On the Theater of Violence

I have observed that there is some popularity in producing theater that emphasizes negative aspects of the human condition. And yes, that was an intentionally obvious statement.

I find that often, such theater is enjoyable, humorous, or enlightening. It creates a positive result out of something negative--we'll call it the 'badness'--it might mock the badness until we can laugh at it, or perhaps it hyperbolizes the badness in a comical way. The audience may go away thinking this badness is ludicrous and laughable in addition to being bad. This is a positive result because it lets people cope with the badness.

Perhaps it satirizes the badness. Or perhaps it shows a particular badness in all its horrifying details in hopes of shocking the audience into questioning themselves about it. The hope being that audience members might avoid that badness in the future, might ask new questions that might lead to a better life. Again, a positive result.

But this note is called "On the Theater of Destruction," and so I must now define Theater of Destruction as any piece of theater that creates an overall negative effect. If at this point you're asking, 'what kind of theater creates an overall negative effect?' I'll give an example: A play that, in essence, is saying that life is shitty.

There seems to be a common error in some thinking where people equate life being difficult to life being shitty. Difficult does NOT equal shitty. I can agree that life is difficult, but I will never agree that life is shitty. In fact I will vehemently oppose anyone who makes such a vile and, in my opinion, grotesque declaration. And my big question when I go to a play that tells me that life is shitty is--why on earth would anyone put on a play about this? Why would anyone PAY to see a show like this? Why would anyone expect other people to pay to be told that life sucks???

It is destructive to tell people that life is awful: that life is, in itself, a 'badness' both overwhelming and inescapable (except, in some cases, through death).

It is infuriating to go to a show and come away with nothing but "life is difficult and therefore it sucks," or to go to a show and be told that "people are animals [in a base and disgusting way]." It is not only a waste of my time it is an ASSAULT upon my consciousness. And the only conclusion I can draw (since I assume that the director, actors, and playwright are not actually suicidal) is that the creators of the show are doing it to be controversial or something. As if it were bold or brave to say that life sucks. As if it were taboo territory or an experimental horizon of theater to be explored.

It's not taboo territory. And it's not bold or brave. It's just a meaningless violence committed against your audience.

And I can only speak for myself, but I wouldn't want that on my conscience.

Icons - Final Round

I don't want to say anything specific about what round three of Icons entailed, since this is a public blog and part of the strength of round three is that it takes you by surprise.

I didn't know what it was going into it and I'm so glad I didn't. As it was, it was one of the most engaging, demanding, and fun exercises I've done all year.

I'm going to write simply that sometimes you have experiences with acting that remind you of why you fell in love with it to begin with. Today was one such day for me.

To describe this feeling, simply because I don't want to forget it: it was like without having to think at all I embodied the text and communicated it with ease and passion. I connected to the words effortlessly--it was in my body and in my voice and every move I made was made on natural impulse. Emotion wasn't summoned--it just flowed through me--another result of my simple committal to getting my point across.

Anyway. It felt great. And I know it was compelling. Today was a good day.

Perspectivism

I'm posting my essay on Nietzsche's theory of perspectivism for anyone who's interested.

I myself don't know that I can fully endorse everything that Nietzsche says, but I do think that his concept of human nature is one of the most interesting, cohesive, and coherent views I have ever heard of. And I think even if one doesn't fully buy into the sort of ultimate statements Nietzsche makes about human nature and reality and stuff, there are still a lot of really important things to take away from his writing and incorporate into your own personal philosophy. His thoughts on the will to power are not only fascinating but highly useful ideas in understanding how people (including yourself) work. And I think his whole view of individualism is a pretty healthy and life-affirming take on what it means to live a meaningful life.

Anyway: Perspectivism.

Nietzsche’s Perspectivism and the Freedom to Risk Everything

Nietzsche is not known for being direct and to the point, but there is a method to his madness. His philosophy of perspectivism is never explicitly detailed but it can be discerned, and though it often seems to contradict itself it actually makes a circular sort of sense; it is arguably no more or less circular than the standard Lockean view of reality, which maintains that there is an external reality and that we have access to and can gain veridical information about that reality through experience. Nietzsche diverges from Locke by supporting a standard monist view of reality, where there is no separation of self from reality, and therefore there is no singular “truth” of reality that can be accessed. In Nietzsche’s view, experience does define our perception of reality, but as Nietzsche points out that experience itself is necessarily conceptualized, and therefore our individual experience is all there is to go on. As he says in section 36 of Beyond Good and Evil, “Suppose nothing else were ‘given’ as real except our world of desires and passions, and we could not get down, or up, to any other ‘reality’ besides the reality of our drives,” (237). There is literally no distinction between empirical perception and reality; they are one and the same. But that is only the groundwork for Nietzsche’s perspectivism. There are a couple possible problems or seeming contradictions that arise with Nietzsche’s perspectivism which might cause one to doubt its credibility, but I argue that there are solutions that make it believable.

One such potential problem is raised early on when Nietzsche denies the necessary validity or superiority of truth. It is important to note, in this case, that what Nietzsche is doing is not saying “no statements are true” or “all statements are false,” which would clearly be a paradoxical thing to assert (if the statement “no statements are true” is true, then it is false). Importantly, such a statement still confines itself to vocabulary and assessments based on the existence of truth and falsity. What Nietzsche is really doing is throwing into question the entire valuation of truth vs. falsity as an example of questioning the popular perspective. Rather than assert that all truth is actually false (which is where the paradox would lie), Nietzsche simply suggests that there might be alternatives to the standard “faith in opposite values,” that ideologies such as truth vs. falsity and good vs. evil might be rendered meaningless in a perspective that eschewed them, and therein lies the logic behind the title of Beyond Good and Evil (200). So can perspectivism be believed? If you accept what it rests upon: the theory that not only our reality but our entire evaluative system is a matter of personal faith and perspective, then it becomes very difficult not to believe its validity. After all, the very concept of validity vs. invalidity implies an evaluative system: an evaluative system which is entirely subjective and therefore not an effective rationale for definitively disproving or disbelieving in perspectivism. Therefore perspectivism is at least as believable as standard realism, which contends (as an equally faith-based foundation) that there is an external world and that therefore our evaluative system might not be subjective.

To return though, to the core of perspectivism: If every individual’s experience of reality is different, and if there is no external reality or separation between reality and individual experience, then the logical conclusion is that each person’s reality is different. If each person’s reality is different because of their concepts then it follows that an individual should be able to alter their own world by altering their concepts. In fact, by altering one’s own concepts one should be able to alter one’s world to be optimal: specifically defined in such a way that is ideal. In essence, this is the core tenet of Nietzsches’s perspectivism: If you are strong enough you may undertake the overthrow of popular norms or dogmas in search of a perspective that is specialized to your own needs, and thus is comprehensively life-affirming and allows you to “discharge your strength” in a way that the popular dogmas never could (since they are not tailored specifically to you). The “will to power” is what Nietzsche observes as the explanation of “our entire instinctive life,” to exert control over ourselves and others and so discharge our strength (238). This is the valuation Nietzsche argues (I think, persuasively) that should be used in assessing a particular perspective, for what could be a better measurement of quality than the measurement of how well it embraces and encourages your life and your “will to power.”

Thus, the creation of one’s world is the core of perspectivism. Nietzsche argues though, that to do so is certainly not easy; in fact it is dauntingly difficult and dangerous. In section 1 of Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche writes “for it does involve a risk, and perhaps there is none that is greater,” (199). This is because as a necessary precursor to creating one’s own perspective, Nietzsche argues that one must first reject the predominant dogmas or beliefs of the current widely held perspective. Clearly, the current popular perspective works to some degree, since not everyone kills themselves right away. There are certain life-affirming components to the popular perspective that help us operate from day to day. In section 121 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche writes, “We have fixed up a world for ourselves in which we can live—assuming bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content: without these articles of faith, nobody now would endure life,” (171). So as you begin to reject certain dogmas of the popular perspective, you risk getting rid of something life-affirming with nothing to replace it, and thus place yourself at a sort of psychological peril, and thus a more complex picture of perspectivism begins to develop. The core tenet of perspectivism, as stated above, is to attempt to create a perfect perspective of reality for oneself, but there is no safe way to do so and in fact the very process must begin with dangerous experiments in the rejection of popular dogmas—dangerous because to do so automatically places one’s psychological struggles “so far from the comprehension of men that they neither feel it nor sympathize,” (232). Yet this is the task of the “free spirit,” who has not yet created his own perspective, but must as a necessary precursor experiment with liberating himself from certain aspects of the popular perspective.

The free spirit is a person who eschews the dogmas of the popular perspective, and is thus free from those dogmas. However it is not quite that simple. As Nietzsche points out, most accepted dogmas are on some level interrelated and interdependent. For example, dogmas of truth vs. lies, good vs. evil, commonly accepted social morality, and the concept of free will and accountability are all meshed together. The idea that there is truth justifies that there could be a higher good and a corresponding set of “wrong” actions (evil), which in turn justifies commonly accepted social morals, ethics, and norms, while the concept of free will means that people are responsible for their actions and can choose between right and wrong, and therefore can be punished if they choose wrong. Everything connects. Therefore, the free spirit is faced with a difficult quandary. The free spirit cannot deny all dogmas at once, for the free spirit is not yet capable of forming a new perspective, and cannot live without perspective because as stated earlier all of reality is perspective. Attempting to reject all dogmas—or attempting to live with some sort of dogma-free perspective—would simply not provide for any comprehension of the world, and thus would inevitably result in the free spirit collapsing back into the popular perspective in order to function. But without denying all dogmas, how can the free spirit deny even one, when they are all interdependent and give rise to each other? This is one of the possible internal contradictions of perspectivism, and one reason it might be argued that it is not a cohesive or coherent philosophy: If the core tenet of perspectivism relies on one’s ability to break from popular dogmas to create one’s own perspective but there is no sustainable way of breaking from the popular dogmas, it is a self-refuting philosophy. But in fact, while it might not be possible for a free spirit to reject all dogmas at once, and it might not be possible to reject one or two dogmas for any extended period of time without them all falling back into place, it is possible for a free spirit to reject a few dogmas at a time while changing frequently. With enough willpower, a free spirit may be able to consciously accept some dogmas and deny others for a moment and so on from moment to moment and day to day. In this way, a free spirit may experiment with rejecting dogmas and perhaps reject all of them in time, but never all at once (at least until ready to forge a new perspective as a philosopher of the future). In this way, they free themselves from certain dogmas of the popular perspective through self-experimentation.

The concept of self-experimentation is important because there is no other way to create a new perspective. You cannot describe a new perspective to yourself, or think in the hypothetical, for as long as you operate with the terminology and psychology of your current perspective you cannot possibly escape that same perspective. The only way to discover a new perspective is to adopt it fully, to live it. Nietzsche says in section 41 of Beyond Good and Evil, “One should not dodge one’s tests, though they may be the most dangerous game one could play and are tests that are taken in the end before no witness or judge but ourselves,” (241-242). For these same reasons, Nietzsche felt it was futile to communicate a new perspective to a person (since they would only be able to misunderstand it as long as they remained within their own perspective). And this is one reason why Nietzsche never explicitly details his argument with any direct specificity. Nietzsche is conflicted because he himself is describing a phenomenon that he clearly hopes may guide people to a new perspective, but by the very nature of perspectivism one cannot guide someone to a new perspective. They must discover it for themselves. So Nietzsche attempts to point to the path without describing the destination too precisely, thinking that this is the most he can do to inspire people to experiment. This goes so far as to explain why Nietzsche does not attempt to present a fully developed alternative perspective of his own, but his reasons for writing in such an arcane manner go even further than that. In section 40 of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche illuminates why he does not even clearly define the nature of perspectivism itself. He states, “Whatever is profound loves masks; what is most profound even hates image and parable. Might not nothing less than the opposite be the proper disguise for the shame of a god? …Every profound spirit needs a mask,” (240-241). In this section, Nietzsche seems to imply that as a bearer of profound thoughts it is a natural necessity that he cover up his true meaning with ‘a mask,’ with ‘cunning’ and even with apparent contradictions and opposite meanings in order to “guard something precious and vulnerable,” (241). Nietzsche must have had a desire that only those truly devoted to understanding his work would ever be able to pierce the veil, while casual readers or those who might skim his work without any real commitment would only ever misunderstand him and collect superficial and inaccurate meanings.

It is a difficult thing to describe the potential for radically altering all the things one naturally holds to be true in the world without also offering up clear, concrete alternatives; but indeed this seems to be a great deal of what Nietzsche is trying to do in Beyond Good and Evil. His philosophy of perspectivism is at first difficult to wrap your head around simply because much of it relies on the fact that the way we currently define things may not be the only way or the correct way according to any external objective assessment, which Nietzsche argues is nonexistent, and a matter of faith. Nonetheless, perspectivism is coherent and cohesive when one resists judging it according to the dogmatic truths it seeks to reject. It may be a dangerous endeavor to reject the popular perspective, but the possibility of somehow redefining your own perspective in alignment with your individual needs and natural behaviors is undeniably exciting. And arguably, that’s exactly the feeling Nietzsche wanted to instill.

Works Cited

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Walter Arnold. Kaufmann. Basic Writings of Nietzsche. New York: Modern Library, 2000. Print.