Damn you, Nietzsche!

Nietzsche, Germany's answer to the Cupie Doll

Friedrich Nietzsche (Editor's note: Oh, no. Here we go again.): proper noun. 1. German philologist and existential philosopher. 2. Iconoclastic figure of the late 19th century. 3. One of the most improperly cited sources for supporting the eugenic and Nazi movements. 4. Rumored to have died from syphilis. 5. Though he was the bees knees.

Nietzsche is not the focus of this blog, though he is important, because it was Nietzsche who introduced me to the idea of physis, or fusis, which is a Greek term meaning "the nature of things," and this term is generally applied to the inanimate.













Nietzsche used the physis model, (which was more or less described to me by a student of Derrida's as a bell curve) to speak of the natural course of cultures, and he said that every culture invariably starts at a low point, rises up, reaches its peak, and then declines sharply and comes to a degrading lull. In various texts, Nietzsche said this is what happened to the Greeks and was currently happening to the German peoples of the late 1900s. And I'm sure many democrats think this is what Bush has done to America (Editor's note: I agree).

But personal physis is something I'd like to talk about, as it is something many people overlook as they trudge through their life routing. There are events which we may skim over in our personal affairs that embody the nature of physis, and it is time to acknowledge those moments of physis and value them, for they were not entirely bad. They started out arbitrarily, eventually rose with promise, reached a climactic peak, and then crashed and burned like the Hindenburg.

When speaking of physis-personal or culture-it's important to remember three things: 1) the peak is so blissful that anyone in their right mind would want to prolong it, however attempting to prolong a failed personal affair or culture may make it sink faster; 2) the fall is devastating; and 3) the lull after the fall is often lower than the Point 0 at the beginning, because it is only after that you know the peak and lose it that you truly understand what you have lost.

This could happen in any area of life. And probably for most of us, it has happened in a romantic relationship. You meet somebody in passing, think nothing of it (point 0). You develop a friendship, find common interests (rising, rising). You notice an attraction (Going up, please). You act on the attraction (Up, up, and away). You commit and fall in love, and everything seems to be going just fine.

(Editor's note: But, as Nietzsche and the Greeks well know, "just fine" never lasts "just long enough.")

And then, like an explosion in the fuselage, the whole shebang comes crashing down, and while you slide down the tail end of the physis model, you ask yourself, "What could I have done to prolong that feeling of ecstasy, that jubilation that bliss, that wholeness of feeling loved?" And the answer is, "You couldn't have done nothing, Jack."

Because that's how life works. Sometimes you get shat on, and sometimes you do the shatting. But most often, it feels like you've been shat on 100 times more than you've shat on others, doesn't it?

Tom Petty said, "The waiting is the hardest part." But he was wrong. I, and anybody whose written 200 pages of a novel and then couldn't figure out how to tie everything together, know that the end is the hardest part, because you know what you had and you know what you lost and if you're at all interested in learning from your mistakes, you blame yourself for what happened and ask, "What can I do differently in the future?"

But there is hope, because Nietzsche never said the physis model can't repeat itself, it just can't reverse itself. (Editor's note: in fact Nietzsche loved the idea of eternally repeating everything you've done over and over) And maybe you haven't even reached the peak yet, maybe you're still working your way up there, and maybe, just maybe, you'll find somebody who makes you feel twice as alive as that other person did. It may be hard to believe right now, but it's possible.