back to Fred Nietzsche
The 'tapes' read by Charlton Heston: a very good reader. The well-modulated voice inevitably evoking images of his roles in biblical epics and as the twat who promotes the right to hold arms as front man for Rifle Association, got a bit tangled in my mind, as I listened, but he is not narrating the whole time. Did he, one mulls, think putting his name to Nietzsche, so to speak, would perhaps futher his beliefs in the right of one American to kill another with handguns.
The narration, as I mentioned earlier, is broken up with quotes done in funny voices: Fred's in the sort of voice that actors adopt when they take the part of Einstein. It does sound a bit like what an an audio tape of Dr. Zeuss might sound like..I don't know is there one already? . An hour or two long in total, it proved an education. It showed his use of the terms 'will to power' was based in his understanding of biology, had a which ad rather reassuring and calming effect on me, as I always hated the term as understood to mean survival of the fittest as it has been used so often, which in itself is wrongly used itslef when used in a Spencerian rather than Darwinian sense.
Saw somewhere on one Nietzsche site (inevitable Google follow through after the 'tapes') that Fred's sister, niece, or other familt memeber, who had Nazi sympathies, doctored {er..edited,ed.} many of his notes to make them conform to the idea that he was the source of Nazi ideology. Let's be clearer...doctored to encourage people think Nietzsche's ideas were a source of the Nazi ideology.
A light bulb lit re the Nazis when I saw their hatred of the 'financiers' both explained why they felt it necessary to kill anyone who might have been associated with them, if only by tenuous link of race-religion. Hence, not sufficient to kill financiers (who just happened to be mostly Jews) but all who might thinking of becoming one or who might breed a potential money-lender! Incidentally Thomas Robertson in "Human Ecology" (1947) goes into how Rothchild new he was more important than individual states - a state maker or breaker then, in the days before massive loans (usury,folks) helped to ruin half of Africa.
Then, it occured - not an original thought - the Nazis were anti-capitalist in a similar way G8 protesters are. Yet, they - as do the modern-day protesters - freely avail themselves of all the goods and services that the capitalist system of production provided, including what thy must have seen as a logical extension of a low pay economy, slavery. If they - the G8 protesters, not the Nazis (joke!) who presumably are by now mostly very content with life on their West German and GDR pensions - put their money where their mouths are and added value within a non-capitalist 'mechanism' they would be too tired to protest (and without any money or willingness to use a credit card) and probably feel too embarassed to turn up to a demo in the rags they had woven for themselves out of the nettles they had grown.
Nietzsche-studies-the-easy-way tied in very nicely with an ongoing search for an understanding of usury which seemed necessary in attempting to write something about G8. Went back to Robertson's, "Human Ecology" to start with, then to Google where found a panoply of sources (such as Catholic encyclopedia [sic. way of spelling]) on the topic, but too many questions and doubts crept in to continue the essay as orginally envisaged. Too much information may be a dangerous thing: it is also a great damper on over enthusiastic, half-thought out ideas.
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Apropro presque rien: anyone wanting to do some science reading, try "Who got Einstein's Office?"(1987) by Ed Regis, ISBN 0201120658, with the seemingly obligatory, explantory sub-title: Eccentricity and genius at the Institute for Advanced Study. This is Princeton and familar to many from the many biopics of Einstein, etc. My copy has an interesting 'provenance' in that the person I got it from was married to the son of someone who has annotated the book with comments - showing he was part of the story in some way of another unspecified - shown in [colour] over such as these: "...both Oppie [!] and his wife were drinkers [ ..yes]." and on page 149 "The conventional explanation is that Oppie had publicly embarassed his one-time supporter, Lewis Strauss [mean guy]". And another [page 130]: " ...the name of Strauss [Terrible man] was left on the list, {..] despite [..]the man had virtually no academic credential at all. It is no secret, and Blackie, the man who red-biroed these comments into my now copy, now dead, deserves to have a mention. He was a lawyer by training and worked as counsel for a short-lived Roosevelt 'Quango', the The National Industrial Recovery Board. A site here mentions his appointment in 1934.
Strauss, a former rear-admiral who had started his life in Wall Street, only later joining the Navy, was appointed Director of the Institute: they thought he could mange the finances well..
In the front of the book there is an interesting note in which son {my cousin's late husband} passes book, unfinished, over to his father to read, with mention of "your friend Dyson's..." which I find quite cool {Freeman Dyson, one of greatest scientist of all time} in the sense of you get not guilt-by-association but a feeling you too are involved because of the physical connection between someone related to you and the famous. This is where the education system fails in its determination to work to syllabus (they call them specifications now, by the way) rather than in persuit of knowledge: if you as a teacher who knew a working scientist and could bring him into your class to do some experiments....
posted by Adfero Affero @ 1:00 PM
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