Fair call. Cheers.

It’s not just Deleuze who reads will to power this way. Most postmodern interpretations of it emphasize that power is not under the control of the will , because the will want have any control over itself. It is splintered into competing drives.
The self-actualization of the will , which is tied to Hegelian dialectics, is a form of moralism that Nietzsche critiques.Creativity for Nietzsche is more about celebrating what thwarts our will than about willing what we want. — Joshs

I think the will he's referring to is Schopenhauerian. It's not a personal will. It's the animating force of the universe.

We might perceive it as instinct to survive and thrive.
Does this accord with postmodern interpretations?

Sounds like communism to many and will be resisted bitterly, even if it means a collective suicide. — Tom Storm

You could argue that the left shows its instinct for autocracy in a crisis. And so mutates into an autocratic regime engineering permanent crisis (as Orwell diagnosed). Then the right understands that crisis is the opportunity for wealth transfers. So it is always sniffing around waiting for a crisis to milk.

Climate change is a little too big for either cynical ploy. But here in NZ, we did have bitter experience of a textbook neoliberal response to carbon reduction.

Rather than an honest carbon tax, we created a tradeable carbon market - open to the world. We said let folk buy carbon credits so that those who could easily decarbonise could profit, and those who would struggle to decarbonise could pay an appropriate tax that would eventually force the required change.

It sounded textbook market logic. A model of equality where each would contribute according to their needs for the benefits of all.

But of course, secretly, it was a local rort that became swept up into a global rort. Disaster capitalism at its finest.

The NZ government effectively socialised the nation’s forestry. It just so happened that the mid-1990s saw high log prices and there was a gold rush to plant pines. This created a “wall of wood” that would have to be harvested in 25 years time. But right at that moment when the Emissions Trading Scheme was being set up, the government could bank all the plantation as a carbon credit profit.

This meant NZ could get away doing nothing substantive - and in fact increase its carbon production through a period of fast growth - while also being about the greenest nation in the world … according to the shonky accounting of thr Kyoto Protocol emission trading deal that it helped sell to the world.

The people involved the best of intentions. I’ve met most of them. Decent chaps committed to green politics.

But they hoped for the best with the wall of wood dodge. That was only meant to be an up front sweetener to get it past the voters. Eventually the screws were meant to be tightened.

But then along comes the rest of the world, pulling off the even bigger rort of fake carbon forest with their fake carbon credits that could extract big Euros from the EU version of the ETS. Their bad credits then washed into the NZ system and NZ polluters could arbitrage those to generate a domestic profit. They could bank the NZ credits, which were at least real forest, and pay their debts with the fake Polish and Russian ones.

Our worst polluting industries - the ones the whole scheme was meant to be pressuring - were actually having to report embarrassing annual profit figures. They were being paid a free dividend on their climate offences.

This would have been a huge political scandal - if the public could have understood what was going on.

So a bit of a diversion from the OP. But it illustrates that we do know how to design moral systems.

NZ is in fact world class - another Singapore or Finland - when it comes to effective public policy to deal with health, education, pandemics, trade, whatever. But climate change is another order of magnitude entirely when it comes to the scope of the problem in question.

Dig into the “morality” of the current responses - left or right - and it is all a mess ripe for cynical exploitation.

Don’t get me started on blue hydrogen or the other new rorts becoming the latest policy responses.

[Oh yeah, I meant to add the NZ greens have morphed into our hard left political party now. More focused on social justice and intent on removing its leader - our climate change minister - as he lacks wokeness and is too much a technocrat trying to fix things as we shift to some actual carbon tax, and force our farmers finally to take their hit on methane … and even find some way to stop foreign carbon farmers from turning all our productive land into a fresh round of international carbon credit rorting - the next step where NZ doesn’t even get to claim the profits!]

We might perceive it as instinct to survive and thrive.
Does this accord with postmodern interpretations? — Tate

It’s more like a tension or difference between drives than any single drive. Not what puts us on a specific trajectory but an impetus which alway derails and resituates
our direction. Drives aim to exhaust themselves. “Physiologists should think twice before positioning the drive for self preservation as the cardinal drive of an organic being. Above all, a living thing wants to discharge its strength – life itself is will to power.”(BGE)

The way you’re putting it turns it into a form of self-consistency or self-continuity. For Nietzsche it is about self-transformation , not survival. If it is a thriving , it is not cumulative addition to a valuative theme, but a continual change of direction of value and meaning.

This thread is not going well. — Banno

Time for the wombat shuffle. Turn back to the dark and block the tunnel with your arse. :lol:

I think the will he's referring to is Schopenhauerian. It's not a personal will. It's the animating force of the universe. — Tate

Power was always the wrong term for the universal thermodynamic imperative. The Cosmos is about the will to entropify.

The dialectic is then that it must have negentropic structure to achieve that. So power becomes the ability to do that work - construct the engines of dissipation.

Or at least that is how ecology and systems science now understands the general situation.

For Nietzsche it is about self-transformation , not survival. If it is a thriving , it is not cumulative addition to a valuative theme, but a continual change of direction of value and meaning. — Joshs

I really disagree with this. For Nietzsche, value and meaning are always mythological, no matter where you are in terms of actualization.

The way you’re putting it turns it into a form of self-consistency or self-continuity. — Joshs

I don't even know what that means. My concern is about pesticide use in my neighborhood which has wiped out the local frogs. I like the sound of the frogs, so it distresses me.

I think my neighbors were simply driven by something like the will to power: a blind will live. In the same way a tree turns dirt and water into wood, we spray chemicals to eliminate annoying bugs: to transform the environment unto our own needs.

Is this not correctly called the will to power?

Exporting buttloads of coal, as your country does, supports the formation of your community in far reaching ways. So I guess that's moral? — Tate

And that's actually a great example in support of my argument. As I said, the community is engaged in a conversation about what is right or moral. And some of us, as part of that community, protest and take direct action against industry and government - American military bases on Australian soil, the coal industry, environmental destruction by corporations. None of these issues can be solved by one guy's will to power as per your OP. Only communities can change the behavior of communities.

NZ is in fact world class - another Singapore or Finland - when it comes to effective public policy to deal with health, education, pandemics, trade, whatever. But climate change is another order of magnitude entirely when it comes to the scope of the problem in question.

Dig into the “morality” of the current responses - left or right - and it is all a mess ripe for cynical exploitation. — apokrisis

Yep. We need a whole new way of conceptualizing our world, it's not just tinkering with existing systems, or adjusting our priorities. That kind of change takes time we don't have.

An aspect of being a human (self) is to be virtuous (good) and yet we stand apart from the rest of life as being capable of the worst, we can go toe to toe with The Devil himself! Oh well!

We wombats tend more to

Now, where do the commas go?

For Nietzsche it [will to power] is about self-transformation , not survival. — Joshs

:fire:

Power was always the wrong term for the universal thermodynamic imperative. The Cosmos is about the will to entropify.

The dialectic is then that it must have negentropic structure to achieve that. So power becomes the ability to do that work - construct the engines of dissipation.

Or at least that is how ecology and systems science now understands the general situation. — apokrisis

:100:

(i.e local order accelerates global disorder).

We need a whole new way of conceptualizing our world, it's not just tinkering with existing systems, or adjusting our priorities. That kind of change takes time we don't have. — Tom Storm

:yikes:

As I said, the community is engaged in a conversation about what is right or moral. — Tom Storm

That's nice. The exports continue, though. Economic well-being overrides morality. Do you have an argument to the contrary?

Power was always the wrong term for the universal thermodynamic imperative. — apokrisis

The word Schopenhauer used for it is "will.". As phenomenology, it works, though it may seem strange if you're not familiar with S.

Nietzsche's concern with will was driven by Schopenhauer's pessimism.

The dialectic is then that it must have negentropic structure to achieve that. So power becomes the ability to do that work - construct the engines of dissipation. — apokrisis

Do we need to do a deep dive on entropy? Because it's not the universal entity you seem to be suggesting it is.

Note: I changed the title for clarification.

I think my neighbors were simply driven by something like the will to power: a blind will live. In the same way a tree turns dirt and water into wood, we spray chemicals to eliminate annoying bugs: to transform the environment unto our own needs.

Is this not correctly called the will to power? — Tate

I think this is one aspect of the will to power, the drive to assimilate , dominate and achieve mastery over oneself and one’s surroundings. But will to power also implies a constant re-directing of the drive to dominate.

Nietzsche says the essence of life , as will to power , is its “spontaneous, aggressive, expansive, re-interpreting, re-directing and formative forces”.


What does he mean by re-interpeting and re-directing?
“That overpowering and dominating consist of re-interpretation, adjustment, in the process of which their former ‘meaning' [Sinn] and ‘purpose' must necessarily be obscured or completely obliterated.”

“No matter how perfectly you have understood the usefulness of any physiological organ (or legal institution, social custom, political usage, art form or religious rite), you have not yet thereby grasped how it emerged…the whole history of a ‘thing', an organ, a tradition can to this extent be a continuous chain of signs, continually revealing new interpretations and adaptations, the causes of which need not be connected even amongst themselves, but rather sometimes just follow and replace one another at random.

The ‘development' of a thing, a tradition, an organ is therefore certainly not its progressus towards a goal, still less is it a logical progressus, taking the shortest route with least expenditure of energy and cost, – instead it is a succession of more or less profound, more or less mutually independent processes of subjugation exacted on the thing, added to this the resistances encountered every time, the attempted transformations for the purpose of defence and reaction, and the results, too, of successful countermeasures. The form is fluid, the ‘meaning' [Sinn] even more so . . . It is no different inside any individual organism: every time the whole grows appreciably, the ‘meaning' [Sinn] of the individual organs shifts…”

So will to power is a dominating impetus that exhausts itself in assimilating the world to a valuative meaning, thus jumping from one meaning to another without there being a logical connection between the two. It is not about mere preservation or survival but expansion. And the dominant valuative interpretation will to power imposes becomes obscured or obliterated as it expands its dominance.

So if will to power is transforming the world in accord with our needs , it is at the same time having the valuative basis of our needs constantly be obliterated , re-directed, and redefined in ways that don’t allow us to claim some sort of thematic continuity in what we want. This is self-actualization as continual self-obliteration and re-invention.

Or does it temper the will to power, which I interpret as the will to dominate one's environment? — Tate

All of life is a will to power. It does not make sense to interpret this as the will to dominate. The will to power can be seen in the majesty of the mighty oak and the persistence of the weed emerging in the hostile environment of sunbaked concrete.

I'll argue that it's opposed to life and the will to power. — Tate

In the Genealogy the development of Christian morality is the development of the will to power through man's self-overcoming. It is only later that it becomes life denying.

All of life is a will to power. It does not make sense to interpret this as the will to dominate. — Fooloso4

I agree. That's just one fundamental aspect of it. Are you saying morality springs from the same source?

In the Genealogy the development of Christian morality is the development of the will to power through man's self-overcoming. It is only later that it becomes life denying. — Fooloso4

What is self-overcoming exactly?

Are you saying morality springs from the same source? — Tate

Yes.

What is self-overcoming exactly? — Tate

I will let Zarathustra tell us.

And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people:

“I teach you the overman.Human being is something that must be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
All creatures so far created something beyond themselves; and you want to be the ebb of this great flood and would even rather go back to animals than overcome humans?
What is the ape to a human? A laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. And that is precisely what the human shall be to the overman: a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment.
You have made your way from worm to human, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now a human is still more ape than any ape.
But whoever is wisest among you is also just a conflict and a cross between plant and ghost. But do I implore you to become ghosts or plants?
Behold, I teach you the overman!
The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth!

Let me add to that Nietzsche’s linking of traditional morality with intentionality , the willing what one chooses to will, and his critique of this morality. Self-overcoming involves deconstructing the presumed internal unity of willing, intending and valuing.

“Today, when we immoralists, at least, suspect that the decisive value is conferred by what is specifically unintentional about an action, and that all its intentionality, everything about it that can be seen, known, or raised to “conscious awareness,” only belongs to its surface and skin – which, like every skin, reveals something but conceals even more? In short, we believe that the intention is only a sign and symptom that first needs to be interpreted, and that, moreover, it is a sign that means too many things and consequently means almost nothing by itself. We believe that morality in the sense it has had up to now (the morality of intentions) was a prejudice, a precipitousness, perhaps a preliminary, a thing on about the same level as astrology and alchemy, but in any case something that must be overcome. The overcoming of morality – even the self-overcoming of morality, in a certain sense: let this be the name for that long and secret labor which is reserved for the most subtle, genuinely honest, and also the most malicious consciences of the day, who are living touchstones of the soul.”(BGE)

From Being to becoming.

Going back at least to Plato traditional morality has sought a fixed, unmoving point by which to guide us. Movement or change was, and by many still is, regarded as a defect. Fixed truths were beneficial or even necessary. But life is not fixed and unchanging.

Are you saying morality springs from the same source?
— Tate

Yes. — Fooloso4

When there appears to be a conflict between the will to power and morality, say when economic well-being trumps morality, what does this mean? If they have the same source?

Is it that overcoming is needed?

Do we need to do a deep dive on entropy? Because it's not the universal entity you seem to be suggesting it is. — Tate

Cite an exception of a phenomenon that is notvsubject to either informational or thermodynamic or cosmological entropy. :yawn:

The word Schopenhauer used for it is "will.". As phenomenology, it works, though it may seem strange if you're not familiar with S. — Tate

He was right that nature has a universal “striving” - the thermodynamic imperative. Existence is a dissipative structure, a Big Bang tumbling into a heat sink Heat Death of,its own making.

But he then projected the notion that this was suffering, a pessimistic burden, on to what is a neutral fact.

I prefer the optimistic reading of Peirce who characterises the same striving as the Comos evolving through the growth of universal reasonableness. Which is sort of Hegelian also, but Peirce had a proper model of natural structure and so really nailed the best version of the story.

But he then projected the notion that this was suffering, a pessimistic burden, on to what is a neutral fact. — apokrisis

Not exactly. He noted that consciousness is an arc always headed toward satisfaction, which is the death of the will. Consciousness requires unanswered questions, unresolved drama, in short, evil in order to stay awake.

This was possibly something Nietzsche reacted strongly against, not that he didn't recognize the truth of it, he just believed we have to learn to celebrate ourselves in both our good and evil. Or something like that.

Did you see the thread I started on entropy? Your thoughts would be appreciated should you find the time.

Consciousness requires unanswered questions, unresolved drama, in short, evil in order to stay awake. — Tate

But that is just more bad psychology. The view from a world being swept up in the industrial revolution. Folk wondering why coal seemed to have the power to drive humans into a crazy new life of factories and slums, mechanised war, forced education, the slavery of capitalism, etc.

The Enlightenment had its Romantic reaction.

From nature’s point of view, consciousness is really suppose to be about unconscious flow. The flow state of skilled habitual action. The life of the happy villager in tune with the rhythms of the harvest, or the savage on the tropical island - in the romantic telling.

So with fossil fuels as a limitless entropy source becoming coupled to engineering and machinery, suddenly the world to which society had become habituated was being shaken up in ways no one seemed to be able to control or predict. Coal was demanding what it was demanding. Electricity and oil, then even nuclear, all followed.

Psychology aims for flow states. Neither boring nor exciting. Just accomplished and valued. Yet now here was this fossil fuel erupted out of the ground demanding we find ways to fulfil the thermodynamic imperative and burn it in some system of machine-based consumption. We had to have exponential population growth and a mechanically structured civilisation to scale ourselves up to the task nature had apparently just dumped in our lap.

So of course, we get this line of pessimistic and bewildered philosophy that continues through PoMo even today. We get the Romantic reaction that sets itself up against the Enlightenment rational view - because the Enlightenment was the enabler in terms of being the intellectual key that disturbed the black beast that had laid dormant in the Earth crust for half a billion years, slowly cooking into forms ever more explosively energy dense.

It is all very familiar and deeply confused. I give guys like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche the big go round because there is not a lot of point trying to straighten them out. They sort of both get it and really don’t.

At least with Hegel and Peirce, perhaps Schelling, even Kant, you have an attempt to see it in a general systems perspective - a neutral view which is not about good vs evil and stuff like that, but about a dialectic or unity of opposites.

Like thermodynamics and dissipative structure theory. The science of flow states. The unity of entropy and negentropy. Or as Peirce eventually crystallised it, semiotics. What evolutionary theorists would now call infodynamics.

Consciousness requires unanswered questions, unresolved drama, in short, evil in order to stay awake.
— Tate

But that is just more bad psychology. The view from a world being swept up in the industrial revolution. — apokrisis

Yeah, the industrial revolution was in England. Schopenhauer was German. I'd say if you reject his pessimism, you just don't know what it is, because it's pretty obvious.

Yeah, the industrial revolution was in England. Schopenhauer was German. — Tate

During the early stages of the industrial revolution, Schopenhauer initiated a tradition of radical critique of Enlightenment notions of historical progress, rationalism, and autonomous human agency.

Schopenhauer argued that the intellect or reason so hypostatized by much Enlightenment thought was actually in bondage to the practical motives of the will to live, a will concentrated in the sexual act, in the unconscious and irrational desire to perpetuate life. Schopenhauer viewed Will as the unique noumenal reality in a Kantian sense, a force which operated (a) largely unconsciously, (b) often repressively, and (c) in intimate conjunction with memory and sexuality.

The Enlightenment notions attacked by Schopenhauer, such as the scientific progress of civilisation and the perfectibility of individual and state through refinement of the faculty of reason, reached a climax in the philosophy of Hegel which represents the most articulate attempt to present a coherent bourgeois view of the world, incorporating elements from Enlightenment empiricism and rationalism as well as from Romanticism.

The “heterological” tradition opened up by Schopenhauer was continued by figures such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Bergson, Husserl and Heidegger, thinkers who challenged the very discipline of philosophy and its claims to arrive at truth through reason. They emphasised instead the role of emotion, the body, the unconscious, as well as of pragmatic interests.

Schopenhauer offered an incisive critique of the bourgeois world: its vision of the present as alone real, its exaltation of a rationality answering merely to pragmatic needs and, underlying these, its self-abasement before the “crass materialism” of science.

Schopenhauer was especially contemptuous of attempts to historicise and rationalise the evils of the bourgeois world as part of an ordered teleogical plan; he dismissed Hegel’s “philosophy of absolute nonsense” as comprised of “three-quarters cash and one-quarter crazy notions…” He himself utterly rejected the notion that history exhibited any unity beyond eternal recurrence of the same miserable patterns of events.

https://habib.camden.rutgers.edu/talks/schopenhauer-and-freud/

Sounds like what I said, no?

Sounds like what I said, no? — apokrisis

Schopenhauer was one of the first of the irrationalist philosophers. This is a separate issue from his pessimism.

Schopenhauer was one of the first of the irrationalist philosophers. This is a separate issue from his pessimism. — Tate

If you say so. You are free to elaborate of course.

The two seem connected to me. Reality is the inescapability of dissipative structure – the dialectical combo of entropy production and the negentropic structure needed to actually produce it. From the Big Bang down, the Cosmos is a tumble into a self-making heat sink. And life and mind – humanity - is "enslaved" into this same unhappy project. The only escape is death. And yet even then, there is just a recycling, a rebirth, as the job of dissipating is not quite complete. The Cosmos is still a couple of degrees from its destination of absolute zero.

So some folk – like that bastard Hegel, and later Peirce – celebrate rationality as the triumph over entropy. But Schop knows better. Rationality is the slave to entropy, not its master. We are being sucked along in ways we have no control over. A pretty pessimistic conclusion where the only alternative is to be ... a poet and philosopher. Roll on the PoMo revolution.