Something similar for me. Totally agree.🤞🏻👍🏻🫡

Thank you!

Postess - now that's the stuff

😅this guy gets it@@CyanAblaze

I feel like there are a lot of Nietzschean ideas in the Dark Souls series as well which also comes from Japan.

Never played that game but perhaps I will now. Would you mind sharing some examples of Japanese media with Nietzschean themes?

@jaspar2236 Saint Seiya (manga) and other works by Masami Kurumada, Ashita no Joe (not nietzschean itself but has a similar understanding of human nature to nietzsche), Getter Robo/Getter Saga (manga) along with this any other red robot powered by green energy because they are all inspired by getter (e.g. Gurren Lagann) I'll might edit later to add more examples, keep in mind that most of this works, rather than trying to showcase or explain a philosophy, are as the author feels the world is (due to eastern writing traditions) and are mostly aimed to kids and teens (though japan doesn't have the parents associations or cultural zeal to erradicate any "edgy" content for kids like Saint Seiya), unless the work is aimed by adults the nietzschean themes will be delivered esoterically and will ask of you knowledge of buddhism (which is the form of nihilism they usually argue against) And finally, due to all of this works being the literal foundation of anime you will find, especially in 70-90's anime, a lot of "casual nietzscheanism", just taking nietzschean ideas and views as presuppositions, maybe some sort of shortlived "cultural nietzscheanism" if you will

@@jaspar2236 The Dark Souls games were made by a Japanese studio, From Software. The plot is somewhat obscure, so there are different interpretations of their meaning. But from my analysis, the central conflict of the story is basically the "death of God" and navigating faith and nihilism or trying to find a better way. There are some pretty clear references to Nietzsche, for example, the plot of the first game's DLC is basically Beyond Good and Evil 146: it revolves around a legendary knight who battled monsters from the Abyss (a literal location/dimension associated with destructive nihilism) but was eventually corrupted and became a monster himself. There are also some hints at Eternal Return throughout the series, and Fire is a major cosmological and philosophical element (so at least an association with Heraclitus). Even the core gameplay loop could be likened to "What does not kill me makes me stronger" because you are meant to learn the game's bosses through failure and perseverance. The in game explanation for this is that your character is undead and cannot be permanently killed, so the only way to truly fail your quest is to give up and become a "hollow," a mindless, purposeless zombie that attacks living beings on sight. The games also have some incredible tragic story arcs and lore. And they have some of the best third-person action gameplay ever (the only game I think surpasses them in this regard is that same studio's other game, Sekiro). I grew up playing video games, but the Dark Souls series (along with great RPGs like The Witcher) really convinced me that good games are legitimate art and more than just mindless fun.

@@KimeruDerHund What your brought up about Japanese media against Buddhism by way of Nietzsche is very interesting. I have watched Gurren Lagann and I did get a unique feeling from it. Something profound in it, not sure what, but there's definitely life affirmation in spite of circumstances. So it's usually more implicit, I gather. Cool, perhaps I'll check out some of those series. Thanks 👍

That’s awesome! My band actually played with Windhand, many years ago. I might do a video about that, maybe more than top ten I’d feel more comfortable doing a video giving the best introductory albums to doom metal

@@untimelyreflectionsAWESOME! Windhand and Black Pyramid are 2 of my most cherished bands. already loved your channel, now i'm a fan. look forward to that video. would be great fun

@@untimelyreflectionsalso, would like to exorcise this memory from that Windhand concert if i may... small venue, got to the show early, Dorthia comes out and hangs at the bar talking to a friend (?) and suddenly all my Nietzsche honed will to power shrivels in my miserable shell and i dont go talk to her. in the moment i called it politeness in not interrupting her, maybe i didnt wanna appear like a common gushing groupie. but i really regret not pushing it forward. amor fati

That is an extremely flawed Rousseauian perspective. Just look at any survival TV show and you'll see how absolutely brutal nature is and how grateful we should be for civilization. Also, tribes go to war constantly, not over resources, but mostly over women. The myth of the Nobel, peaceful savage was propaganda.

The good old days probably weren't as good as we 'remember'.

@@virtue_signal_ These people talk about their personal expirience of having the direct comparison and not some idealized fantasy of a golden age past

​@virtue_signal_ Most people who have nostalgia for a period such as the Victorian era or the middle ages assume they would have been part of the aristocratic or bourgeoisie class even though they're not in the 1% today. Life really aucked for 90-99% of the population who were in the peasant classes

@@ZM-dm3jg Life really aucks for 90-99% of the population who are in the peasant classes nowadays too

Postmodernists are a bunch of resentful pencil necks.

Power is capacity

Through the unification of your instincts towards a particular goal.

@@tangerinesarebetterthanora7060 and how would one unify all their instincts?

It's a form of degeneration and incapacitation of the species. We Are detaching from nature, and harming everyone long-term.

I agree. It seems therefore that a faith in individual human reason would be misplaced.

​@@untimelyreflections I think you're confused about the perspective on postmodernism from the public figures you mentioned. It's not that it doesn't have legitimacy. The problem is that it's contradictive in practical application. Postmodern philosophy is an endless splitting of hairs that's antithetical to a cooperative society and human flourishing more broadly. This is why the brilliant Nietzsche fell flat on the answers to his own insights. I would argue that a 180 year old healthy Nietzsche would still be flailing for answers to his own questions to this very day. Herein lies the problem with our predicament. I suspect a direct conversation with Peterson or Hicks would be enlightening for you. I don't say this to belittle in any way, but I think you have a straw man perspective on both of them.

​@@untimelyreflections The idea that postmodern philosophy is irrelavant to the ideologies of the modern left is so ridiculous, I can't believe you said it. Where do you think these ideas about gender identity come from? What about the rejection of merit? Have you seen the polling data on race relations over the last several decades? Turns out that focusing on differences leads to division. Who would have thought? Ideologies brought on by postmodern philosophy have left western acedemia in tatters, but there's nothing of it? The STEM fields are predictably more resilient, but even those departments have been infiltrated. You need to learn the difference between theoretical philosophy and praxis. You're several moves behind, my friend.

There was an answer: Genghis Khan probably didn’t hurt people because he was weak, but then he probably didn’t hurt people for the sake of hurting. The fact that I don’t have perfect psychological knowledge of Genghis Khan’s inner states makes it difficult to say anything else that isn’t speculation. Also if your takeaway is “power corrupts because of weak character”, you misunderstood.

The point is not that power comes from the relation to others. The point is precisely that ressentiment arises as a result of a power imbalance in relationship to others. The video was not attempting to talk about “power” in the abstract, but the reason why a lack of power in relation to the external world creates the breeding ground for ressentiment and bad conscience (“weakness”).

@@untimelyreflections I understand and I agree. And unfortunately for the last few years I have been testament to your point. Something I'm striving to overcome.

I’ve shown my face on the channel many times 😅

I read that book before most of you even knew who Jordan Peterson was. I *love* that book. He’s not correct about Nietzsche or postmodernism, though.

Lmao at “the devil’s Peterson”!!! But also good comment.

There is literature by the Frankfurt School, a whole bibliography so to speak. Keegan did an interview with a professor (Mark Levine) on the podcast that shed a lot of light on what Peterson sees as a boogyman.

"ANY literature on cultural marxists or did peterson make that term up?" The way Peterson uses it is mostly a made up term, or at the very least, corrupted by paranoid liberal/conservative critics. I've come across different uses of the term where it tends to mean a shift of focus from privileging economic phenomena as the main determinant of social structure or historical phenomena, towards culture or ideology being more important for analysis and political action. So whereas classical marxist analysis -a la marxism leninism, or dialectical materialism from the Soviet Union, and beyond- emphasized "economics" -following the metaphor [first *suggested* by Marx in his preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy] of the division of society into the economic base and the political, juridical, ideological superstructure- so called "cultural marxism" started emphasizing culture, ideology, etc. Who are these authors that started elevating the superstructure as main point of analysis? Well, some trace it back to the Italian Communist Party's famous theoretician Antonio Gramsci, who relabeled the "economic base" as the "infrastructure". Others simply point to the Frankfurt School's shift from economics to culture. There are more. Truth in point is that Engels already countered misinterpretations of the materialist conception of history merely privileging the "economic base" instead of other fields of social structure. Here's a quote from a letter he wrote to J. Bloch: "According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure - political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas - also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form." www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm Notice how he doesn't even say that economics is ultimately determinant but "the production and reproduction of real life" (something already mentioned in The German Ideology, and reiterated in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State), even though immediately he appears to characterize this as "the economic situation". There is much to say, but life is at the center of Marx and Engels revolutionary vision. Make what you'd like about that. It's important to say that they're not entirely innocent about how people posthumously treated their work, there are places where they seem like hard economic determinists, other places where they're more lax, and places where they're more ambiguous. A great number of revolutionaries, theoreticians, and academics have tried to glide through these formulations appealing to the magic word "dialectics". My suggestion? Take it with a grain of salt. It's two revolutionary visionaries struggling with their own changing view points and trying to express them as best as possible. They were not doctrinaires hailing a new creed, nor did they try to create a doctrine or a new dogma, like some did using their work. But also, they were not wimps avoiding influence or risk; like everyone else, they were affirming their own perspectives, impulses, and forces, within the revolutionary movements of their time. After all, they did not invent the word "communism", they merely placed it front-stage, following the pre-marxist proletarians and revolutionaries who called themselves communists. Sincerely, a communist who loves Nietzsche. P.S. There's also no such thing as "historical materialism", there's only a materialist conception of history. Much more methodologically open, if you like. Life is at center of it. Just like life is at the center of Nietzsche's thought.

Will to power drives politics. Your political philosophies are a fun distraction for intellectuals.

@BeckyYork Except I don’t see “Will to service” in nature. I see things eating each other, extracting energy from other lifeforms so that they can reproduce their own forms.

@@untimelyreflections its just a wrong take mate. I don't want to criticise you because I love your show, but will to power might be at the core of the onion of human behaviour but its not all its layers. Its massively reductionist and misleading to say that it is. Society orients itself around norms, moral stances and accepted consensus. These also change over time. Its ok for Ghengis Khan to create mounds of skulls its not ok for us to that do. So what's an 'ok' thing to do at any given time? That depends on social, moral, philosophical arguments and positions. Whilst obviously a lot of what is said online in political/philosophical circles is a wank, that's also true for most of anything that's said. Nonetheless WHY our current politics work the way they do and why our current consensuses have been reached is a philosophical and moral examination that needs to be discovered not explained away by a non answer such as 'will to power'. Yes people want power, now why does our current society work the way it does?

@@damienpace7350 I disagree its a wrong take. Sure, people adopt social, moral, philosophical positions - but why do they adopt them? Are they argued into them? A philosopher can only convince the masses of something that they will find convincing, and they'll find convincing what makes sense to them according to their perspective and what gives them advantage. Take Marxist revolutions that created socialist states. If you think that the reason why there were socialist revolutions is *because* of Marx, that completely ignores the fact that there was a material basis for those revolutions. If there wasn't a proletarian underclass for whom the Marxist theory would be motivating, they wouldn't have revolted in the name of Marxism, but some other idea. We actually have counter-examples, such as when the Iranians revolted, but established a government on the basis of Islam because that was the idea that resonated with people there - Marxism was not an intuitive or indigenous idea and it didn't take root in the soil. So I'm not denying that people have moral, religious, or philosophical ideas - I'm denying that rational discourse or debate, or disseminating concepts into the 'marketplace of ideas' is what drives politics. I don't think that people read a philosopher and then decide to onboard values that they'd never held before, or reject values that are plainly advantageous to themselves or those they have social bonds with. > , now why does our current society work the way it does? Our current society is run by technocrats who have figured out that society can be managed like a Skinner box, and since average people are driven by desires (conscious or unconscious), they can be manipulated on the basis of those desires. I think most of the philosophical or political discourse that takes place amongst this underclass is yet another means of occupying the attention of the masses/fulfilling their desires (i.e., their will to power is sublimated into intellectual competitions rather than physical).

@@untimelyreflections I don't want to take you too far away from your work by drawing you into a discussion but I would like to say a couple of things. On something like the communist revolution you're arguing that they couldn't have taken place without the economic conditions. Well sure but they also couldn't have taken place without theorists like Marx which was essential for the Bolshevik movement. So I don't see what the dispute is, Marx was necessary. Is this just an argument of chicken or egg? On seeing society as a Skinner box run by technocrats, that's true of course but not a full picture. People consent to technocrat control provided they're within certain theoretical and philosophical bounds. They become discredited and vulnerable when they're outside of them. Some controlled outlets of discontent might be allowed by authority figures but it's all a matter of degree and these avenues can discredit a regieme. If a regieme is philosophical discredited and viewed as only working for itself it's weak. I can understand that people put too much credence on philosophy and politics in explaining things but to put NO weight on that whatsoever doesn't describe how reality works in practise and to me seems like a cope for people who have decided not to engage. Let's just say that the Greeks and Romans took politics seriously and didn't dismiss it all as kabuki theatre. Philosophical/political ideas also get dumbed down and percolate through the general community informing their understandings of life.