Episode 213 - Transcript

So this episode’s building off the last two episodes: on Nietzsche and affirming life as it is.

And if you’re someone who hears what Nietzsche has to say and goes wow. Checkmate, philosophy. 

I mean this guy Friedrich just destroyed ALL of you…go grab your HERD membership cards, get together…and you know, find a place to moo at each other in a field for the rest of your lives…and let the cultural elites like Friedrich take over from now on…well, if that’s how you feel… then unfortunately it’s gonna be a very short-lived party for you. But that’s a GOOD thing I think, ultimately. 

I mean you could probably see it coming. Like if you’re Nietzsche…and you SAY the kind of things we’ve been TALKING about dunking on the entire HISTORY of philosophy…even if you’re RIGHT about SOME of these things…you’re JUST, unleashing the hounds on YOURSELF when you TALK like that– future philosophers are GOING to come after you. And when they do they’re GOING to be very smart and find where you made all your mistakes.

Which Nietzsche NO doubt would’ve appreciated, but the point is: there were a TON of people disagreeing with him within even just a few years after his work. ONE of which we talked about LAST time, was Martin Heidegger. 

You know to Heidegger…despite Nietzsche SEEING himself as someone that DESPISED Plato’s work, as someone that had moved BEYOND the metaphysics of the ideal vs the real…to Heidegger: Nietzsche in his work had REALLY just created the INVERSION of Platonism, where he makes the SAME kind of MISTAKE that Plato does and needlessly favors the REAL over the IDEAL. 

I mean to Heidegger…whenever Nietzsche brings up the concept of the will to power in his work…by doing that… he is EMBEDDING himself in the SAME metaphysical TRADITION that he was CLAIMING to try to move past: he was STILL operating on the assumption in other words…that BEING ITSELF…ALWAYS needs to be VIEWED from the DUALISTIC PERSPECTIVE… of being a subject…that’s navigating a realm of objects. 

And it’s BUILDING on this that Heidegger comes UP with what would EVENTUALLY become a HIGHLY important QUESTION in his OWN work, definitely with Nietzsche in mind, the question is: is it POSSIBLE…to THINK…WITHOUT the will? This is a classic…Heidegger style question. 

And I mean you wanna talk about a philosopher that smashes the idols that came before him…Heidegger in HIS work…thought he was REBUILDING, ALL of human thought from the ground up… I mean he EVEN refuses to use terms or categories that former philosophers had used. To him: ALL of their work has to be called into question… because ALL of it was BUILT on TOP…of faulty ONTOLOGICAL assumptions. How do you trust ANY of it?

But anyway Heidegger’s response to Nietzsche, his critique of the technological way that we view each other in the modern world…that’s for another day. Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in. You know I always promised to do an episode on his later work and how it SHAPES a lot of the conversations that are going on TODAY in philosophy. 

But that said: TODAY’S episode is on ANOTHER one of these people that responded to Nietzsche’s work…it’s JUST as exciting, but it’s someone who RESPONDED to it…in a VERY different WAY than Heidegger did. 

I’m talking about an INTERPRETATION of Nietzsche’s work…that MANY people out there believe to be the BEST interpretation of his work that has ever been done. People say it’s the one that reflects the direction Nietzsche PROBABLY would’ve been HEADED in…had he not gotten sick and died as early as he did. It’s a book written in the year 1962 called Nietzsche and Philosophy…by the now WORLD famous philosopher named Gilles Deleuze. 

And whether you’re a FAN of Nietzsche…or whether you’re someone that’s kind of TIRED of his whole act he’s got going on…I think you’ll get a lot from HEARING about another LAYER to Nietzsche’s work. That’s one of the privileges of being alive you know; still able to learn: there’s always another layer you can peel back of the world and find a different perspective in. And THAT’S what we’re GOING for here today with the work of Nietzsche.

See to Gilles Deleuze…YES, Nietzsche was in many ways a product of his time, hyper-individualism, the herd-mentality stuff…we’ll talk about why these ideas don’t necessarily hold up as concepts when you take the implications of his work seriously…but Deleuze is not interested in spending much of ANY time…DWELLING on these sorts of problems. 

Because the REAL interesting piece of Nietzsche, ironically…is what we AFFIRM about his work, not what we can critique about it…see Deleuze is ALWAYS in the business… of getting AWAY from just CRITIQUING things, he’s ALWAYS interested in CONSTRUCTING something NEW when he writes something…and what he SAID about Nietzsche…is that he’s a philosopher that managed to lay the groundwork for an ENTIRELY different way of THINKING… about affirmation and difference as concepts– where the MOST important thing… ABOUT Nietzsche’s work…is that by TRULY AFFIRMING difference at this RADICAL new level that he introduces…it NOT ONLY allows us to escape the dialectic of Hegel and most of his admirers, but it ALSO allows us to ESCAPE from the NARROW BOXES that philosophers have had us THINKING in… for basically the entire history of western philosophical thought. 

Now, that’s a big claim…and what did Deleuze MEAN when he SAID this? And didn’t we already TALK about Nietzsche smashing the idealism from the history of western society? Is this Deleuze just REPEATING something we’ve already heard here? 

Well no… if you’re coming from THIS point of view, then the implications of Nietzsche's work if you REALLY TAKE them seriously…actually go farther… than even Nietzsche HIMSELF realized…as he was writing them. 

Which BRINGS me to the first part of this episode; one of people’s FAVORITE SEGMENTS on this podcast over the years. The title of the segment is: DISMANTLING philosophical assumptions that have been going on for over 2000 years or so. Honestly it could use a better title. 

One of the most world shifting points that Deleuze brings up in his OWN work…is his CRITIQUE of western philosophy and what he calls the Image of Thought that’s gone on all throughout it.

CLASSIC example to start EXPLAINING the Image of Thought  and what he means is to look at Plato’s world of forms. How does it generally go when we talk about it? There’s an IDEAL version of a TREE for example, that all PARTICULAR trees are just imperfect COPIES of…meaning when you’re walking through the GARDEN section of the home depot, and you see that line of flower pots with the TREES coming out of em…to Plato, those things are trees…ONLY because they RESEMBLE or REPRESENT… the more IDEAL form of a tree, that we can arrive at through reason if we just THINK about stuff well enough. 

This is what Deleuze calls an example of REPRESENTATIONAL thinking…and just for the sake of FULL clarity here: the same thing goes for the ideal of form of JUSTICE that you can reason to, versus a particular REPRESENTATION of JUSTICE when a judge bangs a gavel in a courtroom. Same thing goes for the ideal form of COURAGE versus a particular REPRESENTATION of courage if you pushed past your fears with something. Point is: particular things are REPRESENTATIONS of an ideal.

Now ONE of the assumptions that comes OUT of this representational thinking that you’ll NOTICE if you read any of Plato’s dialogues…is that say YOU have a theory, about what a TREE is or of what JUSTICE is for that matter…well that theory you have about justice, when you ARGUE for it…it is ONLY made valid…to the DEGREE that it corresponds… TO that IDEAL form of justice that’s been previously established by philosophers. 

The MOVE here for Deleuze that’s gonna be IMPORTANT to NOTICE…is that in this representational thinking…how VALID someone’s thoughts are…always comes down to how well they correspond to some PRE-EXISTING set of criteria. 

And this HASN’T just happened in Plato’s work. You can notice this SAME exact thing going on in the work of Descartes, where thoughts are VALID ONLY if they’re clear and distinct as defined by the criteria Descartes lays out. You can notice this in the work of Kant where KNOWLEDGE is only valid if it can conform to the categories of our understanding, as laid out by Kant. 

But real quick just for a second…REMEMBER how NIETZSCHE viewed the work of all these philosophers…and what he THOUGHT about their attempts at arriving at “truth”. 

When a philosopher, or ANYONE has a worldview…that worldview says a WHOLE LOT MORE about them PERSONALLY, their own bias, history, or personality…than it does ANYTHING about the truth of the universe. 

So think of the kind situation this creates in the history of PHILOSOPHY for Deleuze. 

We have a HISTORY of thinking about stuff…where philosophers have come up with a set of rigid protocols…for what VALID THINKING is. An Image of Thought as it’s called, where ALONG with these protocols…come a bunch of OTHER assumptions philosophers have made…LOTS of them: from the fact that everybody has a natural ability to think clearly, where if only they WORK on their thinking they’ll be less prone to ERROR…or HOW bout the assumption that it’s error ABOUT the FACTS… that’s usually the PROBLEM that’s LEADING to bad thinking…not the rigid PROTOCOLS that everything is being FILTERED through. 

LOT of assumptions… philosophers have been making about what thinking even IS. 

But to him…one of the MAIN problems he would want to point out about this whole setup: is that it is ALWAYS, BY DESIGN…a REACTIVE process. Meaning it is ALWAYS trying to take NEW states of affairs that we’ve never SEEN before…or new ways of chopping up and making SENSE of the world…and we’re ALWAYS supposed to measure the WORTH of these things… based on how well they represent some previous standard, arrived at by another philosopher, in a DIFFERENT state of things, using their OWN criteria. 

But if EVERYTHING is always understood in terms of how well it matches up to some former snapshot of the world, in a WORLD that is ALWAYS MOVING and in a state of becoming…then aren’t we SEVERELY LIMITING our ability…to construct new, valuable ways of looking at things, arrived at from an entirely different perspective?

If it’s confusing as to why this would ever be a problem…just think of this applied to the realm of movies, to give a relatable example. Imagine someone saying I am the something like the Plato of the movie industry. And unless if a movie conforms to THIS ideal standard I’ve set up…unless if there’s three acts, a hero, a climax and a resolution…well then THAT’S not really a movie now is it? 

Similar to that: Imagine someone saying unless if the PLOT of this movie…is written in a way that is CLEAR and DISTINCT…and WHO decides that? I decide what’s clear and distinct! What would you say to someone who SAID something like that? 

You’d say get over yourself ya weirdo, a movie’s a lot more than whether it follows some protocol you’ve set up…and for the sake of EVER having anything TRULY NEW to watch…we NEED to remain open to more than just YOUR standard you’ve come up with. 

And for Deleuze, maybe the more IMPORTANT thing here is to consider…how this process goes in the OTHER direction as well: when people sit down to WRITE a movie. And they’re ALWAYS THINKING in this representational way, they’re thinking okay: well if I’m going to write a movie…then it’s gonna need three acts, it’s gonna need a hero, it’s GOTTA be clear and distinct…point is: always needing to conform to a set of protocols LIMITS the creativity of the ARTIST as well…it LIMITS people’s ability to arrive at new forms of what life even LOOKS like. 

This is why Deleuze would LATER go on in his work to critique things like psychoanalysis. SAME sort of relationship. Imagine LIVING your LIFE…having a psychological experience of the world…and then you go see a psychoanalyst whose WHOLE bag of TRICKS…is to find ways to EXPLAIN the experience you’re HAVING…through how it CORRESPONDS to or REPRESENTS… the terminology and theory that they’re educated in: in other words…to some pre-existing, overly-rational framework of HOW HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY operates.

Point is: if you were ALWAYS primed to understand your experience through a framework arrived at by someone else…it may GIVE you a rigid way to THINK about it, no question…but it might ALSO PREVENT you from coming up with new psychological tracings for navigating the CHANGING world you’re actually LIVING in, with a CHANGING psychology as a part of it. 

If you’re NOTICING a pattern here…that Deleuze is concerned about the reactive ways that we organize our thinking…and how they may PREVENT people from a more ACTIVE approach where they’re involved in the creation of the new…well then you’re definitely on the right track. 

And you can see the comparison here to the Ubermensch of Nietzsche that we’ve been talking about…where it’s a person that DOESN’T conform to a passive, reactive approach to life given to them by other people…but they instead EMBRACE the fact… that the world is always changing, emerging into the future…and that when a person ENGAGES with that chaos head on, and creates new projects and values out of what they find…this is a type of ACTIVE approach to life, that AFFIRMS things at a level that the REACTIVE approach… is constantly trying to run away from.

Well this Ubermensch…becomes a nice, MACROSCOPIC, HUMAN level example that we can relate to…to start explaining a process that is going on for Deleuze practically EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME at EVERY different level. 

Gilles Deleuze is a process philosopher. He describes himself in his work sometimes as just a metaphysician. Meaning he SEES himself primarily doing METAPHYSICS…he’s not giving particle analysis, he’s not a biologist, he’s talking about what is going on within or BEYOND physics… metaphysics… so that it MAY give one explanation as to what’s going ON in the world. 

And to him…the fundamental component of our reality…is difference. This is the thing earlier philosophers have MISSED in their work because they’ve always been trying to distill reality down into something FIXED and STABLE. We got seven episodes we did on Deleuze. Not going into all of it here, but the short version of this: is that if you’re one of these people that go throughout your life thinking about yourself as a static identity: I am Friedrich Nietzsche, for example. And Nietzsche is a human being. And that there’s an ESSENCE to what a human being is. I can THINK about that essence and arrive at a definition of it. And Friedrich Nietzsche is a rational creature, where I am presented with options up in my head…and I pick and choose what the best decision is after weighing all those options. If that’s the way you’re thinking.

Well this might be a nice, pragmatic way for you to operate as you go throughout your life…but Deleuze’s ENTIRE PICTURE of the universe… would pull basically EVERY ONE of those assumptions we just made completely apart at the seams. Even MORE than that.

If you want to think more like the picture Deleuze lays out in his work…instead of thinking of the world like there’s fixed ESSENCES to things– a tree is a thing. A person is a thing. A rock is a thing. 

Think INSTEAD of reality…as being made up by a collection of forces, that are DEFINED by their interactions with each other– TRILLIONS of different forces…that are all vying for EXPRESSION, in each moment, as the WORLD unfolds into the future. 

Well in that kind of world then…Friedrich Nietzsche is not a static IDENTITY. What we think of as Nietzsche, when he was ALIVE at least…was the interaction between a collection of forces, at a specific location. He was ultimately…a site of becoming. He was MANY different forces, all VYING for expression, overcoming each other GAINING expression: In other words: think of Nietzsche NOT as a person with an essence, like we might TYPICALLY think of him. Nietzsche is a historical collection of forces that are STILL having impacts on forces in the world to this day.

And when you look at him THAT way…again Nietzsche…is not a static identity…to Deleuze…what we call Nietzsche in any given moment, is a temporary formation… of just a repetition… of CERTAIN, similar forces… that GAINED expression during THIS particular moment, but haven’t changed DRASTICALLY enough for the illusion of a static identity to go away. 

So on that SAME note…think of what YOU are…along these same lines. 

Any IDENTITY where it SEEMS like it’s what YOU ARE right now…is really just a temporary pattern of forces, that have found expression, that through repetition can SEEM to YOU like they’re a stable identity. 

But I mean OBVIOUSLY we recognize…that if OTHER forces that are a part of you found expression…then you would be a different person. And if ENOUGH of them changed and had repetition in another direction for a long enough period of time…then your whole IDENTITY would feel like it was something different to people. But NEVER was there a static ESSENCE or IDENTITY to what you were…and ALWAYS was there the ability for you to BECOME something totally different and explore new modes of existence. 

Now this is just…a TOTALLY different way of looking at what a PERSON is, classic, subjective identity… just doesn’t APPLY here…and to take this back to Plato…you can understand this as a totally different way of looking at what a TREE is as well. 

I mean you go into the home depot and see all those trees…and on one hand, yes…it’s all very pragmatic to call all of these trees the same genus and species, they look KINDA similar…but on another level: this DENIES the TRUE level of difference that’s going on. These trees are a process that is embedded into a LARGER collection of processes. 

EVERY SINGLE ONE of these trees is a different repetition of forces, that are ALL constantly shifting and adapting, within a WORLD and UNIVERSE that is always shifting and adapting. And this view of reality in terms of it being an interaction between different forces…is one of the things Deleuze thinks Nietzsche’s work lays the foundation for. So if it’s not ENTIRELY clear yet: UNDER this view of reality: ANY ATTEMPT at making IDENTITY or REALITY into something FIXED and STATIC…while it’s undeniably USEFUL when you’re checking out at the home depot, which is NOTHING to gloss over…it’s at ANOTHER level, ALWAYS in DENIAL of the TRUE state of change that the world is always in. 

So you can SEE here where the critique starts to make sense for the history of philosophy and the supposed Image of Thought put forward by philosophers: to Deleuze…even our concept of THINKING is always subject to change. And WHY WOULDN’T it be? There ARE no STATIC categories of thought…there are an INFINITE number of ways the universe could be conceptually framed and mapped out by philosophers…and THINKING in this limited way… SABOTAGES our ability to arrive at NEW ways of thinking or new forms of what life is.

You can ALSO start to see how when you’re affirming your PLACE as one small PIECE of this constant UNFOLDING of reality into the future…how ALWAYS looking to the PAST to verify the present…starts to DENY something VERY important about what existence is altogether. In other words: you can start to see the similarities that we’re building to…between the tendencies in our philosophy, and the tendencies in the way people live their lives. 

More on that in a second. But for now…SINCE we have a basic PICTURE here of the universe, in Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche…this is a good place to start to make the case for why he thinks Nietzsche’s work is actually… the ENEMY of Hegel and dialectics. He’s gonna say the dialectic is making too many assumptions trying to eliminate difference. 

And it’s interesting, cause USUALLY people will think of the dialectic…and see it as something you use if you’re ACTUALLY ACKNOWLEDGING the true complexity of reality. You know Justice ISN’T some THING out there with an ESSENCE they’ll say. It’s just one piece of an opposition within a complex NETWORK of oppositions.

In the more Marxist type of dialectics when it comes to SOCIAL relations…like we talked about in that Zizek episode…ONE, VERY simple way to look at the world… is to see something like a school…and to think well a school is just a school. It’s a place where we send people to go get an education. But as we talked about: somebody thinking more dialectically might say that that’s oversimplifying things. 

That when you TRULY dig in to what a school IS to anyone in a particular structure of meaning…that school is something that HAS the meaning it DOES to us…ONLY because of its relationship to all the other things AROUND it in a given society, in a NETWORK of oppositions. 

For example: how a school relates to what a company is to what the government is to what the economic setup is to the FACULTY of the school. These things are not as SEPARATE as an essence driven view of reality might suggest…and as it’s said in dialectics what that MEANS is: the FORM of what something is…becomes an IMPORTANT piece of what the CONTENT of the thing is. 

Now as I was just saying: this is typically seen as moving AWAY from oversimplifying things. 

But if we TAKE the ideas of Nietzsche SERIOUSLY…through this interpretation by Deleuze…then the dialectic…becomes yet ANOTHER EXAMPLE…of one of these NEEDLESS rational scaffoldings… that we’re projecting onto a reality…that is ACTUALLY more COMPLICATED and dynamic than the dialectic allows for. 

Let me give an example…one of the ones Deleuze uses is the dialectic between Master and Slave. Now in dialectics…these two SEEMINGLY different things of being a master or being a slave…are in REALITY two sides of the same coin. They are oppositions to each other; the meaning of them is unified. You can’t understand the meaning of ONE of them…without presuming the existence and meaning of the other. 

But under Nietzsche’s worldview he says: there’s NO reason to chop up REALITY into these oppositions that need to be resolved. Because Difference, to Nietzsche, accounts for ALL of these things. For example: master and slave to Nietzsche… are not two sides of the same coin. Masters and slaves come from two COMPLETELY different genealogies. They are explained by two COMPLETELY different histories. They often come from two COMPLETELY different MORAL approaches towards reality. 

So if each ONE of these forces are distinct and very different from each other…why do we gotta make them the same thing? Just to REMOVE difference and replace it with negation? 

See to Nietzsche: in the ACTUAL world… when a master overcomes a slave or slaves rise up and overthrow a master…that’s not an opposition being resolved. In Nietzsche’s view: this is the affirmation of difference. This is ONE will to power overcoming ANOTHER will to power. And subordinating DIFFERENCE to it simply being a NEGATION of a more unified thing…is again a needless rational scaffolding that DENIES how dynamic the reality of difference truly is. 

So picture that world: it’s not a bunch of ESSENCES all competing with things that have OTHER essences. It’s not a bunch of oppositions seeking resolution and clarification. It’s just a near INFINITE collection of wills…that are all competing for and striving for differentiation. 

The dialectic in that world then…becomes unnecessary and distorting. I mean you can imagine the MISTAKES you might make in SEEING forces in the world, revolutions, historical movements whatever it is…and if you were FIXATED on this idea that everything is just directly part of and SOLELY in reaction to some OTHER thing that came before it. You might miss OUT on things that were UNIQUELY characteristic to a PARTICULAR movement that were IMPORTANT for understanding what they were. 

Now the takeaway from this in a more practical sense…will lead people to call the END RESULT of Nietzsche’s philosophy…an approach to life filled with a type of Joy, lightness, playfulness. The REASON for this is because if we take what Nietzsche has to say seriously…then the picture of life is NOT one where you’re held to a rigid set of protocols like a moral code from a god your entire life. It’s not a picture of life where there are these countless dialectical oppositions that need to be worked out, so you better go get to work. No the picture of life to Nietzsche becomes almost like a game you’re playing…where through affirmation of what life IS…you’re rolling the dice, over and over again, hoping to roll a seven… but even if you DON’T get a seven, you’re still at least playing the game. In other words there’s a SERIOUSNESS and EXPECTATION to what life is…that just gets LIFTED…and INSTEAD it makes more sense to just AFFIRM difference in each moment of your life heading into the future… whether it lines up with a set of protocols created in the past or not. And this recurring affirmation of DIFFERENCE in EACH moment as it unfolds in the universe…is what Deleuze believes is the TRUE significance of Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence. 

Now for Nietzsche…these trillions of forces going on in the universe: if you were to analyze them…they can be broken down into categories of either active forces or reactive forces. And one of the first things you gotta think is wait a second: doesn’t that sound like he’s just creating a dialectic? But no, again these Active and Reactive forces are not NEGATIONS of each other…each is a NEW expression for Nietzsche…of their OWN will to power. 

And you’ll of course recognize the terms Active and Reactive…from discussion we had around active or reactive approaches to life…the ACTIVE being the approach of the Ubermensch, who creatively differentiates their existence…the REACTIVE being the approach of the herd mentality, that critiques, moralizes, sits around and seeks recognition in external events.

But it SHOULD be said that to Nietzsche, through this interpretation by Deleuze…this goes BEYOND just how this shows up in actions, you can ALSO see these active and reactive forces…ALL OVER the place in OTHER SCALES of reality. So what are some examples of what these might be? 

Well take an example at the level of micro-biology: Think of a virus that attacks a body, and spreads all around attacking different pieces OF the body. That would be the result of a collection of ACTIVE forces, asserting a type of will on the forces of the body. Now on the OTHER hand in RESPONSE to this… there are often REACTIVE forces… like say, the immune system of the body…these are forces that mitigate or GOVERN the active forces by fighting OFF the virus, trying to return the body back to a level of stasis. 

Now of course we know ALL of this is a metaphor: there IS no stasis…the body is ALWAYS in a state of flux… AS are OTHER active forces in the world looking to impose themselves on the body around it… but nonetheless this is an EXAMPLE… of active and reactive forces IN their constant interplay at the level of micro-biology. And we can SEE this dynamic all over the universe. 

Let’s look at ANOTHER example of this at a bigger scale…let’s think of this at the level of POLITICAL action. 

Say there’s a revolution going down somewhere…what are the ACTIVE forces in that revolution? Well, you have the revolutionaries who are spreading the word, the rallying, fighting, creating new forms of order on the fly as the situation develops…these are people that are asserting their will and are actively creating something NEW. 

Now on the OTHER hand you have the REACTIVE forces in things like the existing government: the institutions, the military of the governing body, the laws designed to maintain the existing order of things. These are NOT forces that are CREATING anything…they are REACTING to external EVENTS, trying to GOVERN them, trying to return things back to the way they were before.

And it’s through SEEING these FORCES as either active or REACTIVE…that Nietzsche starts to look at aspects of our everyday LIVES as active or reactive. For example: Criticism…is to him a REACTIVE thing to do. If someone else is actively trying to DO something or CREATE something new…and your WHOLE contribution is to sit around and offer criticisms about it…you are engaging in a REACTIVE sort of tendency. You’re just looking at external things that are happening…and trying to mitigate them or govern them down. 

Moral Judgment…is ANOTHER one of these things that falls into the reactive category…because what do you DO when you aren’t doing much YOURSELF to be morally judged for? You call out OTHER people for not living UP to some rigid set of protocols for their behavior.  

You can start to see the picture that’s being painted for Nietzsche through the interpretation of Deleuze: NOT ONLY…is he saying that there is a REACTIVE BIAS to almost the ENTIRE HISTORY of human thought, remember with that representational thinking, we’re always looking to the protocols of the past to justify FUTURE thought…but then we ALSO…create ENTIRE SOCIETIES OUT of this SURPLUS of reactive energy…that then go on to CREATE very REACTIVE TENDENCIES in the people that MAKE those societies up. 

So this is a PERFECT time to bring up the comments about the herd mentality from Nietzsche. Is it right to call 99% of people out there…members of the herd?

Now of course there is a reading of Nietzsche that says the only reason he’d ever refer to people as members of the herd is to inspire those that are trapped in chains they don’t realize they’re in. 

But what critics will say in the years FOLLOWING Nietzsche’s work is okay, let’s take what you have to say seriously here: let’s say there’s no good and evil written into the universe…and PRETENDING as though there IS just DISTRACTS us from the REAL work we need to be doing of understanding the power dynamics that REALLY determine what goes on. 

And let’s SAY that MOST people fall into this “herd like mentality” where they’re all adopting a reactive approach to life. Well then the FIRST question you have to ask is…why IS that, Nietzsche? Is that because they’re BORN weak or bad people? Or is that because they are BORN into power dynamics… that regularly EXPOSE them to forces that influence them to BE passive and reactive? 

Like lets say there’s a child born into a Christian home…and I use Christianity here because Nietzsche specifically calls it a slave morality…when that child grows up and FAVORS the “virtues of the weak” as Nietzsche calls them…was that because they were BORN weak? Or because they grew up in an environment, a set of POWER dynamics, where those virtues were nurtured into them and REWARDED from the moment they were born? 

In other words: calling someone a member of a herd, short of this being a way of inspiring people, SEEMS to be making the SAME mistake he’s accusing people of, of NOT considering the power dynamics that REALLY determine people’s worldviews. 

Now to MANY thinkers who comment on Nietzsche’s work: it’s obvious Nietzsche DID understand that this was a matter of power dynamics…which is why he spent so much time engaging with the power dynamics of HIS time. 

I mean MUCH of his work is spent untangling things like morality and egalitarian politics… that he thought were often used as TOOLS to be able to control people in that REACTIVE, GOVERNING sort of way. 

And look: it’s NOT like Nietzsche anyway… had enough time to do ALL the work in this area himself. It would take MANY others coming after him INSPIRED by his work to take this critique to the next level. For example: Carl Jung…HEAVILY influenced by Nietzsche’s work. I mean if the categories of Good and Evil are not things that are written into the universe…then how can we begin to better EXPLAIN what people are doing when they CREATE these sorts of categories? Well they’re part of the symbolic way that we collectively ORIENT ourselves towards the world. Let’s FOCUS on that, understand the CONSEQUENCES of that, and develop something CONSTRUCTIVE out of this critique, rather than just calling people members of a herd. 

Or how about the work of Foucault…who maybe more than ANYONE else followed UP on the work that Nietzsche was doing in untangling HOW POWER actually intersects with people’s LIVES in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. We’ve talked a BUNCH on this podcast about his take on disciplinary society and how the institutions funnel people into schools, prisons, hospitals, military barracks, and then control the very norms that people USE to understand how they fit IN to a society. 

But it would take someone like Gilles Deleuze…to CONTINUE examining the power dynamics in play for what he called these societies of CONTROL that we live in now.

Because to Deleuze… NOW the best way to dominate people… is NOT through moral judgment or by funneling them into schools or prisons, those are the more obvious ones…NOW the best way in these more technologically advanced societies…is to control the very INFORMATION that they receive, that they CONSTRUCT their entire worldview OUT of. 

But hold on a second before we get too deep into that. There’s a COUNTER point to all this that needs to be said…there’s PROBABLY someone out there whos been thinking this since we we started TALKING about active and reactive forces like five minutes ago– WHAT IS IT exactly …that Nietzsche’s saying here with his active and reactive forces? Is he saying that REACTIVE forces… are totally bad… and that ACTIVE forces are totally GOOD? I mean if your EXAMPLE that YOU give…is that a reactive force is like the IMMUNE system of the body…or laws and rules…or moral accountability…these things SEEM important to me. I mean I get just sitting around and critiquing things can be insufferable…but isn’t THROWING this stuff out just missing a HUGE regulatory component of what our lives are? Of how our societies function well? 

These are great questions. And the ANSWER to them is: OF COURSE we need reactive forces in the world. Of course we need critique, and governance, moral judgment and ALL of it. The QUESTION that is MORE relevant here to Nietzsche is, again through the interpretation of Deleuze…is if you HAD to do an analysis…of WHAT kinds of forces are MOST prevalent in the world we live in. Would you say the typical society is set up… with an EQUAL level of support… for people choosing lives that are active and reactive? Is it 50/50 exactly? No, is it more likely to be REACTIVE? Well then how much MORE on the reactive side are we? 

To Nietzsche…we have a HUGE bias in the reactive direction. Society ITSELF is a reactive force trying to govern people’s behavior. And if history is FULL of people choosing more reactive ways of living…does that maybe have SOMETHING to do with the way those societies have been set up? Is it maybe easier to CONTROL people when they’re ENCOURAGED to be passive and reactive?

And for Gilles Deleuze…one of the promising ways FORWARD when it comes to ALL of this we’ve been talking about today…is going to be for us to emphasize ART… as opposed to information. 

Let me explain. Because hearing that you may be like good God is this gonna say we need to do more FINGERPAINTING to FREE ourselves from the bonds of the digital panopticon. But just think of what information…truly IS in the type of society we live in. 

We TYPICALLY think that information…is something that’s LIBERATING. If ONLY people HAD the information…then they’d be able to make DECISIONS that were BETTER for them and their families. 

But so often what HAPPENS in the information AGE…is that whoever dominates the flows of information…gets to dominate the limited worldview of the people that they’re reaching. 

So when you’re GIVEN… information… in one of these modern, control societies to Deleuze…it’s obviously not about transmitting knowledge. It’s MOST of the time hardly even VERIFIED…so what this information becomes is a method of mass communicating the meanings, norms and directives of the day…that the people are supposed to internalize and believe in. 

Information…is like a police communication he says. When you watch a news story or a political debate or whatever it is…this is NOT some neutral thing where, well take this for what it’s WORTH but here’s some INFORMATION about the world! No, it’s a PRESCRIPTION of the MEANINGS of the EVENTS that are going on. Information in a control society he says…is both a snapshot and a command at the exact same time…it carries with it an implicit ORDER… that THIS is the view polite society is going to believe in next. 

And this, combined with the other ways people are turned into bits of that information and then manipulated, information turns out to be a MASSIVELY effective way of CONTROLLING people’s behavior. Turns out it is also very easy to CONVINCE people that they have a different sort of way of looking at things, a DIVERSE way of looking at it…even though they’re just funneled into the same algorithmic channels that so many OTHER people are given their information in. FAKE difference. 

But if it’s NOT OBVIOUS by this point in the episode…Deleuze is a philosopher that has as maybe his CHIEF goal above all others…to find ways to facilitate…the creation of the new.  REAL difference. 

Think about what we know about him: this constant unfolding of existence into the future. Difference and repetition to replace the traditional idea of a static identity. This critique of philosophers being stuck in the image of thought from the past. Philosophy to Deleuze…TRUE thinking…is a CREATIVE activity. It’s not prescriptive. It’s not a set of protocols to determine how valid someone’s thoughts are. Philosophy is about the creation of a new tracing of concepts… that can understand reality in a totally different way. 

And as important as what Nietzsche would call REACTIVE forces may be: we ALSO NEED people… who are NOT sitting back being reactive all the time. Deleuze himself doesn’t break these forces DOWN into this kind of a binary. He’s going to say that ANY activity that TRULY has as it’s goal to NOT sit around and repeat the traditions and ways things have been done in the past…but one that ACTUALLY, genuinely aims to find NEW lines of escape from these traditions or NEW forms of what life can look like…THAT is an activity that he is DEEPLY interested in finding better ways to facilitate, NO MATTER what the context is. 

And if you had to give a NAME to that sort of activity…whether it’s in philosophy, science, painting, music…the only name that makes SENSE that we have really…is ART. 

Deleuze says that art…is NOT a form of information. It’s not even a form of communication to him. True art…in the sense that it’s CREATING a new tracing of reality, in the sense that it’s inspiring people to see life in a new way…this is something FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT than information, which is only trying to give people a SNAPSHOT of the PAST that is loaded with meanings and directives. 

True ART to Deleuze…helps people think and feel BEYOND the prescribed limitations of the information they get on a day to day basis. 

So if you hear Deleuze’s philosophy and you feel a little disoriented, like man this is truly a bizarre picture of what our reality is like, how do I ever USE this way of thinking PRACTICALLY when I’m going through my life…well, that’s actually part of the POINT. True art gets people THINKING OUTSIDE of these rigid boxes…it inspires NEW thoughts and NEW ways of engaging with the constantly changing circumstances we live in. 

You know how they say there’s a comedian’s comedian. Or a musicians musician? This is why I think…one way to describe Deleuze…is that he is a philosopher’s philosopher…or at the very least an artist’s philosopher. His work is designed to INSPIRE someone…to think different. TRULY different.