The transmutation of the human spirit, by Friedrich Nietzsche

From Thus Spake Zarathustra, "The Three Metamorphoses"

Three metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit
becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.

Many heavy things are there for the spirit, the strong load-bearing
spirit in which reverence dwelleth: for the heavy and the heaviest
longeth its strength.

What is heavy? so asketh the load-bearing spirit; then kneeleth it down
like the camel, and wanteth to be well laden.

What is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? asketh the load-bearing spirit,
that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.

Is it not this: To humiliate oneself in order to mortify one's pride? To
exhibit one's folly in order to mock at one's wisdom?

Or is it this: To desert our cause when it celebrateth its triumph? To
ascend high mountains to tempt the tempter?

Or is it this: To feed on the acorns and grass of knowledge, and for the
sake of truth to suffer hunger of soul?

Or is it this: To be sick and dismiss comforters, and make friends of
the deaf, who never hear thy requests?

Or is it this: To go into foul water when it is the water of truth, and
not disclaim cold frogs and hot toads?

Or is it this: To love those who despise us, and give one's hand to the
phantom when it is going to frighten us?

All these heaviest things the load-bearing spirit taketh upon itself:
and like the camel, which, when laden, hasteneth into the wilderness, so
hasteneth the spirit into its wilderness.

But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here
the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its
own wilderness.

Its last Lord it here seeketh: hostile will it be to him, and to its
last God; for victory will it struggle with the great dragon.

What is the great dragon which the spirit is no longer inclined to call
Lord and God? "Thou-shalt," is the great dragon called. But the spirit
of the lion saith, "I will."

"Thou-shalt," lieth in its path, sparkling with gold--a scale-covered
beast; and on every scale glittereth golden, "Thou shalt!"

The values of a thousand years glitter on those scales, and
thus speaketh the mightiest of all dragons: "All the values of
things--glitter on me.

All values have already been created, and all created values--do I
represent. Verily, there shall be no 'I will' any more. Thus speaketh
the dragon.

My brethren, wherefore is there need of the lion in the spirit? Why
sufficeth not the beast of burden, which renounceth and is reverent?

To create new values--that, even the lion cannot yet accomplish: but to
create itself freedom for new creating--that can the might of the lion
do.

To create itself freedom, and give a holy Nay even unto duty: for that,
my brethren, there is need of the lion.

To assume the right to new values--that is the most formidable
assumption for a load-bearing and reverent spirit. Verily, unto such a
spirit it is preying, and the work of a beast of prey.

As its holiest, it once loved "Thou-shalt": now is it forced to find
illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may
capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture.

But tell me, my brethren, what the child can do, which even the lion
could not do? Why hath the preying lion still to become a child?

Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a
self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.

Aye, for the game of creating, my brethren, there is needed a holy Yea
unto life: ITS OWN will, willeth now the spirit; HIS OWN world winneth
the world's outcast.

Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the
spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child.--

Thus spake Zarathustra. And at that time he abode in the town which is
called The Pied Cow.

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Ressentiment in the Present Age, by Søren Kierkegaard

since feeling is first, by e.e. cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings enjoying life at his
Joy Farm in New Hampshire.  Only having seen
the worst humanity had to offer was he able
to write some of the most beautiful, loving,
yet still socially conscious poems of all time.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis




-----
Originally published in is 5 by E. E. Cummings.  Since it isn't public domain yet, you can read about half of the poems contained therein by clicking here.

-----

e.e. cummings (without capital letters as he did not like capital letters much) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1894.  He died on September 3, 1962, being the second most widely read poets in the United States after Robert Frost [read some of his poems], as great a poet and wonderful counterpart precisely because they almost represent polar opposites insofar as style, tone and thematic content.

After completing undergraduate studies and a Masters of Arts at Harvard University by 1916, Edward Estlin Cummings enlisted as a volunteer ambulance driver during World War I.  Five months later, he was detained on suspicion of espionage by French authorities.  The consistent and constant vitalist message in his poetry, his enduring love of life, is likely a product of having witnessed the "War to End All Wars".

Of course, the "War to End All Wars" did not end all wars and, in fact, led to an even deadlier and longer one, World War II, only two decades later.  However, contrary to popular belief, World War I was far more gruesome for participants than was WWII.  The reason for this is largely technological. On the one hand, airplanes were still too basic to provide any decisive advantage, and tanks only came into existence near the end of that war, invented by the English and quickly replicated by everyone else, but these were too few, clunky and slow to permit the quick troop movements seen during the Second World War.

World War I tank.  These roaring machines were so noisy
and scary that their tactical effect was more psychological
than anything else.  Just imagine being holed up in a tench
and seeing one of these buzzing machines you had never seen before
coming toward you and ignoring the many lines of barbed wire.

On the other hand, the machine gun had been perfected and great strides had been made in artillery, mortars, and in chemical warfare, particularly mustard gas, against which early gas masks afforded little protection.

Machine guns were the decisive force during during World War I.
Here you see infantry employing them in trench warfare
while wearing gas masks because of the frequent use
of chemical warfare as a means to advance from trench to trench.

The result was that the First World War was largely a trench war that was basically a stalemate where troops would advance with many losses from one trench to the next only to have a counterattack drive them back from that trench to where they had come from.  The use of toxic gas had two purposes: not only did it provide a cloud of cover that impeded proper aiming by machine guns, it also killed or severely injured the troops holed up in the trench that was being advanced towards.

Photograph of World War I infantrymen spending their days
 in trenches covered by sandbags and protected by barbed wire.

The First World War only ended because the Allied Powers managed to successfully flank the Central Power's trench lines, cutting off their front line troops from receiving supplies.  This maneuver led to a Conditional Surrender or Capitulation by the Central Powers (i.e., Germany, the Austria-Hungary Empire, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), unlike the end of World War II which was concluded in an Unconditional Surrender.

World map of the Allied Powers, the Central Powers,
and their colonies, at the onset of World War I.  Allies shown
in green; Central Powers shown in orange, and neutral territories
are displayed in gray. Russia withdrew from the war in 1917,
ceding the territories the Central Powers had managed to occupy
following the Bolshevik Revolution and their need
to focus on internal affairs as their new state restructured.
The United Socialist Soviet Republics would get back control
over these territories following World War II.

The conditions set by the Allied Powers (i.e., the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan) split the Austria-Hungary into two separate states, spelled the end of the Ottoman Empire, but the conditions were harshest against Germany, being considered the main culprit.  These included large territorial transfers, of particular importance are Alsace-Lorraine going to France and most of Western Prussia going to the establishment of the nation of Poland.  However, it was the large economic reparations imposed on Germany that led to its economic collapse soon afterwards and allowed the Nazi Party's rise to power.  Not surprisingly, one of Hitler's first orders of business was to violate the Treaty of Versailles via a surprise re-militarization in 1936 of the Rhineland; moreover, the German invasion of Poland on September 1939 marks the beginning of the Second World War.  Allied cowardice permitted it all, and Hitler would later say "If France had then marched into Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tail between our legs", a hypothetical event that would have likely prevented WWII altogether because the French army was still overwhelmingly larger and better equipped than Germany's given that the latter had just begun the rebuilding of their military strength.

Click to Enlarge.
German territory at onset of World War I
and the remaining territory at the end of
World War II, in gray at top, in blue at bottom.
The reunification of Germany did not occur
until 1990, following the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.

History aside, the psychological effects of the dehumanizing nature of World War I and the mass and unusually cruel deaths that were everyone to be seen had a profound influence on e.e. cummings' celebration of life, living, and the vitality in all of us that most people either hinder or ignore.

Otto Dix (1924) "Shock Troops Advance under Gas".
Otto Dix participated in what is known as Germany's
cultural Golden Age during the decade of the 1920s.

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Read more poems by Edward Estlin Cummings.

SONNET 94, by William Shakespeare

They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,...
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

now does our world descend, by e.e. cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings displayed
an innocence in his eyes that he would
never recover following his experience
as an ambulance driver during the
First World War, even if this hopefulness
was replaced mostly with an intense will to—
and a joy for—life in later photographs.

now does our world descend
the path to nothingness
(cruel now cancels kind:
friends turn to enemies)
therefore lament,my dream
and don a doer's doom

create now is contrive;
imagined,merely know
(freedom:what makes a slave)
therefore,my life,lie down
and more by most endure
all that you never were

hide,poor dishonoured mind
who thought yourself so wise;
and much could understand
concerning no and yes:
if they've become the same
it's time you unbecame

where climbing was and bright
is darkness and to fall
(now wrong's the only right
since brave are cowards all)
therefore despair,my heart
and die into the dirt

but from this endless end
of briefer each our bliss -
where seeing eyes go blind
(where lips forget to kiss)
where everything's nothing
- arise,my soul;and sing



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For an informative background of the life, style, and historical context encasing e.e. cummings' exceptional body of work, please read the article immediately after the following poem—

"since feeling is first" by e.e. cummings

You may also enjoy these other poems by Edward Estlin Cummings:

• "love is more thicker than forget"


• "if you like my poems"

Courage and Fear

Fear, like all strong emotions, foments neurogenesis
and the integration of new neurons because emotionally charged
experiences are more salient, thus creating stronger memories.
Click the image to read the news article from the University of California
at Berkeley.  Peer-reviewed journal paper from Molecular Psychiatry
may be found here, by lies behind a pay firewall.

Courage is strength of anima—both mental and moral—to venture and persevere, to act in the face of fear, danger, and overwhelming difficulty. Confucius said that «it does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop.» This idea entails extraordinary determination; however, its lack of a time-constraint renders it more accurate for private life than for profit-seeking. Swift action is often required for business success. Frequently, timing is everything.


Fear paralyzes. As a flurry of recent neuropsychological experiments has corroborated, fear reduces the velocity of cognitive decision-making, and persistent fear over time decreases functional cerebral mass as millions of neurons shrink or die, widening the brain’s unproductive, anatomic cortical folds. In The Prince, Machiavelli noted the vast advantages of inspiring love instead of terror. A fleeting feeling of love is—inversely considered—an absence of fear, a state of vulnerability that compels action and foments a productive, happy society that precludes the appearance of conspirators. Despite acknowledging this, Machiavelli reluctantly recommended governing through terror-instigating measures solely because fear paralyzes individual and collective actions, thus thwarting rebellious uprisings.


Decelerated mental activity yields mediocre execution, professional conformity, and consequently, when widespread, the propagation of broken promises that pave the way for the materialization of a culture of rotten compromises. Because uprisings aren’t as great a concern to a CEO, COO, CFO or CIO as they are to a prince, managing by inspiring admiration, respect and love is pivotal to securing the long-term success and survival of any corporation. To deserve and receive respect, leaders must inspire courage in others. Empathy is necessary to earn the love of a subordinate or peer.


Mediocre leaders confuse fear with respect and compliments with love and admiration. Empathy demands that courage be rewarded. Combating conformity, on the other hand, requires imposing excellence as the nonnegotiable standard for all labor, as the maximum value of our work-ethic. Excellent execution necessitates a healthy dose of courage, which therefore merits reward and distinction whenever encountered. As a result, when a person defines his own hierarchy of values—his ethic—if he also places growth and excellence as categorically above his preferred value system, then the question of how and when to reward courage becomes moot. To that self-realized leader, any culture of rotten compromises is unacceptable and unlivable.

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Originally published by the St. Gallen Symposium.

Also available at ResearchGate.

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• The Transmutation of the Human Spirit, excerpt by Friedrich Nietzsche


• How Do Human Minds Work?: The Cognitive Revolution and Paradigm Change in Cognitive Science