Treasure of Tranicos

[Yogah of Yag]

Also sprach Zarathustra is required reading for anyone who wishes to be deemed even halfway educated. The work is dense, but with some marvelous, epic concepts. Nietzsche is mentioned several times in the fascinating article called "A Critical Appreciation of John Miliuss Conan the Barbarian." Unfortunately, I lost the link thereto.

 

[René]

Also sprach Zarathustra is required reading for anyone who wishes to be deemed even halfway educated.

Glad to walk on the right side :wink:

 

[Flecha]

Glad to walk on the right side :wink:

No offense, but that's a quite pompous statement. It's very pompous (and ignorant) to think that oneself's side is the right side. Imagine, there are presidents who say, to justify that their side is the right one, that God talks to them (yeah, right. And I'm from Ganymede). It has taken about 7,000 estimated years of civilization to reach the conclusion that only physical facts are right; opinions are relative.

Then, of course, is philosophy, who tries to seek the truth out of reasoning, and therefore has produced many, many different theories out of many different authors, sometimes contradicting previous ones, as logical. All that has provided us with an ever-growing body of knowledge, basic for our understanding of the universe, and the minimal knowledge of all that is necessary to speak properly, withouth haughtiness.

Of course, as every area of human knowledge (and to that, philosophy is central), it's a trial an error process; some authors say better of worse things, and it's the commitment of newer authors to grow on previous theories, and make better ones correcting the wrongs, as is done in science. As an example, Aristotle did and said wrong things, for example considering women inferior, and proving it! (of course there's the matter of how greeks used a method different to the our scientific one, but that's a longer story).

I've heard of him. He sounded like a total s*** to me. Too bad he's dead- he'd be interesting to mess with. Cool

Again no offense, but this is even more pompous yet. Nietzsche is one of the finest German philosophers. He is quite misunderstanded and disdained in our "modern" world, because in his reasonings he nullifies christian religion (islamic one, too; I said just in case), and later was used by Hitler to justify part of his claimings; of course, Hitler never revealed that in other pats of his texts, Nietzsche praised the jews, but that, again, is another long story.

In his works, Nietzsche spoke of the decadence of man, of how man should free of the many ties that we all willingly take to form our mental prison, and the path to better ourselves, to find our trueselves. For that, we should trust in ourselves above everything, and therefore he discards the idea of God as something behind which we hide to mentally exculpate of everything. So, face our acts and the ties who weak us, and right them, grow, and makes us and free. That concept of the man who has done it, was casted by him as the "Superman".

And yes, this has EVERYTHING to do with a Conan thread. Because Howard spoke, independently, of the same thing. Conan, a Cimmerian, is the epitome of Nietzsche's "Superman", a human person free of the ties and psycological faults of the civilizated man. Even the Cimmerian God is unlike civilized gods, not helping his people or hearing them at all, so they find their strength in themselves, by themselves. Howard teaches us the same things that Nietzsche, but instead using the reasoning process, he does it as literature, making us enjoy with a leisure tale.

 

[VincentDarlage]

Glad to walk on the right side :wink:

No offense, but that's a quite pompous statement.

No offense, but I think René just indicated that he had read the work in question - he just said it in a joking manner. He meant "I read that; therefore I must qualify as at least half-way educated according to Yogah of Yag's criteria." Did you notice the "wink" emblem at the end of the statement?

It wasn't pompous at all. It was just fun dialogue.

No offense, but do you understand that people do not always say things to be taken literally, but use context and subcontext to convey meaning beyond the literal words? That is what the emoticons are all about in text based discussions.

No offense, but your statements to René were a serious over-reaction.

 

[The King]

Crichton at least explains a little Nietzsche's theories as it is probable that many didn't read his works.

 

[Flecha]

No offense, but your statements to René were a serious over-reaction.

Ups. I'm sorry, Vincent, you're right. It was a serious over-reaction. Sorry, René.

Sometimes I read threads too fast; I really felt the need to clarify Nietzsche and how it's often disdained by interested parties. Hope I almost did that; sorry again and in the future I'll try to prevent that passion doesn't impair my reading ability. :wink: (Hope this was a correct use of emoticons )

 

[Yogah of Yag]

Wow. A lot of intensity here. :shock: "The postings that don't kill us make us stronger." At least, I hope.

I have always wondered about the exact list of books Howard read. That is, those books which brought about his creativity, fertilized Howard's mind and were the foundations of Hyboria. I doubt he ever read Nietzsche. Philosophy on the whole was probably "too civilized", the recreations of the perfumed, frilly, decadent "city-slickers."

 

[The King]

In fact Nietzsche's saying is the foreword of the Conan movie. It is possible that de Camp chose it.

Whatever! I consider quite silly to consider some authors as classical knowlegde as if they owned the truth (Veritas). I believe one can learn much from any text, be it form shakespeare, chateaubriand or whoever, even Lovecraft.

 

[VincentDarlage]

I have always wondered about the exact list of books Howard read.

Here is a good start: http://www.rehupa.com/bookshelf.htm

The introduction states: "The following listing is comprised of books, magazines, stories, articles, poetry, manuscripts and dramatizations that Robert E. Howard either may have possessed as part of his library, or that he mentions in his correspondence or stories. The list also includes writers he mentions, whether or not he names a work by them. The listing is intended to assist those who wish to study literary, historical and other influences that may have found their way into Howard's work, and those who may wish to explore for themselves the world that opens up from the reading Robert Howard had done."

I doubt he ever read Nietzsche.

Here is a comment by REH on Nietzsche: "Nietzsche never untwined the human from the cosmic..."

 

[René]

No offense, but your statements to René were a serious over-reaction.

Ups. I'm sorry, Vincent, you're right. It was a serious over-reaction. Sorry, René.

Sometimes I read threads too fast; I really felt the need to clarify Nietzsche and how it's often disdained by interested parties. Hope I almost did that; sorry again and in the future I'll try to prevent that passion doesn't impair my reading ability. :wink: (Hope this was a correct use of emoticons )

Don't worry, no offence taken!

 

[Raven Blackwell]

I have read some of the man's work and to me it sounded like tripe to justify 'might makes right'- the classic cry of the tyrant. That Will is more important than Love, that it's okay to oppress the weak, getting what you want is more important that working towards the common good of a community, etc. You know- what evil people tell themselves to pretend they aren't evil. And since the man died insane and poor from following his own philsophy I think I'll look elsewhere for information on lifestyles, thank you. 8)

Also Aristole sucked too. In fact any dead white male with a lot of words about his POV is more important than mine is going to rub me the wrong way. Advice I'll take. Commandments I won't. Guess that doesn't make me 'educated' in your eyes, huh? I'll just settle for doing more good in the world than he or any other would-be 'authority' has done. I might abuse my power to some degree but I have never felt the need to rule over others though I do demand respect where it is due. And since I have been fighting monsters and staring into wide abysses for sometime and yet remain unmonsrous myself I think I've disproved Mr. Nietzche point. Guess I'm not as afraid as he was to see what was staring back.

 

[Yogah of Yag]

Okay, we get it. Retract the talons, Raven. We know you don't like the DWM's (Dead White Males), or LWMwWMD's (Living White Males with Weapons of Mass Destruction), or PLWMwNBTDTBR (Powerful Living White Males with Nothing Better to do than Bother Raven). :roll: :lol:
I agree with your completely. Flower-Power in Hyboria! :shock:

Let's dispense with the Core Rulebook's section on Weapons and Equipment and replace it with detailed Hugging Rules! Beware: Hugging triggers HoO (Hugs of Opportunity).

 

[The King]

Here is another saying which would better suits the later chronological Conan period (where he receives some army command):
"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." Sun Tzu

 

[Flecha]

I doubt he ever read Nietzsche.

Here is a comment by REH on Nietzsche: "Nietzsche never untwined the human from the cosmic..."

So, it seems proof that he read Nietzsche, right? I was more of the opinion of Yogah, that he never read it, but poured similar ideas (of his own) into Conan's character.

Damn, we all will learn once and for all to correctly write "Nietzsche".

 

[Flecha]

I have read some of the man's work and to me it sounded like tripe to justify 'might makes right'- the classic cry of the tyrant.

I think that's preciselly where is the misunderstanding; I'll try to explain.

First, I'll tell you about my view of life. I hate capitalism, regimes, and republics which elect a candidate to presidency just to treat as a king instead a government employee, betraying what "democracy" means. I hate views egotistic and selfish. I basically think that people should work for the sake of others, instead of themselves. I hate work exploitation, left alone slavery, and sexual or racial discrimination. I'm not communist because I don't trust the idea of "state". Therefore, I'm a kind of anarchist. I hate power, and social strata, etc. My favorite stories ever are Blake's 7, V for Vendetta, The Fight Club, and so on. I think that the best thing we could do is blow up the modern world and begin again from the ensuing anarchy; whatever comes after, can be worse than this

No, I don't like tyrants, anyones ruling over others, and never was able to abuse my power to any degree, because I never took any power, despite the times I could have done so.

But I still understand Nietzsche, and make his ideas mine to some extent. He wasn't justifying any tyrants, since his idea of "strenght" and "weakness" was ethical and spiritual, not literal and physical. He hated the time he lived and the nations of that era because of their wrongs and abuses, and the excuses people looked to excuse them.

In fact, what evil people use to pretend they aren't evil, is religion. Take Hitler, who take whatever parts he fancied from Nietzsche, and turned it into a religion. Take any other tyrant of history, and see that they all justified always with religion. In fact, consider the crusades, one of the saddest episodes in history, whose consequences we are still paying today. Yeah, all that people did (and do) what they do shielding behind the ethic of religion, because it "stoned" the people.

Besides, when Nietzsche called people "weak", he wasn't doing it literally, not referring to the people opressed or physically weak, but those who are "emotionally" weak, like any of us, since we all live dependent of so many things. We are not free, therefore we are weak. We can be free, getting rid of all that tie us to this decadent lives, and be masters of our own destiny, getting strong.

About the madness of the man, it could just be propaganda, like in "hey, this guy says we must disdain the weak, he's mad!". And propaganda has becamed the "de facto" maaaaany times in history. You would be surprised how things are frogotten and changed in a mere 100 years. You would be surprised too at how many really mad people you consider genius withouth your knowledge. Just look at the prices of Van Gogh's pictures. Remember Newton? The biggest physicist in history? The guy who casted the world we know? Well, he was schizophrenic and made all those developments to ready humanity to fight against the antichrist when he camed. Mad it's not synonym of silly (quite the contrary, in fact), or unuseful.

Finally, I don't think that anyone who roleplays is an uneducated one. In my 32 years of life I've seen more uneducated college graduates than not-graduated roleplayers. No kidding! I can find ideas "ignorant", not necessarilly persons... :wink:

 

[Flecha]

Don't worry, no offence taken!

There's a good lad! :wink:

 

[Ant]

Also sprach Zarathustra is required reading for anyone who wishes to be deemed even halfway educated. The work is dense, but with some marvelous, epic concepts. Nietzsche is mentioned several times in the fascinating article called "A Critical Appreciation of John Miliuss Conan the Barbarian." Unfortunately, I lost the link thereto.

It can be found on Edward Waterman's Barbarian Keep: http://www.barbariankeep.com/ctbds.html. "Nietzsche" occurs six times.

Ciao,
Ant

 

[Ant]

... It's very pompous (and ignorant) to think that oneself's side is the right side. ... only physical facts are right; opinions are relative.

So... are you saying that you are right? Oh, but you can't be, because your opinion is not a physical fact.

Cordialement,
Ant

 

[Raven Blackwell]

We know you don't like the PLWMwNBTDTBR (Powerful Living White Males with Nothing Better to do than Bother Raven)..

Yes, but I am plannning on thinnning the ranks of those guys. 8)

I agree with your completely. Flower-Power in Hyboria! :shock:

Only if it's Hemlock and Nightshade.

 

[Flecha]

So... are you saying that you are right? Oh, but you can't be, because your opinion is not a physical fact.

Heh, good one! Well, one thing is an oppinion and other an exposition of a reasoned thougth. It's what scientists and phylosopher "try" to do, in opposition to merely state opinions. You must consider different philosophical systems, even if they differ, since all them has been developed by reasoning. Only then you can get a better picture of things, and just disdaining one part of philosophy because it doesn't fancies you is like disdaining relativity because the creator is jew (as Hitler did, go figure!). I've tried to do reasoned expositions all the way, not just defending Nietzsche because what fancies me; maybe I didn't achieved it, but I tried.

Well, I think this thread has gone way off-topic! Maybe, if people is interested at all it saying more, another more appropiate thread should be open. I myself have enough for today! :wink: