Would you feel better about the Nietzschean notion of power if you saw it as radically distinct from its conventional definitions? — Joshs

Does anyone feel better about the Nietzschean notion of power—embodying it as a lifestyle?

Now even if we take a large city, we would have similar differences between the rich and poor places. — ssu

This isnt about the rich vs the poor. Someone can be poor but socially progressive , or rich and socially conservative. Traditional (far right) social values are not correlated directly with level of wealth. They are more closely related to level of education.But even here, we need to focus on a particular kind of education After all, some of the highest ranking leaders within the MAGA movement are ivy league-educated. The sort of education. or intellectual
understanding I have in mind relates to what I call ‘social i.q.’, a set of insights into the way that individuals reciprocally shape each other’s values and knowledge within discursive communities. Social
traditionalists embrace an older set of notions that conceive of personhood in terms of isolated, autonomous subjectivity (like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism). Being a billionaire doesn’t prevent one from having a traditionalist worldview like Trump. I have a number of wealthy friends who are MAGA supporters.

And do notice that especially in Europe in many countries the conservatives haven't gone with the populism similar to Trump. — ssu

Axios doesn’t seem to have noticed what you are noticing. They report:

The populist wave that formed in the wake of the 2015 migrant crisis has not crested. It's surging — and spreading — across Europe, cheered on by a U.S. government eager to see MAGA go global. For the first time in modern history, far-right parties are leading opinion polls in Europe's four largest economies ( The U.K, Germany, France and Italy)

In addition, in Austria in the 2024 legislative elections, the Freedom Party achieved its best-ever result, 28.8%, and is leading coalition talks. In Portugal, Chega became the main opposition party after winning 60 of 230 seats in May 2025, marking a major shift. Other countries with far-right parties in government, either leading or part of coalition, include Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Sweden, where far-right Sweden Democrats prop up the minority government.

There are many parallels between MAGA and Europe’s far-right movements, even if they’re not identical in style or political system.

Some of of the strongest similarities include
populist nationalism. MAGA’s “America First” is paralleled by Europe’s “France for the French” (Le Pen), “Germany for the Germans” (AfD), and “Italy for the Italians” (Meloni’s party roots) . Both MAGA and the European far -right frame politics as protecting the “real people” against outsiders (immigrants, Brussels/EU, elites).

They also share an anti-Immigration focus. The framing of immigration as a civilizational threat is almost identical.
Both groups attack elites and institutions. MAGA attacks the “Deep State,” and the media as “enemies of the people.” while in Europe, AfD rails against “mainstream media” and the Berlin political class, while Orban in Hungary portrays Brussels and liberal elites as oppressors of the nation, and Le Pen denounces the French establishment and globalists.
Both embrace cultural conservatism. MAGA is anti-“woke,” and attacks gender and LGBTQ rights in favor of strong Christian identity politics In Europe, Poland’s PiS government pushed anti-LGBTQ laws, Hungary banned LGBTQ education content, and many far-right parties link national identity with traditional Christianity. Both frame culture wars as existential fights.

Both embrace an authoritarian style and election doubts. Trump allies and MAGA figures have actively supported European far-right leaders (e.g., Steve Bannon worked with Le Pen, Salvini, Orbán). Shared rhetoric often bounces across the Atlantic (immigration “invasions,” “globalist elites,” “law and order”).

Does anyone feel better about the Nietzschean notion of power—embodying it as a lifestyle? — praxis

Yes, I do. Why do you not? Respond specially to the distinction I made between conventional definitions of power and the alternative I laid out. Btw, it’s not a lifestyle , any more than the structure of temporality is a lifestyle. It’s an ontological ground.

Will to power may be a metaphysical claim about the structure of existence, but for me it only carries weight if it is also experientially meaningful—can be embodied as a lifestyle.

Speaking of the woke and their infinite capacity for projection;

When making my daily walks, I have started to notice a peculiar pattern. Every now and then I will pass by a woman/lady on an empty street, when they will inexplicably tense up, clutch their purse and/or pull out their phone. Sometimes they'll even pretend to be making a sudden call.

Normally I wouldn't think anything of it, but this has happened more times than I can remember, and I suspect something else is at play: they are assuming that, because I am a man and they are alone, I must be there to rob or rape them, and they are pulling out their phones as a way of saying "I have the emergency services on speed dial/someone is on the phone with me, so there will be proof", etc.

I am not tall, nor overly muscular or otherwise intimidating.

I suspect this is the result of years of fear porn and woke propaganda about 'rape culture'.

Despite not being particularly likely, being raped is one of people's biggest fears. The woke have taken this fear, inflated it and ensured that people are continually confronted with it, keeping it always at the front of their minds.

They've also worked hard to ensure rape is, in the minds of the fearful, psychologically tied to "men" - not a small set of deranged individuals, no - men.

My example is of course anecdotal (maybe it was all coincidence?), but one need only to glance at the things wokies and RabFems espouse to see the possible connection. Such things generally don't worry me unless I start seeing symptoms in my everyday life, and that is what I believe is happening here.

Woke is promoting sexism of the worst kind, and is exactly that which it pretends to fight.

I suspect this is the result of years of fear porn and woke propaganda about 'rape culture'. — Tzeentch

I don't know if you're in America or not, but here's why American women would look at you that way:

Over half of women and almost one in three men have experienced sexual violence involving physical contact during their lifetimes.
One in four women and about one in 26 men have experienced completed or attempted rape.
https://www.cdc.gov/sexual-violence/about/index.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Who do you think is raping and committing sexual violence on all these women? Men.

Will to power may be a metaphysical claim about the structure of existence, but for me it only carries weight if it is also experientially meaningful—can be embodied as a lifestyle. — praxis

My point wasn’t that it is MERELY an ontological
principle as opposed to being experientially meaningful. It is both at once. Like Heidegger’s Being, Kant’s Transcendental Subject, Hegel’s Absolute Spirit, or Husserl’s Transcendental Subjectivity, Nietzsche’s Will to Power is not simply an abstract metaphysical thesis but a grounding condition for the possibility of meaningful existence itself. To say “it only carries weight if it can be embodied” is almost redundant: its function as a metaphysical a priori is precisely to determine what embodiment, practice, or lifestyle can mean at all.

Will to Power functions as a perspectival lens: an interpretive key to life understood as force, struggle, creation, and transformation. Its significance does not depend on being translated into “lifestyle” after the fact; it is already lived through the embodied dynamics of drives, values, and self-overcoming. In this way, Will to Power differs from other major philosophical principles: it is not a condition standing behind existence, but an interpretive enactment within existence itself.

I would feel better about it if lead to greater meaning (creativity, self-overcoming, and life affirmation) than the conventional definition of power. I can’t say how I feel more plainly than that.

So again you are just taking the position that woke = someone being trans and not hiding i — Mijin

No. This is clearly bollocks. I gave you several reasons, which have nothing to do with being trans. Please stop putting words in my mouth.

at least half of adverts have someone that needs a slap IMO, I don't see any reason to particularly focus on one transwoman. — Mijin

You may. Most people do not. Until we see something egregious. I have explained why that's the case. You're allowed to disagree. What you cannot do, is pretend I've said something else. Mulvaney being trans has nothing to do (i assume) with her overbearing and uncanny behaviour, which puts people off. Clearly, lots of people.

\\

ou've given no example of anything Dylan Mulvaney has done wrong apart from, apparently, making you uncomfortable. — Mijin

You didn't ask for that. You asked for why it's a problem for people., I gave you those reasons, Don't move the goalposts. You're simply allowed to disagree. You seem to think her behaviour is totally normal. Fine. I don't. Most don't. The situation is as it is.

Trans women in bathrooms is absolutely a non-issue; — Mijin

Right o, I'll tell that to the victims and the millions of females it makes unsafe. Cool.

Why would someone pretend to be trans to commit a rape when in America rapists are treated better? — Mijin

I think all 'being trans' is pretend in some sense: You cannot change your sex. It is utterly impossible. There is no version of 'transition' which means anything if gender is a construct/spectrum that means nothing to us as sexes (which is fine, I don't quite have an issue with tha tposition). With that out of the way, people are stupid and that claim is utterly fucking insane. Cummings rant is delusional, and i reject entirely the insulting, disrespectful and self-obsessive statement that rapists are treated better than trans people. Absolutely fuck off with that completley absurd horseshit (that's not direct at you, but this is an important issue for which I will not accept equivalences that puts the rape of females up against the challenges trans people face (which are mostly self-created, anyway).

your list of pinterest t-shirts or whatever totally — Mijin

You, not even bothering to look at the examples given, and then making an erroneous claim designed to denigrate and trivialise? Wow. Couldn't have picked it.

It's not a gotcha, it's a self-own. If you don't watch beer ads, what point were you even trying to originally make? That trans on TV is fine as long as you don't see it? — Mijin

This has nothing, whatsoever, to do with what we're talking about. This is now not a conversation but you ranting. Please stick to what we're talking about.

And again, is the solution here simply that transpeople should not be allowed on TV?
Is any public appearance "woke"? — Mijin

This is the exact type of stupid, bathwater-tossing response that makes this conversation almost impossible to have. We need an adult conversation with nuance, not ridiculous hyperbole as soon as anything gets contentious or is being discussed in "close quarters". We need to be real.

The will to power isn't about Coveting power.

The will to power isn't about Coveting power. — DifferentiatingEgg

I didn’t suggest that it was.

I guess I'm just hella confused about this:

I would feel better about it if lead to greater meaning (creativity, self-overcoming, and life affirmation) than the conventional definition of power. I can’t say how I feel more plainly than that. — praxis

Because that's essentially what will to power is...

All life is will to power, and thus the differentiating egg/seed etc etc is an example of it.

Check out BGE 188. Which details that tyranny of forces that embodies even language and how the long obedience in the same direction always reveals something worth living for. This isn't about "creating yourself" through picking yourself up by the bootstraps... this is about understanding the tyranny of your highest drives that differentiate your existence.

From Ecce Homo

At this point I can no longer evade a direct answer to the question, how one becomes what one is. And in giving it, I shall have to touch upon that masterpiece in the art of self-preservation, which is selfishness. ... Granting that one's life-task—the determination and the fate of one's life-task—greatly exceeds the average measure of such things, nothing more dangerous could be conceived than to come face to face with one's self by the side of this life-task. The fact that one becomes what one is, presupposes that one has not the remotest suspicion of what one is. From this standpoint even the blunders of one's life have their own meaning and value, the temporary deviations and aberrations, the moments of hesitation and of modesty, the earnestness wasted upon duties which lie outside the actual life-task. In these matters great wisdom, perhaps even the highest wisdom, comes into activity: in these circumstances, in which nosce teipsum would be the sure road to ruin, forgetting one's self, misunderstanding one's self, belittling one's self, narrowing one's self, and making one's self mediocre, amount to reason itself. Expressed morally, to love one's neighbour and to live for others and for other things may be the means of protection employed to maintain the hardest kind of egoism. This is the exceptional case in which I, contrary to my principle and conviction, take the side of the altruistic instincts; for here they are concerned in subserving selfishness and self-discipline. The whole surface of consciousness—for consciousness is a surface—must be kept free from any one of the great imperatives. Beware even of every striking word, of every striking attitude! They are all so many risks which the instinct runs of "understanding itself" too soon. Meanwhile the organising "idea," which is destined to become master, grows and continues to grow into the depths,—it begins to command, it leads you slowly back from your deviations and aberrations, it prepares individual qualities and capacities, which one day will make themselves felt as indispensable to the whole of your task,—step by step it cultivates all the serviceable faculties, before it ever whispers a word concerning the dominant task, the "goal," the "object," and the "meaning" of it all. Looked at from this standpoint my life is simply amazing. For the task of transvaluing values, more capacities were needful perhaps than could well be found side by side in one individual; and above all, antagonistic capacities which had to be free from the mutual strife and destruction which they involve. An order of rank among capacities; distance; the art of separating without creating hostility; to refrain from confounding things; to keep from reconciling things; to possess enormous multifariousness and yet to be the reverse of chaos—all this was the first condition, the long secret work, and the artistic mastery of my instinct. Its superior guardianship manifested itself with such exceeding strength, that not once did I ever dream of what was growing within me—until suddenly all my capacities were ripe, and one day burst forth in all the perfection of their highest bloom. I cannot remember ever having exerted myself, I can point to no trace of struggle in my life; I am the reverse of a heroic nature. To "will" something, to "strive" after something, to have an "aim" or a "desire" in my mind—I know none of these things from experience. Even at this moment I look out upon my future—a broad future!—as upon a calm sea: no sigh of longing makes a ripple on its surface. I have not the slightest wish that anything should be otherwise than it is: I myself would not be otherwise.... But in this matter I have always been the same. I have never had a desire. A man who, after his four-and-fortieth year, can say that he has never bothered himself about honours, women, or money!—not that they did not come his way.... It was thus that I became one day a University Professor—I had never had the remotest idea of such a thing; for I was scarcely four-and-twenty years of age. In the same way, two years previously, I had one day become a philologist, in the sense that my first philological work, my start in every way, was expressly obtained by my master Ritschl for publication in his Rheinisches Museum.[4] (Ritschl—and I say it in all reverence—was the only genial scholar that I have ever met. He possessed that pleasant kind of depravity which distinguishes us Thuringians, and which makes even a German sympathetic—even in the pursuit of truth we prefer to avail ourselves of roundabout ways. In saying this I do not mean to underestimate in any way my Thuringian brother, the intelligent Leopold von Ranke....)

The more contrasting forces within... meaning that there are tons of forces stacking up in rank order. The highest of which will be so strong that they define you. That is if you're not sickened on lazy peace and cowardly compromise, attempting to quell the war within.

This is why ploticizing over those who are self aware is such a crock of shit, they are differtiating into that tyranny of their highest drives. Through living the best life they know how. Through a style of innocence in their instincts.

Again I’m no expert but I don’t think will to power is defined by my feeling better about it than the conventional definition of power.

whatever that means

Here's what you said

Does anyone feel better about the Nietzschean notion of power—embodying it as a lifestyle? — praxis

Which consequently isn't you saying you don't think WtP is defined by how you feel about.

It's you asking if people feel better about Nietzsche's notion of it...

And yeah, if a person understands the concept intuitively without reading Nietzsche or even after reading Nietzsche I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people who prefer living to their strongest drives. Rather than living to some political dogma.

It's about living to your internal values rather than external values.

We see this more and more today with people yearning to embrace their own internal drives. In sex, in social, in academics. People dropping out of the "thou shalt" train to live towards "I will"

I was talking about this:

I guess I'm just hella confused about this:

I would feel better about it if lead to greater meaning (creativity, self-overcoming, and life affirmation) than the conventional definition of power. I can’t say how I feel more plainly than that.
— praxis

Because that's essentially what will to power is... — DifferentiatingEgg

You seem to be saying that wtp is essentially my feeling better about it if it lead to greater meaning (creativity, self-overcoming, and life affirmation) than the conventional definition of power.

You seem to be saying that wtp is my feeling better about it if it — praxis

Errr, yo dude, you do you. But that's not what I said at all.

WtP is obeying the tyranny of your highest drives that differentiate you into you. There is no existentialism to it at all. You dont "create" yourself, you simply obey the tyranny that is you. If your highest drive is inherently destructive then you can sublimate it into another drive. Reconcile it to something in the same vein hence tragedy was born out of the Dionysian destructive drives being sublimated in the Apollonian order.

I didn’t say anything about creating yourself.

Jist drop Nietzsche, you obviously have too hard a time understanding him.

More or less I don't give a fuck what you didn't say, I'm explaining will to power to you, not asserting wtf you said. And you're too dense to pick it up.

You got this insecurity about failing Aesthetic Socratism.

Very Nietzschean of you to encourage quitting. :lol:

It is actually.

How so?

As I posted above, it's painfully obvious you didn't read it, or you failed to understand... Nietzsche's philosophy just isn't in your capacity, it's why you struggle with it so much, attempting to struggle through it is ignoring your higher drives.

In these matters great wisdom, perhaps even the highest wisdom, comes into activity: in these circumstances, in which nosce teipsum would be the sure road to ruin, forgetting one's self, misunderstanding one's self... Meanwhile the organising "idea," which is destined to become master, grows and continues to grow into the depths,—it begins to command, it leads you slowly back from your deviations and aberrations, it prepares individual qualities and capacities, which one day will make themselves felt as indispensable to the whole of your task — Nietzsche

Nosce te ipsum, know yourself by knowing your limits. And you apparently don't know yours.

Very Nietzschean of you to encourage quitting. :lol: — praxis

You even saying this shows you think one must create themselves... it's why I harped on that point.

It's about living to your internal values rather than external values

WtP is obeying the tyranny of your highest drives that differentiate you into you

In virtue of what are these desirable, or more desirable than their alternative?

that depends on the person. Those who thrive under the compulsions of external values ought to live under a system of external values.

Those with their own strong organizing drive would find living under an external value system to be stifling.

The point being grow into the plant you're meant to be.

Nihilists for example have low organizing drives and want no gods nor masters....

attempting to struggle through it is ignoring your higher drives. — DifferentiatingEgg

So rather than struggle you always quit when faced with a challenge that interests you?

challenges don't mean limits.

Meaning you don't use limits as resistance to grow stronger and simply quit when you've hit your limit?

No, meaning your curiosity to learn was limited in comparison with your need to try and one up someone. So you clearly have a limit rather than an interest in learning. At least Learning about Nietzsche. It's quite apparent you're fond of your own inaccuracies on Nietzsche's philosophy. So stick with your inaccuracies, and just know Nietzsche's philosophy isn't for you.

Can you point out an inaccuracy?