Lughnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0College Moon<\/p>\n
A friend told me this quote from Nietzsche has been clanging around: \u00a0“The\u00a0secret\u00a0for harvesting from existence the\u00a0greatest\u00a0fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is \u2014 to\u00a0live\u00a0dangerously”. Wondering about context, I located the source, Nietzsche’s book on poetic inspiration, The Gay Science, specifically, section 283<\/a>.<\/p>\n These lines follow the quote: “Build your cities on the slope of Vesuvius!\u00a0\u00a0Send your ships into unexplored seas!\u00a0\u00a0Live in war with your equals and with yourselves!\u00a0\u00a0Be robbers and spoilers, you knowing ones, as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors!\u00a0\u00a0The time will soon pass when you can be satisfied to live like timorous deer concealed in the forests.\u00a0\u00a0Knowledge will finally stretch out her hand for that which belongs to her: she means to rule and possess, and you with her!”<\/p>\n It was in The Gay Science that\u00a0the following\u00a0claim\u00a0appeared for the first time. \u00a0It\u00a0would make Nietzsche famous and\/or\u00a0infamous 84 years later when Time magazine ran\u00a0its cover querying\u00a0the death of god:<\/p>\n After Buddha was dead, people We have lived into that dangerous time which Nietzsche prophesied, when there are those whose knowledge includes the death of the transcendental, but whose lives are under attack by those still living in the caves where the shadow of God persists.<\/p>\n One response to the rising tide of Islamist fundamentalism, of Hindu fundamentalism, to the now receding tide of Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. and to the various nationalisms and xenophobias which mimic them is to follow these folks back into their caves where homosexuality is wrong, where men are right, women subservient and the unbeliever not only heretic but apostate and worthy of death. Where the U.S. is exceptional and for whites only.<\/p>\n But that is not the way to a fruitful and satisfying life. That way lies in continued resistance to the cave dwellers and in continual fealty to knowledge wherever it may take us, no matter how risky, no matter how dangerous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lughnasa \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0College Moon A friend told me this quote from Nietzsche has been clanging around: \u00a0“The\u00a0secret\u00a0for harvesting from existence the\u00a0greatest\u00a0fruitfulness and … Continue reading Live Dangerously<\/span>
\nshowed his shadow for centuries afterwards in a
\ncave,\u2014an immense frightful shadow. God is dead:
\nbut as the human race is constituted, there will
\nperhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which
\npeople will show his shadow.\u2014And we\u2014we have
\nstill to overcome his shadow! \u00a0\u2014\u00a7108<\/p>\n