I'm of the view that nurture - desiring/hoping/encouraging it - serves only as a means to all the other stuff you denied viz. power, pleasure and meaning.

You may be right, and maybe I’ve read too much Jung over the years. But, it just seems to be the most basic of all needs, residing in the lowest levels of the unconscious, instantiated very early on. It almost seems as though the precursor for the will to survive. As for being the very first thing we come to know (unconsciously), I’d say that’s what it is.

Thanks for the input!

The most fundamental truth of all, I’d say, is not the ‘will to power’, ‘will to pleasure’, ‘will to meaning’, or the ‘will to blindness’, but rather the ‘will to be nurtured’; for everything that comes into existence is either nurtured into fruition or starved and denied its prosperity. It’s the very first thing we come to know, unconsciously (from womb to infancy), and serves as an a priori truth throughout the entirety of our lives – that we must be having been nurtured by someone, or something, else, bigger than us, outside of our own individuality in which we remain connected, yet need not, necessarily, be able to identify with on a conscious level, thereby rendering trust moot to save its necessity. — Gregorius

There is a fundamental requirement for humans that they be nurtured until they are independent enough for self-survival. That's just to say that humans cannot survive as unprotected eggs waiting to hatch, but the child must develop inside the mother until birth, and then at birth, there will remain additional time for the child to gain the autonomy to exist on his own.

The will, as I see it, is a higher function in a person that arises after some degree of consciousness exists. An adult's will is formed by all sorts of complex motives, as opposed to an infant who simply feels hunger and cries. The will to be autonomous, to obtain power, or to gain higher degrees of freedom is where I see the higher function of the will, as opposed to focusing on the temporary nurturing stage that will slowly dissipate over time as the individual matures.

I get your point, and I’d agree to an extent. But that just seems to be it – the extent to which we achieve complete independence from that which provides nurture. I’d say it comes down to the question of whether or not it’s even possible, which seems both a dispositional and sociological question; even, I think, an existential one.

Too, I suppose it depends on how we define ‘nurture’, which I’m seeing in the sublime. That is to say as it pertains to psychological health, growth, and overall fruition, as well as spiritual for that matter. Prior to self-autonomy we are, of course, nurtured physically (though not exclusively) where the emphasis on the passive seems to be. Then we pursue psychological growth through our interactions with others, i.e. friendship, companionship, support (of enumerable kinds), exchanging ideas and information, and even, perhaps the most important, love. Even though we all have our own unique dispositions, throughout our lives we adopt specific ideologies, characteristics, mannerisms, etc. that we receive from other people, in which the emphasis has now shifted to the active. That is to say that even though we can, now, pick and choose these things (actively) of our own accord they all, nonetheless, serve as sources that nurture our psychological development. Thus are the beginnings of the larger social construct that continues to nurture us, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

And this is where the issue of trust comes in. Because, prior to the emergence of consciousness trust is, as I mentioned before, rendered moot. By that I mean we neither trust nor distrust our mothers (the source) – it seems more like an unconscious expectation that’s predicated merely upon the delivery of it. Only through our conscious interactions with others do we learn that “trust is earned”, as is distrust. Also, this touches on another post I saw recently concerning our individual rights (if we have any) … something to that effect. Because it seems to me that ascertaining harm from fruition (properly and accurately) is the primary responsibility of that which serves as authority over ones’ prosperity.

Not to get sidetracked, but it’s relevant to this context simply because trust, or authority over one’s prosperity, to be more accurate, is the underlying notion that presupposes nurturing. As such, I intimate that, as adults this is the most basic and fundamental inalienable right of all – to ascertain, for ourselves, what is harmful to us (individually) and what is fruitive. Anything less is allowing ourselves to be treated as though toddlers who are incapable of determining that on their own. The larger social construct that serves to nurture us (physically, psychologically, and spiritually) assumes this authority yet no more engenders trust than do our mothers during pre-development. Personally, I think it’s what Nietzsche was on to – challenging this authority and reclaiming it for ourselves. Again, it seems predicated merely upon the delivery of nurture, with no conscious concern as to its validity. It’s not a question of trust, or why it would, or would not, serve us with the same genuineness of authority as our mothers, but rather a question of why we would ever relinquish this authority (ascertaining harm from fruition on our own accord) to it in the first place.

And this is to the point, finally. Whenever we entrust the voice of the dragon “thou shalt” (via mainstream media, propaganda, political & religious dogma, capitalistic rhetoric, etc.) as though it’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth we are, in fact, relinquishing our most basic of rights, responsibilities, and authority over that which nurtures us to an entity that has not earned the trust to do so, and one in which we cannot identify with specifically. Thus, although we are conscious, we are acting in a similarly unconscious manner as we do during pre-development, in which trust is rendered moot; again, predicated merely upon the delivery of it, with no conscious concern as to its genuineness. In my opinion, to do so is, simply put, as naïve as I can possibly imagine. Perhaps more to the point is that this seems to be a result of the unconscious, developed early on and presupposing any conscious will, in which trust is, in a similarly passive manner, rendered moot.

Furthermore, we cannot escape the environment that nurtures us via air, food, water, etc., without which we would die. It is perhaps in the extreme, but true nonetheless I’d say. And then that which nurtures these things of mother nature is all together larger yet, in which we are separate but still connected, to which we cannot identify with. Thus, it seems to me that complete independence and self-autonomy is illusory. For me, the archetype of femininity (the mother that becomes nurtured upon nurturing her young – the causa sua) is seen in Sophia (The Wisdom of God) – the supreme source of nurture (the Q), where we revert back to the passive from whence we came. It’s the very concept upon which the word ‘philosophy’ is founded (love of Sophia).

As for nurture being a ‘will’, I agree that that is a product of consciousness. However, when we manage to escape the façade of “this world” and its attempt to claim authority over that which nurtures us, we find that that’s exactly what it is. Until then, we only live in a dream world of fantasy, as though unconscious; one that’s created for us by those who don’t believe in fantasy.