Alex Tarnava on Friedrich Nietzsche’s ambiguous warning against nihilism, the true meaning of the Ubermensch, and how to understand (or rather not understand) life by living at its margins.
Vadim Gershteyn, PhD, MPH served as my editor for StressHacked and contributed writing to my upcoming book The Stone Wall. He joins me for this discussion.
VG: You and I have spoken about Friedrich Nietzsche a lot, either in private or in correspondences in the upcoming The Stone Wall. In a reading from StressHacked, you discuss Nietzsche’s aphorism, “God is dead,” how he’s warning against nihilism rather than wholly embracing it, what Nietzsche means by the term ‘Ubermensch,’ and why we ultimately must admire certain things Nietzsche rather than some of the things he did. He lived a relatively pathetic life, as you put it. I agree with you more or less entirely.
I don’t want rehash some of the discussions we had in The Stone Wall and StressHacked about Nietzsche, whether an Ubermenschen is “a child at play” or not, or whether Nietzsche would embrace shame as a social regulator or shy away from it. What I do want to focus on is his method of psychologization, apply it to Nietzsche himself, and tease out answers from you related to questions of utmost importance, which we will hopefully cover in future installments of The Saturday Exhale.
Nietzsche’s father, who you remarked in StressHacked was a Lutheran pastor, died when Nietzsche was about five years old. Some of us are quite precocious by that age and Nietzsche was described in his youth as unusually serious for a young boy. Surely, he understood in a way, maybe an existential one, what his father’s loss meant to him even though he had to internalize it like every other child suffering loss.
Nietzsche was raised by women, namely his mother, sister, grandmother, and aunts. Interestingly, Nietzsche was also cared for at the end of his life by his sister, so women were always central to Nietzsche’s experience. I wager that Nietzsche didn’t go through a ‘socialization’ process that many men go through, whether in sports, combat, war or something like this. The closest he got was as a war orderly where he also contracted syphilis. So it seems to me, this man of letters (literally, as philology, his specialty, is the study of texts and their evolution), Nietzsche, could not quite relate to other men. But I likewise wager he understood them. What do you think? What did Nietzsche understand, and not understand?
AT: Nietzsche understood, in my view, a certain part of men; but as an outsider, not as one who lived through the experience. I remarked recently, in our closing debate in the conclusion of The Stone Wall, that for a time I simultaneously deeply understood men—but also did not. I believe this shared youthful experience is how I can, in a way, see through Nietzsche, or so I believe. I was raised by my mother, grandmother, aunt, alongside my female cousin and sister until I was 15. My first job was with another aunt. My dad wasn’t around much, and even when I moved in with him, I wasn’t really “taught” how to be a man. I was fortunate to have deeper glimpses into what it meant, excelling in sports, for instance, and then further traveling for sales—predominantly with high testosterone men. I believed I deeply understood men, but “wasn’t like them,” and believed due to certain successes, that I even more deeply understood women. This endured for many years, a sort of delusional arrogance. I see it in Nietzsche—often right, but also, often missing the point.
We, as men, bond with other men by experiencing situations that could lead to death. This can be simulated in aggressive team sports, as well. We bond with women, reaching new levels of understanding, through the act of creating, and caring for, life. Nietzsche experienced neither. In a way, he never really lived, existing as a perpetual outsider watching in. This gave him keen insights, without the ability to ever truly reach total lived comprehension. For me, I lived as an outsider for the better part of my life. When I started experiencing “living,” in this primal sense, I was so arrogant that I blocked it out for years. I drowned myself in alcohol, and kept my guard up around others. I did this in relationships with men and women alike. I’ve never fought in a war, or truly had to overcome life and death experiences. I have played team sports, and probably the closest I have to this bonding through survival is the endorphin rushes generated from fighting.
I read many years ago that fighting is, for men, amongst the activities that has the second highest dump of endorphins after sex, when considering peak response and intensity. It shares similar releases with other extreme stakes, particularly physically violent or life and death activities. Men, to put it bluntly, get high from fighting, or these other high-stakes endeavors. They also have a substantially blunted pain response from any injuries inflicted until long after the fight has ended. It’s exhilarating, even euphoric, and leads to extreme clarity. And, men who fight against each other, or with each other, often develop deep bonds—likewise this occurs when they participate in other high stakes activities, also. In short, this shared adversity leads to the development of a deep camaraderie.
Those who’ve never experienced it call it latent homosexuality. Those who’ve experienced it know that’s way off base. It’s hard to explain. But, I believe that this camaraderie-bonding is the ying to pair-bonding’s yang.
Sexual intercourse is, evolutionarily speaking, for the creation of new life; fighting, or other life-risking high stakes activities, is for the preservation of current life. This connection possibly explains why they are the two most substantial endorphin and neurochemical releases, in terms of peak response, that trigger both pleasure, and immediate bonding with those who shared the experience, as compared against any other natural activity.
We have diminished this bonding between men in modern society. Paradoxically, despite the sexual revolution, we have almost completely destroyed the bond over life between men and women. When we endlessly meander between sexual partners, we rob ourselves of the ability to create deep bonds. We also rob ourselves of the ability to create the deepest bond, that being the creation of life with an individual we are, in turn, bonded to. Most youth experience neither, as even if they reproduce, it is often accidental and without the requisite pair bond.
As we descend into an existence where we do not experience what it means to live, to be human, it should be of no great surprise that we have, largely speaking, lost the ability to connect and understand each other as human beings. Our modern society has robbed us of the ability to connect, a reality that Nietzsche was robbed of in some manner, but unlike Nietzsche, the vast majority of us today do not live as spectators, deeply examining how others live. We exist in a state of perpetual distraction, barely conscious of ourselves, let alone others.
I am fortunate that I read Nietzsche when I did. I saw part of him in me, a large part. It is only through my own growth and transition away from a mere spectator, to someone simultaneously watching as I live and experience, that I have begun to comprehend where Nietzsche’s philosophies derailed, why they always felt, in certain senses, lacking.
I am not hard on Nietzsche because I find his work of little value; on the contrary. I am hard on Nietzsche because I now understand the limitations, and hope that others stuck in the allure of what he writes are one day able to break free and experience life, expanding their perspective on humanity—and themselves—in the process.
VG: I can relate strongly to this idea that you can see life for what it is as an outsider, but there is a limit to it compared to actively, and—as you put it—primally living life. At the end of The Stone Wall, I quote an unlikely source: John Lithgow, playing Colin Hanks’ dad in the film Orange County, berating Hanks’ character over why he wanted to be a writer: “you’re not gay. You’re not oppressed,” Lithgow said incredulously to his son in that film. In another film, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (I believe), a character declares, “To be a good writer, you have to live a little bit…or a lot.” What is the implication? To know what the truth is, to write about it, you have to know what truth is not, too. But knowing what the truth is not is not enough to live with purpose, either. It’s not enough to know what not to do to hold wisdom. Living life is different than actively watching it pass by. Nietzsche was a man who did the latter and certainly not the former.
