Nietzsche’s Demon
Nietzsche, unofficial Patron Saint of the goths, tortured souls and anyone who wants to sound more intellectual and sophisticated than they are, once tackled the philosophical idea of the Eternal Return.
In the overdramatic Nietzschean style that he typically employed, Nietzsche referred to what was already an age-old idea as The Catastrophe of the Eternal Return or, depending on how you translate, you might call it The Catastrophe of the Infinite Regress.
Basically, he posed the idea of the Eternal Return through a short visualisation.
Imagine a demon comes to you, and it says to you, “You’re going to live your life over and over again. That’s your curse.”
Here’s a direct quote:
‘This life, as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live again and again, times without number, and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must return to you, and everything in the same series and sequence – and in the same way this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and in the same way this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned again and again – and you with it, you dust of dust!’ – Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who thus spoke? Or have you experienced a tremendous moment in which you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never did I hear anything more divine!’ If this thought gained power over you it would, as you are now, transform and perhaps crush you; the question in all and everything: ‘Do you want this again and again, times without number?’
You can see why Friedrich is popular with the leather, studs and broken-heart tattoos, because there are a lot of ways you could have gotten the point across.
However…
It’s a good idea to actually do this experiment with yourself, because it’ll unlock all kinds of interesting things from deep in your mind that you probably wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
It’s Demon Therapy, Shadow Work and a fun little exercise all rolled into one.
If you had to live the exact same life you’re living over and over, would you feel blessed or cursed? Would you recoil in horror or feel completely content?
That’s the first part of this demon-haunted therapy session.
What Would You Change?
The first part naturally leads to the second part.
Assuming you don’t answer the imaginary demon (because he’s totally not real, guys,) with “everything is absolutely fantastic!”
There are probably things you’d change about your life. It might be:
- You’d be more adventurous – maybe you’re sat reading this article, (or, worse yet, writing it,) while the sun is shining on a summer’s day, and your immediate reaction to the demon was that you’ve wasted a lot of life not being very interesting
- Maybe you’d feel like you should call a family member; you haven’t talked to them for a few days and family is really important, even more so when you think that you’re going to do those Christmas Dinners over and over in succession for eternity
- It could be that you’re sat on the sofa, reading this, suffering back pain and the idea that you’re going to deal with chronic pain for the long time of eternity versus the short time of the next forty years or so really makes you think about seeing a physiotherapist. Finally.
Hopefully, the exercise rustles up some ideas for things to do going forward for you. Now, it might be that you really did feel fantastic at the idea you’ll live this life again and again; in which case, it’s an exercise in gratitude and hopefully a hopeful one that’ll make you feel fuzzy on the inside. Or, it could be that you thought, “This life is hell!” and you’re really angry at that imaginary demon – who, I must again say, is totally not a real being.
If it’s the latter, consider the demon as one of Scrooge’s ghostly visitors; your life could maybe do with a change in a lot of ways, and a change of attitude might be one of them. I’m probably not one of the ghosts sent to set you on the right path, so by all means take what I say with a huge grain of salt. But the demon on your shoulder…
Your personal experience aside, let’s talk about some other interesting ideas that are brought up at a global level by talking with this demon.
Universal Ways To Live
As human beings, we’re blinded by short term thinking. Whilst somewhat typical of creatures that live for an average of about eighty years, we can do a lot better.
I’ll save the transhumanism thoughts for another article, but let’s just take this concept of an eternal return and get some long-term thinking, life lessons from it.
Feel free to add your own, but things like:
- Environmentalism
- Community Building
- Medical Research
- Charitable Endeavours
- Creating a Nice Space To Live In
- Creating Works of Art
- Having a good understanding of the Universe and how it operates
- Solving problems in general
- Experiencing life to its fullest
- (while) mitigating risk and
- Maintaining health and wellbeing of yourself and those around you
All of these things make sense anyway, but that sense is heightened when you think you’re going to be doing this again, and again, and again. Living in a positive space and making it better becomes more important when it’s an eternal state, and the attitude of, “It’s someone else’s problem” goes from being a caddish attitude to abhorrent under this world view.
You will no doubt have different values to me, and that’s great, but run the exercise and find out.