Suffering and adversity as blessings in disguise - ruminations on Nietzsche's worldview

[Nydex]

I remember the days when I thought a life devoid of turmoil, a life lived in the cradle of comfort, was preferable, and something to actively pursue. Then some years passed, and life gave me a good beating, taught me some difficult lessons, and made me realize that perhaps Nietzsche was right all along.

For it was in the moments of the greatest suffering, those moments in which I held my own life in my hands and was posed with the existential question of whether I will allow it to continue or not...it was then that I've learned life's most important lessons - to observe more carefully, to listen to my intuition, to learn to forgive even the unforgivable, among many others.

And it is in the process of learning those lessons that psychedelics played the biggest role in my life, for they opened me up to these new ways of thinking. They made me confront my own shortcomings, and explore my own fears. For that, I shall be eternally grateful to the medicine, as I'm sure many of you understand.

In his The Will To Power, Nietzsche says:

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not — that one endures.

To him, the good and the bad were inseparable and wholly dependent on each other. To diminish the one would mean diminishing the other, and vice versa. In his The gay science : with a prelude in rhymes and an appendix of songs, where he proclaimed the now infamous "God is dead", he says the following:

What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other — that whoever wanted to learn to “jubilate up to the heavens” would also have to be prepared for “depression unto death”?

[...]

You have the choice: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief … or as much displeasure as possible as the price for the growth of an abundance of subtle pleasures and joys that have rarely been relished yet? If you decide for the former and desire to diminish and lower the level of human pain, you also have to diminish and lower the level of their capacity for joy.

[...]

Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and external resistance, some kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, avarice, and violence do not belong among the favorable conditions without which any great growth even of virtue is scarcely possible.

And then Alain de Botton distills those convictions in:

The most fulfilling human projects appeared inseparable from a degree of torment, the sources of our greatest joys lying awkwardly close to those of our greatest pains…

Why? Because no one is able to produce a great work of art without experience, nor achieve a worldly position immediately, nor be a great lover at the first attempt; and in the interval between initial failure and subsequent success, in the gap between who we wish one day to be and who we are at present, must come pain, anxiety, envy and humiliation. We suffer because we cannot spontaneously master the ingredients of fulfillment.

Nietzsche was striving to correct the belief that fulfillment must come easily or not at all, a belief ruinous in its effects, for it leads us to withdraw prematurely from challenges that might have been overcome if only we had been prepared for the savagery legitimately demanded by almost everything valuable.

To subscribe to those beliefs and ideas is to believe in yourself and in your ability to stand in the face of adversity, unwavering. One that knows they are in control of how they react to what Fortune throws at them knows they are invincible. As Seneca beautifully put it:

For what disturbance can result from the changes and the instability of Chance, if you are sure in the face of that which is unsure?

What do you make of this all? How do you feel about the ideas expressed here? How have psychedelics helped you grapple with the difficulties life has thrown your way?

May all of us lead virtuous lives.

 

[ShadedSelf]

Ok, I feel like there are two slightly different ideas here.

One almost sounds like maximizing joy/suffering, you know, wishing the worst for my friends so they can find their best, which sounds somewhat unbalanced to me.
And the other seems more in line with a sort of acknowledgement that adversity is an integral and healthy or beneficial part of the journey.

Which kinda leaves me wondering, what are we supposed to base our compass of life on?
We have stablished that comfort is not it, and Im unsure if the idea here is that adversity should be it.

 

[Mitakuye Oyasin]

Nietzsche was a nihilist. I put nihilism and satanism into the same category and reject them both. I claim no religion as my own, but love to study them all. I am a spiritual being on a spiritual journey through space and time, currently piloted by a human meat suit.

 

[donfoolio]

I studied Nietzsche intensively when I was a teenager and his thoughts still inspire me nowadays.

Nietzsche's Idea of nihilism, fully expressed in his "will to power" (even if this book remains unfinished and was changed by his sister, it still contains some of his most profound thoughts in my opinion) is some kind of applied agnosticism, that prepared really well the 20th century.

The ability to live in a state of uncertainty, of not knowing the truth and accepting it - I have no idea what makes these ideas close to satanism in your opinion.

Even satanism is not a simple line of thought but a complex of many many philosophies by the way.

Anyhow , your idea expressed here is really interesting. I see at as a metaphor and not quite like he putted it. Most of Nietzsches writing is poetic, metaphorical mindfuck and I never have taken it by the letter.
Of course, suffering will bring you to delight and delight will certainly involve some suffering.
This is the way things go. So go further. Carry water, chope wood and everything will be fine. In moments of delight as in moments of the highest pain.

 

[Voidmatrix]

One of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted philosophers in my opinion.

He may have been the first absurdist (sorry Camus)

God is dead for example, could be taken in more than one way, and the most important is not the idea that God is actually dead or gone, but rather that during the time in which he wrote, God wasn't serving people or society in a beneficial way anymore; people moved away from God and/or needing God.

Enduring is where we find freedom...

Which kinda leaves me wondering, what are we supposed to base our compass of life on?

Balance...

I put nihilism and satanism into the same category and reject them both.

Can you elaborate more on some of the particulars of this category?

I claim no religion as my own, but love to study them all.

Curious, what made you bring up religion? Not that it's inappropriate. If it was due to the mention of God, do you think that thinking of God entails religiosity?

Nietzsche's Idea of nihilism, fully expressed in his "will to power" (even if this book remains unfinished and was changed by his sister, it still contains some of his most profound thoughts in my opinion) is some kind of applied agnosticism, that prepared really well the 20th century

"Will to Power" sometimes seems like a primordial force in his writing. It's something in us and beyond us at the same time.

The ability to live in a state of uncertainty, of not knowing the truth and accepting it

Absurdism! Right there! Right there!

One love

 

[brokedownpalace10]

Sounds like y'all got Yin Yang out the yinyang.



"Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh."
Henry David Thoreau

I'm nearly 69 right now. This has been speaking to me. Almost dwelling on some of the sorrowful things and mistakes there have been in my life seems to be sometimes the only way to work through them. The path to redemption is straight through, not around.

A kind of related but not entirely quote I have grokked to lately is by George Orwell

"It is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about."

 

[Nydex]

I put nihilism and satanism into the same category and reject them both.

Of all things I expected this thread to get associated with, satanism was among the least expected, if I have to be honest. I wonder how you got to that conclusion. I'm not familiar with satanism at all, though, so your explanation runs the risk of flying right over my head.
In general, I didn't post this to start a discussion on religious worldviews.

Curious, what made you bring up religion? Not that it's inappropriate. If it was due to the mention of God, do you think that thinking of God entails religiosity?

Precisely my thought.

It seems to me that some people don't agree with the idea that suffering is necessary in order for us to find true happiness and fulfillment. I just wanted to check if there were any people that fall into this belief category here on the Nexus, and pick their brains a bit. Not because I think it's a "wrong" worldview - who am I to judge how others find their fulfillment? As far as I see it, there's not right or wrong way. Provided no harm is done to others, one can seek their happiness in whatever way they want.

I'm just trying to expand my personal perspective by discussing the matter with someone that disagrees with me (and by extension, with Nietzsche).