dChan
Anonymous ID: 798ccc Jan. 30, 2019, 6:57 a.m. No.4963730   🗄️.is đź”—kun

  1. When we hate on others who threaten us in some way (e.g. another religion, someone who has power over us), if left unchecked, we are at risk of becoming as bad or even worse (than we take them to be). The very process of prolonged hating produces entrenched hate. For example, if I hate my corporate colleagues because they’re ruthless, I might respond with even more ruthlessness (lying, manipulating and backstabbing everyone even more), while absorbed in denial or some other self-deception. I end up becoming even worse than those I condemned. Some might call this scenario “Karma” or a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” To avoid this fate, I simply need to admit to myself the shadowy (in a Jungian sense) things I don’t like about myself (e.g. I may feel powerless, inferior, insecure or overly threatened in general), and then work hard to prosocially improve. I think Nietzsche’s point was formed for far more sinister actions though, such as justifying killing enemies through mental manipulation (“They are evil, we are good”).

 

  1. These monster producing “abysses” (plural, signifying anything we suppress in order to avoid cognitive dissonance) requires some pretty scary self-reflection in order to be tamed and exterminated. Fortunately, the scary thoughts (e.g. a momentary wish for the death of a loved one) need not be taken personally or internalized in any way. Those frightening thoughts/feelings/impulses are just part of the human condition, and do not, in most cases, indicate who we are as a person or some awful thing we’ll do in the future. Just the other day I was my parents house looking at all the cool stuff I’d get when they die. But that doesn’t mean I want them to, at least in any prolonged way. It’s like an urge to grab someone else’s steak upon entering a restaurant famished. Self-examination reveals we’re still the good person we were before conscious reflection of the monsters in us. Better, in fact, because as we become less phobic of the entirety of our inner experience, we feel more, stick our foot in our mouths less often, and way more open to connecting with cool people who don’t think, look or talk like us (the fear of the other, tribalism).

 

The warning is clear: the more we suppress what we can’t stand about ourselves, the greater the odds of becoming relatively monstrous—an arse-hole on one end of the spectrum and a killer on the other.

 

  1. Let us be forewarned, gazing into our abyss fears leads inexorably to the existential issues (meaninglessness, freedom, death, isolation), and if were not careful, if we dwell on them too long and get stuck there, we can become a real killjoy (e.g. imagine starting off a cocktail party conversation about the inextricable insignificance embedded in our existence).