Today my topic for you is the 4th chapter of Beyond Good and Evil. This Chapter contains nearly two hundred quotes from Nietzsche about the essential truths in life. Many of these truths I have learnt the hard way and speak deeply to me. I will now relay to you six of these truths to you so that you too may also become greater.
1. “I did that says my memory. I could not have done that says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually – the memory yields.”
This quote about Nietzsche is true. Our memory, just like our history, is written by the victor. The victor is always the one who has experienced the pride of victory. Our deepest and most powerful drives are prideful, and over time they bear down onto our memory until we remember things as we want to.
The practical lesson Nietzsche gives us here is that your pride should be directed at your most important goals and aims. He who controls the past controls the future, and so by having pride in the correct things you bring your future into existence.
2. “Sympathy for all – would be harshness and tyranny for thee, my good neighbour.”
Nietzsche informs us here that having sympathy for those who do not uplift you in any way is a poison. If you had sympathy for mosquitoes, you would be riddled with mosquito bites. If you have sympathy for the poor, miserable, ugly, and alien, then you allow them to impose their worst traits upon you.
All of us here should have sympathy only for those that uplift us. That is moral, appropriate, and in the best interests of us and our children.
3. “What? A great man? I always see merely the play-actor of his own ideal.”
Nietzsche speaks a deep truth here. All great men are acting, they are not one-dimensional conquerors, machines, or always correct geniuses. Humans are deep and complicated, much more than we give ourselves credit. To be great is to display the qualities we are proud of to others, like an actor on a stage.
All greatness is acting, and so we should act as we intend to be. This is how we climb the mountain of greatness.
4. “A discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the animalization of God.”
Nietzsche tells us that God acts through us and our feelings. As humans our ability to enact our will onto our environment is unmatched. Our perspicacity, our greatness, our domination is unmatched. Our ability to create advanced technology, mathematics, physics, and medicine is literally magical.
Therefore, we can be regarded as the animalization of God. The message here from Nietzsche is to be proud, and to trust our deep instincts as the base instincts of God himself.
5. “The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed; he extenuates and maligns it.”
Nietzsche is telling us a truth that I learnt some years ago. The difference between a criminal and a great man is belief in his own deeds. Who is a successful conman? Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs launched and sold a computer and a computer company to Apple for billions of dollars. He did not have an operating system or hardware for it.
Why is he not in jail? Because he believed in his deed, in his greatness, and he directed Apple’s resources into paying for the operating software and hardware needed. He provided the vision, direction, and leadership. The truth is that conmen like Bernie Madoff or Elizabeth Holmes do not believe in themselves and malign their own deeds. They are guilty and treat themselves as criminals, and thus their unconscious desire comes true.
The lesson for us it to always act with greatness, and to believe in our destiny. We must never consider ourselves criminals, but instead as great men. Others will consider us what we consider ourselves.
6. “The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptize our badness as the best in us.”
Nietzsche is telling us the importance of narrative framing in our lives, and our own history. When I think of huge epoch changes in my life, I characterize it as believing in my ambition.
What I might have once considered bad, I now consider good. While my core personality and habits are set in stone, the act of rebaptizing the bad into the good has represented every epoch change in my life, and likely yours too.
This is why our Nietzsche’s message is so important. When we think about our values and morals and rebaptize the pursuit of greatness as the best of us, then we open up a new epoch in our lives. The epoch of greatness!
Thus, I hope that Nietzsche’s wisdom spoke to you, and that you will use these concepts and ideas to ascend higher.