A critique of Friedrich Nietzsche

“You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.”
―P.G. Wodehouse, Carry on, Jeeves.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) is probably the world’s most famous – or should that be infamous – philosopher. Born in the small, German and humble village of Röcken with a Lutheran Pastor as a father, no less, he would write a series of scathing, revolutionary philosophical works: Nietzsche is one of the most controversial philosophers in human history. On the one hand, his style is captivating, passionate and aphoristic; conversely, his detractors allege that he is anti-Semitic and a misogynist.

It is my attempt, in around a thousand words, to give you, my delicate reader, an insight into his opinions in a biased and subjective a way as is possible – for Nietzsche wouldn’t want me to anything but true to myself, admitting my prejudices, as ridiculous as they are.

Was Nietzsche a misogynist?

From some cherry picked quotes, yes. Nietzsche can certainly appear to carry a sustained hatred of women in his philosophy. For example, “One-half of mankind is weak, chronic-ally sick, changeable, shifty.” One doesn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce which half of mankind Nietzsche is referring to; what we must consider, however, is this: is his contempt genuine? If so, does this diminish his epiphany inducing aphorisms?

I want you all to know that I have no pretensions about appearing as a psychiatric expert, and pop-psychology is very tiring. Nevertheless, the fact that Nietzsche was raised by women (his father died from a “brain ailment” when he was five) would have had a profound impact upon his attitude towards women.

He moved to Naumberg, where he lived with his maternal grandmother and her two unmarried sisters. As well as this, he had a younger sister. The young Nietzsche’s world would have been turned upside down – not by a piece of paper and a pen, as he would late profess – but by the death of his father, compounded with a replacement of his father with multiple female authority figures.

On another note, Nietzsche never married. There are rumours –but that is all they are – that Nietzsche contracted syphilis from a whorehouse. However, Nietzsche’s illness in later life may have been due to other medical reasons. We can only clutch blindly at straws to discover evidence of Nietzsche’s misogyny. What isn’t in doubt, however, is the fact that Nietzsche was an extremely solitary man, and that he was sexually frustrated as an individual.

Away from such speculation, one could read Nietzsche’s philosophical rants as cathartic honesty. Many of us think ridiculous, illogical, angry and prejudiced thoughts; Nietzsche, a modern genius, would have recognised his ridiculousness, but embraced it, rather than hiding it for the sake of social cohesion.

Was Nietzsche an anti-Semite?

The very short answer would be “no”. The long answer is “no, but this, and then no once more.” It is important to note that at the time of Nietzsche’s adult writing, a certain fashionable hysteria around what used to be referred to as The Jewish Question (not to dissimilar from modern Islamophobia) was part of the Germanic intellectual zeitgeist. His work really could have been much more damning of the Jewish people, and his criticisms are weighted and considered.

Amongst Nietzsche’s work, much praise for the Jews is included, “As a consequence of this [history], the psychological and spiritual resources of the Jews today are extraordinary.”

He also stated in reference to the Jews, “to whom we owe the noblest human being (Christ), the purest philosopher (Spinoza), the mightiest book, and the most effective moral code in the world.”

However, it must be noted that these quotes are from his earlier writing. His later philosophy was much more damning:

“Christianity, growing from Jewish roots and comprehensible only as a product of this soil, represents a reaction against the morality of breeding, of race, of privilege-it is the anti-Aryan religion par excellence.”

Nietzsche definitely believed in race, but not in the same sense as Adolph Hitler: “Every nation, every man has disagreeable, even dangerous characteristics; it is cruel to demand that the Jew should be an exception.”

To summarise, in my opinion, Fredrick Nietzsche criticised everyone, especially German society -- more than any other ethnic group. He thought that German society was weak; the moral values which dominated Germany at the time, that is to say Christian moral values, were repugnant to Nietzsche, because he thought it rose what is flabby, common and average as something of value. These values, of course, were drawn from Jewish background. This comprises some of his distaste towards the Jewish peoples.

However, his damning criticism of German society was far greater than his agitation against the Jews. Should we hold the Jews above everyone else, and say that hatred towards them is somehow worse than hatred towards Christianity, or his own people? Why should Christianity be an easy target? Are we indoctrinated to think that the Jews are lesser than the Christians, and therefore have to be immune from criticism? I don’t promote anti-Semitism, but I do advocate an even hand of criticism.

Nietzsche’s writings were manipulated by his surviving sister – an admirer of Hitler and the Nazis – and then, in turn, by the Nazis themselves. What is important to note is that they were manipulated to fit in with Nazi ideology. His earlier criticisms of anti-Semitism were airbrushed out, and his view of humanity, centred on elitism, fitted in well with Nazi racial superiority.

My admiration of Nietzsche:

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, unfortunately, has been blighted by history and has been misrepresented, time and time again. Fundamentally, I would like to have written about his literary style to a greater extent. Of course, having only around one thousand words to write about the revolutionary Friedrich Nietzsche is very limiting – but I would hope that I have allayed your fears and prejudices, and thus you are ready for a broader appreciation of his writing.

Samuel Mack-Poole

The seamless inquisitor

Oh doom and gloom,

Born without a silver spoon,

When will you let the lovely light flood the solemn seas

And at what time will the rain no longer torrent the wilting trees?

When will the birds incessant singing stop,

And return to the grace of the natural clock?

Can you imagine a mind free from sorrow,

Or a heart as free as the paths of tomorrow?

Oh grey in May,

Who equally abhors each day,

When will the winds of wrath subside for goodness sake

And at what time will the high tides dissipate to form luscious lakes?

How long will you stop the flowers from bloom,

And return the madness from the mourning moon?

Can you conceive a life without misery,

Or a vivacious body not struck by melancholy?

Ellese Elliott

The Confluence

 

Have you ever been referred to as a consumer? If you have, then you have been insulted. And worse than insulted, you have also been targeted by powerful men for moulding; socially-engineered into something less than you are. You have been belittled and dehumanized, reduced from a Whole being into a single part. You have been made into a statistic to be scientifically examined, reduced to an ever-hungry mouth for the producer to feed. As the producer is a parasite seeking to profit from you, being referred to as a consumer is not so different to being referred to as prey. Greedy prey, stupid prey - the fly who saw the spider's web but crashed into it all the same.

We must not be satisfied with being a feeder, a mere sucking mouth against the teet of hedonism. Ignorance is never bliss, it is uncertainty and frustration, the inability to see beyond the next fix. Ignorance means being unable to make and understand choices; it is the enemy of freedom. We need truth and enlightenment. There is more to us, which we must dare discover; a balanced being, a whole being, a free being.

It was only when reading the work of the world's first self-proclaimed anarchist that I came to realize all of this. And it starts somewhere extremely simple. How we are addressed shapes how we become, in the same way that being praised or insulted might raise or lower our esteem. Proudhon referred to his audience as 'citizen-reader', and it sent me into an upward spiral of thought and discovery.

The confluence -

A confluence is the point where two or more streams form into a single river. How many confluences make up the whole of us is perhaps beyond categorisation. In fact, even categorising things into neat little sections is suspect, as life and being is never so simple. Nonetheless, I will endeavour to present three large and definite tributaries which make up our totality. Ideally, we would all have an understanding and appreciation of these aspects, rather than being trammelled into any individual one. Understandably, we specialize in various places, and are not equally spread across all aspects of our being.

Economic - There are invariably those who value money above all other things, like Dragons upon their golden hoards. For these sorry people the term consumer might fit extremely well, for the concept of a consumer is a creature which exists wholly in the realm of economic transaction (Homo Economicus). They are the ones who want to get things with absolute certainty and familiarity, moving as the crow flies without appreciating the journey. They are easily malleable, and can be satisfied with any conditions provided they get their reward at the end of it.

They obtain their monetary rewards by doing what they would not like to do because they have the promise of spending it on something they want at the end of it. Monetary gain is the consolation for what is often dreary and unimaginative labour. Perhaps we all need to be cajoled into action sometimes and led along by the carrot on the stick a short distance. But to live exclusively for the weekend is to sacrifice five-sevenths of ones life to the machine.

Money is glorified beyond the sum of its parts and becomes a thing of value of itself, rather than a piece of paper used to promise the bearer such and such a sum. It also becomes the main unit of comparison and competition, such that one can never be satisfied with how much one has, for there is always someone with a little more. Thus the value of money is symbolic, rather than useful, and one's attachment to it is not the attachment to one's tools or actual needs, but a symbolic attachment. It is to build oneself on an imaginary foundation (and we call such people 'realists'!) To be disdainful of such a one-dimensional money-clutching character is not elitism - it is simply being something more than an unimaginative creature!

I should like to think that the hypothetical hoarding Dragon I have described above does not really exist. I should like to think that the bulk of our species is somewhat more subtle, and that economic realities are not the be all and end all of existing on this Earth. To the enlightened, economics is but one tributary leading into the river of totality. Economic calculations are a necessary head-ache but one which we would all rather was done away with it. Spending power might illicit the occasional burst of joy, but this would not be an addiction, but an occasional vanity.

Political - Everyone should be political. Not because there is much gain in it, but rather to prevent suffering losses for it. At least in our present epoch of representative democracy (demagoguery), politics is very much a case of damage control. It is equivalent to self-defence.

What is the value of a voice? What is the value of a vote and a movement? I should answer that these things are as valuable as the 'economic' category above. Just as obtaining things by exchanging currency can cause good feelings, so too can discussing things. The difference of course is that discussing important things is free.

The power is there, waiting to be taken, and it costs nothing but effort and time. We should long to have a share of power in government and public affairs, as it is in our interests to do so. The disillusionment with a crooked system (see any currently existing system) only feeds into that system. One of virtuous and balanced character should strive to create something new if the existing surroundings threaten the virtuous. This also is a political action.

Spiritual - The concept of spirituality is one stained by misunderstanding, misuse, and mistrust. Understandably so! Our first introduction to spirituality often comes through dogmatic religion, which drives the dissatisfied toward atheism. Conventional religion is so flagrantly repulsive that it encourages us to denounce spirituality as dangerously stupid, for the most dogmatic of priests oppose all other aspects of human being (such as scientific endeavour) which they consider threatening to their little bubble of perverse power. This might also lead to rational and open-minded religious people being 'tarred with the same brush'.

The necessity of a specific God, or belief in a certain set of scriptures, is also a problem for spirituality. There is nothing worse than competitive religions. Only tolerant religious groups should be tolerated! For that reason I believe spirituality requires total openness and should be proclaimed as an universal individualism. It is a deeply personal experience where, paradoxically, the personal vanishes - for self and all often become interwined during such experiences. But the personal does not vanish forever, and the individual is still left to interpret and ponder their experience, and that is what makes such a spiritual moment special.

I wish here to purify the idea of the spiritual, including within it things we can immediately identify with: to aimlessly observe a white horse grazing in a gladden field; to be lost in a piece of music and to forget time; to see the logic in the absurd; to be part of the unexplainable life of the city; to use language in a nonsensical way; to create art in luminous splendour; to touch the nose of a cat with your own; to imagine one is a sorcerer of a lost race saving a dying realm; watching smoke rise from an incense stick recognising that it doesn't really go anywhere; these are all spiritual experiences.

The spiritual does not align with what is arrogantly called 'the real world', and it is not just a consolation used to maintain a regimented life. The spiritual must be purposeless when all around us demands 'as the crow flies rationality', and accumulation, and severity, and pretension.

Real poverty lies with those who are incapable of fully appreciating this side of themselves. The spiritual does not need to be mutually exclusive with other more 'practical' aspects of our being; they can all co-exist.

Close -

Like any Virtue Ethicist I stand at the foot of the mountain I have raised, dwarfed by its splendour, cast into its shadow. Is it an impossible task to be a balanced and virtuous creature?

Selim 'Selim' Talat

Meeting illogic with illogic

I was somewhat enraged by this poster, which I think illustrates something

on many levels. Apart from anything else, if you try and make constructive comments on feminism, the post-feminists and other rubbish comes out of the woodwork.

But in particular it illustrates the false assumption that if you focus on one thing in one situation, this is a negative statement about other situations. Take for example:

Feminist: Men shouldn’t rape women.

Humanist: People shouldn’t rape people.

Are we to assume women are indifferent to men being raped? Absolutely not. They might be the first to offer advice.

When we hear the clamours of Fathers for Justice, can we assume that they are indifferent to justice for mothers? Er, well... we may not be entitled to assume that, but one is very inclined to think this is the case.

Essentially we jump to conclusions that reinforce what we already believe.

And I am going to jump to the conclusion that the author doesn’t respect women.

I think feminists are right to focus on disrespect for women. Women don’t get enough and in ways men get too much. Unfortunately, while it is sometimes intuitively clear, sometimes it is far from clear what respect consists of. There was a time when it was felt to be sexist to say women should have greater representation in Parliament and on company boards because they have something special to offer.

Nowadays this is regarded more positively. Provided of course that focussing on this doesn’t imply we ignore other more ‘mainstream’ contributions they might make.

Martin Prior

Escaping the Dance of the End of History

The political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously claimed after the fall of the Communist governments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that human history had, in essence, come to an end. He did not mean, of course, that time had, in fact, frozen solid and that historians would not be able to write about anything after 1991. Rather, his argument was based on Hegel's idea that the history of humanity is a progressive movement with a beginning, a middle and an end. The end of history, Hegel said, is the point at which humanity reaches its apex of consciousness and hence has in it's grasp the ideal form of organising society.

For Fukuyama, the defeat of Soviet-style socialism and the triumph of Western liberal democracy inaugurated, essentially, a New Earth where freedom would reign for eternity through representative democracy and free-market capitalism. The flip-side of this assertion was, of course, that Karl Marx was wrong: the stateless society of communism where class conflict would be no more was a pipe dream, and we had no option but to embrace this joyous new world of liberty – a world of marking an 'X' on a piece of paper every four or five years and endless shopping at Wal-Mart.

Many have criticised Fukuyama's arguments, and this is not the place to attempt a point-by-point rebuttal. But I think it is clear that we haven't been living in a state of paradise since the end of the Cold War more than two decades ago. People are still going hungry, and in some cases die of starvation, even as others wine and dine at the Ritz. People are still paid poorly and housed precariously, and in some cases reduced to poverty and homelessness, even as others throw cash around and sleep soundly in mansions. People are still unhappy with their lives, and in some cases become depressed and despondent, even as others seem to be living it up and partying like its 1999.

For some, this sorry state of affairs is proof that liberal democracy is a sham, and that free-market capitalism is a scam. Yet one immediately hears shrill voices which say, “But what are we to do? Haven't we tried doing things differently, through the state, and failed?” “No,” others cry in response, “We're not talking about Soviet 'communism', but the welfare state and the 'public good'. Privatisation has led to inequality by allowing untrammeled greed to flourish! Yes, state-centric solutions can be bureaucratic and impersonal, but we don't have any other options.”

Most debates today about how society should be structured revolve around these two viewpoints. In one corner, wearing a pin-stripe suit, is liberal capitalism. In the other corner, wearing a duffel coat, is social democracy. Cheering and jeering from the crowd are more extreme versions of these two fighters, including neo-conservatives and fascists, as well as state socialists and communists. Should anything drastic happen, these observers are ready (and waiting) to join in the fray.

 

As a result, a large majority of people today feel they have to choose a side. It's either greater freedom or greater equality, either a larger role for private initiatives or a larger role for the state, either a system built on self-interest or a system built on solidarity.

What if this were a false choice? What if I told you that picking either side would not change the underlying structure of our present-day society?

Before you start thinking that I'm about to go off on some sort of conspiracy theory, let us slow things down a little. I'm not about to say these two sides are like the Galactic Republic and the Separatists in the Star Wars prequel trilogy – that is, appearing to be diametrically opposed to each other but in reality both being pawns in a game controlled by Darth Sidious. I don't believe that there's some secretive cabal running the world and playing us off each other like puppets on strings.

What I would like to suggest, however, is the different political systems that we see today in the world – together with many of those that some would like to see realised today in the world – are not as radically different as they seem. To help us dig into this proposition, the political thought of the contemporary theorist Kojin Karatani is quite instructive.

According to Karatani, the society we live in today is made up primarily of three types of human interactions. Firstly, we engage in acts of reciprocity with those whom we feel we have something in common. This could be because we have the same parents or because we have a shared interest in real ale. The essence of reciprocity is that we are willing to help each other because we consider ourselves part of a particular 'group'. Conversely, we're far less willing to help another who is not part of this group. This dynamic is the basis of the nation, which is an imagined community of people who identify with each other because they have a similar culture, history and so on.

Secondly, one segment of our society is engaged in acts of plunder and redistribution. On behalf of 'wider society', this segment collects resources – especially from those who have most – and redistributes them to those who have less. This is, of course, embodied in the state, which is an institution that claims to uphold the interests of the public in its operations.

Thirdly, almost all of us take part on a daily basis in forms of commodity exchange. This includes obvious things like shopping for groceries, but also things such as paid work, because what is being exchanged is the labour of one party for the money of the other. Such is the lifeblood of capital, which is the form of commodity exchange that, although based on the exploitation of most ordinary folk by those who own and run the businesses, claims to be founded on free exchange between equal actors.

When we take all these three forms of human interaction together, we get what Karatani calls the unholy trinity of Capital-Nation-State. All three are mutually supportive, and so when one of them is called into question – for example, by a social movement – the other two can move in to re-balance the system. Although there are moments where the respective forces of capital, nation and state clearly clash, at the end of the day the continued existence of each one is bound up with the others.

Hence, returning to the scene of the prize-fight between the Right and Left of mainstream politics, we can see how the triumph of either one only reconfigures the interconnected relationships between capital, nation and state, but does not actually challenge the basic structure of the trinity. Under the welfare state, the influence of capital is diminished, yet it continues to play an important role in the functioning of the system even as the power of the state increases. A turn towards a liberal free-market has exactly the opposite effect in that it weakens the state but strengthens capital. And when resources are scarce and the economy looks grim, the inward-looking and often violent rhetoric of the nation comes to the forefront of politics (think of Golden Dawn in Greece).

Faced with this vertigo of the three elements of the trinity dancing around us, it can seem difficult to imagine what can be done to bring about a different world. Karatani, drawing loosely from the 19th century anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, suggests that the way out is indeed to exit and transcend this system by means of a fourth type of human interaction, which he calls association.

Association involves elements of the other three forms, but goes beyond them. It incorporates the mutual aid of reciprocity, but without demanding conformity. It aims for egalitarianism, but does not coerce like the state. And it sees some good in the idea of freedom of exchange under capital, but it refuses exploitation through wage labour and usury.

What is it, then? Well, it is not a blueprint meticulously designed, nor an utopia erected in the mind, but rather the labourious and non-violent task of building alternatives to Capital-Nation-State through anti-capitalist, anti-nationalist and anti-statist forms of exchange, living together and co-operation. It is not found in sexy, youthful politics that builds barricades nor in idealistic reformers who run for public office. Rather, it takes shape in projects such as worker-owned co-operatives, Local Exchange Trading Systems, time banks, local demurrage currencies, social centres and free universities. In other words, it is – to steal some words from Marx – “the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.”

If the ongoing climate and economic crises continue to worsen, we may find the need for alternatives to Capital-Nation-State more urgent and crucial than ever. Nevertheless, regardless of what exactly comes to be, it will certainly not herald the end of history, at least not in the Hegelian sense.

Soo Tian Lee

Why exist in the face of oblivion?

This response was written in reply to a wonderfully put question asking why we should continue existing in the absence of a benevolent creator.

The reason, I think, why we might exist in the face of oblivion is because we are, in addition to whatever soul or mind you may posit, a living organism. Why does moss grow on the windowsill? Its life seems futile to us, it continues to grow. Nothing inside of the moss will prevent it from growing and sustaining itself. We must be removed from the brute life-force inherent in all creatures of biology if we are suggesting that lack of cosmic relevance should indicate an early exit! This 'will to live against any odds' must surely be our axiom - the starting point, or truthism, upon which we build all else. This is the first and most obvious point. You exist because some part of you is 'programmed' to continue existing.

You breathe so that you may continue breathing. It is as simple as that really. You do not need a justification for this brute existence. Having said that, life requires sustaining. It is not a given, and we must endlessly nourish ourselves to cling on to existence. I suppose in that sense we must actively choose what is best, or sufficient, to maintain ourselves. Fortunately we have the apparatus to do so - a body!

Now you have life, but there is still a great expanse of time before you. What you live for is up to you; it cannot be generalized, handed down, or forced upon. Hopefully it is something artistic, self-caused and heals the wounds of Man. Hopefully it is not celebrity, fame and wealth. Again, another simplistic answer, but it is hard to say much else. If you respect philosophy, you respect your readers ability to work it out for themselves. In this sense, there is not a universal answer to be prescribed to all, only enrichment and refinement by posing clever questions. Maybe somewhere down the line we will coalesce into a beautiful whole.

Short and sweet, a succinct story -

The fact is seventy years, in the context of our species, seems long enough to do some decent stuff. Those seventy years are not nothing. Perhaps it is just about the right amount of time for us. A succinct story is better than a long and convoluted one.

Those who believe in an omnipotent creator often see this world as a sideshow for 'better things to come'. It is all about the sequel! Nothing they can do in the 'finite world' can compare to the 'infinite' and the transcendent. Yet to claim that our immediate experience of the world is completely and utterly nothing seems bizarre to me. I have no such pretensions. This is all there is. Responsibility lies with Man. Deliverance of justice lies with Man. Ideology and belief lies with Man. Creativity and the world-narrative lies with Man. Everything that is found, is found upon Earth. There is no philosophical position as life-affirming as this. Oblivion gives us ultimate freedom and responsibility: a weight heavier than the cross, a sphere greater than that which Atlas had to haul around upon his shoulders. For the former was a miracle worker who had the promise of eternal paradise, and the latter was a gargantuan Titan! We are just ordinary human beings facing down the abyss, alone.

I don't see why we need benevolent creators above our comprehension. I can't understand how we can practice absolute moralities which were beyond our ability to create. Is Man not enough? What about benevolent order and flexible morality which can adapt with the times? These things can be ours in this life, if only we were not such lazy, abysmal thinkers and mass-underachievers.

Oblivion -

Oblivion may or may not be nothing; the total annihilation of personality. We do not know, and may never do so. But oblivion comes after the fact. Oblivion needn't concern one for the present, and worrying about it will not alter its inevitability. To bring the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus into the fold: "Death means nothing to us...when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist."

Do we truly live in the shadow of oblivion? I do not think so. You have governments and corporations whose plans see no further than the next election or boom-bust cycle. You have next door neighbours whose concerns lie no further than organizing a birthday party and paying the bills. And guarantee yourself that any so-called deep-thinker does not confront their mortality every single day. Even the word death carries no weight until it is truly comprehended, and that is very rare indeed; occuring in spells which catch you unawares (oblivion is just like any other fascinating thing we humans do without realizing it, such as devouring organic matter and turning it into us, absorbing vitamins from sunlight, processing waste and making it come out, and so forth).

Oblivion, properly thought through, is like a sleep from which there is no waking. This is not easy to come to terms with, and may never be fully accepted. But why? If I may end on a wild speculation, our species inherited the ability to comprehend death rather late in day, and we are not designed to fully come to terms with it. For once we fully understood nothingness in our minds, how would we return to something?

Selim 'Selim' Talat

‘The Difference Between Knowledge and Opinion…’

These days, everyone has an opinion. You could even say that this article you are reading is an opinion. With our incredible and unlimited access to the internet and all the media we are constantly presented with, we cannot help but be full of opinions. But opinions are not clear, they are not knowledge, they are subjective and they rarely tell us something about the thing that people are giving an opinion about. I believe there is a difference, a huge difference, between knowledge and opinion, and philosophy holds the key.

When you compare a decent news article to a thread on twitter, you can notice a slight difference between the two, cant you? But its hard to explain just what it is. Plato has a theory that helped me differentiate between the two. A good investigative journalist, similarly to a philosopher, is interested with what the things are, in themselves I mean. What is commonly known in Philosophy as the Love of knowledge. What happened? Why? Where does it all come from? The trouble I mean. A wish to understand the concepts. Plato would argue that a piece of news is a manifestation of what things are in themselves, in the same way that a beautiful landscape or a piece of art is a manifestation of beauty itself. Thus when you want to find out what the thing is in itself (go deeper) you are looking for knowledge. When you just look at the manifestation and say ‘that’s pretty’ or ‘that’s bad’ then you are just stating an opinion. The contrary to the love of knowledge is to just love beautiful things, or things, without thinking about the thing itself, only about the manifestation of it. Thus you give an opinion, almost like giving a superficial gaze.

This very populated land of opinion was placed by Plato, as a land right in between knowledge and ignorance. He claimed that to give an opinion, is a capacity, but not a very deep one, as to look for knowledge. So opinion is clearer than ignorance, because at least it looks at the manifestations of what things really are, but darker than knowledge, because knowledge wants to know what things really are.

To be fair to most of us who fill the internet with opinions, most of the media we are shown are manifestations of things. We are shown just and unjust actions, we are shown beautiful and ugly scenes… Thus we see the manifestations we can give an opinion about. Yet we have to dig deeper by ourselves to really find some knowledge about things, especially about what is going on in our world. To claim to have knowledge, we have to cultivate this knowledge, otherwise, we are just arbitrarily calling things good or bad, without understanding. And you might agree with me that it is incredibly annoying to see someone have an ignorant opinion on something you know or understand, so lets not do the same.

Eliza Veretilo

A sledgehammer blow against the animal's chains

If you have ever observed an argument in favour of vegetarianism, you can be sure that somewhere along the line there will be an accusation of 'emotionality'.

You will see the 'antis' poise the lance of argument at the 'bleeding hearts who have watched one too many Disney cartoons, and now proclaim their love for all beasts!' Vegetarianism is, of course, just an immature emotional reaction to the grim nature of, well, nature. Vegetarians haven't quite clocked on yet that animals must be slaughtered because it is 'the way of things', and if only they were more 'rational' they would realize that animals being killed for food is an unchanging law of the cosmos (insert lion hunting gazelle reference here).

But, of course, slaughtering animals as part of your cultural practice is not the result of an emotional attachment. It is an entirely rational decision to gorge on ever-increasing quantities of meat, resulting in ever-worsening conditions for the animals slaughtered – and just about everything else. Therefore, experiencing as much sensory pleasure and dietary convenience as possible would give one the rational high-ground, right? The answer from my perspective is an overwhelming and horribly jaded 'no'.

I propose a different concept of rational. This is to cause the least amount of suffering and environmental damage for the maximum output of nutrition and variety, from here to an indefinite point in time. It is to consider the future of the earth, rather than just the present. It is to plan ahead to ensure the continued survival of our species - not to mention all of the others we might extinguish before their time. It is not necessarily benevolent, but it certainly is not domineering and destructive. It is quite simply long-term survival and well-being!

Mass violence against harmless animals does not have a rational basis. Violence is destructive to our well-being, even when it is justifiable (i.e. in self-defence). If you agree, then you agree that it is also rational to free people from the barbaric task of animal slaughter. The meat-eating advocate (that is, anyone who condones or participates in the practice) is hiding from the fact that someone else has to do the dirty work. Considering the sheer scale of the meat industry, that is a lot of dirty work.

I doubt the happy family at the table carving a cow-corpse consider the psychological welfare of the men who were tasked with the killing. Those men are as objectified (a walking blade and boltgun) as the innocent animal deemed unworthy of life (walking flesh and food). Even if one cared nothing for animals, could one say the same for men? The same men who must be desensitized to the brutal task of transporting, stunning and killing animals on a factory line. (In the case of halal or kosher slaughter, literally killing a conscious animal with a blade across the neck).

The real emotionality is on the side of the meat-eaters. Sadly, it is the wrong kind of emotion. It is an emotional need to belong to an archaic cultural practice. It is the laziness of convenience, to commit the most banal immorality known to our species. It is to habitually succumb to the darkest of desires, destroying another life for the sake of fleeting pleasure - or worse, arbitrary traditional nonsense. This fusion of emotional need to belong, combined with rampant desiring, is where the irrationality of meat-eating synthesizes.

Fortunately for meat-eaters, they have a many-layered veil to hide behind. The meat industry depends on sheer ignorance to continue itself (a resource reliably supplied by our underachieving species!) It hides the flesh-consumer from the brutal reality of how animals are raised and butchered. It hides behind images of happy cows and pleasant farms, utilizes serpentine language (cage free, free range) or romantic language (calling the corpse of a jungle fowl a 'bird') to disguise the sheer abuse that is necessitated so that we can continue the highly 'civilized' practice of animal torture and murder. It is almost as if a large number of those involved in the slaughter were ashamed of their role in it. But I won't go so far as to say this definitively!

Vegetarianism has its own ethical problems with farmed animals, but it does not depend on anywhere near as much slaughter to continue itself. This makes it an order of magnitude less violent and self-destructive, and an order of magnitude more rational. As for any overly emotional vegetarians, can you really blame them? Even if it is a purely emotional reaction, it is a valid one, and the right one.

This is the first of many sledgehammer blows against the animal's chains. The next article will be asking the question of whether an animal is a moral agent - the predictable answer from this militant animal rights camp being 'yes, I do think so'! The basis of this argument will be the rather simple notion that we are not so different from animals - having evolved 'out' of one after all. See you then.

Selim 'Selim' Talat

My Philosophy on Reproduction

“Now is the time that face should form another...Die Single and thine image dies with thee.” – William Shakespeare, Sonnet 3.

In this (post)modern society we hail from, I am truly flabbergasted by a strange notion: having children is no longer in vogue. As a scientific materialist, I find this view quite bizarre. Our species, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, (Wise, wise man – we have evolved to become doubly wise), is successful, after all, due to our sex drive. In my moments of quiet reflection – whether in the bath, or during my journey to work – I am often drawn towards an obsessive train of thought. My thought process is as so:

1) 99.9 % of all species that have ever lived on Earth are extinct.

2) Humans are not extinct.

3) Therefore, there is something different about humans, and there was something different about early humans, too.

Decisions that early humans made have lead to us being how we are now. Our bodies, our voices, our brains and our language are the direct result of hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. It’s extremely fascinating. We are, as of this moment, a link in a very long chain. Our existence is owed to choices made long ago – choices we have no input towards.

Like all other species, Homo Sapiens Sapiens lives to reproduce. This, from a very narrow scientific evolutionary perspective, is our purpose. People may think that this is a mechanical view of existence. I would contest this; the whole process, from the wooing, to the act of sex, from the pregnancy to the birth are all terribly profound. The science of conception, of the sperm’s 23 chromosomes meeting with the egg’s 23 chromosomes is just beautiful. After all, it contains the essence of man.

The sex drive is so strong because it has evolved to be so. Sex is so enjoyable because it has evolved to be so. Let’s be honest; if sex wasn’t enjoyable, no one would engage in intercourse. However, in these (post)modern times, we have become too scientifically advanced for our own good. We have learned to separate sex for pleasure and sex for reproduction. You must understand that evolution is so clever that it evolved to catch us out. Many people, after all, are the result of an unplanned fumble (myself included).

Despite this, humans have now invented contraception. Contraception allows humans to avoid pregnancy, and therefore, fewer children are born. In this very (post)modern world, humans have developed science which supersedes evolution. It is a very strange set of affairs.

The capitalist system is responsible for many things, and moral decadence is one thing that is often heralded against it. Children, the most important link in the chain to our continuation as a species, have been reduced to a financial cost. Many people don’t have children because they are “too selfish” to be parents.

However, they are also very selfish with regard to their ancestral genetics too. By not having children, you are destroying, killing stone dead, a genetic line which is hundreds of thousands of years old. These are the following people’s genetics you have destroyed:

1) 2 Parents.

2) 4 Grandparents.

3) 8 Great-grandparents.

4) 16 Great (x2) grandparents.

5) 32 Great(x3) grandparents.

6) 64 Great(x4) grandparents.

7) 128 Great(x5) grandparents

Now, I will admit, whereas your parent’s genetic legacy will die with you, it’s plausible that there are others to carry that legacy on. This becomes truer the further one goes back. Your Great(x5)grandparents may have 31 other lines to go through...but if we all think like that, our species will become extinct.

Also, by ending your genetic legacy, you have destroyed everything your ancestors fought for. Life was far more challenging in the past than it is now. There was no central heating; food was scarce; neighbouring tribes would be likely to murder all the men from your tribe and rape all the women – such was the barbaric nature of man. We are the product of those who were successful.

Our ancestors lived under that duress so that we could live. They fought against savages; they farmed through ice and droughts. They survived. They had culture. We have the genes and the memes of our ancestors. Consequently, should we really espouse such thoughtless sexual hedonism as a philosophy?

I think the answer to that is a resounding no. The oft mentioned quote, which is attributed to Socrates, is as follows: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The fact is that having children forces the individual to examine many things: philosophy, values, religion, and politics. You have to reconsider who you are as a human being; only then can you help a new human being self-actualise.

Respect the ancestors. It is so profound to create life, and to nurture it. Being a life-giver is a truly beautiful thing. You owe it to the past, the now, and the future. The choice is up to you: to beget, or not to beget, that is the question!

Samuel Mack-Poole