Yes v. No
I was reading a scholar’s discussion when I came across this passage:
The comparison Nietzsche makes between the Higher Men and the Ubermensch in Zarathustra seems to me to be the relevant passage. For all their higher natures, the Higher Men are trapped by No-saying, their creative potential is locked away because they are first and foremost against degeneracy. The Yes-sayer can be truly creative because he is not against degenerate modernity, but careless of it in his positive-passion for his life-project. Degeneracy no longer matters to him.
Existentialism and especially postmodern inessentialism never seems to achieve that independence, it is always against and rarely for. Being against degeneracy gets you higher but prevents any ultimate escape from degeneracy. You’re always tied to it by your No-saying.
I don’t know anything about Nietzsche myself. What caught my eye in this passage was the resonance with the virtue types. (Wm. Jas. first twigged to the connection between the virtue types and some of Neitzsche’s commentary many moons ago).
This whole virtue project started a long time ago looking at the modern cult of authenticity. We’ve generally beat it up pretty hard. Still, I admit that there is something genuine in it also. What people want to reject really is insincerity, contrived artificiality, oily inauthenticity, and it really is generally gross. I could go on, but insincerity and bureacratic managed fakeness is everywhere. The problem is in Saying No there is no clear vision of what to say Yes to, so even a genuine rejection of inauthenticity often ends right back at a different version of bureaucratic managed fakeness. This is why the cries for more sincerity have led to more fakeness, not less. They end in just a different way of being “nice,” or deliberately being “not nice.”
Real authenticity is a process of becoming and requires all the help you can get from reason and revelation to figure out what you should become.
I go a little different direction from the opening quote though. I believe the Yes needs the No. Yes means you are expanding towards something, but you aren’t fully there yet. You need some No to keep you from blundering about too much. The path is Yes, off the path is No. Standards need rules, and principles need standards.
The letter killeth and the spirit giveth life, but the letter is how we discover the spirit and the letter is what the spirit giveth life to.
The soul that ascends says NO, flees from the error towards the YES, discovers that the YES it has found is incomplete, says NO to that and flees towards a greater YES, onward and upward, and upward all the while.
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Zen
February 6, 2023
These last two posts have been fire.
Clearly, yes, we need to clarify what Authenticity is.
Part of the problem, is that people are expecting to just discover themselves, like Columbus finding the New World, instead of putting in the hard word of making themselves. Still, there is more than a bit of truth about finding it.
Both NO and YES are vital, because we are in need of a direction and a goal, not merely rebelling against the philosophy de jour.
Rozy
February 6, 2023
“The letter killeth and the spirit giveth life, but the letter is how we discover the spirit and the letter is what the spirit giveth life to.”
I love this! It immediately brought to my mind what a member of the stake presidency said in our last conference. He was talking of the new For the Strength of Youth booklet; He said that Primary children need a Law of Moses approach to living the gospel as they learn the habits and behaviors of righteousness. Youth are then able to handle the higher law of Jesus Christ to understand principles and make choices accordingly.
I appreciate Zen’s comment about making ourselves and finding ourselves too. As we find our true identity, the true ones articulated by President Nelson, then we can make ourselves into the person God wants us to be. (Or something like that, hard for me to get my thoughts out.)
I really do enjoy the thought provoking posts here!
Ben Pratt
February 6, 2023
“…people are expecting to just discover themselves, like Columbus finding the New World, instead of putting in the hard word of making themselves.”
Zen, I struggled with this for decades. So often my prayer was a plea to be told what to do with my life. At some level I always knew that there was no real answer to that wrong question, and yet I continued to describe my life’s Golden Thread as a series of “I felt led to do X” moments.
The reality is that, at those key junctures, I was creating hand-in-hand with my Father all along. I only explicitly recognized that in the last year or two.
E.C.
February 6, 2023
“Create a vision of what Zion might look like” has been the clearest direction I’ve gotten lately, though whether that’s through me living my weird little life or telling my mad yarns is not entirely clear. Both, probably.
The problem is that there are a whole lot of people saying NO to all kinds of degeneracy lately, without having a good vision of what they would like to say YES to.
All this rambling to say, you are all articulating something that’s been percolating through my entire life lately, so thanks.
G
February 6, 2023
E.C.,
Your descriptions of your family life has a Zion melody.
Zen
February 7, 2023
EC – I feel similarly to you. I think we will make a lot more progress creating that vision, and sharing that vision, than we will fighting the rising tide of evil.
Pushing back on evil has real, if very limited gains. Perhaps in earlier times, it made more sense to preserve what we had, but now we will accomplish far more, if can build something.
And all that requires vision. Give people vision, and we multiply our strength a thousand-fold.