What if it Were a Woman

Nietzsche once wrote something about truth being a woman and how the dogma of men have failed to understand women.

Use woman as a metaphor and suddenly, everyone gets it. Men understand how unfathomable the metaphor is and start to accept their ignorance. Women understand just how much they themselves have been misunderstood, by men especially. 

We always seem to be what everyone around us want us to be.

As a woman, I've been pursued. I've been analyzed and idolized. I've certainly been misinterpreted, often because to truly understand me would mean to destroy the fantasy that one may have already imagined of me.

Deep inside, I often laugh at what others think, often a projection of themselves; and its funny how my points are often misinterpreted to suit the beliefs of those who witness them.

What if fortune was a woman? How often do men think they can control her, fortune that is. When things are good, they take it for granted. They think they are blessed and don't realize when disaster is lurking around the corner. Men pursue their plans with vigor, so certain of the outcome, as if you really can control your plans? Can you really control your woman? Is she really yours?

What if ideas were women? How we cling to our ideas and our methods, long after they've stopped working for us, as a man clings to a woman who has completely gotten over her infatuation of him. Then they wonder why those ideas no longer serve them.

A man once completely disregarded something I said because it wasn't in line with his view of what a woman should be. Then he said that we are all crazy and we shouldn't even listen to ourselves; making me realize that there really was no point in speaking intelligently to him, since I obviously have no credibility. In this sense, women are denied a voice. This man had already decided what he knew about me and what I had to say wasn't going to change that. This brings me back to Nietzsche when he said, 

"Supposing that Truth is a woman--what then? Is there not grounds for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman?"

Nietzsche also said that sometimes people don't want to hear their truth because they don't want to destroy their illusions. In this case, who needs truth anyway? If that fantasy woman is what keeps you going, then so be it. You don't need to know that your perfect little playboy heartthrob is flesh and blood with scars and shadows and demons of her own. See her however you want to see her, a figment of your imagination.

So is our truth. Often its just a belief, our own mind imagining what we think the universe is all about. As humans, we like to simplify things and even if we are proven wrong, we cling to our ideas because they give us our identity and a sense of structure.

So think what you will of women, just don't be shocked when all of those beliefs blow up in your face one day, and you wonder if you ever really knew this creature you once adored so much. Perhaps you never did, nor did you ever want to.

Nietzsche vs. Buddha

I have a friend who has a Nietzsche  tattoo on his arm, and Tibetan Buddhist tattoos on his forearms.

I find it ironic, seeing how Nietzsche criticized the Buddhists so much and how much their views clashed.
Yet, I can't help but find myself torn between the two philosophies.

Nietzsche loved Dionysus, the arts, beauty and passion. he felt deeply and didn't apologized for it.
Buddha sat under a tree and realized that the end to suffering would be to let go of all needs and wants.
Nietzsche happily suffered all his life. He died saving the life of a horse. He was madly in love with a woman who couldn't love him back and he didn't keep it a secret.
Buddha was great at squelching such infatuations and promised that this would end human suffering. He saw them as illusions and had his disciple do things like imagine the woman he was obsessed with was a corpse, withering away and dying just like everyone else. Because individual identity is an illusion.
So who was right?

Nietzsche said to deny one's emotions, one's desires is to go against nature. How can the Buddhists truly understand nature if they squelch human desire and suffering?
Buddha said that human desire is an illusion that blinds us to the truth and by separating ourselves from attachments, we can separate ourselves from prejudices such as love and hate that make us see the world in a limited way.
Nietzsche would say that the Buddhists are just another breed of philosophers trying to preach their beliefs without questioning it themselves. In this sense, they still have their own prejudices and point of views, therefore they aren't as far removed from the limitations of humanity as they like to think they are.

The one thing the two of them agreed on is that we are all prejudiced and that we all like to cling to our ideas. Maybe they are both right. Maybe we can use Nietzsche's philosophy when it suits us and Buddha's philosophy at other times.

If you are madly in love with the right person, then why deny that attachment? Nietzsche would say to indulge in that feeling of love and to deny it would just be a waste of time. Denying such feelings would also be going against nature and living half a life, a life of no passion.

But if you are in love with the wrong person, someone who is abusive or who belongs to someone else, then its wiser to listen to Buddha. Buddha will help you separate yourself from your desire by saying there is nothing different about that person from any other human being and that its just a trick of our biological processes that makes us feel infatuation.

So, there is a time and a place for every philosophy and as I read, mature and learn; I have stopped calling myself a stoic, a Buddhist, a Christian, a Hindu, an existentialist, etc. I don't want to be bound by a point of view if it doesn't serve me and I don't want to feel thatvI can't question it in certain situations.

So my new belief is to not believe, but to keep an open mind; to keep learning and keep questioning without feeling like there has to be one right method. To cling to a belief is to defend it utterly which makes it impossible to see the truth. After all, what if you're wrong? If you refuse to contradict your own dogma, then there's no way you can learn anything beyond that. I really love learning new things. I guess it gives me a dopamine rush, and I'm sure Nietzsche would welcome that dopamine rush while the Buddhists will make sure that I know that the dopamine rush is just a trick of emotion that helps motivate me, but I shouldn't be dependent on such a high.

On top of that, refusing to know the truth can truly harm us. What if we have a curable cancer, and we refuse to acknowledge it? Most likely, it will kill us. So ignorance can kill us as does an overactive clinging to our affiliations and beliefs. Just look at the world today, as we continually polarize ourselves with our ridiculous politics.

As for my friend with the contradicting tattoos, I tease him for it but I'm all for him believing in contradicting philosophers. But its all in good fun. Ralph Waldo Emmerson once said that we should be open to change our minds as we learn new things. He said that it may confuse others, but that's a great thing. He said Pythagoras and Copernicus and many other great thinkers were misunderstood. "To be great is to be misunderstood."