If there’s one thing Friedrich Nietzsche did well, it’s obliterate feel-good beliefs people have about themselves. He has been criticized for being a misanthrope, a subvert, a cynic and a pessimist, but I think these assessments are off the mark. I believe he only wanted human beings to be more honest with themselves.
He did have a remarkable gift for aphorism — he once declared, “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.” A hundred years after his death, Nietzsche retains his disturbing talent for turning a person’s worldview upside-down with one jarring remark.
Even today his words remain controversial. They hit nerves. Most of his views are completely at odds with the status quo.
Here are 40 unsympathetic statements from the man himself. Many you’ll agree with. Others you will resist, but these are the ones to pay the most attention to — your beliefs are being challenged. It’s either an opportunity to grow, or to insist that you already know better. If any of them hit a nerve in you, ask yourself why.
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1. People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.
2. He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.
3. The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
4. There are no facts, only interpretations. Read More
When the mind is not crowded
By imaginary things,
It is the best season of your life.
-Kabir
I just chopped twelve hundred needless words from this article, which is fitting, because the point of all that blathering was to warn against getting lost in abstractions.
I think too much. Virtually all of us do, it’s no secret. Anyone who even once experiments with meditation discovers in seconds how difficult it is just to sit and experience the physical only. We don’t think our thoughts so much as they outright assault us, so it’s no wonder we have a tendency to fall into resonance with our thoughts and lose sight of our physical experience.
You can take a ten-minute walk to the grocery store, and spend the whole walk with your attention completely hijacked by a line of thought that has nothing do to with walking or groceries. A foreign war, a past relationship, or an internal dialogue about fuel prices easily becomes more demanding of your attention than the boulevards, birdsongs and urban infrastructure that actually comprise the experience of a ten-minute walk. Read More
There is an interesting discussion brewing in the blogosphere at the moment. My friend and fellow blogger Lisis Blackston of Quest for Balance wrote a controversial article last week about the feasibility of dropping your day job to pursue your passion.
We’ve all witnessed a growing culture of people who are quitting their lukewarm office careers to do what they’ve always wanted to do. There are countless success stories floating about (particularly in the online world) and it almost seems like following your passion — given an unwavering will — all but guarantees financial success. Lisis challenges this notion in her post.
Her article is here, and it is absolutely worth a read.
Several bloggers have responded with their take (a full list is at the end of Lisis’ article) and the topic is dear to me, so I’ll weigh in too.
It does seem passion generates income for some, but not for others. Therefore, ditching a steady job — under the assumption that your passion cannot fail you in the income department — is not exactly a bulletproof idea. But how do you know if your passion is the kind that would make you rich if you ran with it? Read More
Mainland British Columbia, from the shore at Hollyhock
Just before flying to Thailand, I spent five days at a retreat community called Hollyhock. It’s a humble, rootsy little hamlet on the relatively remote Cortes Island. I knew very little about the program I’d signed up for, only that it was about Buddhism.
It turns out that it was a rather intense regimen of meditation. Our group of fifteen or so spent virtually our entire days (from 7am to 10pm) in some form of meditation. Sitting, walking, dancing and even eating. I’ve experimented with meditation, but never for extended periods. This was a bit of a shock, finding myself sitting in a candlelit hut with nothing to do for hours but stare into my own mind.
In the tradition of Theravada monks, we undertook several Buddhist precepts, including refraining from consuming intoxicants, and refraining from killing people for the duration the five days. We also observed “noble silence” which means we were not to talk or engage other people, even with mere eye contact. Read More
Since I left on my trip, I’ve had quite a few deadlines to hit. Bus at 07:50. Ferry at 15:45. Plane at 14:30. Pick up the key after 5:00 and before 6:00. Meet so-and-so here at 7:30.
I’m also constantly checking to see if I still have my crucial items: passport, laptop, wallet and tickets. Occasionally I’ve had a moment of panic, but I haven’t run into any catastrophes yet.
It almost seems like I’m going to have to keep my luck going and continue hitting all of these targets as they arise, lest my trip grind to a halt. Sure I can deal with a setback here and there, but there are certain mishaps that I feel are just completely unacceptable.
I can’t lose my passport.
I can’t miss my flight.
I can’t let my laptop get stolen.
I can’t let myself run out of money.
Whenever I sit down, I hook my laptop bag and backpack straps around my feet. When I stand up I check to see if my wallet is still where it should be. I feel for my passport whenever I think of it. I’m extremely careful with these things, but I deep down I do know that absolute security is impossible, and there is always a risk of something bad happening. Read More
It was not until I was an adult that I realized that behind Sesame Street is a grand conspiracy.
It’s been on the air for forty years now, and we’re all familiar with the format: short, simple skits involving muppets, neighborhood human cast members and the occasional celebrity. Each skit has an obvious educational point to get across.
Back when I was a kid it seemed to be the same lessons we learned in school: letters and numbers, shapes, colors, playing fair with others, sharing. Familiar, scholastic topics, taught by ridiculous monsters and ultra-kind grownups. I thought these nuts-and-bolts lessons were really as far as they went on the educational side. The rest was just entertainment.
Unbeknownst to me, the Sesame Street writing team was secretly preparing us kids for things a lot tougher than kindergarten-level math. Read More
When I sit down to write an article for Raptitude, I always try to pick a topic that I can resonate with at that particular time. I’ve got a folder full of great ideas for posts. At any given time, I’m only in the right headspace to write something decent about maybe ten percent of them. The topic has to match how I feel or else it’s just talk.
I write about gratitude when I’m feeling grateful, I write about reverence when I’m feeling reverent, and I write about misery when I’m feeling miserable.
I’m in a difficult place at the moment, and so most of my thoughts are about a particular type of difficulty. My lease is up at the end of this month so I have to be out, and I’m having trouble finding a new place to live. I can’t sign a new lease because I’ll be gone traveling this fall. I’m scrambling to find a decent home within my budget in a decent neighborhood. I don’t know what will happen, where I will go, only that I can’t remain where I am.
Things will work out I’m sure, but there is an ever-present sense of uncertainty, all night and all day. Read More
“Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish opinions.”
~Zen saying
I don’t watch the news anymore, and I don’t get the paper. It took too much time to read, and often it would put me in a bad mood. There was too much to disapprove of, too many unsettled and unsettling stories. So I cut it out.
Television news was no better, mostly celebrity misbehavior and crises of some kind: fires, diseases, bombings and market trouble. I used to turn on CNN first thing in the morning, and listen while I made breakfast. One day I quit.
Initially, I feared I would feel out of the loop, that suddenly I would not know what was going on in the world. My peers would be exchanging crucial details about the state of the universe, and I’d have to ask sheepishly, “What’s swine flu?” or “Who’s the US president right now?” How embarrassing. Read More
The first thing I heard was the crash. I spun around on my stool, and she was already crumpled on the floor, head bent against the radiator.
Her eyes were open and blank, and she appeared to speak, but it was just part of the seizure. She wasn’t there at all. Her movements were so stiff and unnatural that I thought I was watching somebody die.
When she fell, there was nobody in the classroom closer to her than me. Four or five feet away. But I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to do. I just stared, heart racing, and hoped somebody would just do something. Read More
Rich man crying ‘cause his money is time / Poor man smiling ‘cause he knows he ain’t blind
~ Sam Roberts, “Brother Down”
I can remember more than one night I spent wide awake as a child, frightened from a scary movie or some other show I wasn’t supposed to watch. As scared as I was, I knew from experience that the night would eventually be over, and I would be fine, but that wouldn’t dispel the fear. No matter what kind of reasoning I could summon, the fear wouldn’t budge, and I’d be trapped in that awful situation until the sun came up.
Waking my parents to tell them I was scared would do no good. They could only comfort me for a few moments, then turn out the light and leave me again, vulnerable to any and all zombies or giant reptiles that happened to invade my room.
Once they’d left I’d have no choice but to hide completely under the covers, the edges tucked under my body, so that if a wandering bedroom carnivore did happen to eat me, it would just bite cleanly through this neatly packaged child without my having to ever see it happening. I figured that ensuring a sudden and speedy demise was the best I could do in those hopeless situations.
This was not a frequent occurrence but it did happen from time to time, and each time I ached so badly for nighttime to be over. It always came so slowly. I yearned for the sun. It didn’t really matter what the next day would contain, as long as it was light out and there were other people around. I would take anything: unloading the dishwasher, helping my dad organize the garage, standing in line at the 7-11… anything but to be here, alone in the dark. Read More
I'm David, and Raptitude is a blog about getting better at being human -- things we can do to improve our lives today.
I always enjoy your posts. But what I love most about your site is the absence of ads. I find it so incredibly ironic to be reading a post about living an intentional, distraction-free life - setting devices aside, unsubscribing to everything, etc. - while constantly dodging pop-up ads. Your...