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Nietzsche claims that “The sight of man now makes us weary”, and “We are weary of man.” He points out that in modern modes of life and social convention, moral values are “hostile to humans and their lives.” In this paper, I am going to argue that I agree with Nietzsche’s argument and his conclusion about modern modes of individual and social life, moral values, and norms. It is a justified argument, and the reason why he gets this conclusion is that: people have the ability to express the will to power, and social life is oppressing people’s will to power. Will to power means the ability to give meaning or form to things. It is the internalization of humans, so once it is impeded by other things then human lives will become ‘nihilistic’, and people themselves will also become resentful.
Firstly, I am going to argue about why the modern modes of individual and social life keep people far from the will to power. Nietzsche figures out that once a person lives in society, he will give promises, for example, he is a son so he gives a promise to his parents that he will be filial, and his parents are expecting of him, so, when he faces difficulties like ‘he has to do what he is not good at, because of the expectation of his parents, it tends to influence him and make him choose to repay this expectation rather than he follows his heart. There is the expectation of others and he has the power of keeping promises, so these promises turn into his responsibilities, he thinks that he should follow what he promised before. So, when he faces such a situation, there will be two kinds of conscience inside him, the self—conscience and other-regarding conscience. Although Nietzsche says that the conscience ought to be related to people themselves first. ‘It should not be repressive for a person, but freeing.’ However, if a person does something that makes him feel that he breaks his promises, he will be more regretful; to avoid this kind of feeling, most people are more likely to be ‘other-regarding’, and their ‘other-regarding ‘ conscience will be stronger than their ‘self-conscience’ when they are joining social life, so that will make them disregard themselves. ‘Disregarding’ makes people always find their faults inside themselves and they will repress their ‘will to power. If one keeps living in a society with a lack of will to power, he then will be resentful. Social life leads to resentment and resentment leads to the ‘weariness of man’. This is how social life keeps the person far away from will to power.
Moral values deprive people of the will to power. Moral values exist to guide us on whether an action is right or wrong. Christianity and law are two kinds of moral values. In Christianity’s view, according to the bible, all humans have original sin from the beginning of their lives. In their whole lives, whatever they do, they are obligated to answer to god, so, people who believe in God, believe in Christianity, they do not ‘need’ will to power. Because in their lives, the only thing they need to do is atone for their sin, they have no freedom to express their will to power, because it is meaningless to their lives. And the law, like the other kind of moral values, gives all people ‘moral constraints’ when they are joining society. In the past, if there is a debtor who did not return the money to the creditor, the creditor has the right to punish the debtor physically. It is just a relationship but not a moral issue. However, in nowadays society, the law gives all human behavior and relationships moral meanings. People who live in society have to follow those moral meanings because these are their choices, they only have the freedom to obey or not to do. Once a person chooses the ‘wrong’ choice, he or she does not obey the law, then it means that this person is committed a crime. Honestly, the law influence much more people in society than religion, because there may be still someone who does not believe in god and live in society, and everyone who lives in society must obey the law. Although the law makes society more ‘ordered’, it deprives peoples’ will to power and makes them all follow the same rules and lets them agree that following morality is following the law, the law is the basic moral value of society. With such a kind of moral value like Christianity or law, people only can do what others ask them ought to do. In Nietzsche’s argument, he points out that because of the oppression from societal law or religion, people are oppressed and become ‘weak’, they do not have the freedom to express their will to power so which leads to ‘slave morality and makes people realize that they are being repressed and they have no way to express who they are and what they need; so they have to find a way outside and ignore what inside to change themselves into ‘other person’ or other things to get a ‘better’ life. So, it is different from what I mentioned before, it is not a repressive power that comes from inside, it oppresses the will to power outside. Because this is not a promise that makes by people themselves, it is a constraint of morality that imposes people to obey, if people want to live a better life in society, then they have to follow those moral values and ignore who they are, what they need to do is to do what moral values ask them to do and become the person that moral values want them to be. So moral values deprive human’s will to power.
In Nietzsche’s opinion, the social norm has caused people to pursue a ‘higher culture.’ Nietzsche points out that higher culture is a vapid exercise, but it is a thing that encourages people to care about what is socially revered. So, it can make people change easily themselves to pursue the higher culture and removes people from their ‘primal instincts.’ For example, most of the persons think that go to university is good, everyone should go to university for higher education and then they can live a good life. The fact that we use social media and care about it so much shows that we value what social media offer us. People care about things that are attractive, which are fancy, and which are popular. All of them seem to worship those things’ surface. Because those things are always changing, so people will also change themselves frequently to pursue them. In the end, people who keep pursuing the ‘higher culture’ ignore their will to power. When they are pursuing what they ‘care’ about, it seems like they are following their mind, they are expressing themselves; however, it is influenced by the desire to pursue higher culture. That is why social norms are also oppressing peoples’ will to power, it makes people forget that they have the desire and ability to express their will to power.
However, the social norms of pursuing higher culture are not always negative for humans. Although most of the social norms are attracting people and making them forget what they need, and what they want. There are still some social norms that can help people improve themselves. For example, pursuing of bachelor’s degree, pursuing a university education. It is different from the other two factors, social modes are related to other people so an individual cannot change others; meanwhile, moral values are general, and it is obvious that they cannot be changed just by an oppressed individual. So, people have no choice, they can only obey, and that oppresses people and make them more and more resentful. But, if one person can always remember his desire for the will to power, then a good university education will help this person to have a better ability to express his will to power, and he will also live a better life because of this advantage. When facing those different social norms, people can be more freely choose whether they follow those or not, it is much freer than the other two factors. So, if one can improve their ability to will to power through the higher culture, then it is not an oppressive thing for this person, he can use this to help himself. But in conclusion, it still needs people to remember their desire of expressing their will to power. It is too hard to keep the will to power in their mind under such a huge influence of social modes, moral values, and social norms, most people will ignore their will to power from the beginning of their lives until they die.
People live in society, they have to live in a certain social mode, and they are oppressive, so people cannot always express their will to power because they give promises and they do not want to make those people who have expectations of them disappointed. They do not want to be regretful. So, sometimes they have to repress their desire for the will to power. Then, as the basis of a functioning society, moral values become guidelines of what people ought to do, and what they ought not to do. Law and religion are the two main moral values of our society and they are all oppressed. If people want to live a good life in society, they have to repress their desire of expressing their will to power and they have to follow those moral values. Once they choose to obey moral values, then they have to always repress themselves and that makes people more and more resentful, they will find out that they are too weak, so they have to switch themselves into another form, become persons that moral values want them to be. So, after partial repression of social modes, moral values deprive peoples’ desire of the will to power. Besides, social norms also let people forget that they are disregarding themselves, People even do not realize that they are repressing their will to power while they are pursuing the higher culture. Higher culture always encourages people to pursue those things that are socially revered to live better lives. Those three things consist of the whole functioning society. The whole system is oppressing peoples’ desire for the will to power, making people far away from who they are and what they want, social life makes them even cannot find a chance to give meaning to things, it impeded their will to power. In conclusion, Peoples’ lives are actually not living for themselves; because of these three factors, their lives are all ‘nihilistic.’ These are reasons why Nietzsche says that we are weary of man because these social modes, moral values, and social norms are hostile to people and their own lives, making them far away from their will to power, so, his argument is justified.
Bibliography
- Nietzsche, Friedrich. ‘On the genealogy of morals.’ Marino, Gordon. “Basic writings of existentialism”. New York: “The Random House Publishing Group” Excerpt From Gordon Marino. “Basic Writings of Existentialism”. Apple Books. , 2004.
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