Or the \"Knot of Truths?\" (Endings)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 02:39 (5637 days ago)

I've probably read more Nietzsche than any other philosopher, partly for the sheer joy of it, partly for the maddening challenge of it. - One of the biggest ideas that he (perhaps purposefully) never fully develops is the idea of the "Knot of Truths." He alludes to it in Daybreak but discusses it several times throughout the book "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and it was in thinking about this construct that lead me to posit the unholiest human thought of all... - At best, you get out of "the knot" a tangled web of causes that every human being is a part of when they join this world. However, there are no "causes" of the knot. It always is, and every human generation inherits the same knot and it is largely the source of all of our various maladies and mysteries. - An idea of profound proportions seizes my soul on occasion. Sometimes I come to the "divine realization" of nothingness, that is every once in awhile my brain will be able to reconcile the possibility that there is absolutely no meaning to anything at all. I mean this in a very "deep-down" sort of way. - I'm borrowing a bit from the post-modern playbook, but we have a world that has precious few objects that are very real (transcendental functions, atoms, etc.) but in the grand scope of things there is no meaning or order to any of it. No goal. No end game. Nothing at all. - I think of what happened when I was a kid and had to move away for the first time. That townhome we lived in--was a collection of timber and drywall yet I wept for leaving it. - I talked before about humans being godlike... well it is we humans that give all of these objects any meaning. We give things purpose. That also includes each other... - If I depress anyone by reading this, I don't mean to. I've sketched notes about these thoughts for some time and I've been debating actually putting something together to discuss Nietzsche's death of God (which has a very specific meaning) and western civilization's slow process of grieving over this death. But I think the generations just before mine looked at this idea of 'nothing' very briefly and shuddered. It was unthinkable before then. When Nietzsche suggested it, it wasn't even conceivable. - But I think my generation stares "nothing" in the eye and laughs back. And if you know anything about Nietzsche, you know he'd get a little bit of a kick out of that. - /reflection off