Close Reading

"Companions, the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers Fellow creators, the creator seeks--those who write new values on new tablets. Companions, the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters, for everything about him is ripe for the harvest." (This is the value set for framing this post.)

I can't remeber if I've used this quote before. I can't remember because every once in a while it comes back to me when I reflect on my own situation in life. I think it manages to tie together many, many concepts and ends up justifying the way I live, for all the frustrations and annoyances that entails. So all the repeated episodes meld together, and there is no way of keeping trakc just on which blocks I muttered about the creator and on which posts I said the exact same thing. But that's life: cycles of custom and habit.

Nietzsche is probably the last person anyone should go to for advice on the love life. As much as his writing is insightful and inspiring, when it comes to writing about women, his observations are those of a wounded puppy at best and juvenile at worst. It probably comes from being hurt time and again, from having his companinate ambitions shattered.

Seeking companions rather than property has destabilizing effects on relationships. That has always been my problem. Anyone associated with me in that way has been free to come and go, as I have been free to come and go. I've never gone for slogging through the formalities, which are just socially sanctioned ownership dances. I don't want dependency (herds and believers), or someone who is a piece of property or a symbol of status or triumph (corpses). The upshot of all this is: I'll probably never actually meet someone who shares my values, because were we to meet, we'd never get some form of relationship off the ground, weighted by libertaranism and rationality. (Unless there was copious alcohol involved, but that's a different situation.) And yet, the limbic system does not work on these values of freedom and companionship: it views the object of affection (or lust, or companionship) as a piece of property, and once that "property" is lost, ancient evolutionary mate-retention mechanisms kick in and you find yourself outside their houses at night shouting cliches and slogans for all the neighbours to hear as she throws your clothes out the window (I've never done this; in fact, I'm pretty sure I cobbled this toghether from some movies or books). God, how I hate built-in reactions! I want to write new values on new tablets: more human values, more free values. Come to me and leave me for something better if that was your particualr charater arc; come and share of my feasts as I will hare yours. Come and create, for your creation will only build into mine. Come and feel your power, for I am no partiarch; I am no tyrant. But as I give not, I shall receive not: I will share your burdens but will not take them; I will know you, but you will know yourself better; our storeis are merely an echo of the eternal form of personal meaning reverberating in our skulls, and I know this. Such are the problems of extreme individualsm.

How do I get it started? Being a brooding guy in the corner didn't work. I've since stopped brooding in social situations, but I'm sill in the corner. I will not be passive, but neither will I be active. I do not "conquer"; I do not consider "conquest" an adjunct to happiness. No happiness companions give, no creation they offer me, will be as robust as the creation for me in my head. But that head space needs links for equilibration, so that it may function among the herds and believers.

Who, that turned into a lovesick rant way too readily. Well, so it goes sometimes.

Consider: "Many die too late, and a few die too early. The doctrine still sounds strange: "Die at the right time!"."