Melbourne Journal #1: Getting Settled

I'm a bit behind on my blog posts, having been here almost two weeks. It's hot here in Melbourne, with February being the equivalent of August in the northern hemisphere. We've had some 100 degree days, but then it cools off again significantly, down into the 70s, so it hasn't been that bad. 

For the first week of my stay, I was alone, and during the first couple of days, my host TC (in the pictures) took me around the city. Melbourne is a big city, at around 5 million people, and we live in the neighborhood of East St. Kilda, which is a few miles from downtown. It's the Jewish neighborhood in Melbourne and is a cool, bustling place. 


NIETZSCHE: SUMMARY OF IMPORTANT IDEAS FOR ME

I have finally finished reading Nietzsche, and there are a few ideas of his that I hope to take forward into the rest of my life. The first is encapsulated in the following quote: Redemption is to recreate "it was" into "thus I willed it." In our modern era, we no longer have to worry about survival. This frees us to reflect critically on our lives and on the lives of those around us. A pitfall of this kind of critical reflection is that we can end up regretting our past decisions, resenting our loved ones and ourselves for falling short, and generally, feeling like a victim. In this quote, Nietzsche says that instead we should accept, and even embrace, our past - say a radical Yes! to it all - turning "it was" into "thus I willed it." Given that the past can't be changed, this leads to an optimal psychological orientation toward life, though it is very difficult to implement. It's worth noting that Nietzsche experienced a great deal of hardship and misfortune, so these are not empty words coming from him.

The second concept from Nietzsche that I want to take with me going forward is a combination of his three ideas: the will-to-power, the relativity of values, and the over-man. The will-to-power defines (for me) the application of the will toward, in Nietzsche's words, 'becoming who you are.' This requires first deciding what actions empower/diminish you, and then doing/not doing those things. The distinction between actions that empower/diminish is different for every individual, hence the relativity of values. And once a value system is in place, the act of doing/not doing what empowers/diminishes you requires an effort of self-overcoming that defines the over-man. This may seem abstract, but I don't think it is: figure out what empowers/diminishes you, then strive to do/not do those things. 

The final concept of Nietzsche's that I hope to retain is the error of confusing cause and effect. This very Buddhist notion goes as follows. We are biased to think that, as Jen is fond of saying, our actions define us: if we do bad things we are bad, and if we do good things we are good. This is an essential aspect of Western morality, inherited from Christianity, and it is problematic because it allows for someone, or something, other than ourselves to define what is good and bad for us. Nietzsche argues that the direction of cause and effect is wrong here; that in fact, our inner-state will determine the quality of our actions: if our inner-state is "good" our actions will be good, while if our inner-state is "bad," our actions will be bad. This distinction is important, because in the latter view, we must decide for ourselves what defines "good" and "bad" inner-states, which brings us back, again, to the relativity of values.