We are born free!

[Karl12]

Yes, we are born free.

Not because anyone grants it, but because nothing in us was meant to be owned or shaped by anything outside our own truth.

But the world has its ways.

It gives us roles before we know our voice, rules before we trust our instincts, and expectations that make us forget who we were.

So the freedom we arrived with becomes something we must rediscover.

Awakening is remembering, it is a return to the self we were before the world told us who to be.

So, who are you really?

Insecure people say no!

[Sirius]

[Blackfingers]

Naked and afraid I thought.

[Astyanax]

Well, in the philosophy of "Dawkins-Nietzschean Nihilism," (a phrase i just made up) it's taught;

Humans are mostly a herd of slave sheep without the slightest bit of true individuality, and all they believe to be personal choice and freedom is really just the memes and conditioning that they mindlessly follow while believing it was their choice to do so all along. "Conditioned to engage." 

This tendency keeps most people chained to trends of; slave morality, pop culture, god, the government/the system, celebrities, influencers, icons, boogeyman, cults of personality, social media accounts, likes for their hive mind, and the positive reinforcement that makes adopting any of the previous feed an endless cycle of pay for play validation.. 

I think this is a misrepresentation. Nietzsche certainly did not believe that humans are sheep; he taught that each of us possesses what he called the will to power, a basic drive to extend our control over the world, to dominate and to create. When people call him a nihilist, what that really tells you is that they are religious, and irked by his frequent and contemptuous dismissal of religion. Nor did Nietzsche ever say that most people are slaves. He taught that Christianity is ‘slave morality’ (a set of ideas and rules that slaves adopt for themselves to make their condition more bearable), that it was deeply unnatural to humans, and particularly so to the best of us. 

Dawkins is not a philosopher. He is a cool-headed scientific materialist with some ideas about religion he wanted to express (and boy, I bet he regrets it now). His engagement with the world has none of the passion of Nietzsche’s; he believes that it can be understood through painstaking observation and experiment. He also holds that most of the big philosophical and moral questions are actually sociobiological questions, and that – as one of his colleagues pithily put it – all answers to them offered before 1965 are wrong. We now have the right answers in our hands, but they are simply not exciting enough for most of us. As you can probably tell from my posts, this is something I believe, too.

Though The Selfish Gene changed my views for ever and Nietzsche is one of my favourite philosophers (certainly the most entertaining to read), I struggle to conflate them or their teachings. They seem very separate to me.

[Astyanax]

Born to die and pay taxes along the way, slavery. Just pretend…

'No man is free who needs air to breathe' – old Greek proverb.

[Astyanax]

Nothing in us was meant to be owned or shaped by anything outside our own truth.

This is absolutely, fantastically false. It sounds all brave and big-souled and open-hearted; in fact it’s a cowardly refusal to face the complexity and ultimate tragedy of our existence as conscious beings. None of us is ever free; never have been, never will be. From the cradle to the grave, we are dependent on human society for everything except the air we breathe, and for that we depend on the air itself – if not on the strangler and the hangman. Deeper down still, each of us is dependent on language – a collective invention of societies – even to talk to ourselves.

Even the most fiercely self-sufficient (in his dreams) prepper could not survive for a day without the various objects and devices other people have made for him, whether it’s a Rambo knife, a box of matches or a pair of pants. We are social animals – the creators, in fact, of the most complex and versatile animal society ever seen on this world. It is as social beings that we live and die, and to society that we owe our existence.

That doesn’t have to make us Socialists (politics and evolutionary biology don’t mix well), but it completely invalidates libertarianism and laissez-fair liberal capitalism.

[andy06shake]

This is absolutely, fantastically false. It sounds all brave and big-souled and open-hearted; in fact it’s a cowardly refusal to face the complexity and ultimate tragedy of our existence as conscious beings. None of us is ever free; never have been, never will be. From the cradle to the grave, we are dependent on human society for everything except the air we breathe, and for that we depend on the air itself – if not on the strangler and the hangman. Deeper down still, each of us is dependent on language – a collective invention of societies – even to talk to ourselves.

Even the most fiercely self-sufficient (in his dreams) prepper could not survive for a day without the various objects and devices other people have made for him, whether it’s a Rambo knife, a box of matches or a pair of pants. We are social animals – the creators, in fact, of the most complex and versatile animal society ever seen on this world. It is as social beings that we live and die, and to society that we owe our existence.

That doesn’t have to make us Socialists (politics and evolutionary biology don’t mix well), but it completely invalidates libertarianism and laissez-fair liberal capitalism.

It's still an illusory notion that people find quite hard to live without.

Same with security, if we are honest.

But the reason people cling to the idea is that it's psychologically and socially useful.

[Sirius]

[Sirius]

[IdeomotorPrisoner]

I think this is a misrepresentation. Nietzsche certainly did not believe that humans are sheep; he taught that each of us possesses what he called the will to power, a basic drive to extend our control over the world, to dominate and to create. When people call him a nihilist, what that really tells you is that they are religious, and irked by his frequent and contemptuous dismissal of religion. Nor did Nietzsche ever say that most people are slaves. He taught that Christianity is ‘slave morality’ (a set of ideas and rules that slaves adopt for themselves to make their condition more bearable), that it was deeply unnatural to humans, and particularly so to the best of us. 

Dawkins is not a philosopher. He is a cool-headed scientific materialist with some ideas about religion he wanted to express (and boy, I bet he regrets it now). His engagement with the world has none of the passion of Nietzsche’s; he believes that it can be understood through painstaking observation and experiment. He also holds that most of the big philosophical and moral questions are actually sociobiological questions, and that – as one of his colleagues pithily put it – all answers to them offered before 1965 are wrong. We now have the right answers in our hands, but they are simply not exciting enough for most of us. As you can probably tell from my posts, this is something I believe, too.

Though The Selfish Gene changed my views for ever and Nietzsche is one of my favourite philosophers (certainly the most entertaining to read), I struggle to conflate them or their teachings. They seem very separate to me.

Dawkins only the made the title because he coined the phrase "meme,"  And I pair that with slave morality, like a hybrid "memetic morality."  

And it wasnt exactly a serious post, It was more or less purposefully rudimentary, with the basics of heterodox form mashed together. I was trying to keep it playful, but also based in something that tracks. 

But that's what "nihilism" says, would have been a better ending line for that thought.. 

My favorite Nietzsche book is Thus Spoke Zarathustra. and that comment was largely based on the collective gate-minding ape, their fatalist copouts, and not quite getting it.

But blessed are the forgetful, right?