Let me anser at simiolar length.

When
Kim Jong Un
performs another nuclear missile test
and
nuclear bunker busters
are available
they
will
be
used
to destroy
missile bunkers
in N Korea
because
nothing else can
and
N Korea wont stop
but
we wont be told
and
the Un security council
All whose members also have nuclear missiles
will
have
agreed
not
to retaliate
with massive force.
It
will
happen
the
only question
is
when

It's a pragmatic sort of structuration, designed to further our goals of life-enhancement. — Joshs

Not quite. the Will to Power is not a conscious drive either. It's all instinctive. Like an animal responding to stimuli, the external observer could perhaps deduce rules, but there is no reason or cognition in the process for the overmind.

Z. had no value system of his own. He just acted intuitively.
— ernestm

Everyone operates on the basis of a frame of reference, perspective, point of view. Nietzsche's Overman doesn't do away with perspective-taking and value positing, only suprasensory values. — Joshs

It's not a value SYSTEM. He has ideas of good and bad, but there is no SYSTEM of them. It's just intuitive reaction.

As for Nietzsche and his Übermensch, I see it as the equivalent to a teenager's rebellion against authority, rather than a surpassing of authority — Shamshir

That's not how N. saw it. He posed Zarathustra as an ideal model, and Z. did not rebel, he just did what he wanted without any concern what authority said at all. Z. had no value system of his own. He just acted intuitively.

Will to Power expresses the notion that life in its essence is value positing for its own sake. Each value system is on the way to its own destruction the minute it is affirmed,as part of an endless cycle of creation and destruction. — Joshs

That's imposing value systems on N.

Will to Power is central to his position, but for N., the true overmind does not acknowledge any value system. It just responds to situations, like Trump in fact, appearing unpredictable to others because there is no reason or rationale to the choice of actions, they just arise from a 'superior intuition.'

If there has ever been an embodiment of will to power in political office, it is Trump.

Clinton really contemplated a strike on North Korea and decided not to because of the high estimates of casualties. Bush didn't strike either, even if he called North Korea the axis-of-evil. One might argue that there is this closing "window of opportunity" in the same way as in 1962 when the nuclear superiority was such a huge advantage that the US joint chiefs of staff did want to go to war. Yet it's extremely unlikely to happen. — ssu

That was why the USA developed these nuclear bunker busters. the reasoning is, as Russia has them too, that Russia will use them to attack, say, a military installation in the Ukraine, and not retaliate on the USA. Russia has no allegiance with N Korea. It really is on its own on this one.

I think, the current visit is to canvas support from the UK for tactical nuclear devices. Shanahan just flew the largest nuclear test attack out of the UK since the 1950s in April, two weeks after taking office. That was 6 B-52s, plus escort fighters.

Why on Earth would he have done that? Or why on Earth would have the military lead by Mattis a) purposed using nuclear weapons and b) accepted their use? — ssu

Because the retaliatory attack on Syria showed we could not blow up even one of their hardened aircraft bunkers. conventional missiles might be able to blow up a plane or sink a ship, but even a hundred of them don't do much to a military land base.

you cannot discount his historic contribution to the philosophic tradition. — Merkwurdichliebe

How am I discounting it? You praise him for heralding post modernism, and in the best tradition of post modernism I am admiring his marvelous example of post-climax rapture. 'Birth or a Tragedy' was his proposal to create a bastard with another man's wife. 'Of Wagner' was him saying thank you God for being dead. And everything after that, including insanity, was his tribute to her cockoldry. What more could you possibly ask for in a post-modernist thinker.

Is is possible that the Ubermensch relates to a the man preceding the tower of Babel, perhaps a reference to a pre-Appolonian time. — Merkwurdichliebe

Maybe experientially yes. There is the Freudian explanation that Wagner actually caught N. having sex with his wife, and this was N. defending himself. He was entitled to have sex with Wagner's wife
because he was a philosophical superman. I'm sure there are some to this day who find that entitlement appealing for their own purposes, but me, no I'm not interested in Wagner's wife, sorry.

I know he regarded the Ubermensch ethically. But he also regarded it epistemologically, in that it not only appropriates it's own morality, but also constructs it's own conceptual reality. — Merkwurdichliebe

Thus He Spake. And Zarathustra was so much more impressive than Der Ring des Nibelungen, especially when lit by black lights in an opium den. I don't think he cared enough about unicorns to despise Russell for creating them as non-Platonic forms.

Who would win in a fight, Nietzsche or Russell? — Merkwurdichliebe

I don't know. Nietzsche has more black-light posters in opium dens. Russell has more unicorns.

Ah, the pulp culture pop icon has just appeared. Well it's time for me to be going. Thanks for the chat )

but still Plato is the start of the whole thing — ChatteringMonkey

Well thats where we definitely differ. Wagner humiliated the guy with better mythology, so he had to prove he was a better philosopher, but he still didn't seduce Wagner's wife. Good try, but still did not amount to much more than intellectual masturbation. Western philosophers still look to Russell instead. No one else cares much except racists.

Boring or not, if you don't know anything about the thing someone is a critiquing, how can you possibly evaluate that critique? — ChatteringMonkey

Because, if you are after understanding Nietzsche, and you want to understand his influences, it is better to study Schopenhauer first.

I said you need read it to understand what he is critiquing, not because I think, or Nietzsche thinks, it is a particularly good work of philosophy. — ChatteringMonkey

Well there's two problems. First, N. thought Plato was boring.

Second, if you don't find Plato boring and read as far as Republic VII, you'd find the metaphor of the cave. N. rejected it as a stupid metaphor, at possibly the high point of of his epistemological work, in 'Truth and Lies.' The strange thing is, he himself claims to be the alienated Light of Truth, LoT, lamenting his own persecution. That's exactly what Plato said happens to people like N. in the Republic.

So reading Plato actually makes Nietzsche seem more insane than anything else. I think, if you are trying to find something out of him that's more durable than a vulgar two fingers, you have to go into his Dionysian thing, he was very poetic about it.

Nietzsche would be disgusted to hear recommendations for Plato's Republic.

To be attracted to the Platonic dialogue, this horribly self-satisfied and childish kind of dialectic, one must never have read good French writers — Fontenelle, for example. Plato is boring. (Twilight of Idols)

N. typically starts with such vulgar rhetoric, eg:

My objections to Wagner's music are physiological objections....what my foot demands in the first place from music is that ecstasy which lies in good walking, stepping and dancing. But do not my stomach, my heart, my circulation also protest? Are not my intestines also troubled? And do I not become hoarse unawares (Case of Wagner)?

By starting in a vulgar tone, he makes his subsequent intellectual scorn seem less boring to his audience, whom, as he makes perfectly clear, he does not respect either.

I feel like Nietzsche invented a guillotine of his own in "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense". — Merkwurdichliebe

You have the advantage of me, sir, I have not read that work. Perhaps you would be so kind as to elucidate further your insights on it? You see my problem is, the Wikipedia currently says:

O (..) is a philosophical essay by Friedrich Nietzsche. It was written in 1873, one year after The Birth of Tragedy, but was published by his sister Elisabeth in 1896 when Nietzsche was already mentally ill. The work deals largely with epistemological questions about the nature of truth and language, and how they relate to the formation of concepts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Truth_and_Lies_in_a_Nonmoral_Sense

So as I understand it, his sister gathered material for the common 3-page essay of this title after she started assembling 'Ecce Homo,' and originally included it in another book now called 'Early Greek Philosophy and other essays.' She expanded the original essay with another 9 pages from his lecture notes, which was finally published in English long after, in 1911. So at least some of this material was written while he was still working as a University professor. The book is here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51548/51548-h/51548-h.htm

That book contains the full text of the expanded essay "On Truth and Falsity in their Ultramoral Sense" as the concluding section 6, pages 171 to 193. Excerpts appear in other places as the original essay.

Ignore away. What you say is equally a comment on Nietzsche's attempted seduction of Wagner's wife.

Nietzsche sees alot of philosophy as a kind of pathology, or a self-defence mechanism, trying to deny or look away from the vivid realities of life, in all its pain and joy. — StreetlightX

Nietzsche cannot escape from his own criticisms of others that equally apply to himself. He himself erects one of these Apollonian constructs that he so frequently condemns in others, most notably in Thus Spake Zarathustra, which also happens to be twice as long than his other works.

Guttenberg:

• Thus Spake Zarathustra, 880KB, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1998
• The Twilight of the Idols; or, How to Philosophize with the Hammer, the AntiChrist, 494KB, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52263
• Beyond Good and Evil, 441KB: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4363
• Beginnings of Tragedy, 378KB: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51356
• Ecce Homo, 350KB, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52190
• Case of Wagner: 305KB, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25012
  
  • About Wagner, 35 pages
  • Where I Admire Wagner: 1 page:
  • Against Wagner, Wagner As A Danger, A Music Without A Future, Wagner As The Apostle Of Chastity. How I Got Rid Of Wagner, etc. ~ ca. 50 pages.
  • Aphorisms, 17 pages.
• Dionysios, 66KB, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52446

Being one who was led out the garden path, I would agree, because almost all the rest of N. is moral philosophy in some regard or other, but none of it really passes Hume's Guillotine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

To provide current numbers, 7,300 of undergraduate degrees are in philosophy this year, out of 1,600,000 degrees, or about 0.5%.

https://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatordoc.aspx?i=56

But also, only 32% of Americans have undergraduate degrees.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/apr/08/rick-santorum/70-americans-dont-have-college-degree-rick-santoru/

So the overall percentage of Americans with a BA in philosophy is 0.18%.

Of those, about half will not have needed to read Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil for class. With current reading levels, we may assume incidental readers to be virtually zero. The number who were required to know something about 'Beyond Good and Evil' is therefore 0.09%. Of those, maybe one in ten would be interested enough in him as a person to read any biographical about him as well, and therefore would otherwise not know about his affair with Wagner's wife, leading to less than 0.001%, or about one in a hundred thousand, who would perceive the above quote from Nietzsche as ironic. The USA contains about 300 million adults, so that's about 300 people.

Yes, then you have to swear an oath out loud too, but the oath is to allegiance. You don't have to agree the rules are right if you are just entering the country as a visitor. You only have to agree to obey them. But that should be enough to provide benefits of the social contract, shouldn't it?

One can imagine how people in the Middle East are already ridiculing the obvious injustices that will result from tourist visa applicants having their social media accounts reviewed.

Being one of the elite who knows enough to write generalized insults somewhat on the level of Diogenes, would you be so kind to share your own opinion of N.?

Thank you. I of course am not enamored by Wagner's wife so I don't have any opinion on it myself. I wrote my Masters thesis on "the Despicability of Nietzsche," which provided statistical substantiation and complete analysis of the affair, but it's 60,000 words. And I don't agree of his idea that there are naturally people who are beyond and evil. I think his logic still fails Hume's guillotine.

Which would be signified by becoming a citizen. Citizenship is an agreement and acceptance. So those amendments apply only to citizens. — Brett

That's a little ironic, as one common criticism of natural rights is that we are never given a choice whether to accept the social contract into which we are born. On the other hand, people who visit the USA are explicitly given a checkbox "Do you agree to abide by the laws of the USA while you are here?"

You would think that the idea of ‘the blessings of liberty’, if they mean anything should apply to all people. — Brett

If one goes back to the natural rights from which authority is promulgated, then it appears 'the blessings of liberty' belong to those who have agreed to the social contract. That would be signified by a person agreeing to keep the laws of the USA while they are here, and would still be entitled to a firearm for self defense, and to assemble in public protest. If they agreed to obey the USA's laws, it should not be significant what they previously have shared or written on social media.

There are two predominant views of Nietzsche in the USA: white and black. The white view is that he is an obscure and rather irrelevant existentialist who inspired Hitler and therefore must be bad. About 10% of white people also think he was crazy and ill at the end, when he was writing Ecce Homo. Half of those also think that instead of having such a low opinion of women, he should have been more appreciative of his sister's support, or at least they may know that much when they state he was a misogynous pig (and it's better to grant the benefit of doubt on that).

They will not know his ideas from women in Ecce Homo could have resulted from his failed attempt to seduce Wagner's wife. It has remained controversial by those who know about it, but generally, it's accepted that some romantic affair between the two was more than likely.

About 0.01% of Americans, about 3,000 total in the USA, would be able to tell you that 'Beyond Good and Evil' advocated that some human spirits are superior and not subject to the moral judgments or moral restrictions which they rightfully impose on others. However, and this is important: unlike those who conceive it as proof of there being a Master Race, he states the superiority is individualistic and the result of better knowledge and reasoning, which any person may acquire, the same way Neitzsche did for himself.

Then of those, there might be one in ten, as many as 300 in the USA, who could tell you that 'Beyond Good and Evil' could have entirely been the product of a subconscious desire to justify his attempted seduction of Wagner's wife. Nietzsche would protest otherwise, but he would not have been able to protest very much, as he writes himself in the same book:

"It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of – namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown.”

Which of course applies to Nietzsche himself, for whatever else he claims or not, he most definitely claims to have created a great philosophy. Yet putting aside the motive for his work, he made it most clear that he was not speaking of some kind of genetic superiority, but rather of a personal super-awareness that only some possessed through their own pursuits, again, see Nietzsche's own work, "The Case against Wagner," for example.

Then there is the black view, which started with followers of the Black Panther Movement in the 1960s, which has made Nietzsche somewhat of an underground pop culture icon, who was right because Black Power Rules. Also, there is a tiny minority of whites who believe the same thing the other way around. Nietzsche as underground pop culture icon is far more pervasive than any person who knows it would admit to others not in his perceived peer group.

I might add to that, that if the artist had no purpose or intent then what are they doing, what does their art represent, why is it there and why should it be valued above others? — Brett

They days, usually because the people who were commissioned to make it are related to politicians. Most frequently, spouses of city officials.

People who stumble into a Scientology center (as ↪Ciceronianus the White alludes to), a meeting about the "Chronicles of the Girku", some evangelical group preaching the earth is 6000 years old, or that ISIS is the new caliphate and soon takeover the middle east and destroy all the infidels there and beyond and we should all submit ahead of the curve, or various online pseudo "quantum spiritualities", or any number of other crank philosophies -- many people may also be quite impressed and come here and say "don't they have some good ideas that should be taken seriously by this forum and academic philosophers?" as well as "there's a lot of people believing this and taking it quite seriously, isn't that evidence it has good arguments?".

What would you say to such people? — boethius

I think the mature thing to do is leave them alone and ask that they reciprocate. If they find meaning in it somewhere that is pertinent to their own lives, then good for them. We only ask they dont impose their beliefs on us. Thats all.

If you find yourself uncertain how much this applies to you, there is a simple 3-minute test:

https://www.psycom.net/adult-gender-dysphoria-test/

But likely that the Russians have a concept of de-escalation through a limited nuclear strike is making the US also to think the same way with the low-yield weapons. — ssu

Well the Russians say the USA did it first, then the USA says its the Russians fault, so I will be staying out of that catfight.

I don't see the USA using nuclear bunkerbusters in Iran right away.

If they had been available when Syria was reported to be using sarin gas, Trump would have used tactical nuclear devices in his largely unimpressive massive strike of conventional weapons on a Syrian airbase. Since then the Russians have claimed the gas scare in Aleppo was invented. So that is a real problem, I agree with you totally there.

But I think Korea is in real trouble. As soon as the USA has nuclear bunker busters, If N Korea does another nuclear test, even one, a nuclear bunker buster response would be immediate.

It neutralizes the threat of fear by making any and all possibility of threat inconsequential in relation to one's existing... — Merkwurdichliebe

I agree, that's why I think firearms for self defense have become a religion. People genuinely believe they are safer with a gun in the home, no matter how much the evidence repeatedly demonstrates otherwise.

The error people typically do here is that they focus on the practical applications, usually a commercial ones, that have been made (possible) thanks to something done in scientific research. — ssu

Even from the purely academic perspective, research is now rarely funded unless it has a practical application. Maybe practicality is a better demarcation than methodology.

Nuclear weapons indeed are weapons of last resort. — ssu

That's true. The current posture is that there is no other option but to use low-yield tactical nuclear devices, such as the B61-12 nuclear bunker buster and B72-2 Trident, on hardened bunkers in Iran and N Korea. Conventional bombs are not strong enough to destroy them. So we will have to use nuclear ones. But they will only be SMALL nuclear weapons.

"The only option should not be to go big."
- Gen Hyten. under nomination for vice chairman of joint chefs of staff



so then Russia could use small nuclear weapons in, say, the Ukraine; and Saudi Arabia could use them in Yemen; and italy, which is buying some, could use them too. And we would not retaliate either. The good news is, so far Israel has not said it will be using them. Otherwise, there has not been international pressure not to deploy them, in fact, Russia and Nato want them too.

Trump has refused to say he won't use them or when he might use them. The USA will have two types in September, and historically, whenever the Pentagon has a new tactical war toy, it wants to use it as soon as possible, because the immediate tactical need was the justification of the spending in the first place.

I'm stumped at what that response has to do with the simple question I was asking. — Terrapin Station

You are welcome to say that nuclear war could start in September. I am just saying that tactical nuclear devices will be ready to destroy bunkers in N Korea and Iran in September, but that the NSA says they are not nuclear weapons. Mattis said they are WMDs, but he was fired.

Acting Defense Minister Shanahan just flew the largest nuclear bomb flight test since the 1950s out of the UK, and Triump is there now with military pomp.

I was hoping you'd answer, "So that's a more specific idea, no?" — Terrapin Station

Im not trying to be so provocative. If I call it a nuclear war, then I get weird people from the Middle East writing me and asking for my support in their criticisms of the USA.

?? In your view, we'd not be able to attack North Korea, say, with nuclear weapons today, but we would be able to in September? — Terrapin Station

It's not my view, no. It is the view of NSA Advisor John Bolton's view that the modifications to the B61-12, scheduled to roll off production from Boeing at Albuquerque in September, mean that it is not a WMD, but only a tactical nuclear device, therefore not breaking the START treaty and therefore not starting mutually assured destruction. So far, the only person stopping him is Trump.

A Western diplomat who knows Bolton told me, “The trouble for Bolton is, Trump does not want war. He does not want to launch military operations. To get the job, Bolton had to cut his balls off and put them on Trump’s desk.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/06/john-bolton-on-the-warpath

But if Trump thinks he might get impeached, or might lose the election, Bolton is ready.

lol. Maybe ivanka will open a hat shop in Soho, I hear pastel green is suddenly in.

Currently, I can hear Kushner remarking how proud he is that Acting Defense Minister Shanahan flew B52 nuclear bombs over countries he is managing, and someone gently correcting him that the Baltics are not the Balkans like his father-in-law claims.

You will have problems with that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarea_Philippi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banias

here was a temple dedicated to Pan in what became Caesarea, and later Philippi. It held a small Greek cult for about a hundred years after Alexander the Great found it. Prior to Greek occupation, there was a lush oasis around some rock springs, which satisfied all the first settler's needs. So the Greeks renamed a small Ba'al temple there Pan, saying that Pan had given Alexander the strength to terrify the enemy, and naming the place Paneas.

But the Greeks turned it into desert, so then Pan became more of an early nomadic deity for desolate places, music, and goat herds who didn't terrify anybody. To the nomads, Pan was still a major deity, but the Hellenic Gods said it wasn't that important.

Then the Romans conquered it, and Pan's temple was abandoned, making Pan more of a curio in 200BC, after which the Romans lost it back to the Persians who replaced Pan with Ba'al again. Then the Romans conquered it again and renamed it Caesarea, by which time Pan didn't have a city named after him either, then it became a holy Christian city.

Of course you think that, because the trendy 'modern' version of pantheism, to which you ascribe, was a confusion with a similar concept called 'animism' by a couple of aging hippies in the 1970s, lol.