Eternal recurrence or afterlife

In the past I more and more begun accepting the Nietzschean view on morality. I was really beginning to see morality as a ploy used to advantage oneself in dispute over physical/social/cultural/political resources. Therefore I’ve seen that it is typical weak, incompetent or generally soft people (people who are simply losing the battle for such resources) who naturally favor virtues such as equality, tolerance, and compassion, while those people who are strong, competent, and/or otherwise authoritarian who favor virtues as merit. Hence I used to consider our morality is mostly a projection, a theory, or fiction if not something we just blindly accepted. Morality itself according to this ain’t absolute and in some ways it’s subjective, although just because morality has a constructed nature it doesn’t mean some ethical systems don’t have better result than others and there isn’t better or worse ways to approach the world ethically both on an individual and collective level. And here is the problem at the first place: what is ‘better result’? Better than what, compared to what? Why something is better than something else? Because it’s more useful, beneficial, utilitarian than others for the people? If this is the case, the question again: ‘why?’. It was too simple. Something was wrong with this approach as I felt.

One of the reasons Nietzsche despises both Stoicism and Christianity is accepting the morality as supreme rule in cosmic term. As Stoicism says live according to nature means, be virtuous, however Nietzsche pointed out that the nature has no morality. In nature nothing is good or evil. For the nature the morality is not else than an arbitrary, artificially, man-made approach, and everybody’s free to set own moral rules, and everyone tyrannizes oneself with obeying own moral rule. We’ll never have capacity to learn the objective truth in full depth anyways. Despite the fact morality does not exist on the level of nature indeed, Nietzsche failed to understand, and I began to understand that the morality is not social and cultural rather biological phenomenon in case of humans. Every person has a unique connection with transcendental morality without any social or cultural influence. The human race can make difference between good and evil for seventy thousand years at least and the cultures were built on this, sometimes hack this. This is comparable to that fact even the colors don’t exist in the nature, they are all merely illusion. Yet we perceive them, we see colors, moreover we all see particular colors at the same way without influencing each other. How could it possible, since the colors don’t exist in reality? But they exist FOR US! And this is the key issue. Of course there’s some people who are color blind, who are unable sense colors, as there’s psychopaths, who are unable feel empathy and compassion, or the necessity of being virtuous, but this alone does not override the rule. Even a child has a sense of justice without learning it from others. How could it possible? The same point between the Nietzschean and Stoic views, they both deny the existence of free will. According to it we have no capacity to determine what we believe in, and in some sense they’re right about this indeed. Since the existence is not optional, we didn’t decide about whether we’re gonna be male or female either, we’ll have male or female brain structure. No one chooses sexual orientation, preferences, even choosing sexual partner is not conscious choice. We can’t determine our intelligence level, which is genetical in seventy percent or even more. We didn’t select our traits and temper. We did neither choose mother tongue nor environment we were raised in. Those markers determine our behaviour and personality, and ironically we can’t decide whether we want to feel a sense of justice or necessity to be virtuous. At this point Nietzsche contradicted himself. On the other hand however, yet we still have choice, in that how we chase the best version of ourselves or remains coward, lazy, betraying our nature. This is a very interesting paradox. In fact it is very difficult if not impossible to imagine free will without considering our ability in making moral judgement and decision.

As Jung pointed out each and every one of us has a special and unique connection with transcendental morality independently each other. This is why even a children have a sense of justice. They exactly know when they are treated unfairly or when they commit an offense. They feel the difference. Every child knows this without learning basic moral rules and principles from others. They know it because they feel it. This is the most amazing phenomenon, even a child has a capacity to feel the necessity of being virtuous. So the motto of Stoicism, ‘live according to nature’ is not a blank phrase or empty slogan. The nature has no morality, but we have by nature. In the Judeo-Christian belief system we have a choice to listen a voice of God or our inner God the voice of conscience or we fail resisting the temptation of Satan.

Why was Nietzsche wrong? If everyone has capacity to create own ethical system those results must work better than the moral inclination inside us otherwise we created nothing. According to Jung it’s not possible, as we simply can’t jump through own shadow. You can’t argue against universal morality with ignoring the universal morality itself. In other words if you want to create own or better ethical system, it won’t be ethical at all anyway. This is a self-contradiction. Thus the morality is neither a weakness of your system nor prejudice or something we just ‘blindly accepted’, rather something which is out of human control just like the law of physic. Therefore you can’t create ethical system, but you can lie about morality. The legal systems of different countries are more or less relying on this, let’s say ‘universal morality’, yet instead the world’s societies would discover transcendental moral rules and law, they rather tend to create their own ethical system in law making process on their own way, with the same result like creating wealth from paper, or sunshine from cucumber. The modern industrial, consumer, mass societies are all based on the Nietzschean philosophy regarding the morality, as result they are both hedonistic and nihilistic. But not the society that is important here or not an issue of morality in collective level, but an individual. Everything is decided at the level of the individual.

In fact, morality and philosophy are inseparable because the two are one and the same, which Nietzsche failed to understand. Even the phrase of philosophy has a dual meaning, because it’s a compound word. ‘Philo’ means thinking, ‘sophy’ means feeling. Thus you can’t argue philosophically about anything in such way that not to be moral either, because it’s not philosophical at all. You could argue about something that sounds rational (utilitarian arguments), but not moral but that leads nowhere. You can argue that the genocides are uneconomical for instance, but who is that idiot who argues this way. Exterminating our fellow human beings is morally unacceptable and condemnable at every possible way even in that case that would be ‘economical’. This is the essence of philosophy, raising moral feelings to a rational level and expressing them by linguistic means.

I recommend an interesting thought experiment. According to Plato the orb is the perfect form, the science also proves this. From the tiniest subatomic particles to the most gigantic celestial bodies, everything will be arranged into orb form sooner or later. I conclude from this what isn’t shaped into orb, it’s can be imperfect only. So following the principle of perfection, everything must be rearranged into a spherical form, what thermodynamics calls entropy. However, there must also be a less material, more spiritual organizing principle of this reorganization. Just think about it for a minute. The human is the only race what is capable of perfect spiritual, philosophical, and aesthetic abstractions, moreover ony the human being feels unconsciously the necessity of this. The sphere has a perfect geometric shape, two plus two can only have one correct result, and something is either good or evil or moral or not, can’t be both at the same time. The final result of the equation is either correct or not, but it cannot be both. Someone is driven by either good intentions or evil intentions, can’t be driven by both at the same time. The human soul, spirit, and mind who are all intangible, can be only sphere shaped symbolically. Our body in the physical sense also consists of spheres called atoms and molecules, which may be either the prison or temple of our souls.

It is a matter of approach. After all, nature is a cycle, everything that lives dies, that which has a beginning, it also has end. The physical suffering we call life can only make sense through a spiritual cycle. This can mean that time is an illusion, there is no past, present, or future. After our death, with a good chance, we are born again and live the same life, in the same body, repeating the same mistakes over and over again without remembering anything for our previously lived lives. That is, we live our lives, which we have lived countless times, over and over again to infinity. This is what Nietzsche calls eternal recurrence. But according to a less Nietzschean but more optimistic principle, we can escape from this eternal recurrence with becoming enlightened. This enlightenment means the liberation from all material attachment, and wisdom that necessary to rid of vanity, egocentric worldview, and every mundane and banal stuff that prevent us to see clearly. Only the seers can enter the upper stage of transcendental existence, the spiritual existence, to ‘nirvana’ the others orbit indefinitely in the captivity of materia, repeating their lives countless times as an failed exam.

All right, I admit, this is a crazy idea, but think about something interesting. More than thirteen billion years have passed since the big bang, and by the end of the universe, who knows how much will pass. In this period incomprehensible to human reason, the longevity of human life cannot be detected, which justifies the cosmic insignificance of us. But still, what are the chances that we exist in this tiny time frame and thinking on this? What was the chance at all that we were born at all? One in proportion to infinity? Can there be such a coincidence that would justify our current consciousness? Sixty generations have passed since the fall of Rome for instance, which is a very tiny time frame compared to billions of years. In this tiny time frame, only I have more descendants than there are people on earth today. If only one of these was missing, I wouldn’t have been born. Yet it’s just a tiny time frame. What of this enormous chance can be explained with, one is proportional to infinity, if not with argument, there’s no past, present, and future, that is, what we call time is an illusion, and we circulate in a matrix indefinitely. Of course this alone does not prove anything, but this may be at least as probable as a ratio of infinity to chance. This argument leaves the atheists speechless by the way, since even a God has better chance to exist than we have at this moment. Perhaps we all live in delusion with regards to time, life, and mortality. Of course, we can never know the truth, but there is another interesting phenomenon here to which I have already referred. Namely the issue of morality, which makes us seener, and a lack of it makes us blind. Why is it precisely morality that makes us something unique from an intelligent animal? There is even a name for this sense, called emotional intelligence. Because there is no other universal phenomenon that is as perfect as this, and which connects us all through time and space.

While other abstractions striving for perfection fill only practical or aesthetic purposes, the transcendental morality is something special. It’s on the top of all, so much so that the absence of this renders all efforts meaningless. Morality and philosophy are one and the same. Morality is rebellion against nihilism, so philosophy is rebelling against nihilism. The intellectual improvement is rebellion against meaningless circulation of satisfying of our material needs merely. Not do people live only on bread. Besides our material needs, we have intellectual and emotional needs either. The seers are seers because they recognize this, and heroes are heroes because they put it into practice. The tendency to morality is as perfect as the geometry of the sphere. I am convinced that we can only get rid of the meaningless cycle by following our conscience. The philosophy is the only antidote to suffering and misery of life. The blinds cling to meaningless material goods and mundane banality. They disdain morality, mock it, and make a fun of it, but they will pay the price of doing this. Sadly I have seen so many people getting stuck in eternal intellectual winter so far, in other words in trap of infantilism. Many of them are struggling with various kinds of addictions; drug, porn, alcohol. Even I was on the verge of falling apart a decade ago due to lack of life purpose and denying my spiritual needs. Because the life with no morality and intellectuality is a bleak suffering. Living without it is like living without colors. I have seen many disintegrated lives caused by this arrogance. It doesn’t matter how we name this need, a divine creative impulse or inspiration, a voice of God, or something else, but it exists, and we need it either the eternal recurrence or the random coincidence theory is correct.

What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again – and you with it, speck of dust! Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god, and never had I heard anything more divine!” If this thought were to gain possession of you it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and everything, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?”, would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed you would have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal conformation and seal? (book IV: 341)

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science

Okay this topic was abstract a bit, I hope you learned something new, anyways thanks for reading!