COMPLEX DESIRE FOR TRUTH & PEACE

You two-timed me one time too often | Image & quote by : : John Stezaker

ANALYSIS OF NEITZSCHE'S ESSAY ON TRUTH & LIE IN AN EXTRA-MORAL SENSE
This might be quite a long & a bit unusual read for some. However, I guarantee it will get your wheels turning & you will certainly learn something new about the way humans use language, how that directly correlates & affects the way we perceive truth & lie. In addition I will discuss human desire for truth & peacefully coexistence and how that is reflected in different ideologies of rational and intuitive men. I am not attempting to convince you of any particular way of thinking or perceiving life but rather this is meant to provide a different perspective on the human interactions that remains quite a mystery in my scope of things. I am certain that this will make you more aware of how humans behave, communicate & define themselves by their choice of words. Without further ado lets begin.

Nietzsche analyzes our human desire for truth and honesty and how such desire for truth, which for him is quite harmful and destructive, begins to contradict with our mare desire to coexist peacefully. Nietzsche also defines man as a deceptive and proud creature, which makes it harder to understand as to how such creature could come to desire truth and want peaceful coexistence. To view humans solely as deceptive creatures it is to say that everything we experience with other humans is a collection of lies and manipulations. If you let that idea absorb you would find that it would be very difficult to go on living if such was the case. With that said in order to better understand such view and bold statement I want to look at why Nietzsche sees humans as deceptive and proud creatures. I want to look at what he defines as truth and the reasons as to why we want it, or as to why in other instances we choose to manipulate it for the purpose of deception. Last but not least, I want to look at why according to Nietzsche we want to coexist peacefully. The drive for investigating Nietzsche’s ideas is to create clear connections between these different ideas in order to make our own human interaction and thought process ever so slightly clearer.

To start of lets look at the direct source for Nietzsche’s bold statement on human deception and even his own uncertainty on human drive for truth:

“Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself – in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity – is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.”

Initially it is hard to pin point exactly how he comes to this bold conclusion that all men are deceptive creatures. After reading the passage I quoted above, I begin to feel great sense of pessimism coming from Nietzsche. Is it possible that we are all this cynical? Perhaps it is the generalizing of everyone with these characteristics that I want to know the source of his drive for the statement. Fortunately, this idea that he is generalizing everyone is made clear at the end of his writing when he acknowledges that in general there is a rational man and the intuitive man. Rational man is guided by his principal needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity, while the intuitive man disregards these needs and counting real life only that which has been disguised as illusion and beauty (60). You might be wondering how these two kinds of men connect to the idea of deception. The idea of deception does connect to the ideologies of these two kinds of man. However, if you read the quoted passage on deception again, Nietzsche states that “deception is so much the rule and law among men (54)”, which includes all men. By generalizing Nietzsche states that both kinds of man are capable, and able of applying deception (Nietzsche 54). In his passage at the end of his writing where he describes the patterns of action for both kids of man, we can clearly see that rational man is the only one that applies deception in order to protect him from future acts of deception. In the process the rational man appears to seek nothing but truth and sincerity and somehow in the process of protecting himself from deception, we can only conclude that the rational man acquires a great deal of knowledge on the act of deception that in the end he is the one to employ masterpiece of deception (61). To better understand the points I am making lets look at the passage I am referencing at the end of Nietzsche’s writing:

“The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption– in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch. He is then just as irrational in sorrow as he is in happiness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled. How differently the stoical man who learns from experience and governs himself by concepts is affected by the same misfortunes! This man, who at other times seeks nothing but sincerity, truth, freedom from deception, and protection against ensnaring surprise attacks, now executes a masterpiece of deception: he executes his masterpiece of deception in misfortune, as the other type of man executes his in times of happiness. He wears no quivering and changeable human face, but, as it were, a mask with dignified, symmetrical features. He does not cry; he does not even alter his voice. When a real storm cloud thunders above him, he wraps himself in his cloak, and with slow steps he walks from beneath it.”

In attempt to live a happy life, free of structure and regularity the intuitive man experiences a great deal of misfortunes from inability to prepare and learn from his past abstract experiences. Essentially intuitive man wants to free himself from deception but in return ends up experiencing deception even more so, and more frequently since he does not understand how to learn from experiences. In addition, if we read between the lines we can conclude in general terms that in order for the intuitive man to experience deception someone else has to commit it. Even though this is generalized conclusion, we can see that there is the one committing deception and the other experiencing the consequences of deception.

This idea of the intuitive man is fascinating mainly because I begin to question the amount of intelligence that an intuitive man has due to his inability to learn from experience and avoid deception. According to Nietzsche, as the individual wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under natural circumstances employ the intellect mainly for dissimulation (54). In other words according to Nietzsche, every man’s natural reaction is to employ his intellect mainly for disguise in order to maintain themselves in certain light against other individuals. For Nietzsche, deception or dissimulation is a natural part of an intellect. That also means that if an individual has a higher intellect his dissimulation will also be higher. And to summarize it even more, the smarter an individual is the more manipulative they are. What does this say about the intuitive man, the one who is not able to employ his intellect for dissimulation and can not learn from their past experiences? Initial conclusion would be that his intellect is lower than that of a rational man. Perhaps, the conclusion that makes more sense or is a more of a positive outlook would be that the intellect is present just as much as it is in the rational man, with the exception that the intuitive man has made a conscious decision to want to live and think in another manner. Such could be part of a desire to break away from the world of deception and create a new system of human interaction where everything exists in a harmonious cycle. If such is the case where the intuitive man is so aware of the way the rational man thinks and behaves and is able to realize this and attempt to over come it, we could conclude that intuitive man has higher level of intelligence than the rational man. It makes the act of overcoming the rational ways seem like a brave decision. What we can see here is that intuitive man does not let fear of deception get in the way of missing an opportunity to experience joy and happiness. Perhaps the intuitive man wants to believe against odds to show that it is possible to experience more joy than a rational man. If that is the case, intuitive man does not let the fear of reoccurring deception stop him from trying to get a positive outcome. Intuitive man, even when he does experience deception keeps trying to beat the odds and not allow the harmful consequences of defeats to bring him down. Instead he instead maintains persistent. At this point we can conclude that the intuitive man suffers a lot, and frequently. The rational man protects himself from deception, while wearing a mask that depicts him as a man of truth and honesty. In fact because of his fear of future deception he becomes great at deception. Meanwhile, intuitive man fights against the odds to break free from deception and regularity in order to experience joy and happiness that is free of deception. His persistence also allows him, considering that the intellect is high enough, to still learn something about him after each defeat. It is the kind of knowledge we can only gain through defeat, and it is something that rational man would not be exposed to, as he would limit his exposure to deception. This relates to my own experience and the fact that you don’t learn as much when you take the safe and easy road. Also, to be able to completely isolate and deflect any deception we would never fail, and in doing so we would not learn how to be able to get up and keep going after each defeat. Success is not always succeeding, but being able to get up and keep going after we fall down. With all of that said it is clear that both have their advantages. It is up to us how we employ it personally. The question remains weather or not the intuitive man contains enough intelligence to be able to fully take advantage of what his way of life brings to him. Lets not forget that deception is so much the rule and law among men (54). That means that everyone uses it, even the intuitive man. At least that would be the assumption. Considering that the intuitive man contains this ability to deceive just as much as the rational man, perhaps it is the rational man that experiences deception presented as rational man’s victory over the intuitive man. Perhaps, intuitive man plays the role of the loser and in doing so lets the rational man believe he has won and plays along with expected outcome of defeat. In such case both attain their happiness. Knowing that we all want to attain happiness such interplay of deceptions between the rational and intuitive man begins to sound the most logical, as they both get what they want. The certainty of these interactions and how they correlate to deception is something that can continuously argued back and forth as more research is done. What we can conclude from this is that in either case both seek to experience happiness. That brings me to the next point of our desire to experience happiness and coexist peacefully with the herd (54).

Why do we want to coexist in peace and with the herd? I’m not certain, but I find myself relating more and more to the rational man. I want to believe that people are great, giving, carrying, thoughtful and considerate but like most of men, I have experienced a great deal of deception and my view that people are great is frequently questioned. Even as such, I secretly want to believe that people are great. I want to be like the intuitive man who does not let the past experience prevent him from giving a similar future experience another chance in hopes of experiencing something positive and new. Why is it that we believe in the great or good in people? Why is it that we desire this need to coexist peacefully? What we do know is that we certainly do act peacefully as it is in accordance to the social expectations for the means of getting what we need. Past that this is a direction that needs more research on my part, but I believe that the same part of our brain is responsible for creating the idea of a higher force. To be precise, most of our days on this earth are spent in trial and tribulations that most of us begin to feel, there has to be more to this life than what we are experiencing. If we experience only hardships why do we exist at all? What is the purpose of living if we are doomed to spend it in suffering? I feel that is when our desire to validate our existence kicks in and we begin to look for reasons and pleasures to make our existence pleasant and better. It is in this stage where we begin to look into other human beings for validation and similar kinds of understandings. Such is there so that we can share the suffering and fight against it together. I strongly believe that this desire to coexist peacefully and find others that understand our suffering in order to help each other through this very abstract life is the reason why we seek friends and ultimately why we seek for someone to spend our life with. We, at least I do, feel that most people will disappoint us, so we look for the one person that can give us the most amount of comfort and support that we can find, as we have learned first hand that most people won’t provide such. It’s rather strange how Nietzsche describes this desire for peaceful existence:

“… from boredom and necessity, man wishes to exist socially and with the herd; therefore, he needs to make peace and strives accordingly to banish from his world at least the most flagrant “bellum omni contra omnes” (Nietzsche 54), which means the war of all against all.”

Could it be that we want to exist peacefully out of boredom? Somehow I am not certain of this. So according to Nietzsche if there was something that we could cure boredom with we would never desire to coexist. If I could create art without the need to communicate with people would I never care to desire peaceful coexistence with others? Do I not create art in order to communicate with other human beings? For me, my art is a particular connection that I make or want to make with others. Besides art we do so much with others in mind, for the purpose of getting what we want or need. Some of these necessities could be a validation of our existence and what we do with our time on this earth, and other necessities are simply getting around to get the basics for survival like food, shelter and so on. With that said, I disagree with the idea we want to coexist peacefully because of the boredom, but rather necessity. I still have to interact and if nothing pretend to desire peace in order to get along only so I can get anything else that I might need to satisfy the basic needs for survival. I want to connect this back with the idea of deception. Since we want to coexist in order to get what we want or more specifically what we need, we begin to employ deception. In this desire for peace the rational and intuitive man both play the same game but in a different role. The rational man displays the desire for truth and honesty. At the same time he is being very careful about any possible threats of deception. This is the instance where the intuitive man is the one who is simply letting him become embraced with the whole experience. However, it is in our interactions with each other the deception and truth occurs when we begin to use language in order to reveal or conceal something. We use language to come to mutually terms on what something is and can be. The act of defining or describing something is what can be defined as the search for truth. With that said what is truth? Why do we desire it? How did it come about it in the first place? According to Nietzsche truth is:

“A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms:in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins (56).”

We can argue what color red is and what a tree looks like. We find generalized characteristics of these descriptions and we agree that we cannot necessarily identically define the same thing but that we are referencing the same thing. This allows us to agree on the subject of our conversation in order to be able to move on and get to the main point of the conversation, which could be why we are discussing color red or that tree. With that said it is clear that language is the first expression of our desire for truth (54). In our desire to coexist peacefully we also use language and seek truth through language in order to discover more about the other individual for the purpose of understanding how we have to act in order to maintain ourselves against them. For instance, if they moral beliefs are that of ours we will approach them in a less deceptive way as we can them being someone with whom we can share a great deal of ourselves with. If they seem the opposite we use our intellect to make sure they don’t hurt us and we can maintain minimal peaceful interactions. Essentially we keep distance from those we do not trust. Also by maintaining peace with those same individuals we ensure that in the future if we ever needed each other for the basic necessities we would be able to help each other. To further explain, the main duty that the society imposes on us thus far in order to be truthful is for us to employ these usual metaphors In order to express truth morally also means that we have the duty to lie according to a fixed notion and with the herd in a manner that is binding upon everyone. Now what has happened is that we have all forgotten that the metaphors are metaphors and not truths, but by the process of forgetfulness and with the habits centuries old we have made metaphors and illusions into truths. Since we have forgotten that the truths are lies made truth by the process of forgetfulness, we unconsciously and in accordance with habits, which are centuries old we lie in the manner, indicated (56).

Essentially truth can mean anything that has been used in the language over the centuries to the point that it’s meaning is not questioned, but merely accepted. That includes any simple terms referencing color, shape and all the way up to more complex ideas of morality. It is the desire for us all to maintain ourselves against other individuals that we seek for truth. Truth in the way we all perceive it is something that tells a great deal about the subject. We hope that such reveals the essence of something. But why do we seek it? We seek it because we want to protect ourselves. We want to know where we stand up against other individuals. We want to know if what we define as moral is also what the other individual defines as moral, in order to determine if we can trust them or not, which is once again done for the purpose of self preservation. However, that is just one side of the coin. The other side is the individual giving the truth. The other individual wants to just as much maintain himself against the other individual so he might say or do something that be in accordance of what is expected of him. Why would one conceal something if there were no interest in the other people? One of the clear reasons is to ensure that if needed for necessity we can still communicate with the other individual sometimes in the future. In essence not burning bridges allows us to come back to those people with due to necessity we might need them. This does sound a tad deceptive, but it is the connection I am making with the information given. Perhaps it is because people talk and the word of your rebellious ways will spread. It might be hard to conceal the truth once it is out in the open. If we fully engage in this act of concealing it only makes sense that through the act of forgetfulness that we would find ourselves believing what we have expressed time and time again to be the real truth. So if truth is anything repeated over the time that we forget what it really was, are we not than making matters harder for ourselves by concealing? I still strongly believe that the search for morality is our way of discovering something that can help us relate to and understand others. The desire to relate or understand others can be there simply due to wanting to know how to coexist peacefully so that we all can get what we need. It teaches us how to compromise socially so that we all do get what we need. The social standard of rules provide the basis for anyone needing guidelines to know how to act socially if they want to attain what they might need.
Now the strange twist to this is our own inclination to actually allow ourselves to be deceived. This is what Nietzsche describes:

"But man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king (60)."

So even with all of our efforts to avoid deception and to demand truth in order to live a life free of deception somehow at the end we still allow ourselves to be deceived. I believe such statement reveals something about men collectively, including the rational and intuitive man. It becomes clear that we all want to experience happiness of epic fables and life that seems so perfect and past our own real experience. With so much effort to protect ourselves from deception I am certain we all want to believe that life free of deception is possible. Protecting ourselves from deception is a reaction we have acquired over the years. Weather or not such is possible; it is nice to think about the life that is free of deception. The life that is greener on the other side. I strongly believe that the main reason for us allowing the act of deception depicting happiness is to mainly inject a sparkle of positive hope in our lives. Life is not always as easy as one wished it would be. Therefore allowing us to be deceived by what is nothing short of an epic fable is our way of finding energy to keep going when days in our life are not so easy and the bright light in the future begins to fade. It is the belief in something great; something is almost unreal that keeps us moving ahead. Once we get there we will realize that it is not going to be about getting there but using those bright lights in the distance to get us out of troubles or misfortunes we might be in at the current state.

At this point I have discussed from various perspectives the act of deception, intuitive man, rational man and how all of it relates to our desire for peaceful coexistence and truth. There are so many different instances for the use of deception or avoiding it. It becomes clear at least to my understanding that there is no certain way of defining one individual in one light only. There is also no certainty that intuitive man is less intelligible than the rational man. However there are indications that due to intuitive mans inability to learn from mistakes in order to manipulate for the purpose of self-preservation is a good sign of lesser intelligence. The only way we could get a better result of it all would be to do in field test and research. In my own personal experience I have played the part of the intuitive man more often than not. I had people hurt me before through deception, but I did not wanted to give up on the idea that things can be better than the previous similar experience. After few instances such harmful consequence became too much to deal with, as it affected other aspects of my life. It is than that I realized I simply need to let my past experience with my instinct based on past experiences guide my decisions in life. In some instances we employ our intellect to protect ourselves, in other instances we let ourselves be deceived in the search of fable experience to step aside form the mundane realities of everyday life. As defined intuitive man is the one that wants to free him from deception and he is the one that takes risks and faces deception. The rational man lives by rules, regularity and wants to at all costs protect himself against snaring deception attacks. Rational man is protected by means of deception but learns less by avoiding failure. Intuitive man has a lot to learn from his failure but since he is not capable of learning from mistakes he does not employ what he learned. That is of course what Nietzsche believes. My argument is that the intuitive man can and does learn from his mistakes, but continues to play the role of the intuitive man in order to keep gaining happiness he desires and making it seem as though deception was not predicted. If you think about it, in those terms intuitive man is a great actor. At this point it is strange to even say it out loud, but I can relate to both kids of man at some point in life. That is to say we all go through a lot of different experiences in our lives and as we go through them our perspectives change and so do our actions. Sometimes we decide that we need to be deceived into believing that something is better than what it reality is in order for us to keep going and keep trying. I pose that as I have done that when I was not happy with my environment or the stage in life I was in. When I first arrived in United Sates I did not understand why I was here or what the purpose of life was. My reaction was to believe that one day I might do something great with my life. So instead of trying to play much with other kids I learned how to draw and spent a lot of time alone, contemplating a lot of things but also accomplishing a lot. I bring this strange stage in life mainly because throughout our lives changes of all sorts will challenge us and push us into this highly contemplative and analytical stage of life. It is good to know what that means for you and how to make the best of it. As far as our desire for truth is concerned, we desire it because it is our way of understanding how everything works in relations to others and ourselves. We desire to know about other individuals in order to know how we can act in order to maintain ourselves against them. The use of language is our tool to construct the metaphors that we define as truths in order to better understand others. Based on what we desire for our outcome we employ language according to the social expectations in order to get what we need. Throughout it all we still desire to coexist peacefully. The socially acceptable rules is what creates outlines for our peaceful coexistence. We desire it to be able and find others we relate to and who see life and morality in the same way we do, so that we can collectively share the struggles and hardships of life. In addition, we want to coexist peacefully for the purpose of doing what is safe and expected in order to avoid conflicts and be able to get what we need out of interactions. There is an enormous amount of space for exploration of these ideas and I have not even scratch the surface yet. Now that I have given these ideas a great deal of attention and time I, just as you should too, must step away from them and see how I begin to employ these ideas in real life. In all honestly, the main reason for focusing on these topics is to be able and better understand what it takes to be a good communicator, how I can communicate with others to get the most of out life and to see if achieving happiness is really possible. Of course the idea of deception will be a great focus on my mind as I begin to meet people from this point on. I am certain in couple of years I will be able to look at this writing and add a great deal of quality ideas and prospective. Meanwhile I am excited to see if these ideas will have a great impact on how I as well as you develop from this point on.



Written : : by : : Boris Pelcer | Friedrich Nietzsche quote taken from : : On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” Continental Aesthetics Reader, pp. 53-61. | Image Reglogged from : : theapproach.co.uk | Image : : by : : John Stezaker