Organizational Man: Refined or Repressed?

Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideal is the courageous, ancient Greco-Roman nobility, including the unashamed conquerors replete with self-confident will to power rather than shame at having vanquished formidable resistance. Rather than actually advocating that we return to the raping and pillaging that took place back then, Nietzsche wanted to depict modern, emaciated man as a contrast in order to turn the weakening of man around in Europe. Similar to Sinclair Lewis, who wrote his satirical novel, Babbit (1922) to showcase the utter vacuity of the middle-class businessman in America, Nietzsche laments “the reduction of the beast of prey ‘man’ to a tame and civilized animal, a domestic animal . . .”[1] By that he meant us: modern, enervated, and cultured incarnations of human nature relative to the full, untamed, and resilient lives of the ancient Greco-Roman conquerors. Having no knowledge of the lives that they lived in terms of full, unashamed and unconstrained will to power as will to living life with gusto, we scarcely realize the extent to which our societal institutions and vocational organizations box up our nature to that which is inoffensive and even polite even to competitors.

How very much our very nature has been contorted so as to fit within the modern straitjackets that we moderns ourselves have constructed. We have cut off our limbs and yet even as we still hold the knives, news of our deeds has not reached us, like light from a distant star has already happened but has not yet reached our planet. Nietzsche uses this imagery in explaining the death, or, more accurately, discrediting of the Abrahamic conception of God—Gott ist tot. Anticipating Freud, Nietzsche liked to remind us that we don’t really know ourselves as well as we think we do. In grizzled suits sitting in an office—something utterly unknown to the Roman conquerors!—are we not purblind when facing a mirror at “the repellent sight of the ill-constituted, dwarfed, atrophied, and poisoned?”[2] Who is aware of being poisoned when each dose is small and the course of weakening is of long duration? In fact, “the ‘tame man,’ the hopelessly mediocre and insipid man, has already learned to feel to feel himself as the goal and zenith, as the meaning of history, as ‘higher man.’”[3] Like arrogance on stilts during a flood, modern man speaks of progress while ignoring the weakening impact of creature comforts in sedating our will to power as will to experiencing the fullness of life into something like a will to comfort.

At this point in Genealogy, Nietzsche writes as only he has—vintage Nietzsche. “At this point I cannot suppress a sigh and a last hope. What is it that I especially find utterly unendurable? That I cannot cope with, that makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! The approach of some ill-constituted thing; that I have to smell the entrails of some ill-constituted soul!”[4] Elsewhere in his writing, Nietzsche refers to the bad odor of the weak, voluntarily impotent creatures whose inner bird-of-prey nature has been replaced by spite and resentment of the strong under the subterfuge of polite society.

Modern man knows passive aggression all too well; university faculties specialize in it under the cover of calmness. To be not calm, but to shout at the betrayal of a friend—this we have almost lost. Stuffing feelings can diminish direct communication that is unashamedly honest. Even though direct, unfiltered communication of especially strong feelings is generally considered indecent in public, such communication clears the air by flushing toxic residue away so genuine human connection can finally exist or the combatants can separate cleanly and forget each other. This advice applies of course to romantic relationships, but also to co-workers in the workplace. How shocking it would be to Babbit to hear two workers shouting at each other in a workplace that has been designed to remove all but a pallid version of human nature in its fullness! Of course, the need for monetary compensation to cover rent, utilities, and food makes employees reasonably fearful of bringing their full human nature to work. My point is that the ubiquity of passive aggression in the workplace means that too much of our innate nature is repressed in the business world; perhaps two angry employees could take their argument outside, escaping the overly disinfected office space for a bit.

In an emotionally-fearful society of banal convenience, a person can be unaware of how “much one is able to endure: distress, want, bad weather, sickness, toil, solitude. Fundamentally one can cope with everything else, born as one is to a subterranean life of struggle; one emerges again and again into the light, one experiences again and again one’s golden hour of victory—and then one stands forth as one was born, unbreakable, tensed, ready for new, even harder, remoter things, like a bow that distress only serves to draw tauter.”[5] How different such an expression of human nature is than that which is permissible under the tight watch of security cameras. So much of our nature is proscribed by organizational policies—as if policies were laws and subcontracted security guard were police. In utter disgust at modern man having become “thinner, more good-natured, more prudent, more comfortable, more mediocre, more indifferent,” Nietzsche yearns for even just a glimpse of a person “wholly achieved, happy, mighty, triumphant, something still capable of arousing fear! Of a man who justifies man, of a complementary and redeeming lucky hit on the part of man for the sake of which one may still believe in man!”[6] Nietzsche wanted to believe in our species but found a downward trajectory from strength to weakness—a “diminution and leveling.”[7] Nietzsche would likely claim that the hierarchies that exist in social/religious, business, and governmental organizations pale in comparison to natural hierarchies that enable a pathos of distance between the now-rare, strong breed that values and acts out ancient noble virtues such as courage and honesty and the now ubiquitous weak breed of timid, emotionally-vacuous organizational humanoids.

The modern woman who is attracted to the insipid corporate type sufficiently high on the corporate ladder has lost her way, Nietzsche would no doubt say, and is denying her primal nature; not so the woman who is instinctually attracted to a passionate, dominate male who lifts weights and is not ashamed to be vocal in overcoming resistance from a rival and even from her, and who wrestles or maybe even street-fights from time to time when provoked rather than calls on police to intercede, thus subcontracting his basic instincts. So distant the corporate man is from raw human instinct, and yet modern society counts business executives as powerful and of high standing in society. It is as if we all have been fooled into taking weakness for strength. Business ethicists lash out at business managers with “Thou Shalt Not!” as if the managers should be ashamed of the power that they wield, but this assumes that corporate power evinces Nietzschean strength as self-confident pride rather than timidity in overcoming obstacles. So very pallid is corporate speak, and yet how very many nonsupervisory, uneducated workers on the margins, such as at call centers, use the tone and lingo as a club as if from a position of strength rather than weakness. The weak who seek to dominate the strong—think of a call-center employee on the phone with a legitimately aggrieved customer—are not strong enough to master their most intractable instinct, Nietzsche claims, which is to feel the pleasure of power even by dominating if necessary. The strong need not dominate, for their self-confident power overflows. Confidence is attractive, whereas dominance, which Nietzsche theorizes manifests from weakness, is ugly.

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library1968), p. 478.

2. Ibid., p. 479.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., pp. 479-80.
5. Ibid., p. 480.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.

Nietzsche on Promise-Keeping: Sex and Relationships

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote on promise-keeping in Genealogy of Morals as being a result of a refined, and thus cultivated “breeding” of our species, rather than as an innate part of human nature that can be taken out for a spin on day one. In contrast, lying is more expedient and thus primitive in our nature, as if an instinctual urge that is more reflex than refined. In terms of romantic relationships, whether marital or not, “cheating” sexually is definitely a sign of weakness because it places momentary pleasure above being held as reliable (i.e., trustworthy) in terms of promise-keeping. A boyfriend who admits that he might hurt his girlfriend emotionally by engaging in infidelity is really telling her that he is weak-willed and thus not good boyfriend (or husband) material. To be sure, a couple could agree that both can have sex separately with other people, so not being monogamous need not involve violating a promise. I don’t think Nietzsche’s philosophy goes so far as to embrace such an arrangement (especially if romantic feeling or connection is allowed in the separate sex), but neither is monogamy advocated, given the nature of Nietzschean strength that should be allowed out of the cage of societal convention periodically, but not on a regular (or rotating!) basis. The concept of strength plays such a powerful role in Nietzsche’s philosophy that even the occasional raw expressiveness of strength beyond a societal straitjacket of moral convention would not be viewed as violating promised monogamy. 

An acquaintance whom I met in San Francisco told me that he would periodically spend thousands of dollars to travel to and attend Mariah Carey concerts. It must be a gay thing. Even though he partied while out of town at the concerts, he told me that he had not been unfaithful to his husband. I think valuing and giving force to such true caring as can be carried over great distance may be rare in the San Francisco gay "community," because, according to my friend, many of the child-men there conveniently live by the mantras, "out of sight, out of mind," and "what goes on in Vegas, staying in Vegas." Cute for school-yard banter, but jejune nonetheless. Relatedly, Nietzsche describes egoism (i.e., self-centeredness) as a matter of privileging proximity over that which is distant. Selfish people who should not be counted on as reliable by others allow immediacy both temporally and spatially to be most, and even exclusively, determinative. 

No relationship, even when the natural coupling bond is beginning to occur, can survive such an empirically-oriented perspective, for nobody can always be the most proximate geographically to one's beloved. Which person who has been in love with someone else has not hoped from a distance that the person who is being loved is not currently succumbing to the sexual and emotional overtures of another person without any distant thoughts whatsoever? I contend that it is imply human to want to believe that the person who is loved is reliable, and thus trustworthy, rather than being a creature like a lion that is ruled by momentary urges. Leo the cowardly lion can come very, very late in summer as far as I'm concerned. 

To be in love with a person who obviates commitment even as a matter of principle in order to leave open plenty of space for urges to be fully satisfied in the moment without  any thought of distance: that must surely be hell on earth for a person whose heart is like unto that of the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy leaves Oz, the sentimental Tin Man observes introspectively, "Now I know I have a heart, cause it's breaking." People who refuse, whether out of utter selfishness or an irresistable and insatiable urge for instant gratification, to hold themselves to keeping promises break hearts. Such people will find no solace in Nietzsche's philosophy even though in it he castigates the "Thou Shalt Nots" that modern morality inflict on the strong. 

To be sure, even though Nietzsche wrote in favor of being willing to make and keep promises, his attitude towards modern morality is not that of positive approbation. In fact, he would chastise my friend’s sense of moral obligation to be faithful to his husband during the rare dionysian weekends of frenzied music and partying. Nietzsche lauds strength of will and power in embracing living (i.e., the will to power is the will to life) in its resplendent fullness without shame. Strength by its own nature needs (and deserves) occasional stints of breathing room, similar to how ancient Roman conquerors were occasionally able to venture outside, beyond the empire's borders, to conquer and do what they like to the vanquished. Pillaging and even raping women were permitted under the customs of war even though stealing and raping were obviously illegal within the empire. 

In fact, I don't think Nietzsche would consider the sex that Roman conquers had with captured women to count as infidelity because the strong need (and deserve) the extra-social escapes from the constraints of societal (moral) convention due to the very nature of Nietzschean strength. Nietzsche claims that "the same men who are held so sternly in check inter pares by custom, respect, usage, gratitude, and even more by mutual suspicion and jealousy, and who on the other hand in their relations with one another show themselves so resourceful in consideration, self-control , delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship--once they go outside, where the strange, the stranger is found, they are not much better than uncaged beasts of prey. There they savor a freedom from all social constraints, they compensate themselves in the wilderness for the tension engendered by protracted confinement and enclosure within the peace of society, they go back to the innocent conscience of the beast of prey, as triumphant monsters who perhaps emerge from a disgusting procession of murder, arson, rape, and torture, exhilarated and undisturbed of soul . . ."[1]  The loyalty that the strong have in their relations with each other, including between husband and wife, as in promise-keeping regarding sexual fidelity, is not invalidated by the rape that can follow the overflowing self-confident pride of power that comes from overcoming formidable resistance on a battlefield. I doubt the wives of the Roman conquerors even considered their husbands to have been breaking their marital vow of sexual fidelity while they were away conquering, which itself is intrinsic to such strength. 

Distaste for and even anger at pathological liars is deeply engrained in human nature; nobody appreciates being lied to unless the liar’s motivation or act is in the interest of the person being lied to, rather than only in that of the liar. Benevolent lying can thus be distinguished from lying that is intended to manipulate other people. When a person just beginning to date, or “see,” another person romantically lies both about the decision to visit another romantic interest and for how long intends to manipulate rather than benefit the new flame or the budding relationship. That actually happened to me twice. One time, a woman left me a voicemail that she would be staying with an ex-boyfriend in New York. I hadn’t fallen for her, so it was easy for me to stop dating her. The second time was not so easy. I bolted not only because of the extent of sex with other guys, but also because of a trip taken to stay with a continuing boyfriend over my objections. That time, I had fallen in love. Even knowing that in returning I would be rejected, or else lied to over and over again in a “relationship,” I had to apply mental thrust to fight against the tremendous gravity of the sort that is unconditional and diminishes only with time. “Time is a great thickener,” Lincoln says in Spielberg’s film, Lincoln. Nietzsche wrote of the value of forgetfulness as preferable to rumination, and as that which makes it possible to “love thy enemy” and thus engage in universal rather than partial benevolence. In short, lying is too easy for us mere mortals to do to each other, which is why building and maintaining trust in relationships with emotional intimacy can be so very fragile and vulnerable to collapse. Accordingly, Nietzsche claims that the act of will to keep promises—to hold oneself as being capable and willing to voluntarily keep oneself from breaking one’s word by going instead for some momentary pleasure (for oneself)—required some development of the species rather than being in raw human nature. Those momentary, proximate instinctual urges that prioritize the immediate moment over the future (e.g., keeping one’s promises) are, according to Nietzsche, more pressing than is the opposing effort to hold oneself as reliable. Even just for some human beings to be able to trust each other can thus be regarded as what Nietzsche calls “ripened fruit” from a long maturation process that took place in our species’ long prehistoric time. Even though reliability and the related trust can by now in human history be achieved by the strong, it is not difficult to find examples of the weak who lie on a regular basis to use other people, such as sexually without commitment. It is natural for the strong of will, who are sovereign enough as individuals to keep their promises as if doing so were a necessity even though it is voluntary, to keep a pathos of distance from the pathological liars, for whom momentary, selfish pleasure is their drug-of-choice. 

Strong individuals, whose strength of will they make so hard regarding promise-keeping that they can be relied upon, and thus trusted by other people, naturally resist being maltreated and even infected by the weak. As if weakness were a sickness, Nietzsche advises the self-confident strong—the healthy—to stay away from hospitals that contain sickness. Even if the strong by analogy cannot become sick, they can be entrapped and beguiled by the weak and thus voluntarily renounce their innate and built-up strength.

Kant also refers to promise-keeping as being of value, and even argues that rational nature itself is capable of achieving the necessity of a law in holding oneself to one’s promises. As rational beings, we should be taken not just as someone else’s means to their ends, but also as ends in ourselves.  Why?  Because it is by reason that we assign value to things (and to people), and so reason itself has absolute, or undefined value. By analogy, the sun’s brightness is undefined or absolute in being the source of all of the reflected sunlight on Earth. Of course, manmade brightness exceeding that of the Sun itself would place the latter in a relative rather than an absolute position. My point is that, along the lines of Plato’s Republic, wherein reason rightly (i.e., justly) rules the passions, we can use reason to hold ourselves to our promises even when momentary passions tempt us to expediency in satisfying whatever instinctual urge, including lust, happens to be most pressing at the moment.

To Nietzsche, the substance of thoughts consists of instinctual urges, which can be directed along the channels laid out by reason, which itself is really an instinctual urge. Plato’s reason-controlling-passions becomes some instinctual urges mastering others by being more powerful. This does not necessarily mean that momentary urges that tempt us to violate our promises are preferable, according to Nietzsche, to the strong, autonomous individual who fortifies one’s desire to keep one’s promises. On the contrary! To be able to be regarded by other people as reliable, and thus as trustworthy, is mark of strength in Nietzsche’s sense of the word. For our species to have reached the point in which some individuals could by the mental force of sheer will-power hold themselves to their promises as if human nature had a certain built-in necessity for promise-keeping (which is not the case) is the product of a long prehistoric time in the species’ development. Such ripen fruits may seem to be innately ripe, but, given human nature such as it is, the ripening took effort, just as keeping one’s promises in the face of seemingly insurmountable urges does. To Nietzsche, both on the level of the species and individuals, such effort is of value.

It is remarkable that particular individuals differ so very much in terms of being willing to keep promises or to actively choose to indulge in momentary pleasures that violate one’s promises and even lie about having done so! The gulf is indeed sad, given that reliability and trust must be in the soil for a couple’s roots of emotional intimacy to grow long and deep underneath. Any viable relationship must endure through dry stretches in which promise-keeping is difficult, but it is precisely during such periods that the roots grow deeper. Contrast this with seeds thrown on dry rock!

In terms of dating, or “seeing someone,” and even in having a girlfriend or boyfriend (i.e., an enduring romantic relationship), I have been struck by my observations that the promise-keepers tend to occupy one orbit, while opportunist “cheaters” and their enablers are in their own orbit. When a person from one orbit traverses into the other without adapting to its norms and values—to its level of energy—mental explosions can occur and may even be quite likely. Being used to people who have integrity, a person may impulsively bolt from even a beloved whose definition of commitment excludes any circumscription or mastery of immediate impulses for momentary pleasure even though they could be expected to sabotage any genuine relationship. From the other direction, a person used to being able to have sex separately with whomever, whether with or without romantic connection, while still being able to have the benefit of a romantic “relationship” may reject a promise-keeper who rejects the utter lack of commitment and return to enablers who accept (and even adopt) such behavior.

Imagine on a second date (or “hook-up”) with someone, being immediately told, “I’m tired because I spent the whole night awake having sex with three other people, so I really need to get some sleep (i.e., rather than have sex with you).” Would that new information not ruin any forthcoming (tired) sex for the person having been de-valued? My point is that from the standpoints of Nietzschean strength and weakness, the person who expects acceptance of one’s own self-centered and disrespectful behavior and the person who accepts such behavior are in an orbit that is a pathos of distance from the other orbit in which such behavior would be regarded as a huge red-flag.

In the other orbit, a person who states, “I’m afraid I might be unfaithful,” really stands out as dangerous emotionally and is thus instinctively avoided, whereas in that person’s own orbit, the other person might say the same thing, such that both people would be fine with mutual cheating at the expense of emotional intimacy. Indeed, such local (or sub-local) cultures have existed such that relationships endure without commitment because that is the widely accepted norm that relationships should be as such. The two orbits are indeed worlds apart, yet both contain the same Grundlagen of human nature.

Nietzsche is not a relativist on the two orbits. Promise-keeping is a legitimate exception to the general use of forgetfulness, which keeps people from ruminating on past emotional injuries and thus being able to be in the present and even hope for a resplendent future. Unlike the case of romantic relationships (before as well as during a marriage) that lack commitment because they are “open” and “poly-amorous” sexually (and emotionally!), having the strength of will to keep one’s promises even when doing so is difficult or inconvenient is something that requires significant effort rather than being raw in human nature itself and thus natural. Put another way, a strong, self-confident, and resilient will is superior to a weak, selfish, and expedient will. To a person who is used to being able to keep one’s promises and thus holds oneself as deserving the same from others, especially in intimate relationships, a person who refuses or is unable to keep promises spells nothing but recurrent emotional pain. It is on this basis that the strength of will can be found to thrust away from the tremendous gravity towards the other person that goes along with falling in love. Indeed, it is astounding that an instinctual urge of such power exists that can overcome, by mastering, the urge to be with a beloved even if pushing away is known to be in one’s own good.

Promise-keeping plays an important role in Nietzsche's philosophy. “To breed an animal with the right to make promises—is not this the paradoxical task that nature has set itself in the case of man? is this not the real problem regarding man?”[1] The task is paradoxical because promise-keeping is not as natural—in human nature itself—as is prioritizing instant gratification and thus momentary pleasure, which eviscerates promises because they involve prioritizing the distant—the future—over the moment. The willingness to so prioritize is what distinguishes and separates the two orbits—the two worlds of interpersonal relations. Behind promise-keeping is “a desire for the continuance of something desired once, a real memory of the will: so that between the original ‘I will,’ ‘I shall do this’ and the actual discharge of the will, its act, a world of strange new things, circumstances, even acts of will may be interposed without breaking this long chain of will.”[2] Parsing this difficult passage, the original “I will” is short for “I will make and keep promise X.” The “I shall do this” is a statement of recognition that promise-keeping extends out into the future, so actual discharges of the will, and the respective acts thereof, in a future even of strange new things and circumstances, will not break the long chain of willing in line with the promise. Circumstances in the future unforeseen when the promise is made do not justify willing (and thus acts of will, such as having a sexual affair) that violates keeping the promise (e.g., to one’s spouse).

One woman’s boyfriend, for example, who in the future meets a beautiful young woman and she who drops her pants as an obvious invitation to a man to cheat on his girlfriend does not justify the man’s use of his will to break his promise. He is advised not to return to his girlfriend to explain to her, “I had not met the young woman when I promised you that I would not have sex with other women.” Neither would, “But the woman and I bonded before I knew you, so you can’t really object to me doing some molly and messing around with her when she visits the city.” Of course, facing such a warped justification, the girlfriend should bolt rather than be so very rudely maltreated by a boyfriend who really doesn’t care for her anyway as evinced by his easy willingness to inflict emotional pain in the distended use of his inordinate power in the relationship with someone who loves him. Should he punish her for loving him? Perhaps he loathes himself (and justifiably so!) and thus does not feel worthy enough to receive the kind of love-of-personality that can be healing such that his self-loathing could justifiably ease and he could thus love her back. I contend that self-loathing is a salient feature of the orbit inhabited by the weak-willed creatures of deceit who relish dominating and thus hurting people of the other orbit in order to feel pleasure from the will to power.

Aristotle’s notion of misordered concupiscence applies to such a boyfriend because people who put momentary, even strongly-felt urges for sexual pleasure above maintaining a chain of willing that is in line with a promise, which itself supports a relation of emotional intimacy, put a lower good above a higher one. 

Nietzsche is more complicated. One the one hand, he maintains that promise-keeping, especially by a will that is hardened such that the keeping has the necessity of a law binding on the will even though this is done voluntarily, is superior to human nature in its raw state without such fine breeding as has enabled the strong among us to make and keep promises rather than be primitive, utterly untrustworthy creatures of proximity. After all, the spite of such creatures that is instinctively inflicted in the face of relational resistance can really hurt.  

However, lest we conclude that Nietzsche is claiming that promise-keeping is superior because it is a moral custom, he looks back to the ancient Greek and Roman conquerors and notes approvingly that such strong, self-confident men were justified, given the very notion of strength as self-confident rather than cowering power of overcoming obstacles whether internal or on a battlefield by mastery rather than repression, in periodically leaving the cage of societal convention to conquer by fighting, pillaging and even raping along the way. Even their wives would have known that such natural “breathers” from the societal (and relationship) norms and mores befits the nature of strength and thus is justified. Even though promise-keeping is a bred refinement of the will rather than a product of social convention (or innate to human nature), a conquering victor enjoying the spoils of war even sexually is an exception outside of the long chain of the will that is in line with keeping the promise of marital fidelity. So, it is not that going to war justifies sex with the conquered because that lies outside of society and thus its conventions; rather, Nietzsche is asserting that the very nature of strength, out of which the will engaging in promise-keeping is possible, requires that the strong be periodically let out of artificial societal cages of convention. 

A certain freedom goes with innately human strength. “The knightly-aristocratic value judgments presupposed a powerful physicality, a flourishing, abundant, even overflowing health, together with that which serves to preserve it: war, adventure, hunting, dancing, war games, and in general all that involves vigorous, free, joyful activity.”[3] To circumscribe all these to fit within societal conventions would be to tie up strength as if in a dungeon. “To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.”[4] Strength and weakness are truly antipodal in Nietzsche’s philosophy, as well as being central to it.

To be sure, societal convention may even have ways in which such strength can be expressed without having to go to war. Once I went along with a remote acquaintance whom I had just met asked me to come along as he looking for a two-bedroom apartment. Initially unknown to me, he wanted to use one room as a sexual dungeon. I was surprised when he admitted the intended use to me, and I joked to the real-estate agent that, were I looking for an apartment, I would want one in a quiet building elsewhere “because he has wild parties.” The acquaintance, who was in my brief time of knowing him very careful to keep his true self hidden from me, rolled his eyes spontaneously—it was so cute!—as if the gig were up and he would not even be offered the apartment. In Nietzschean terms, rather than being willing to flex his muscle by becoming master in order to overcome resistance in the form of another person’s resistant will, he relished weakness because he got pleasure from being dominated and even physically hurt as if he deserved it. Such weakness as wallows in its own kind of languid power cannot constitute strength.

As a side note, the ancient Romans admired men who played the active role sexually with other, usually younger men, but disdained the men who played the passive, “bottom” role because that evinced being dominated and thus weakness; the ancient Greeks were of course fine with both roles, as evinced in the Iliad.  Secondly, it might it be that constructing a dungeon so as to dominate and thus express innate strength albeit within a (marginal) societal convention rather than on a battlefield is something that Nietzsche would have applauded because strength would be expressing itself? If so, then such an occasional expression of raw strength within a societal context, rather than exogenous to one, could be compatible with keeping a promise to be monogamous. In short, strong people got to let off some steam once in a while, and this need not be incompatible with achieving and sustaining emotional intimacy romantically.

Therefore, as I read Nietzsche, he is not defending monogamy though if that is a promise made it is of the nature of strength to keep it in normal time (i.e., except when conquering beyond society’s walls). In practical terms, this could mean that even an otherwise monogamous couple would agree to each person being able to occasionally have “nights on the town” that include drinking (or getting high) with sex with others while still counting the promise of monogamy as being kept. Such “breathers” for our animal nature Nietzsche favors because societal convention is like a cage and thus is not completely compatible with our very nature. This is very different than the boyfriend mentioned above who often has sex with other women and even some of whom he feels an emotional connection with. 

The weak person “is neither upright nor naïve nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul squints; his spirit loves hiding places, secret paths and back doors, everything covert entices him as his world, his security, his refreshment.”[5] His warning that he might engage in infidelity is perhaps his most honest statement, for it proclaims a weakness of will and a refusal to master (not repress!) sexual urges as they arise in the future apart from any natural coupling. Give him credit for his momentary fit of honesty, then bolt, for he does not even care about himself. His coldness even to a woman who loves his personality even with all of its dents and still wants to be with him nonetheless can ironically be warmed by just such now-absent love, yet this he rejects in favor of his urge to fuck whenever and whomever he wants, even in the bed he shares with his wife, under the idol of momentary pleasure, as if commitment (i.e., promise-keeping) were a dirty word—or feared. Mastering this fear by overcoming it honestly, with the help of love, which Nietzsche doesn’t mention, could, I submit, strengthen a weak (which Nietzsche also doesn’t mention) such that such a boyfriend could be in an emotionally mature relationship rather than always running away by dropping grenades along the way to distance the women who love him.

The sex of victorious noble conquerors whether to willing captives or even by dominating them by raping them in Greco-Roman history was not done with emotional (e.g., “poly-amorous”) attachment and neither was it done often, so I would be surprised to discover that the wives felt that that their relationships were threatened by the extra-societal expressions of raw strength or even regarded them as breaking their respective husbands’ long chains of will in line with fidelity. Just because Nietzsche writes positively of the ancient noble values such as courage and self-confident subduing and castigates modern morality that opposes such values does not mean that he applauds men of the sort who incessantly lie, including on having separate sex with other women—even those with whom a connection or emotional bond has been made—or demand acceptance of that behavior as if it should be required in order to be something more than friends with sexual benefits (i.e., a couple).

Nietzsche trumpets the ancient noble values of honesty and honor, and thus integrity too, rather than a life spent prioritizing the primitive sexual urge for momentary pleasure without regard to keeping promises that are in line with not hurting those whose love can make life worth living. Strength is in line with having an emotionally-mature significant relationship, whereas weakness of the will is not. Indeed, the very nature of strength means that a romantic relationship with deep emotional intimacy need not be completely monogamous, and thus entirely within societal convention. Yet this is not an open invitation to the selfish and weak-willed to flaunt convention daily in a way that expunges romantic intimacy whether by lying rather than keeping promises, or demanding that an addiction to sex be accepted as a condition for being with the person romantically. Whereas the strong are free, even from time to time from societal convention, the weak are slavish, according to Nietzsche. Because strength and weakness are for Nietzsche ultimately physiological, he does not allow for healing and thus for strengthening. The healthy are healthy even when the weak who seek to dominate even the strong out of ressentiment beguile the strong so they will voluntarily relinquish expressions of their strength in overcoming resistance. The weak are innately ill-constituted, but are they really? 

I would rather hope that the selfish boyfriend who exploits his girlfriend or wife so he can satisfy his sexual urge in any way he wants at the time can find it within himself to pull himself up even if he is afraid to ask his partner for help. I would like to hope that emotional intimacy can furnish a context in which a weak person can become stronger—from within rather than from someone else’s emotional urge to rescue or save another person so to gain more self-esteem. It may come down to the fact that a minimal amount of self-esteem is requisite to being able to tolerate and maintain emotional intimacy with another person without sabotaging every relationship that comes down the pike. In other words, a certain amount of self-esteem may be necessary for a person to be able have the necessity of a law in one’s will such that promises can be kept rather than undercut for momentary pleasure. A relationship in which one person’s sexual urge is not mastered but instead is allowed to be satisfied spontaneously whenever it is acutely felt is not really a relationship in any sense of the word. Unquestionably Nietzsche would regard such a person as weak rather than strong.

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1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Trans and Ed., Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), p. 476.

2. Ibid., p. 493.

3. Ibid, p. 494.
4. Ibid., p. 469, italics added.
5. Ibid., p. 481.
6. Ibid., p. 474.

Critical Race Theory as Ideology

The word theory signifies proposed knowledge that is not merely subjective sentiment or belief that is being prescribed or advocated as an ideology; the purpose of a theory is rather to explain. Only in terms of better understanding is the implication that a better world could result (i.e., from the enhanced understanding). Even though a theory does not constitute established knowledge, that ideologues have seized on the label as a way of legitimating their respective cherished ideologies should come as no surprise because ideology sells better in the guise of knowledge even though a theory has yet to gain sufficient support epistemologically to be recognized as established knowledge. The epistemological subterfuge—a Trojan horse of sorts—also hides the fact that the ideologue seeks to persuade or advocate rather than primarily explain. Under the patina of a knowledge-claim lies quite another instinctual urge. Nietzsche’s claim that the content of a thought is none other than an instinctual urge of sufficient power to burst into consciousness—a manifestation of the will to power—provides an explanation for why the slight of hand is so easy for ideologues to make in sliding over to present the veneer of knowledge-claims even though such claims do in fact differ qualitatively from ideological claims. I contend that critical race “theory,” as well as the related interactionist “theory,” is in its very substance ideological in nature, rather than knowledge or even a theory.

The full essay is at "Critical Race Theory as Ideology."

Turkey on Gay Obscenity

On 8 April, 2026, eleven leaders of a Turkish gay-rights group faced a judicial trial on charges of “obscenity” and “violating the protection of the family.”[1] These charges are of course heavily subjective and even controversial, especially well into the twenty-first century by which time gay and lesbian couples were raising children in family units so the issue in Turkey could be said to be which type of family warrants protection. The obscenity charge had to do with the fact that two men or two women kissing romantically in public still made a significant proportion of people uncomfortable in Turkey. Turkish authorities had deemed photos showing gay couples kissing and put on social media to be obscene. That homosexuality was not illegal there at the time rendered the trial perplexing to many in the gay community in Turkey and elsewhere in the world. Perhaps even more perplexing is the fact that the constitution of Turkey contained an article on protecting family values and that gay couples raising children were exempted from even being deemed families.

The gay association claimed that the trial was “an attack on freedom of expression and freedom of association.”[2] In particularly harsh terms, the group also called the trial “a form of dehumanization.”[3] Whereas expression and association are jurisprudential terms, dehumanization evokes human rights being severely violated. I contend that none of these claims gets at the underlying issue, which is that, just as in climate change wherein some regions (e.g., the poles) have been warming faster than others (e.g., the equator), in any society some parts change more than others, such that the latter can be expected as a matter of human nature to resist surges in the former. Whereas people in a gay bar in San Francisco were used to seeing men kiss each other, the same cannot be said in many cities in Turkey. Both being accustomed and being uncomfortable are valid human reactions to the fact that change does not happen at the same rate across a given society. In a healthy society, the gays who are on the forefront in displaying their homosexual affection in gay neighborhoods naturally tone down the visuals  in other neighborhoods, and heterosexuals not used to such displays try to tolerate them under the correct supposition that culture changes. In an unhealthy society, gays intentionally push their homosexuality where they know it is not as accepted, and people unaccustomed to the visible gay affection seek to punish the gays for what is only natural affection for gays.

A man can fall in love with another man, and a woman can fall in love with a woman. Bisexual men and women who have falling in love with people of both genders attest that the love is the same in substance. Also, falling in love with a personality is not the same as lusting after a particular sexual organ; indeed, people fall in love before having had sex with the beloved. In fact, anyone who has falling in love would acknowledge that the sex pales in comparison with the strong emotional attachment being felt. Selfless, or other-focused love is possible in human nature itself, and thus whether the person being put first is of the same or the other gender does not alter the qualities of the love because it is oriented to personality, not to sexual organs (though having access to preferred organs is no small matter). 

Furthermore, a gay couple can truly love a child being raised because the parent-child love is the same, regardless of what the parents are doing sexually (at least one would hope the two are separate!). Just as a heterosexual step-father or step-mother can come to love a nonbiological child of the wife or husband, a gay spouse can love the biological child the spouse. That is to say, gay couples can indeed form genuine families, and the love therein is what the Turkish constitution could ideally have promoted and protected were love itself valued over hate by the government officials behind the trial.

That which should arguably be excoriated is not homosexuality per se, but the sordid elements culturally that can render the gay “community” as anything but warm and fuzzy. I am referring to the privileging of anonymous sex, even in imposing "open" relationships with separate sex with or without emotional attachment, as if monogamy were anti-woke and toxic. Lying, in cheating on a boyfriend or husban sexually, eclipses emotional intimacy and trust that could otherwise embrace gay couples and render them as more legitimate from the standpoint of heterosexuals. Also problematic is the utter slicing ruthlessness with which gay men reject other gay men not only sexually, but also emotionally. The narrowness of a hypertropic sex drive be exaggerated by an enabling cultural norm in the gay "community" that it is fine to "block" online or "flake" on showing up for sex as soon as a "hotter" guy is found for casual sex (i.e., "hooking up"). 

In short, responsibility, which is required for any genuine romantic relationship, may be a recessive value in the gay "community" whereas the primacy of momentary pleasure is privileged beyond its worth at the expense of emotional intimacy or connection. It may be that for too many gay men, the act of gay sex is more important to them than emotional intimacy and establishing trust and connection. Moreover, it may be that for too many gay men, "falling in love" is sex-centric rather than based on personality. I suspect that gay culture has been tacitly undergirding this toxic misordered concupiscence. If so, I would not be surprised if loneliness has been rife in the gay "community." 

My point is that rather than thrown “obscene” and anti-family charges at homosexuality itself, genuine romantic love that a same-sex couple can have can be distinguished from the more primitive gay lifestyle. Societies that make this distinction would be able to relegate Turkey’s approach to punishing gay people as utterly crude and primitive, which are labels I would apply to the gay men who use sex to obviate commitment as if the sexual urges of gay men are such that those urges are different or stronger and thus cannot be resisted. The belief that such urges should not be resisted, even if doing so evicerates the integrity of intimate romantic relationships, is more troubling not only because people, whether gay or heterosexual, who live out that belief are functioning as animalistic primitives rather than as responsible adult-humans. Perhaps one day Christopher Robin of Winnie the Pooh lore will finally grow up, and associate intimately with other humans rather than only or primarily with more primative animals that enable his childishness. Perhaps Christopher will move on from his trophy animals, or perhaps he is naively their trophy. 

Turkey’s approach of lashing out against gay visuals in 2026 was itself jejune, and thus did not evince sufficient maturity to facilitate the maturation of humanity’s homosexual population as it was shifting from informal relationships and the privileging of anonymous sex to the emotional intimacy that is only possible romantically in sustained relationships, including but not limited to marriage. 

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1. Gavin Blackburn, “Turkey Puts 11 Leaders of LGBTQ+ Rights Association on Trial for ‘Obscenity,’” Euronews.com, 8 April, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Retail Intimidation amid Romantic Fear: Emotional Intimacy Eclipsed Culturally in San Francisco

Visuals are an important ingredient in consumer marketing, so it is surprising to come across retail managers who are so purblind as concerns the latent yet obvious passive aggression in some of the visuals that those managers themselves approve in the name of security. The espoused, yet utterly fake claim that customer experience is improved by the added sense of safety—the actual underlying motive lies in loss prevention—is typically outweighed by the very human negative experience from being intentionally intimidated by passive-aggressive visuals. It may be that such managers, frustrated by high rates of in-store petty theft (i.e., “shoplifting”), are unconsciously taking their latent aggression out of the customers as a group. Even if not, the lack of judgment is palpable from the visuals themselves. It is no wonder that an increasing number of customers prefer shopping online. 

The full essay is at "Retail Intimidation amid Romantic Fear."

Global Warming Accelerating

When I took calculus in my first college-degree program, the graduate-student instructor didn’t bother to tell the class that a derivative signifies changes in the rate of acceleration. A derivative is not the rate itself, but, rather, the change in the rate—something much more difficult to detect empirically, as in watching an accelerating car. Formulae were the instructor’s focus, as if they constitute ends in themselves. By the time the climate numbers for 2025 came in, scientists could confidently say global warming was accelerating. The rate itself may have been increasing (i.e., a positive derivative), but attention to that by the media would have taken an educational reform as to how calculus was being taught. We think in terms of speed and acceleration. In this respect, we may be deficient in climate change itself as it has been unfolding. More decades than I care to admit had passed by 2025 since I had that course in calculus; only now can I say that I have used the math, albeit theoretically rather than via formulae.

Looking at the numbers for average global temperature for 2023, 2024, and 2025, Robert Rohde, the chief scientist at the Berkeley Earth Monitoring Group, said in early 2026, “The last three years are indicative of an acceleration in the warming. They’re not consistent with the linear trend that we’ve been observing for the 50 years before that.”[1] A linear trend represents no acceleration, so the rate of acceleration only became positive in 2023. Relative to the prior years, the averages for 2023, 2024, and 2025 “seemed to jump up,” said NOAA climate-monitoring chief Russ Vose.[2] The average for 2024 was 1.6C degrees above pre-industrial levels, hence slightly above the internationally agreed-upon limit of 1.5C degrees, and the averages for 2023 (1.48C above) and 2025 (1.47C above) were essentially tied so close to 1.5C that the average of the three years is above 1.5C. Even though the “leap” from the previous years since at least 2015 instantiates an acceleration, more years may be needed to assess whether the rate of the acceleration was increasing (mathematics majors would know this). At the outset of 2026, the three preceding years appeared as a plateau rather than evidence of continued acceleration, but a plateau could exist within a trend even of a positive derivative. My point is that we should have been more focused on changes in the rate of acceleration, for if the rate itself was increasing, then it would not be long until the threshold of 1.5C is surpassed and more extreme symptoms of climate change occur.

One of the weaknesses of democracy is that such symptoms may have to be experienced and seen before electorates treat climate-change as an important issue in voting. Human nature itself, a product of natural selection, still prioritizes the immediate over the long-term, especially in regard to threats. Instant gratification too is “hard-wired” in us all, which is why we tend to vote to keep gas prices low rather than to cut off the further manufacture of gasoline-powered cars. Whereas these contributory drawbacks in our nature, inherited from the gradual process of natural selection in evolution (mostly in the hunger-gatherer period of our species), have been associated with the lack of sufficient political will in the world since 2016 at Paris to keep the average global temperature from surpassing 1.5C above the pre-industrial level, our cognitive impairments that are also contributory are less well-known. This is the idea.

In addition to difficulties in conceptualizing and keeping attuned to what the derivative represents (i.e., change in the rate of acceleration, rather than the rate itself), our arrogance of pride in what we think we know also holds us back from grasping the magnitude of the human contribution to climate change. Just days before writing this essay, a man aged 75 declared to me that climate change is “just the natural cycles.” I don’t know whether that person had gone to college, but I do know that he was not a scientist. So the man’s declaration itself rang out as being out of place, given his actual level of knowledge on climate science. Similar to how we tend to focus on acceleration rates rather than changes in those rates, most people would be attuned to the content of the man’s statement—that climate change is merely part of a long-term natural cycle that will eventually reverse itself—rather than to the declaratory form of speech with which he made the statement. It is too difficult for us to grasp changes in rates of acceleration and focus on the presumption of entitlement that can be detected in the way a person makes a statement, whether it is written or verbal, and yet we tend not to realize that we have trouble with both. As one consequence, we understate the severity of climate change.

Lest anyone needs a refresher, “Rohde said nearly all of the warming is from human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases. . . . Samantha Burgess, strategic climate head of the Copernicus service, said the overwhelming culprit is clear: the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.”[3] Lest it be conveniently assumed that the burning has been going on somewhere in nature away from humans, Burgess doesn’t mince words: “Climate change is happening. It’s here. It’s impacting everyone all around the world and it’s our fault.”[4] Climate change is not just from a natural cycle that would be occurring even if there were no homo sapiens species.

So, Joe the plumber, a person let’s say who barely graduated from high school, would not only be incorrect in declaring that climate change is just part of a natural cycle; he would also be presumptuous in slighting the contradicting knowledge of climate scientists, whose years of study are indeed superior to Joe’s opinion. Like arrogance on stilts during a flood, Joe’s self-love issuing out in puffed up “knowledge” may one day be underwater if he happens to live on a coast when enough of the polar ice has melted to rise the level of oceans appreciably. That Joe would likely react angrily to being corrected even though his declaration of knowledge actually has no foundation is yet another indication of the presumptuous that may be endemic to the human mind but seems to be more salient in uneducated people. Formerly known in Western civilization as the sin of pride, which Augustine and Paul set as the worse (and thus intractable) sin, treating one’s own opinion as a fact of knowledge can be added to the list of the deficiencies in our nature that may wind up causing the extinction of our species as the Earth’s climate approaches a new equilibrium sooner rather than later. How much sooner depends at least in part on whether the relevant derivative is positive.

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1. Seth Borenstein, “Scientists Call Another Near-Record Hot Year a ‘Warning Shot’ of a Shifting, Dangerous Climate,” APnews.com, January 14, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. Italics added for emphasis.

Holidays at U.S. Parks: Usurped by Partisan Ideology

In the United States, Christmas is the last official holiday of the calendar-year, and Thanksgiving is the penultimate holiday. New Year’s Day is the first holiday of the year. Any other holidays among or between these are private rather than public holidays, and thus the public is not obliged to recognize those holidays as if they were equivalent to public holidays. Although New Year’s Day has remained safe from ideological attack, neither Thanksgiving nor Christmas have. Nevertheless, their status as official U.S. holidays has remained, at least as of 2025, and thus it remains as of then at least proper and fitting for Americans to refer to those holidays by name rather than by the denialist, passive-aggressive expression, happy holidays, which conveniently disappears even from retail clerks just in time for New Year’s because that holiday is ideologically permissible. The problem writ large is the influx of ideology trying to invalidate certain official United States holidays. By the end of 2025, the initial influx had triggered a counter-influx that is just as ideological, and thus only encircling certain (but not all) official holidays with ideology. The underlying fault lies in using the creation of a holiday to promote an ideology.

Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth were made official U.S. holidays to promote an ideology. This rationale for declaring a public holiday is problematic because such holidays should be acceptable beyond a partisan minority or even a simple majority of the public. This translates into requiring that both major parties agree (even beyond simple majorities) in Congress before a new holiday is declared.

With regard to existing official holidays that have long been on the books, the onus should be on efforts to remove those holidays because ideologically-oriented motives for change, being partisan, warrant strict scrutiny, whereas the holidays’ default status does not. In short ideologically-motivated change should be subject to heightened scrutiny because ideologies are typically partisan rather than a matter of unanimity.

That Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth are arguably too duplicative or overlapping, thus contributing to there being too many public holidays at the expense of the Gross Domestic Product and thus prosperity (and employment), is an indication that both holidays came out of an ideological push rather than a national sense or identity. In other words, the excess alone is a sign that holiday-making had gotten out of hand. In 2025, U.S. President Trump argued that there had come to be “too many non-working holidays,” and that all the days off were costing the U.S. economy too much in lost productivity.[1] Doing ideology by creating holidays does not come cost-free in economic terms. If the selfish trend of making holidays in one’s own image continues, more and more holidays might be viewed as valid only by some, rather than by every American, as being an official U.S. holiday were not validating enough. This does not mean that every American must or should celebrate every holiday.

The trend can also be seen in the changes made to holidays on which fees are waived in national parks. Firstly, that the “Trump administration removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from [the 2026] schedule of free entrance days for national parks” indicates that those two holidays are ideological, and thus partisan, in nature, and thus not fit to be public holidays.[2] Secondly, that the federal president then added his own birthday to the list of free-entrance days shows just how egocentric and thus arbitrary (to other people) holiday-creation had become. Trump also removed the birthday of the Bureau of Land Management, which could be a reflection of the president’s ideological dislike of regulatory agencies. Why not remove the first day of National Park Week, Great American Outdoors Day and National Public Lands Day too, as being excessive losses of revenue, given that none of those constitute even minor holidays like MLK Day, Veterans Day, and Juneteenth. Removing non-fee days such as Great American Outdoors Day would make sense from a financial standpoint, especially given Trump’s addition of President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday and the Fourth of July, which make more sense anyway, given all that Roosevelt did for the national parks and the major status of Independence Day in terms of anything governmental in the United States.

The president’s fiddling with the fee-free days at national parks goes to show that the questionable ideologically-based rationale of holiday-creation may seem to go seamlessly along with more legitimate, and credible from a national standpoint, rationales. So, the interlarding of the former can easily go unnoticed and only objected to after too many holidays have been added to the calendar. That conservatives were joining in the game of ideological holiday taking-and-giving has effectively relativized, or flagged, what the progressive had been doing in creating new national holidays and even in trying to outlaw Christmas, a national holiday, be castigating any mention of that major public holiday by name.

The addition of a counter-force could thus be efficacious if the objective is to sever holiday-construction from the tool-kit of partisan ideology. That politicalizing had already gone too far with neither realization from the public at large nor any self-restraint by the expansionist ideologues themselves is itself a problem worthy of notice and correction. Successfully adding or ending a national holiday should receive the consent of the vast (super) majority of Americans at the very least, including both of their major political parties rather than just one with a minority of the other. Opposing partisan ideologies can be fought over on the campaign trail and at the ballot box rather than by using holidays, which, incidentally, can serve as respites from all the political turmoil. Treating holidays as political means rather than as ends in themselves, including what they stand for, has gone virtually unnoticed by Americans and their elected representatives. This takes a gradual and subtle yet important toll on the very notion of a public, official holiday, such that even the major holidays are subject to attack for ideological purposes. It is important to realize that any ideology is partial rather than wholistic because some values are emphasized more than others.

The guts that it took to risk treason by declaring British colonies to be sovereign countries, and President Lincoln’s benevolent declaration of one day to give thanks came under attack in the early twenty-first century because American history is not salubrious with respect to American Blacks and Indians, and counter-holidays, partisan in nature, were created, whether public or private holidays (as if the two were the same).  As a result, nearly every national holiday could be viewed as being valid only for people of a certain ideology on one side or the other, rather than as what a public or national holiday should be. The vacuous, ideological expression in “wishing” someone, “Happy holidays” is just one symptom of the underlying societal illness. Such a “greeting” fits with Nietzsche’s point that modern morality has been wielded like a club under the subterfuge of good-will. In other words, “Happy holidays” contains a virulent “Thou shalt not!”  Unfortunately, the very notion of an official national holiday has become collateral damage for a people grown wary of too much ideological push. Is there any respite? At one time, holidays afforded such a rest. Put simply, spending weeks arguing directly or by verbal passive-aggression about a galvanized holiday is counter-productive from the standpoint of enjoying a day off work to relax and have fun. The tyranny of an ideological minority can be just as bad as that of the majority; holidays—July 4^th at the very least, should be tyranny-free.

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1. Pocharapon Neammanee, “Trump’s Birthday Added to National Park Free-Entry Days After Dropping MLK Day and Juneteenth,” The Huffington Post, December 6, 2025.
2. Ibid.