere, don't pay any taxes, they "buy" governments instead. Of course such people are as a rule more fabulously wealthy than can even be guessed.

Not to remain stuck to some pity - not even for higher men into whose rare torture and helplessness some accident allowed us to look.

That's right, never pity anyone, ever, not even when someone of high rank stumbles or falls, maybe even especially then, as one may jeopardize one's own position in an attempt to help someone else, very much as a drowning man struggles and may inadvertently drag down the person who tries to save him.

Not to remain stuck to a science - even if it should lure us with the most precious finds that seem to have been saved up precisely for us.

This one is curious to the uninitiated but nevertheless true of the string pullers and their supporters; not to specialize in a particular science or technique, but rather to remain informed on as much knowledge as possible, again to be more agile and adaptive.

Not to remain stuck to one's own detachment, to that voluptuous remoteness and strangeness of the bird who flees ever higher to see ever more below him - the danger of the flier.

This advice is as much for cover and camouflage as for anything else; live and walk among the common run of men lest one stick out and so become a target. It is also the only way to sharpen one's wits and senses, to remain informed of the mood of the crowd.

Not to remain stuck to our own virtues and become as a whole the victim of some detail in us, such as our hospitality, which is the danger of dangers for superior and rich souls who spend themselves lavishly, almost indifferently, and exaggerate the virtue of generosity into a vice.

Oh yes, but again methinks Nietzsche is confusing "rich souls" with "rich men" whose legendary stinginess must be a warrant against being drained dry of resources by the Chandala mob.

One must know how to conserve oneself: the hardest test of independence.

Beyond Good & Evil #41

In some societies both ancient and modern, it was even considered a great evil for a rich man to spend himself too lavishly, become too hospitable, etc. It still is. Consider that wealth always and everywhere seeks concealment and conserves itself lest it be squandered and its benefits lost not only to its owners but even more so to the rabble of the Chandala mob served by its scraps. Either the rabble rousing socialists know this is true or they discount it, cynically preferring to believe that the aftermath of the revolutions they attempt will bring about a greater wasteland in which many of the "stinking masses" will not survive anyway. Thus, to the extent that I feel any Christian sympathy for those at the bottom, I am compelled to loathe the socialists, who either with foreknowledge or without it, are instigators of ruin. Of course there is the other distinct possibility; that the socialists are purposely furnished with enough financial backing so as to carry out their reign of ruin on behalf of the string pullers who are only interested in culling the human population. This too has always been a perennial concern of the string pullers, their backers and those who preceded them on the world scene millennia past. But that too is off the subject.

Let us get back on track by considering the attitude of aristocrats, real aristocrats, whom these days are more often than not without titles yet have the same function as they ever had in the past; the leadership class, which includes at least as many as aspire to such status as those who are already among the aristocracy, which in the modern world consists of those who are mostly on "the barge." Nietzsche speaks again as though he were offering fatherly advice to his sons;

Every elevation of the type "man," has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society and so it will always be--a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other.

And yes, even modern "democratic" societies require slaves and have them in droves, though those who believe themselves "free" may not even recognize their true social condition. So much the better. It was even more so under communism, and what is most ironic, some people having lived under the regulations of slavery in such systems often long for their return, after they have crumbled away, thus proving Nietzsche's estimation of the masses of humanity to be accurate; few people can handle real freedom, the vast majority are only fit to be slaves.

Without the pathos of distance, such as grows out of the incarnated difference of classes, out of the constant out-looking and down-looking of the ruling caste on subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a distance--that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended, more comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation of the type "man," the continued "self-surmounting of man," to use a moral formula in a supermoral sense.

Of course Nietzsche is driving at the notion not of "man" but of "superman" the concept for which he is most noted, out of which comes the Hitlerian notion of a "master race." But among the denizens of "the barge" such notions are not mere fantasy.

To be sure, one must not resign oneself to any humanitarian illusions about the history of the origin of an aristocratic society (that is to say, of the preliminary condition for the elevation of the type "man"): the truth is hard. Let us acknowledge unprejudicedly how every higher civilisation hitherto has originated! Men with a still natural nature, barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, men of prey, still in possession of unbroken strength of will and desire for power, threw themselves upon weaker, more moral, more peaceful races (perhaps trading or cattle-rearing communities), or upon old mellow civilisations in which the final vital force was flickering out in brilliant fireworks of wit and depravity. At the commencement, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste: their superiority did not consist first of all in their physical, but in their psychical power--they were more complete men (which at every point also implies the same as "more complete beasts").

Beyond Good & Evil #257

Emphasis mine. Psychical power. This caste is profoundly convinced of its metaphysical hegemony. And here it is, the grand myth, the basis for the Hitlerian rites of National Socialism, based on the mythology of the Germanic brand of "noble savagery." Ironic that in another text Nietzsche blames Christianity for the demise of ancient Rome while here more accurately attributing some of it at least to his own ancestors, the Germanic barbarians.

But the truth of how ancient civilizations actually spring forth is not based on this myth at all but on one far stranger, far older, having far more occult factors, and no we will not go farther in that direction here. Suffice it to say that the true roots of ancient civilizations are known full well by the highest leadership among "the barge" and held most secret by them, although they may decide to leak some or all of this knowledge out to the public when and if it serves their purposes to do so. Until such time, they have many well paid scoffers who will assert that nothing but what is commonly believed to be history is true.

The essential thing, however, in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should not regard itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth, but as the significance and highest justification thereof--that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, for its sake, must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments.

Oh yes, and of course this must be their view of things. They are not like the rest of us. Their vast wealth and power and the distance these create must make this so. Everyone else who is not of their caste is not intelligent, even if they can assert a mountain of works that usually prove otherwise to everyone else. Nor a handful of academic degrees. Nothing equates with supremacy like power and wealth and the intelligence to use it and most importantly to keep it. Let all the world think that a rich man is stupid, he certainly wont care in the slightest, as the mere suggestion is itself proof that the man making such a statement is a fool.

Its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is not allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties, and in general to a higher existence.

Beyond Good & Evil #258

And make no mistake, if one is not of their caste, they must be nothing but a footstool or scaffolding for such as are. No matter what personal graces or refinements they may have gained by their own efforts, or talents they have nurtured to perfection, they are accorded as mere ornaments to the majesty of the great. This used to be the province of "the gods." Later it was the prerogative of princes. It has in modern times become that of "the barge." It is a grand illusion for those at Nietzsche's social rung to consider themselves among the top echelon, rather than as merely the academically prepared "instruments" that they in fact are. But the people of "the barge" know better and that's all that matters. The same goes for artists, celebrities, politicians, diplomats, etc. These people are the tools of the elite not the elite itself.

To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one's will on a par with that of others: this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organisation).

Aristocrats always respect each other as members of the same class.

As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society, it would immediately disclose what it really is--namely, a Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution and decay.

Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;--but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped? Even the organisation within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal--it takes place in every healthy aristocracy--must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organisation, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other: it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendency--not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to Power.

Emphasis mine. Cutting it down to bare essentials; an aristocrat recognizes a fellow aristocrat and accords to him and his class only what is fair and sporting behavior as "on the playing fields of Eaton" but regards all others as fair game to use, exploit and extinguish for their own gain. This is a wolf pack analogy in which an aristocrat is fundamentally dangerous, one with whom one deals being fully armed, not with weapons such as firearms, but with weapons of intelligence, information, secrets, real resources, etc. In such a scheme one is either a hunter, with the pack of hunters, or one becomes the hunted.

On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter; people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which "the exploiting character" is to be absent:-- that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. "Exploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society: it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life.--Granting that as a theory this is a novelty--as a reality it is the fundamental fact of all history: let us be so far honest towards ourselves!

Beyond Good & Evil #259

Whether exploitation belongs to the nature of a living being or not is certainly open to questions of interpretation for most of us. It is not for members of "the barge" but rather exactly the way they see the world and their own prerogatives in it. If in the process of regulating the affairs of the rest of us they are perpetuating themselves and their caste and in the process perhaps tens of millions of human beings may of necessity suffer or die is of little direct concern to them. They probably think that those of us who manage to survive and carry on our lives should be thankful that many more did not suffer and die.

What a father of "the barge" set may tell his son or daughter from the time they are tots on up is something like this;

In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain traits recurring regularly together, and connected with one another, until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light. There is master-morality and slave-morality; --I would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilisations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities; but one finds still oftener the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close juxtaposition--even in the same man, within one soul.

Yes, but the man of divided loyalties is that much easier to use in that for some measure of his time he is impressed by being "on the winning team," or "with the right people." He is easier to use since he is not always aware that he is forced to act as merely a slave. And because of this divided loyalty, he will very often be many times more productive than a mere slave. Such a man seeks flattery and gets just so much to keep him useful, never so much that he will feel sufficiently flattered and fail to remain a good slave.

The distinctions of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly conscious of being different from the ruled--or among the ruled class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts.

Nietzsche could only be dimly aware that this is true; that there are different codes of ethics for each caste, that equality of moral sanction is the greatest of fictions. But he ignored historical facts that are not ignored by the real high and mighty of today; that morality and ethics proceed from an exalted source and cannot be rendered inoperative forever. The members of "the barge" have their own terrors, do not sleep as soundly as the rest of us and frequently must resort to "medications" in order to maintain their lives.

In the first case, when it is the rulers who determine the conception "good," it is the exalted, proud disposition which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and that which determines the order of rank.

Notice Nietzsche is not referring to someone who has "a big ego" but rather someone who's word is a command to action; not a controlling person who attempts to govern by suppression but a commander who orders others what to do and gives those others the feeling that they are in fact serving a higher purpose and rightful authority.

The noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposition displays itself: he despises them. Let it at once be noted that in this first kind of morality the antithesis "good" and "bad" means practically the same as "noble" and "despicable";--the antithesis "good" and "evil" is of a different origin. The cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the self-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars:--it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful.

This last assertion is very far from the truth, probably a chief instance of the vanity of aristocrats down the ages. Beware of those who are always quick to call another a liar as they themselves may not hold the truth in such high esteem. A fact that can be proved or disproved easily on the other hand, held completely apart from a person asserting it, may be easily classed as a lie and in the interests of getting to the truth of a matter should be so classed. Whether one may be able to assert openly and in every situation that something is in fact a lie is another matter altogether reqauiring great prudence. The noble notion of "good" and "bad" as described above is not new and one even sees hints of it among the media elites today, especially among the celebrities and journalists. Despicable as in base, dirty, abject, contemptible, wretched, low, filthy, etc. These are indeed the forms of "bad" that the denizens of "the barge" want to keep as far from themselves as possible. These are the projected "bad" as opposed to the really "evil" that is allowed to continue and even thrive.

"We truthful ones"--the nobility in ancient Greece called themselves.

As I said, it's an old illusion.

It is obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first applied to men; and were only derivatively and at a later period applied to actions; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of morals start with questions like, "Why have sympathetic actions been praised?" The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: "What is injurious to me is injurious in itself"; he knows that it is he himself only who confers honour on things; he is a creator of values.

Exactly so, and this is not only what members of "the barge" set believe but what they train their children as inheritors of the regime to believe.

He honours whatever he recognises in himself: such morality equals self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of a wealth which would feign give and bestow:--the noble man also helps the unfortunate, but not--or scarcely--out of pity, but rather from an impulse generated by the super-abundance of power. The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who takes pleasure in subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence for all that is severe and hard.

A bit more of that "noble savage" myth here, but it too is very much alive and well among aristocrats or would be aristocrats on the golf courses, or in the squash or tennis courts, and they very much hate to loose too. Most difficult to reconcile the self-delusion among so many of them that only they tell the truth whilst all the world lies with their notorious bad sportsmanship in games of chance and skill such as golf or tennis. Let it ever be said that one may never trust a man who would stoop to cheating at golf or tennis with any serious business. One is practically guaranteed to be cheated. But among the aristocrats of all times and ages, their young were ever and always trained to be hard; their instincts ever molded to regard strength and winning as all important and any softness of character as severely to be reproved out of them. This too is an ever present tendency among the parents of some children engaged in little league baseball, soccer, gymnastics, swimming, figure skating and a host of other sports.

"Wotan placed a hard heart in my breast," says an old Scandinavian Saga: it is thus rightly expressed from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is even proud of not being made for sympathy; the hero of the Saga therefore adds warningly: "He who has not a hard heart when young, will never have one."

Let me remind you who read this that only among the aristocrats, those who truly belong on "the barge" is having a hard heart equated with anything good. The Christians were not the first to regard hard heartedness as morally bad. The ancient Egyptians claimed that after death, were one's heart to be weighed heavy in the scales, that the soul's destiny would be the abode of woe and desolation; hell.

The noble and brave who think thus are the furthest removed from the morality which sees, precisely in sympathy, or in acting for the good of others, or in desinteressement, the characteristic of the moral; faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a radical enmity and irony towards "selflessness," belong as definitely to noble morality, as do a careless scorn and precaution in presence of sympathy and the "warm heart."

Look around you, especially in the media, and one sees images of this sort portrayed as popular, to be aspired to, WINNERS, in contrast to those who would be considered candidates for Christian sainthood, LOSERS. Such people are uninteresting.

It is the powerful who know how to honour, it is their art, their domain for invention. The profound reverence for age and for tradition--all law rests on this double reverence,--the belief and prejudice in favour of ancestors and unfavourable to newcomers, is typical in the morality of the powerful; and if, reversely, men of "modern ideas" believe almost instinctively in progress and the "future," and are more and more lacking in respect for old age, the ignoble origin of these "ideas" has complacently betrayed itself thereby.

Perhaps so, but really Friedrich, how much of these "new ideas" are not just "old ideas" newly floated for the entertainment of the masses? The only people who need to care about such things as "reverence" where it exists at all are those on "the barge" and these care less for such things these days. Here I think Nietzsche is waxing too Germanic, or something.

A morality of the ruling class, however, is more especially foreign and irritating to present-day taste in the sternness of its principle that one has duties only to one's equals; that one may act towards beings of a lower rank, towards all that is foreign, just as seems good to one, or "as the heart desires," and in any case "beyond good and evil": it is here that sympathy and similar sentiments can have a place.

Sounds to me as though he's making apologies where none matter. If it makes certain people "look good" to wear useless symbols of solidarity with AIDS victims while doing nothing else, or to have a big pop music concert to raise money for the starving masses in Africa, whether in fact any of the food gets to them, is all that matters.

The ability and obligation to exercise prolonged gratitude and prolonged revenge both only within the circle of equals,--artfulness in retaliation, raffinement of the idea in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (as outlets for the emotions of envy, quarrelsomeness, arrogance--in fact, in order to be a good friend: all these are typical characteristics of the noble morality, which, as has been pointed out, is not the morality of "modern ideas," and is therefore at present difficult to realise, and also to unearth and disclose.--It is otherwise with the second type of morality, slave-morality.

Nietzsche seems throughout this whole section to be hooked on the horns of a dilemma; he cannot attribute the finer feelings to those he has made out to be ruthless without diluting his notion of what is noble. In real life today, those among the ruling elite who wish to patronize the fine arts do so and more or less lavishly, behind the scenes, through corporate foundations and the like, and attend whenever and wherever they happen to be. The artists themselves are nonetheless still mere instrumentalities of their entertainment. What else could they be? The exercise of any fine art even by an amateur of above average talent, time and inclination, requires a specialized dedication and discipline quite unsuited to commanding the affairs of others. Artists are not of the ruling elites no matter how much they would wish they could be.

Supposing that the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves should moralise, what will be the common element in their moral estimates? Probably a pessimistic suspicion with regard to the entire situation of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man, together with his situation. The slave has an unfavourable eye for the virtues of the powerful; he has a scepticism and distrust, a refinement of distrust of everything "good" that is there honoured--he would feign persuade himself that the very happiness there, is not genuine.

Well, how often is it said among the poor or struggling that after all the lot of the rich cannot be so much better, after all they have this or that problem to deal with, etc. So perhaps Nietzsche has something here. But on the other hand, where envy and revenge have not been stirred up among the poor and average, their view of themselves, of the rest of humanity and of their lives may not be nearly as pessimistic as he supposes. It is in fact really among the socialist revolutionaries or among those who finance them from "the barge" that such pessimism as regards human existence generally begins and is then sold as a pernicious commodity among the lower orders. Contrary to these notions is the longstanding Christian evaluation of the poor as blessed and the wealthy as cursed. People of "the barge" particularly resent this as do their socialist agents.

On the other hand, those qualities which serve to alleviate the existence of sufferers are brought into prominence and flooded with light; it is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honour; for here these are the most useful qualities, and almost the only means of supporting the burden of existence. Slave-morality is essentially the morality of utility.

Nietzsche is really hoist with his own petard here, methinks. But then again so are a great many of the denizens of "the barge." Since they cannot be happy merely doing as the lower orders can and do, they must and do live off the labor and produce of the lower orders whom by financial and political resources they attempt to control. The socialists can do no better since they themselves are incompetent to do anything including rule.

Here is the seat of the origin of the famous antithesis "good" and "evil": --power and dangerousness are assumed to reside in the evil, a certain dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which do not admit of being despised. According to slave-morality, therefore, the "evil" man arouses fear; according to master-morality, it is precisely the "good" man who arouses fear and seeks to arouse it, while the bad man is regarded as the despicable being. The contrast attains its maximum when, in accordance with the logical consequences of slave-morality, a shade of depreciation--it may be slight and well-intentioned--at last attaches itself to the "good" man of this morality; because, according to the servile mode of thought, the good man must in any case be the safe man: he is good-natured, easily deceived, perhaps a little stupid, un bonhomme. Everywhere that slave-morality gains the ascendency, language shows a tendency to approximate the significations of the words "good" and "stupid."

Well there surely cannot be a better approximation of the notions of "good" and "stupid" in plain English than the word "nice." Being nice is the reigning social morality of today. If one is not nice, one is usually thought of as mean, which is used to conjure up everything that is bad. All one really needs to do to spoil someone's social reputation is let it be known that so and so is mean. Well, mean or not, I for one do not choose to be nice, at least not all the time. I may decide to appear to be merely nice in order not to draw attention to myself, and this is a good and useful ploy these days. But nobody who is nice at all times is ever considered a WINNER or as "strong" or even as "smart." I would rather be recognized as being "good," but as Nietzsche has shown us, that word can have a lot of meanings, some of which I would not choose to describe myself.

A last fundamental difference: the desire for freedom, the instinct for happiness and the refinements of the feeling of liberty belong as necessarily to slave-morals

Catch this - Nietzsche says that the slave desires freedom and knows how to be happy, by instinct, never defined further, and that the slave has "the refinements of the feeling of liberty" by which a slave either knows not what exactly it would feel like to be in a state of freedom but nevertheless can "feel it" in his life as if he's an actor in a play.

and morality, as artifice and enthusiasm in reverence and devotion are the regular symptoms of an aristocratic mode of thinking and estimating.

But the aristocrat has phony morality, "as artifice," yet shows enthusiasm in reverence and devotion. To and for what? To and for himself?

Hence we can understand without further detail why love as a passion--it is our European specialty--must absolutely be of noble origin; as is well known, its invention is due to the Provencal poet-cavaliers, those brilliant, ingenious men of the "gai saber," to whom Europe owes so much, and almost owes itself.

Beyond Good & Evil #260

How on earth can "the great philosopher" be so muddled? He attributes "love as a passion" as being "most absolutely" of noble origin yet as an invention of a band of vagabonds who wandered around Europe singing songs and playing their lutes. What is really true is that the nobility always had the time and resources to play around with "love as a passion" which they borrowed from their retainers, the true "free spirits" who were content to sing, dance and play, taking their love as it were from place to place. These bards and vagabonds were of the most "despicable" castes and yet Europe owes them so much, almost owes itself. Just a footnote; the notion that "the gods" owe man something is also quite old, but again, we would be deviating from the purpose of these pieces to go there. In any case it is quite probable that Nietzsche knew precisely nothing about love since real love lies outside his system as indeed it may lie completely outside the experience of denizens of "the barge." Of sexuality, they may know plenty, of love, nothing. Nietzsche continues his instructions;

There is an instinct for rank, which more than anything else is already the sign of a high rank; there is a delight in the nuances of reverence which leads one to infer noble origin and habits. The refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a perilous test when something passes by that is of the highest rank, but is not yet protected by the awe of authority from obtrusive touches and incivilities: something that goes its way like a living touchstone, undistinguished, undiscovered, and tentative, perhaps voluntarily veiled and disguised.

It sounds to me as if he is discussing the first time a junior executive is whisked upstairs to meet "the great man" for a unique almost ceremonial "introduction," or is invited to luncheon with the "great men" of the enterprise. Such sentiments are not what Nietzsche assumes they are, having precisely nothing to do with rank or its significance. It is well to stress here that in the modern world, separated from Nietzsche by two devastating European wars, the rise and fall of a terrible communist regime, and one hundred years of other gross human tragedies, that the idealistic tone of language he uses is long out of fashion. Delights in nuances of reverence, refinement, loftiness of soul are these days significant of nobody in any position of real power and prestige. They are more characteristic of the fine artist, where they exist openly at all, or satirized as belonging to the "sensitives" among the homosexuals. Where a few generations ago, the good man of noble instincts was sure to rise in the ranks, make a way for himself in an organization and otherwise assume the duties handed down to him by his elders, today the realpolitik of winning and losing at everything has made everyone and every caste vulgar and every intention transparent. The reverence one feels for the great these days is based on the real fear that they are in positions to make or break one, occasionally even unto death.

He whose task and practice it is to investigate souls, will avail himself of many varieties of this very art to determine the ultimate value of a soul, the unalterable, innate order of rank to which it belongs: he will test it by its instinct for reverence. Différence engendre haine: the vulgarity of many a nature spurts up suddenly like dirty water, when any holy vessel, any jewel from closed shrines, any book bearing the marks of great destiny, is brought before it; while on the other hand, there is an involuntary silence, a hesitation of the eye, a cessation of all gestures, by which it is indicated that a soul feels the nearness of what is worthiest of respect. The way in which, on the whole, the reverence for the Bible has hitherto been maintained in Europe, is perhaps the best example of discipline and refinement of manners which Europe owes to Christianity: books of such profoundness and supreme significance require for their protection an external tyranny of authority, in order to acquire the period of thousands of years which is necessary to exhaust and unriddle them.

Peculiar isn't it? He seems to be speaking here about a time long past when people actually behaved this way, common people, mostly from the middle classes. This too is a subject we may tackle in some future piece. Where is his usual heated loathing for Christianity?

Much has been achieved when the sentiment has been at last instilled into the masses (the shallow-pates and the boobies of every kind) that they are not allowed to touch everything, that there are holy experiences before which they must take off their shoes and keep away the unclean hand--it is almost their highest advance towards humanity. On the contrary, in the so-called cultured classes, the believers in "modern ideas," nothing is perhaps so repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of eye and hand with which they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it is possible that even yet there is more relative nobility of taste, and more tact for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of the people, especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading demimonde of intellect, the cultured class.

Beyond Good & Evil #263

Is he backing away from everything he said before? Probably. What he exposes here is his idealism, to wit that some things in this world are "holy experiences" that should be honored as such; hallowed. He is decrying the rise of something else in "the so called cultured classes," a belief in "modern ideas." These ideas have largely triumphed to the extent that there is nothing beautiful that is not ruined or profaned publicly including beautiful young women who are willingly besmirched by the obvious carnal advances of truly degenerate men. But this "cultured class" Nietzsche speaks of is really not so very "cultured" after all. They may have academic degrees, but since the standards have been lowered to allow the mediocre access to acquire degrees, they are of less value. Everything has been devalued leaving a huge gap between those who have tremendous wealth and power and everyone else. The realpolitik of this "distance" forms the stark power of the string pullers. The fading high culture of Nietzsche's time was dealt a possibly fatal blow by the Great War that broke out in 1914 and destroyed everything that went before it. In this great cataclysm, everything truly noble perished. The modern world was built on its ashes.

The more similar, the more ordinary people, have always had and are still having the advantage; the more select, more refined, more unique, and difficult to comprehend, are liable to stand alone; they succumb to accidents in their isolation, and seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense opposing forces, in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural progressus in simile, the evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the average, the gregarious--to the ignoble!

Beyond Good & Evil #268

In closing this piece, I must confess that I am one of those whom Nietzsche describes; more refined, more unique, difficult to comprehend. I do at present stand virtually alone. My wife, who was a kindred spirit, passed on six years ago. We did have a child but she is not quite one of us in temperament or outlook. Nevertheless I do not look to nature to assure the human race of more of my kind but to my Creator who can raise up in time "the more select, more refined, more unique," and yes even the "difficult to comprehend" from the stones if necessary, as required to his purposes. I care very little for what the denizens of "the barge" may do now or in the future. I care more for the easy company of "the ignoble." I am not a "journalist" but rather a "chronicler" of my times and their events for such a time as I am required to report what I have experienced. It is enough for me to impart some of this to those who happen along these pages on their quest for edification or enlightenment along this mysterious electronic superhighway we call the Internet. So, until next time,

"be seeing you..."

The Polar Bear