Beauty will save the world.
— Dostoevsky
I am actually more puzzled by this statement. I have only read a few of his works in translation, and I don’t claim to understand Dostoevsky’s philosophy and world view, which probably stems from ancient Russian perception of the world, nature, God, and the meaning of human existence.
What is beauty? I cannot answer that but I can probably tell you what is NOT beauty. LOL
If you’re interested,
My interpretation after reading some of his works on this question is Dostoyevsky’s life experience brought him much suffering including the moment he faced a firing squad.and was certain he was going to die. In that moment is when he realized the beautiful things in life that he wanted to live and yet the experience brought him to a newer type of awareness that when thinking such things is when his life at the last minute was spared.
You know he was a compulsive gambler and he even sold the dress of his young (second) wife. She was originally hired as a student stenographer who was merely moonlighting.
One of the reasons they went to Europe after their marriage was to escape from the debt he had accumulated in St Petersburg. Anyway, that woman turned out to be his life-saver.
These details I do not know, but with very little to track people with due to the era, I would think making a fresh start somewhere in a distant land was a realistic appeal that is often romanticized in literary visions. Such escapes are no longer available in the modern age of todays surveillance state we often find ourselves in. Even the selling of the dress is something of a fascinating oddity that todays women would scoff at being strange and crude reduce such notions to a cheap thrift store. Maybe war time produced such scarcity that dresses were high sought after or held value like gold?
I think Dostoevsky betted his wife’s dress, so that he could gamble on. Eventually he promised her that he would put an end to his addition.
I never read this novel, but it’s probably about himself.
I was just discussing this very topic yesterday. What I find most fascinating and one I have experience with, is the perspective of a soldier during wartime. Lewis states that the soldier during a campaign are not spending their down time talking about the republic or its ambitions to glorify but of other ideas. This is so true, so the chaos part is also part of the human condition and its creative process. We as a species needs to create in order to survive.
Right on the “front line,” soldiers don’t talk of the “allied cause” or the “progress of the campaign”
They’re instead concerned with stories, myths, fateful open-ended questions
They desire “aesthetic satisfactions”
If they wont “read good books” they will "read bad ones”
Interesting read and insightful of the workings of one’s thought process.
Anyone who hasn’t read Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle has entirely wasted their life up to this point.
Ernst Jünger survived multiple headshots in WW-I
Led his unit to impossible victories
Read Nietzsche in his spare time
Wrote notes that became the war classic Storm of Steel
On his 128th birthday today
Discover his forgotten essay “On Pain”
And its TIMELESS insights
1/ Pain is revelatory
Jünger writes:
“Pain is one of the keys to unlock man’s innermost being.”
In pain, all pretense & social masks slip away
Pain truly reveals a “man’s stature”
Therefore, Junger writes: “Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are!”
2/ How to bear extraordinary pain:
Make the body “a distant outpost” of your being
The true “command center” of your being should be a spiritual mission
When the body stops being the end
And becomes the mere means to a higher goal
Then pain loses its power
Jünger considers the belief that “reason can conquer pain” naïve - one that is losing “its allure”
Even if pain momentarily disappears, boredom replaces it
Jünger has a striking description of boredom:
“The dissolution of pain in time.”
4/ In chaos and pain, the human mind RECALLS archetypal images
Pain is the PORTAL via which we access the insights and power of archetypes
This is why in the pain and chaos of the 20th century
“The primordial memory of the lost Atlantis” recurs in the collective consciousness
5/ In our sensitive world, we try to marginalize pain and shelter “life from it”
In a heroic age though, the approach to pain is completely different.
In a heroic age:
“The point is to integrate pain and organize life in such a way that one is always armed against it.”
Instead of minimizing pain
We must attempt to maximize it
And gradually increase how much is bearable to us
The goal is not to escape FROM pain
But to develop indifference TOWARD it
7/ Jünger on language and reality:
“Words change nothing. They are at best signs of change. Change, however, takes place in reality, and it becomes most clearly visible when we seek to understand this change without prior value judgment.”
8/ Jünger wrote that it is a sign of “superior achievement when life gains distance from itself”
Julius Caesar was fit to be emperor as he had an “inborn noble detached judgment”
To be preoccupied with avoiding pain suggests an inferior nature
Tech has removed much pain from life
And yet our painless ease is “oddly agitated”
Pain: Reality giving us crucial negative feedback
Pain: A scale with which to measure genuine growth
Instead of escaping pain, we should aim to raise our pain threshold
“Pain is underappreciated. Comfort, in excess, weakens the soul, soften one’s being, and limits one’s mind. New knowledge is often painful; being too unaccustomed to pain, one shrinks from discomfort, and clings to socially acceptable lies.”~ Carter
Another added to my long list.
Do we have to know everything about the other side?
Not really, but every bit of information helps to overcome the fear of death.
Plato said the purpose of philosophy is the exercise of dying, and recalling what we have forgotten about the other side.
LOVECRAFT wrote that everything worth having comes from excess
Being an NPC is the NORM
And the only way to break free from the Orbit of the Mid is to hold onto that part within you that is extra - that is bubbling with force - and use its energy to BREAK OUT
Russian babushkas in search of meaning (and fun) in the old age. What does it mean to live a long life?
A grandmothers’ ice hockey team, whose captain is 82. They train twice a week.
You can get computer translation in English
Orwell wrote that demons possessed him and made him write 1984. Tchaikovsky was quivering like a madman when he wrote history’s most famous ballet: Black Swan. Genius is not polite or domesticated. It is rude and scarily close to insanity . Dig into the dark heart of genius
Just like the surfers chasing giant waves face an above-average risk of drowning
Geniuses chasing giant breakthroughs face an above-average risk of going mad
Sometimes you break through
Sometimes you BREAK
2/ But are geniuses literally possessed?
The writer of 20th century’s most recognizable novel thinks so:
Aeschylus invented “TRAGEDY” while trying to win ancient art Olympics
You can see where this is going
And perhaps his wife too…
A rivalry can set off a downward spiral as easily as it can set off an upward one
When you want to beat someone “no matter the cost”
Sometimes you’re willing to pay with your sanity too
There are 3 steps:
Step 1: Strong organic interest
Step 2: You devote time, attention, energy to your MUSE
Step 3: Your psychic investment almost unconsciously leads to ideas and achievements that push the envelope
9/ Arthur Conan Doyle turned his favorite professor into literature’s most famous and most adapted character: Sherlock Holmes. Ian Fleming idolized his soldier-adventurer brother Peter Fleming, and turned him into the superspy James Bond
Behind genius there is love
Found first-hand accounts of their creative process
And read academic books by based psychologists
To understand exceptional achievers
Who is a genius?
He who recognizes his talent and realizes the reason behind it.
It was neither for money nor for his pleasure, but for humanity to benefit from it.
Can the genius abuse his talent?
Yes he can. That’s his choice, but there’s a price to pay.
“Doing what comes natural is when we are not in our comfort zone but on the abyss of madness is where our genius is found.”
NN
The word “genius”far exceeds its meaning to be inclusive to a broader sense.
Who would that be in your opinion? Are there any left or are they just stealing other people’s idea’s?
I didn’t have anybody in particular on my mind, but let’s take Dostoevsky as an example. He wrote his novels, using his literary genius, expressing his thoughts on (brotherly) love, God, life and death, what humanity should focus on, etc.
Comparing Edison and Tesla, there’s no doubt that Tesla was a genius, while Edison was just a very clever guy. Tesla never thought of profiting from his genius and getting rich.
Worst way to read Nietzsche is to get stuck at “God is Dead” or some meme quote. He had profound insight into the nature of genius, why modernity is SETUP for mass depression, how to deal with your strongest urges, and more. 14 insights from Nietzsche you haven’t read before
“Only excess of strength is proof of strength.”
You ONLY possess those things that you can afford to waste
Only excessive spending is proof of wealth
Going overboard demonstrates authenticity
Only needless risk is proof of courage
2/ LIMIT your information intake
Nietzsche: “Once and for all, there is a great deal I do not want to know – Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge”
Take care that acquiring knowledge doesn’t distract from acquiring power, sway, and clout
Real domination over the real world
3/ On Caesar
Is the world set up for survival of the fittest?
Nietzsche says NO
It’s the rudimentary microbe that is more robust than genius men and genius civilizations
Using the example of Julius Caesar, Nietzsche shows how genius can fortify itself:
“When it is trodden on a worm will curl up. That is prudent. It thereby reduces the chance of being trodden on again. In the language of morals: humility.”
Humility: scared animal reducing surface area
Pride: strong animal increasing surface area
5/ Nietzsche saw our age coming - a time when everyone feels permanently broken:
“Here everyone helps everyone else, here everyone is to a certain degree an invalid and everyone a nurse. This is then called virtue”
Stronger ages “overflowing” with life would pity such cowardice
Nietzsche:
“To have to combat one’s instincts – that is the formula for décadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one.”
Reason drives a WEDGE between us and our gut
7/ Nietzsche on the complainers:
“Every poor devil finds pleasure in scolding – it gives him a little of the intoxication of power. Even complaining and wailing can give life a charm for the sake of which one endures it: there is a small dose of revenge in every complaint.”
Nietzsche:
“Castration is instinctively selected in a struggle against a desire by those who are too weak-willed, too degenerate to impose moderation.”
Lust, greed, wrath needn’t be castrated as sins but rather wielded as weapons
9/ Nietzsche’s 4 questions of conscience:
Do you want to lead men or merely be different from them?
Are you living true to yourself, or LARPing?
Are you taking action, just watching, or turning away from it all?
Do you want to lead, to be equal, or to be alone? Full quote:
“One is fruitful only at the cost of being rich in contradictions; one remains young only on condition the soul does not relax, does not long for peace. One has renounced grand life when one renounces war”
11/ In the rituals of the past, a lot was “risked…demanded…squandered”
People could indulge in them due to their “superabundance of life”
One “consequence of decline” has been people giving up on rituals
Nietzsche: “What was formerly a ■■■■■ of life would be poison to us”
“Equality belongs essentially to decline: the chasm between man & man, class & class, the multiplicity of types, the will to be oneself, to stand out – that which I call pathos of distance – characterizes every strong age”
Nobility wants to stand out
It takes collective sacrifice across the bloodline and a willingness to prioritize beauty over more immediate concerns
Nietzsche elaborates:
In our cerebral age, too much effort is wasted on perfecting “thoughts and feelings"
While great civilizations are actually built on the cult of the body
Here is Nietzsche on the primacy of the body:
