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Mary, this is the question to end all. What would it take? While reading this I was reminded of Davy Crocket saying that the natives were Gods people too only to have his house burned down, and the phrase ‘kill them all, nits make lice.’ As long as people look to their own needs, wants and desires the world will be this way. Sadly, those who are willing to do anything to further their own cause often make their way to the top of the heap. I truly feel more of us should be digging our way to the bottom, I do believe that the last shall be first. Thanks for another wonderful entry.

I think that the 'rabble' should take charge and not sit quiet and let the dung heap grow. It is when we are quiet and passive and not asking questions, that is when we are taken 'unawares'. If only mankind could remember that we are all born as little helpless babies, no baby is better than the next. Yeah, a very simplistic and possibly not too well thought-out response, but that was my initial thought, so I wanted to respond.

maybe it has nothing to do with the concept of "free will" and everything to do with, "The Will to Power."

Ok jon1it, that sounds interesting. Could you explain how you see Nietzche explicating Milgram's and Zimbardo's findings?

On of my favorite Nietzche bits:
"All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses."

And of Francis Bacon
"Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority."

I'd rather inflict pain on myself than on others or defy authority figures. I'd probably off myself in such a situation. Make it easy for everyone. I wonder how many people killed themselves rather than persecute the Jews or stand against Hitler? Sorry for the morbid musing.

Countess, not at all morbid; it is a damn good question. I will dig around and see if there is anything written about such a possibility and post it if I find anything.

American "democracy" is a guise as were the early principles of nazism in its surge toward world domination. there is a difference, however, in the 'effects' or outcome with the degree of relative suffering inflicted on a group or population. certainly another difference is the means by which one brings about such effects. your analogy of japanese internment and indian reservations to the holocaust is false, though i acknowledge the qualifications you made. there were fleeting moments of seeming similiarity - with each instant being a systematic endeavor with the intent to oppress a select group. the problem is in the degree of brutality exerted and the stated/unstated objectives of the oppressor, which in the case of the natives varied depending on the administration or rag tag rebels . i doubt that we would have used gas ovens if the technology had been available. to take steps toward "modifying" our behavior, as you put it, smacks of the same oppressive tendency as the examples you presented. "will to power" suggests an tendency toward life, not power for the sake of inflicting harm to another. nietzsche's will to power is ultimately about life as a being present, living present. consider the words of jim morrison: "we want the world and we want it now." the clash of good and evil, each with its distinct agencies of aggression, is as natural as the sun rising. you wouldn't reach out and press down on a rising sun now, would you, marylupin?

jon1jt - Why do you think the comparison between Internment camps, Reservations and concentration camps is a false analogy? Just because of the degree of brutality? If it is numbers dead then by some accounts there are more dead from the take over of the Americas. Or is it the numbers dead in the short time given over to WWII?

Why do you doubt we would have used gas ovens if we were willing to invite Indians to dinner then poison them (California), deliberately give them blankets infected with small pox, put a bounty on Indian scalps, hunt some tribes to extinction (i.e. Beothuk), refuse to allow Indians off Reservations without special travel passes even when they were starving, etc etc.

I don't know that the level of brutality was less, more or the same. What I am saying is that it may appear less because we work really hard at not paying attention to our own brutal history...just exactly as the Germans did after the end of WWII.

Have you heard of the Ludlow Massacre? Or the Columbine Mine Massacre? Or read about the rate of radiation sickness and birth defects amongst the Navajo? Or investigated the rate of multiple sclerosis in the populations who grew up near Hanford Nuclear Reservation?

And of course aggression is natural to Homo sapiens. But so is adaption. And, so some claim, the capacity to reason and learn.

Here is the thing with Nietzsche, the will to power requires something to work on and against. Power is not something that exists in a vacuum. Admittedly, Nietzsche meant will to power as the power of self-mastery. That is, in a sense what I mean by asking what would it take to learn from the past because no self-mastery is possible without a full understanding of our political, social and historical origins. Nevertheless, someone who pursues self-mastery does it in the company of those who are "slaves." This may explain the relationship between Rockefeller and the labor organizers that resulted in the destruction of the women and children under the tent city at Ludlow. But who is the slave here? The massacred or the rich?

i tried to clarify my original post if that helps. as far as your take on nietzsche, i disagree with your interpretation. you see will to power as self-mastery, which assumes a conscious awareness toward that goal or condition. nietzsche, however, wasn't talking about that at all. where does nietzsche use the term, "self-mastery," in his writing? that's touchy-feely-new age speak, which in actual terms runs against everything nietzsche believed to be pure and naturally occurring. Nietzsche's notion of the superman is one that either exists within the individual or does not. your idea of self mastery as a mechanism to improve the human condition via adaptation - a natural function of the species - is just another version of herd morality. it's on that basis i reject your prescriptive solution.

From Beyond Good and Evil

The common man (slave) "waits first for an opinion about himself and then instinctively submits himself to it" whereas the master must "compel himself, particularly with the help of history, to see that since time immemorial, in all the levels of people dependent in some way or other, the common man was only what people thought of him: not being at all accustomed to set values himself, he measured himself by no value other than how his masters assessed him (that is the essential right of masters, to create values)"

The slave is mastered. The master masters himself.

From Will to Power Book II

What distinguishes moral philosophers themselves is a complete absence of cleanliness and intellectual self-discipline: they take "beautiful feelings" for arguments: they regard their "heaving bosom" as the bellows of divinity-- Moral philosophy is the scabrous period in the history of the spirit.

Moral philosophers, those bane of FNs existence, are the exact opposite of what it means to be a Master. The two qualities a Master must possess: cleanlienss and intellectual self-discipline, i.e. no emotional thinking

From Beyond Good and Evil

The noble man honours the powerful man in himself and also the man who has power over himself, who understands how to speak and how to keep silent, who takes delight in dealing with himself severely and toughly and respects, above all, severity and toughness. “Wotan set a hard heart in my breast,”

Self discipline, hard hardheartedness, a willingness to face the truth of history, the acceptance of the necessity of "slaves" to enable the nobility, this is what makes a man a master to Nietzsche.

I don't think FN really fits what I was saying, mostly because I don't see the wonders of human creativity necessitating slaves. Nevertheless, you are free to see me as a proponent of the "herd" if you wish.

i can see that this discussion is about to get lost in semantics, which tends to be problematic when dealing with the assertion made with the Milgram's experiment findings. so i'll just toot a little more and be on my merry way. you seem to be suggesting that the "masters" in nietzsche's Beyond Good & Evil was his archetype of Will to Power. the master masters himself suggests a "way"--as if some step-by-step program out there to be followed. but consider that the masters ultimately failed. the slaves managed to trick the masters. and according to Beyond Good & Evil, it was accomplished thru the instruments of guilt and pity, which in essence became the triumph of reason. but Nietzsche's archetype transcends reason. remember, Nietzsche loathed Socrates. Zarathustra is that individual who goes beyond good & evil, becoming the full actualization of will to power, something that the masters themselves failed in. to bring this full circle back to your original claim about the milgram experiment which you said demonstrates that human beings are 'more willing to inflict pain on others,' i believe you're quite mistaken because there is no "willing" agent, which was my initial claim. there is no willing agent because will to power is not a state or individual force with "goals" as you imply. it is only a conglomerate of energy churning thru human history and the present. so, yes, based on what you believe to be the case about the human condition, you are a proponent of the herd. oh i'm just kidding with ya.

Zarathustra is that individual who goes beyond good & evil, becoming the full actualization of will to power, something that the masters themselves failed in. to bring this full circle back to your original claim about the milgram experiment which you said demonstrates that human beings are 'more willing to inflict pain on others,' i believe you're quite mistaken because there is no "willing" agent, which was my initial claim. there is no willing agent because will to power is not a state or individual force with "goals" as you imply. it is only a conglomerate of energy churning thru human history and the present.

What Milgram says (in Neitzschean terms) is that people are herd animals. In his experiments not one American refused to inflict pain on another. Each American inflicted pain at the request of an authority figure, even while most of those Americans protested verbally against being "forced" to inflict that pain. What Z says is that the overman is achieved through struggle against the herd mentality. It takes a huge force of will to accept the fact that nothing changes (the doctrine of eternal recurrence) and that only an uberman can take responsibility (choose to take responsibility) for each and every moment of his life. That is, an uberman does not blame the authority for asking him to inflict pain on another. What Z realizes is that the herd will always be there and that the overman will always be a rare minority.

So in N terms what I am asking is how can a member of the herd who wants to become a overman do that? Since Z sought to convert members of the herd he had to think it possible. Even when he found out that the vast majority would never listen or hear he still kept at it with his few men that went to the cave. (I thought going into the cave thing was funny given what Plato did to get us out of it.)

so, yes, based on what you believe to be the case about the human condition, you are a proponent of the herd.

So what I believe about the human condition is that in our current evolutionary terms we are exactly what we are (in N. terms mostly herd) and will remain that for the duration of H. sapiens with minor exceptions. The question of whether I am unabashedly herd or attempting to be a overman...well I think that N would firmly declare me female and therefore implacably herd. So you are in fine company there.

I do, however, suspect, that N had a few mistaken ideas about the history and nature of H. sapiens and one or two misconceptions about the nature and history of women.

i disagree. Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence does not mean that there is "no change." i'm just curious, is that your interpretation of his Will to Power or from some nietzsche biographer? eternal recurrence is based on the finitude of living in an infinite universe. nietzsche acknowledges "change" occuring within those theoretical parameters. i was just tempted to use the word "cycle" --- as if to say humans were like items of clothing caught in a cosmic whirlpool. but that would suggest an orderly universe, and elsewhere nietzsche suggests otherwise. the very word, "recurrence," itself assumes a continuum of activity preceding the recurrence and death in streams of such activity. as far as nietszsche considering you a member of the herd because you are female, i'd like to believe that any resentment he expressed against women were inspired by the lovely and talented Lou Salome who rejected his advances early on before any of his major works had been written. it was his caddy way of getting even.

And yet, Hitler used Nietsche to justify his work. To what end does one master oneself? To the benefit of self or society? Who determines the goal? What is good for the self (Hitler) can be a bane on humanity.
How can you argue that Nietzche's philosophy would solve the problem when it created it in the first place? Though I usually disagree with him, I think Jon1it's right about his interpretation of Nietsche's will-to-power as energy. At best Nietzche may be suggesting a methodology for self-mastery, but he cannot set the end, because the only end without God is what the self determines is good, and in this case Hitler determined global domination was good.
As to how we treated the Indians - we were wrong, though (like Jon1it), not to the same degree at Hitler. Still, a sore is a sore, whether it covers the arm or the whole body.
Of course, as I believe in God, I'm only arguing within the constraints of yours and Jon1its a priori suppositions. I myself don't even hold those to be true.