Nietzsche Warns America

He knew exactly what animates the Wokish

I don’t know how or when I knew Nietzsche. It was in the past five years most certainly. And like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I discovered that it was something I should have read when I was in my 20s. I read Dennett, Hofstadter, Mishima and Sowell instead. I didn’t realize they had enemies. But Nietzsche could have warned me. Ha. Just last week I was complaining about how I suffered the education of Hippies and Jesus Freaks.

So here, finally I have the reference definition of those I have been calling the Ivy Cabal, and still it is not quite a perfect fit. This is more specifically like Berkeley and Brown, but I think nothing like Princeton or Carnegie-Mellon. But what do I know? I know this applies to America today.

This valuation was brought to a peak by Jesus: with him every man was of equal worth, and had equal rights; out of his doctrine came democracy, utilitarianism, socialism; progress was now defined in terms of these plebeian philosophies, in terms of progressive equalization and vulgarization, in terms of decadence and descending life. The final stage in this decay is the exaltation of pity and self-sacrifice, the sentimental comforting of criminals, “the inability of a society to excrete.” Sympathy is legitimate if it is active; but pity is a paralyzing mental luxury, a waste of feeling for the irremediably botched, the incompetent, the defective, the vicious, the culpably diseased and the irrevocably criminal. There is a certain indelicacy and intrusiveness in pity; “‘visiting the sick’ is an orgasm of superiority in the contemplation of our neighbor’s helplessness.” Behind all this “morality” is a secret will to power. Love itself is only a desire for possession; courtship is combat and mating is mastery: Don José kills Carmen to prevent her from becoming the property of another. “People imagine that they are unselfish in love because they seek the advantage of another being, often in opposition to their own. But for so doing they want to possess the other being... L’amour est de tous les sentiments le plus égoiste, et, par conséquent, lorsqu’il est blessé, le moins généreux.” Even in the love of truth is the desire to possess it, perhaps to be its first possessor, to find it virginal. Humility is the protective coloration of the will to power.

Will Durant. The Story of Philosophy (pp. 485-486). General Press. Kindle Edition.

Boil it down to this:

People imagine that they are unselfish in love because they seek the advantage of another being, often in opposition to their own. But for so doing they want to possess the other being...

That is the Postmodern, Woke, Progressive, Atheist Alt Religion. It is a religion with sanctified devotees who will not change their stripes. They are holy warriors and their elite vanguard is the Ivy Cabal. That’s more apt. Stop look and listen for the exaltation of pity and self-sacrifice. Hear it? I know you heard it at Columbia. Where have all those wilted flower children gone? When will they ever learn? Ha. They’ve already received their blessings. They believe they have nothing else to learn, just more ideological enemies to subvert.

Behind all of this ‘morality’ is a secret will to power.

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