Rocks, Water and Nietzschean Ethics.

I've been thinking about Nietzsche's "Revaluation of Values": his maxim that whatever creates strength and power is good, whatever causes weakness is bad. I think this principle is valid, as long as strength is defined in a broad sense rather than a narrow one. In particular, I would include the Taoist idea that apparent weakness can sometimes be strength; that the soft, yielding and pliable can in some situations triumph over the hard, rigid, and resistant, as water wears away stone.

I am reminded also of the Taoist theory of the elements, which contains as sequence similar to the game of "Rock-Paper-Scissors", in which the elements are presented in the order in which one element destroys or overpowers another: fire burns wood, water extinguishes fire, etc. The sequence comes round in a circle; the weakest element is also the most powerful.

Thus, an ethic based on power as the primary good need not be a crude, simplistic creed of "Might Makes Right", but instead can utilize a complex, subtle and sophisticated understanding of power as true efficacy, incorporating characteristics such as adaptation, feedback, and sustainability.

Below: A beautiful landscape in the "Rocks and Water" style by the contemporary Chinese artist Zhang Qiu Yue.

Paradoxes of Opposition

Session 1799 (Group/Chicago)

In this session, Elias deals with the concept of opposition. This is a tricky issue for me, since in my philosophy opposition, competition and conflict play a necessary and vital role in the evolutionary process. Without the contest of opposing factors, different alternatives could not be tried out against each other, and the progressive unfoldment of evolutionary selection could not occur. A certain kind of opposition also is an essential part of creative action. For example, in playing the violin, the bow must push against the string, and the string must resist the bow. Without tension and friction, there is no music. Thus, I view opposition, in the general sense, as a positive value.

Elias, however, uses the term in a specialized sense, as resisting one's own process of creation and projecting onto others or external circumstances the blame for what seems to go "wrong".This generates inefficiency, since it involves disowning and alienating part of your own Will. The Will then goes off and does what it wants to anyway, and you are working at cross-purposes to yourself. To resolve opposition, in these terms, you must take back your Will and say 'I' to it, and release the judgement and discounting which caused you to project it in the first place. In this manner, you generate acceptance and allowance.

In this session, Elias begins by asking what brings people "opposition and irritation", with the implication that this is unique to every individual. What opposes you reveals the unique contours of your existence.

Interestingly, I experienced some synchronicity with regard to these concepts. I've been using the Learning the Tarot website to keep current on my tarot skills, and the card that came up for me recently was the Five of Wands, which deals precisely with these issues. The Wands represent the element of Fire, signifying vitality, energy and aggression. The Fives represent general chaos and disruption. This card shows both the positive and negative apects of opposition: energy either being dissipated in many small hassles, or focused into a competitive endeavour.

Next, Elias speaks about the concept of "presence" and its connection with opposition:

The most common example of an individual actually experiencing their own existence and presence is generally in situations in which the individual creates some extreme uncomfortable situation in some manner. Generally speaking, pain is an excellent example of being present of your existence within yourself – be it physical pain, emotional pain or what you term to be mental pain.

Pain generates an automatic response, for it generates an intensity and in that intensity the individual automatically directs their attention to the element of pain. But in directing to the element of pain, they are also more highly aware of their actual existence. The other automatic response that follows the initial response of focusing upon the pain is to attempt to move away from the pain or to generate some action that severs the pain from their existence

If you shoot your foot, you shall focus upon the pain of the wound in your foot, and it shall probably be intense enough that your first automatic response shall be “I wish to cut off my foot!” for you generate a similar extreme in your response to the extreme intensity of the experience. You are experiencing that as an element of your existence and your presence with yourself. It is uncomfortable, and therefore the automatic response is to sever it from your existence.

First, there is an acknowledgement here of the positive value of common-sense "opposition", pain, suffering and discomfort. If nothing else, pain gives you a sense of presence, makes you vividly and unmistakably present to yourself. It makes you feel alive.

Second, notice the paradoxical nature of this effect: It brings the experience vividly to one's awareness and simultaneously induces an automatic response of avoidance, withdrawal, splitting-off. Pain is simultaneously presence and dissociation, acknowledgement and denial. In cases of extreme trauma, this can even result in a fragmentation of consciousness which can grow into a new, independent personality. This is how trauma-based multiple systems are created. (Note, however, that not all plural systems are trauma-based).

That choosing aspect of you does not concern itself with what is comfortable and what is not comfortable; it concerns itself with what is efficient and what matches the intensity of what you are presenting to yourself in information. But you are not victims and you are not out of control.

And there it is: the mystery of mysteries, Vorsehung, the Will. What the Will is in its innermost essence is, as Schopenhauer intimated, ruthless efficiency in the pursuit of desire, which by its nature generates suffering; yet, as Nietzsche understood, is also the root of all value and valuing. And we are the Will, each and every one of us. Yet, we do not know what we are, for we do not know what we are doing; we have split off and disowned that knowledge. Yet, we can use our suffering itself as a means to give ourselves (back) that information, to re-connect. And so it comes full circle: through opposition we become free, through being broken we are healed.