Who has more obedience than I masters me [Emerson]
Exercising power is violence against the weaker? That’s what most people think. But also Devotion, also obedience is an expression of power. Only those who can joyfully surrender to the power of another can also uninhibitedly enjoy the surrender of others without resentment. Not only exploit its superiority, also devotion is an expression of power. It is useful to look up the etymology of terms like power. Often, the original meanings contain less pejoratives than in the prevailing meaning today.
Read also:
The will to might is also a will to truth
Imitation is suicide
The term power covers a very wide range of meanings. You can exercise power in different ways. Your exercise of your power may seem unjust to others, ruthless, mean, brutal and also devotion is an expression of your might. Every action of yours is an expression of power.
There is only one criterion that determines the difference between power and powerlessness. This criterion is the answer to the question of whether your actions are in accordance with your nature or whether you do something because it is done that way, because it conforms to the prevailing morality, or because you imitate others instead of realizing yourself. It is crucial to understand that surrender, obedience or devotion is not a problem at all as long as it is what you really want to do.
Imitation, on the other hand, is suicide. This sentence comes from the leading American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. American Transcendentalism was the original development of ancient Greek Cynicism and German Romanticism. Emerson’s texts are of great value to us Cynics.
That what is true for you ….
Today, such meaningless weakening sentences are common, like: “That may be true for you, I see it differently”. But such a weakening statement does not correspond to cynism, romanticism, or American trancendentalism.
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in private heart is true for all men.
Emerson, about Self-reliance
If you speak this truth too loudly today, you risk being labeled a megalomaniac, a narcissist in desperate need of therapy. But have you ever heard of great thinkers, Heraclitus, Socrates, Diogenes, Jesus, Nietzsche or Foucault, that they say something like that, that they just cautiously say something that would only be valid for themselves, while it could be completely different for others? Full self-realization does not stop “at the freedom of the other,” as liberals regularly pray. It is infinite, it has the claim to move mountains.
Those who humble themselves will be exalted.
When Socrates was sentenced to death, he submitted to the sentence. He did not do so because it was expected of him. On the contrary, not only his friends, but also the representatives of the state who had sentenced him, would have preferred him to flee. But Socrates wanted to obey the sentence. It was his will to might that determined his actions.
At the Last Supper, Jesus commanded his followers to imagine eating him. This was exactly what Jesus wanted to happen.
And he humbled himself before his disciples and washed their feet because he wanted to experience that very humiliation. Jesus knew and practiced for himself what Peter, for example, had not understood.
“For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” He had tried to teach this his students. But they had not understood. They had not understood that self-abasement makes one strong, that devotion is also an expression of power.
Such empowering self-humiliation can be powerful in very different ways in very different situations. One of the few bosses in my life whom I really had a lasting admiration for, the lawyer and head of a correctional institution, was Dr. Rotthaus, who is still well-known today, long after his death. He helped me into my coat, I was just 18, after a conversation that was very important to me. I was ashamed. Because actually only men helped women into the coat and younger older ones. But he insisted. And this gesture had made us both stronger, somehow.
During my first divorce, I had become somewhat friendly with my lawyer. We would sometimes meet for a beer. But I could never ask him, “Shall we have a beer together tonight?” Because his whole daily routine, including the evenings, was determined by his secretary, whom he obeyed completely. He had only made her understand that I was now a friend. And she decided when her boss could meet his friend. Because the lawyer was also politically active and often had important appointments in the evening hours.
The boss obeys his employee? That was very confusing for me at the time. Shouldn’t he be the one giving the orders? Without giving it much thought, we hand over our lives every time to the cab driver we sit down in. The pilot of the plane that is supposed to take us on vacation could also crash it into the sea, driven by suicidal thoughts.
To obey others, to submit to others, to give oneself in life and death, to serve others: all this, we are led to believe, is the spirit of submission. But this is not true. The underling, that is, the last man, the slave of Christian slave morality, is precisely unable to obey. He does not want to be ordered by anyone.
Power also in erotic submission
As a therapist and fascilitator in Encounter groups, I have met people who took great pleasure in sexual submission. Often they felt ashamed and some hoped that I could free them from this pleasure. But they all felt happy, strong, powerful and free during such erotic adventures. And instead of trying to drive out their pleasure in submission, I regularly encouraged them to practice enjoying erotic dominance as well. This was not difficult for most of them. Because regularly people who find submission, punishment, extreme humiliation, etc. arousing are very power-conscious people, used to being in control of others.
Both, active exercise of power and passive suffering of power, are related poles that dynamically reinforce each other and lead to more power. Only those who can enjoy extreme humiliation are capable of exercising extreme power over others. Ruthless dominance is an expression of power. Just as devotion is an expression of the same power.
Build your Cities on Vesuvius
Nietzsche’s call to live dangerously, to build one’s cities against Vesuvius, is not a call to empty adventure out of boredom. It is an affirmation of the divine power of nature. It is said that the Lisbon earthquake triggered worldwide atheism. The supposedly so God-fearing people of the Portuguese, had nevertheless just, on All Saints’ Day, remembered the dead, as it was traditional Christian duty.
That God sent so many to death on such a day could only mean that there is no God at all. And such serves the last people as a proof that nature is not good, that one must not submit to God, that one must invent an ethics which distinguishes between good and evil beyond God. In reality, the reaction of the world to this earthquake, did not cause atheism, but only showed it. Nietzsche’s will to might, however, is beyond good and evil, understood as the morality of the godless, who blather about the naturalistic fallacy. Loving devotion to the strongest is an extreme expression of power. You lose the fear of death, you become invincible.
Read also:
