some rambling thoughts on nietzsche's ego and will to power, part 2

There was an interesting discussion on freeratio.org about culturally conditioned morality, particularly religiously influenced ideas such as the Buddhist concept of kamma, and being completely free of their oppressive weight. The OP commented, "Imagine how freeing it would be to know that we could intentionally harm another without any interpretations of right and wrong at all, just because we felt like it." They qualified this statement with, "I'm not saying that I want to do that, but I have seen those that do, and who seem to feel no restraints of a metaphysical nature, or indeed any nature, upon them. Indeed it can be a somewhat joyous process to witness," and then invoked the name of Nietzsche.

Personally, I've always found the concept of kamma (literally 'action') to be quite pragmatic, and not terribly heavy at all. The way I see it, we simply experience the results of our intentional actions in ways that are interpreted to be right or wrong based upon a myriad of factors, some of which may be unique to our species (i.e., kamma is psychological in nature); and we become free of kamma once we get ourselves to the point where we'll never intentional harm another, nor ourselves, and free our mind of clinging (to sensual pleasures, views, rites and rituals, and doctrines of self).

The way they described this freedom from moral conventions, however, immediately reminded me of a psychopath, and I found the thought of purposefully wanting to become like that quite frightening. While I agree that it sounds freeing to a certain extent, even if all psychological restraints are removed from the individual, there are still societal consequences involved in harming others that aren't what I'd describe as 'freeing' or 'joyous.' Moreover, this kind of freedom sounds more appropriate in the Wild West than a modern, civilized society. I suppose this is one of the reasons I've never been a big fan of Nietzsche or Rand, whose philosophies I find somewhat similar in that they seem to exhibit strong psychopathic elements/influences.

In fact, as I've said before, I'd even go so far as to say that Nietzsche's philosophy and type of ego-development leads to an unhealthy type of individual who 'transcends' the world in order to lord over it (a hero who's the antithesis of Buddhism's spiritual egalitarianism). For example, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he calls the 'lust to rule' a "gift-giving virtue"; proclaims that selfishness is blessed, wholesome and healthy; and suggests suffering can be drowned out by continuously creating and overcoming oneself; in The Dawn, he writes, "The striving for excellence is the striving to overwhelm one's neighbor, even if only very indirectly or only in one's own feelings or even dreams"; etc. (Compare the last line to this entry from one of Rand's personal journals: "One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one's way to get the best for oneself. Fine!")

I think this issue arises mainly from his unbalanced view of morality, i.e., his focus on the 'strong-willed individual' and his rejection of what he calls 'slave morality,' which values actions according to their good or evil (i.e., skillful or unskillful) intentions, for 'master-morality,' which values actions according to their good or bad (i.e., pleasant or painful) consequences. This view is unbalanced in that it either overlooks, or completely denies, the efficacy of the intentions underlying our actions (not to mention its blatant disregard for others) (whereas Buddhist concept of kamma recognizes both actions and their intentions as contributing to the experience of mental well-being and/or suffering, for ourselves as well as others).

Nietzsche was undoubtedly a great and original thinker, Rand a little bit less so, in my opinion; nevertheless, I find in his writings evidence that he was also somewhat of a self-absorbed individual with little-to-no conscience or empathy for others, and for whom social rules and conventions had little-to-no meaning, which may have been one of the reasons he seemed so keen on subverting them. At least, that's the impression I get from what little of Nietzsche I've read. The same applies to Rand; maybe even more so since she seems to have admired a likely psychopath named William Hickman, going so far as to model a character named Danny Renahan on him for a novel that was never finished. In one journal entry, for example, she writes of Renahan (emphasis hers):

He is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness—[resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people. (One instance when it is blessed not to have an organ of understanding. Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should. He knows himself—and that is enough. Other people have no right, no hold, no interest or influence on him. And this is not affect or chosen—it's inborn, absolute, it can't be changed, he has "no organ" to be otherwise. In this respect, he has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel "other people."

Of course, some might say that this is a crude misunderstanding of Nietzsche's Ubermensch, and that he most certainly doesn't advocate psychopathy—that he simply acknowledges the 'will-to-power' is inherently sadistic, and his program is to turn that inward in an effort to transcend and overcome various social conditionings, becoming as one wills and not otherwise. And while I'm sympathetic to that view, I believe that his ideas are essentially the perfect ethical foundation/justification for a psychopath when taken to their logical conclusion, and Rand's more explicitly so. At the very least, I find them to be self-indulgent in the extreme as they seem to completely neglect others except as stepping stones. If their idea of joy is reveling in one's power and freedom to the exclusion, even detriment, of others, then it's a kind of joy and freedom I can live without.