Nietzsche and Runaway Audio Consumption


Came across this today. A lot of posts bring up the issue of "how much is enough?" or "when is audio consumption justified" etc.

Does this Nietzsche aphorism apply to audio buying? You be the judge! 

Friedrich Nietzsche“Danger in riches. — Only he who has spirit ought to have possessions: otherwise possessions are a public danger. For the possessor who does not know how to make use of the free time which his possessions could purchase him will always continue to strive after possessions: this striving will constitute his entertainment, his strategy in his war against boredom. 

Thus in the end the moderate possessions that would suffice the man of spirit are transformed into actual riches – riches which are in fact the glittering product of spiritual dependence and poverty. They only appear quite different from what their wretched origin would lead one to expect because they are able to mask themselves with art and culture: for they are, of course, able to purchase masks. By this means they arouse envy in the poorer and the uncultivated – who at bottom are envying culture and fail to recognize the masks as masks – and gradually prepare a social revolution: for gilded vulgarity and histrionic self-inflation in a supposed ‘enjoyment of culture’ instil into the latter the idea ‘it is only a matter of money’ – whereas, while it is to some extent a matter of money, it is much more a matter of spirit.” 

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1996. Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Cambridge University Press. (p. 283-4, an aphorism no. 310)

I'm pretty sure @mahgister will want to read this one! (Because they speak so artfully about avoiding the diversion that consumption poses to the quest for true aesthetic and acoustic excellence.)

128x128hilde45

There is something going on in modern first World society that challenges much of past philosophy. No conspiracy or master plan but an incoherent commercialization of culture promulgated by newspapers, advertisements, films, tv, radio, photography, internet...How do our limited primate brains parse the bombardment of multiple purveyors of what constitutes our happiness? A beer summons beautiful women. A car defines manhood. Clothes hipness. It goes on and on. Are we all resultant outcomes of hundreds of thousands of economic images and subtle (or overt) implications?

Is our audio equipment fixation mere emulation of Esquire magazine or a Hugh Hefner after hours production?  And maybe we return to the OP's subject and something N sensed. 

Neither Gopher or Tortoise.

btw significant Materialists to name a few

(and Deists should count along with any who believe "God" has no interest in our affairs or "souls".)

Lucretious

Darwin

Marx

Shaw

Neither Tophit nor Aphor.

@jpwarren58 

"No conspiracy or master plan but an incoherent commercialization of culture"

Agree, except for the plan part! It may not be master, but the incoherence most experience yields a fair amount of control and profit for, let's say, .1%. 

Not one is a universal genius, save Democrites disciple of Leucippes which created a very different and deep atomic theory before the modern one...

None in this list compare to the universal genius of a Swedenborg, Goethe. Aristotle or Leonard Da vinci...To name a few...Or Newton or Leibnitz....

In economy/sociology and psychanalysis the real genius is not Marx which is a children compared to Bernard Mandeville 2 centuries before he was even born..

Darwin is a great natural scientist by no means a universal genius ...Even Goethe is on par with him in natural science or the Humboltd brothers, Shaw is not even Voltaire which is not a universal genius... Lucretious is brillant but only a Leucippes and Democrites disciple in the latin world...

The greatest geniuses in all culture are spiritual men, not materialist, try Archimedes the greek superhuman scientist who create almost the modern calculus but nobody was enough clever to notice it before Newton did his part..., Ramanujan who spoke each night with the gooddess of knowledge or Grothendieck who wrote a book about his relation with God ( one thousand pages in french i read it) and like Archimedes created by himself modern mathematics ...Only Poincaré is near Gronthendieck in the 20 th century or Gauss and Riemann before them...

If many deist are dumb , atheist are not very clever either...Some exception exist: for example Freud is a genius over Marx and Even Darwin...Is Freud a universal genius? No...

Why?

It is impossible to be a creative universal genius WITHOUT a creative superlative IMAGINATION...

What is imagination ? It is the first step of inspiration and intuition which are the three of them the PERCEPTIVE intelligence of meaning and form in their universal ssetting... A materialist universe has no MEANING and even no deep form by design...Read Nietzsche description of the eternal return...

 

btw significant Materialists to name a few

(and Deists should count along with any who believe "God" has no interest in our affairs or "souls".)

Lucretious

Darwin

Marx

Shaw

Neither Tophit nor Aphor.

 

You are naive if you dont know the master plan...

Study one of the rare materialist genius : Bernard Mandeville..Who is the first thinker of mass manipulation ( before Bernays Freud nephew in America) among other fields he created singlehandly like modern market invisible hand thoery before Smith and class theory on a level more clever than MArx...

Marx+Freud+Huxley+Orwell+Smith+ Machiavel in one head, Mandeville anticipated all the theories of these 6 men, or put them like in the Machiavel case on a way deeper level, and sometimes 2 centuries before them which is so great that the austrian economist Hayek did a conference and call him "our master of us all"...Adam Smith is an idiot compared to Mandeville...Even Marx is because Mandeville would have NOTHING to learn from even Freud contrary to Marx...Think about that...Mandeville is not even known nowadays...

The master plan is WRITTEN completely in 1705...

This is HISTORY of philosophy not conspiracy....even Bernays the nephew of Freud and creator singlehandly of all the American modern propaganda machine is a dwarf compared to Mandeville...All Bernays is already in Mandeville books and understanding...

Now guess who read and understand perfectly well Mandeville among his contemporaries? Do you think Hayek was the only one to understand this master almost 2 centuries only after his death ?

I will not go further...Because superficial mind will accuse me of conspiracy theory...An expression if not created, usedwith success, for the UNSOLVED murder of Kennedy even today... Think about that...

But read me right compared to Goethe or Swedenborg the clever genius of Mandeville is not CREATIVE but only TENTACULAR....It is a daemonic mephistophelic intelligence....Thats all... But so clever that Kissinger for example is an idiot compared to this man...I dont say that Mandeville was EVIL, his genius was not the human person... He was a doctor and observe men and completely understood the animal part of men...

No conspiracy or master plan but an incoherent commercialization of culture"