What I am about to say does not concern the ordinary man of our day. On the contrary, I have in mind the man who finds himself involved in today’s world, even at its most problematic and paroxysimal points; yet he does not belong inwardly to such a world, nor will he give in to it. He feels himself, in essence, as belonging to a different race from that of the overwhelming majority of his contemporaries. ~ Julius Evola.

Monday 31 March 2014

Friedrich Nietzsche - A Lack of Noble Manners




On the lack of noble manners. 
-- Soldiers and their leaders have always a far better relationship with one another than workers and their employers. So far at least, culture that rests on a military foundation still stands high above all so called industrial civilisation; the latter, in its present form, is in general the meanest mode of existence that has ever been. It is simply the law of necessity that operates here: people want to live, and have to sell themselves; but they despise him who exploits their necessity and purchases the worker. It is curious that the subjection to powerful, fear inspiring, and even dreadful individuals, to tyrants and leaders of armies, is not at all felt so painfully as the subjection to such undistinguished and uninteresting persons as the captains of industry; in the employer the worker usually sees merely a crafty, blood sucking dog of a man who speculates on all misery and the employers name, form, character, and reputation are altogether indifferent to them. It is probable that the manufacturers and great magnates of commerce have hitherto lacked too much all those forms and attributes of a superior kind, which alone make persons interesting; if they had had the nobility of the nobly born in their looks and bearing, there would perhaps have been no socialism in the masses of the people. For these are really ready for slavery of every kind, provided that the superior class above them constantly shows itself legitimately superior, and born to command by its noble presence! The commonest man feels that nobility is not to be improvised, and that it is his part to honour it as the fruit of long periods of time. But the absence of the higher presence, and the notorious vulgarity of manufacturers with ruddy, fat hands, gives him the idea that only accident and luck has elevated the one above the other. Well then so he reasons with himself - let us try accident and luck! Our turn to throw the dice! And thus socialism is born. 

~ The Gay Science, BK. 1, 40.

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