A trait deemed as good that’s used as a guide for behavior. Yes. Lying. The laws of the jungle are quite different. For the solitary savage there is no right or wrong. Hah! Didn't you get the memo? We're engineering humans. Ever drive in L.A.? Humans, of course. An imagined order requires believers and it shapes our desires. It works for the most part but there's always the fear that it could crumble. We're lazy. We don't think for ourselves. We look to others to inform us on how to live. Less individual responsibility, more power, affirmation, and reinforcement. Our reward system. Power is intoxicating. Through corporations, legal entities, etc.
You are speaking of and for yourself, or else repeating some other oblivious bozo's opinion, with no evidence. Everything you know and see and take for granted around you, from the pyramids to vaccines to the freeway to the computer keyboard, testifies to the constant activity, the busyness, the productivity and ingenuity of "engineering humans". This mass of product - much of it unnecessary, over-the-top, frivolous and harmful - was not brought about by lethargy. You haven't thought through any of your other pronouncements, either.
"A traveler who had seen many countries, peoples, and several of the earth’s continents was asked what attributes he had found in men everywhere. He said: "They have a propensity for laziness." To others, it seems that he should have said: "They are all fearful. They hide themselves behind customs and opinions." In the heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that there will be no second chance for his oneness to coalesce for the strangely variegated assortment that he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience—why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conformity and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that forces the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. For the majority it is idleness, inertia, in short that propensity for laziness of which the traveler spoke. He is right: men are even lazier than they are fearful."—Nietzsche The bozo was talking about the majority of humans being a product of the masses and their laziness to face the difficulties of challenging the norms.
Was it a critique on man or was it a disguised confession? He’s peeling away the social conventions and illusions, but unlike others, he doesn’t develop a system. Why is that, Jeeves? Why doesn’t he tell us how to live? Is he, too, simply tossing an object of creation on already polluted shores, or is he simply trying to change his own outlook, and pursuing knowledge for his own sake? He advocated perpetual self-overcoming, (personal development) as a solution to resentment, and an internal guide to action. He advocated distance but not alienation. He kept the object, (self) from alienating itself from the subject, (life). He was an advocate of creation but understanding why you create is the key to drive. But from your perspective self-domestication doesn’t prevent people from exerting energy, it causes them to go crazy. Hmm…I’ll give that some thought. Thanks! Robert Bednarik says something similar in regards disorders and to the rise of the specter of perfection and performance gaining cultural selection capital. He says something interesting about history, too. He said that it operates on the principle of extolling the values of cultural evolution and its grandiose achievements. He said that these tensions have resulted in the construct of a pinnacle of evolution—present man—whose intelligence, compulsions, and obsessions drive his puerile search for something to believe in that stands in stark contrast to the innate maturity of all other species. Indeed, the entire purpose of evolution was apparently to produce this paragon of virtue, this likeness of a deity.
Wait, wait! Is your handle supposed to be a short of: "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"? Anyway, I have little knowledge about, Nietzsche, so It'd be cool for a little more info.
It was simple a statement. You answer no pertinent questions; you produce no evidence or cogent argument; you merely parrot someone else's opinion. Of another culture, in another century, according to the lights of one gifted and profoundly troubled individual. Maybe because he didn't give a damn how or whether we live. I don't know what he intended to do. It's not relevant: he stopped doing anything at all more than a century ago. Fine. Peachy. So? That doesn't make him less wrong about men being lazy. Nothing stops people from exerting energy, except depression or sedation. In the majority of cases, human domestication is no longer self-imposed. Initially, when it was voluntary, people didn't know what the long-range consequences would be - much like other human endeavours: we're all gung-ho, let's go, let's do this... ooops; didn't see that coming. They never see the Ivan, the Pizarro, the Stalin coming. Rousseau: "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains." I'm looking forward to your own thoughts. Robert Bednarik sounds like an intelligent observer.
There are some good documentaries, including a short, very accessible one by BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07h0hg9
Really? Good to know because my first impression was that you’re here to impart knowledge, not exchange it. The reason that I mentioned Bednarik’s work is because he’s basically saying the same thing as Nietzsche. In fact, he even mentioned him in his book. So did Darwin but that doesn’t mean it’s no longer applicable. As Bednarik noted, independently minded, individualistic or especially gifted people were persecuted, exiled, or burned at the stake. This exacerbated the effects of domestication, in which characteristics of compliance are usually selected for. It is not at all clear what the long term effects of contemporary human breeding patterns will be. The modern welfare state has rendered most members of many societies unable to exist without such support, and has constructed new niches for humans, the genetic effects of which can be expected to be profound. They will, however, lie well outside of natural selection. He thought, as Nietzsche did, that if we are to understand the human condition that it is reasonable to expect humans to learn to appreciate that they are not created in the image of a deity but far from it. They are apes whose brains have grown too fast, who have little or no comprehension of the reality of the universe or their place in it. They are the wrath of this planet (its skin disease, as Nietzsche would have it), and their continued existence seems to be that once in a while they are capable of producing genius. If we consider the true potential of this species, there can be no doubt that humans have fallen immensely short of what they could have been. The notion that we are the arbiters of defining reality is preposterous, yet individually we remain addicted to it to the point of happily sacrificing our lives to the mirages it conjures up.
Don't be silly! We're here to procrastinate doing unpleasant chores. Who hasn't, at one time or another? In fact, a good deal has been added to Darwin's work. Laying a foundation for a body of knowledge doesn't require one to be right about every aspect of that discipline, nor doe it mean that one's every statement, conjecture and opinion is correct. I didn't say Nietzsche was wrong about everything, but he was way-to-hell-out-of-the-park wrong about some things. Yes. How is that relevant? That's just all over the place. WTF is "the modern welfare state"? How has "it" constructed new niches? How are "niches" having a genetic effect? We left natural selection behind as soon as we started owning land, women and livestock. See how an intelligent observer can still be wrong about some things? What's any of that to do with laziness?
Ah, yes, we're being lazy. Like what, Jeeves? Give me an example. Well, for one, it reinforces group thinking. Has modern life side-stepped natural selection? Yeah, maybe we should review the OP. We already covered that.
