And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) Nietzsche may have rejected Hegel and Hegelian Dialectic Philosophy but to me, Nietzsche remains a supreme 'dialectic philosopher' for two main reasons:
1. There was no better philosopher than Nietzsche at 'dialectically uniting and integrating the mind and heart';
2. Nietzsche's first work 'The Birth of Tragedy (BT)' was totally dialectic in its structure and process(which Nietzsche asserted later was to the detriment of the book, as he began to move away from Hegel and the dialectic perspective -- Not so says this philosopher here: it was to Nietzsche's detriment and to the detriment of Nietzsche's philosophy that he moved away from Hegelian Dialectic Philosophy and 'The Birth of Tragedy' which can be viewed as a precursor to 'The Birth of Psychoanalysis' -- and indeed all of 20th Century Clinical Psychology in its emphasis on the principle of 'homeostatic or dialectic balance'.
Nietzsche once wrote: 'Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.' This too, is a strongly Hegelian (or post-Hegelian) perspective, and Nietzsche proved this point in his own life and philosophy.
Specifically, in philosophically walking away from BT, Nietzsche became obsessed with 'Dionysus' (The Greek God of wine, dancing, celebration, and pleasure) at the expense of ignoring 'Apollo' (The Greek God of law and order, ethical restraint, justice, truth and reason...). He did the same thing in tearing down Christianity and Religion without being able to see and/or acknowledge that Christianity and Religion in general play important 'life-serving' functions in human society in terms of bringing people together in harmony under one roof with one essential united, integrated cause (family, community, roots, and mutual 'I-WE' support...). Instead, Nietzsche could only see the 'pathological-self-destructive' elements in Christianity and Religion -- and offered a 'counter-extremist philosophical position'.
In essence, Nietzsche became 'The Anti-Christ' and in so doing he may have 'freed' many people from their religious chains but in so doing, Nietzsche was at least partly opening up a new 'Pandora's Box': The Pandora's Box of The Anti-Christ: live fast, die fast -- drugs, alcohol, partying, sex...party til you drop...the life and death of my ex-common-law (of 11 years) girlfriend's sister - so pretty with a beautiful smile in her young life, the party queen, the life of the party: she got into 'crack/coke' in her mid to late 20s and died horrendously, like an AIDS patient, her internal organs shutting down, putting her into a coma, then being taken off life support, at 39.
I say this not to look down on my sister-in-law's life and death, or to wave a righteous finger at her bad choices (we all make bad choices, some worse than others), but simply to contrast the beauty of her young life and smile -- indeed, the beauty of all life -- with the bad, stupid choices we all can make and/or do make, from time to time in our life, which can most grieviously cut off a beautiful life in a Kierkgaardian moment, or in a culmination of Kierkgaardian moments, in a culmination of bad -- and worse -- choices that can quickly and/or slowly turn the most beautiful of lives into the most horrific of deaths.
I'm thinking now of that South American beauty queen, and her death after four amptuations from a 'vaccine-resistant' bacteria. And I'm thinking now of all the brutal things that have happened in the Middle East, and are still happening -- soldiers, husbands and wives, women and children dying once again in the most horrific of different ways but mainly by guns and bombs -- all the culmination of man's individual and collective stupidity relative to religious, political, and/or economic righteousness and narcissism. There are no winners in war, just losers, victims of death and dying, families of death and dying...and crying...crying when we can stop distancing ourselves from what this series of Middle East wars is really doing to people's individual and collective spirits and souls...
I could easily die myself within a couple of years through bad choices -- spending too much time at the bar, too much alcohol for my seriously compromised liver, if I let 'my internal Dionysus' completely take over my life; fortunately, I believe, I generally have a decent working balance between my internal Apollo and Dionysius -- and an even more solidly balanced 'Apollonian-Dionysian' girlfriend pulling me back from the precipice whenever I start to 'stare too deeply into the Dionysian/Nietzschean abyss'. Most of us tend to have a feeling of indestructibility when we are 20 or 30, we generally start to wisen up in our late 40s and early 50s --if we make it that far.
'Balance' was where Nietzsche started before he unfortunately abandoned the solidly post-Hegelian, dialectic philosophical principles of BT. BT was the little 'romantic-mythological' book that took the best of Hegelian Dialectic Philosophy and applied this perspective to the 'Apollonian-Dionysian' workings of the human psyche which would clearly foreshadow the work of Freud, 'The Birth of Psychoanalysis', and Freud's philosophical-psychological model and function of 'The Ego' which in Freud's model was always attempting to dialectically negotiate -- and integrate - the restraining Apollonian 'Superego' with the impulsive, sensual and sexual Dionysian 'Id'.
Some do better than others but the Nietzschean solution and resolution of 'Dionysian Extremism' takes most people to 'Hell on Earth rather than Heaven on Earth' just as Christian or any type of religious, righteous extremism can do the same from the opposite human polarity.
As Aristotle wisely noted the best path is usually the 'middle path'. This is the philosophical, psychological, biological, and political path of -- homeostatic (dialectic-democratic) balance. This is the path - and the fleeting, evasive philosophical destination that DGB Philosophy is constantly seeking.
As passionate and as brilliant a man as Nietzsche was, in the end, in my opinion, Nietzsche philosophically and existentially missed the boat. He jumped into the deep Dionysian waters - and he died either in the process and/or as a result of doing this.
I've done the same -- jumped into the deep Dionysian waters of Lake Ontario under the influence of about 5 cocktail Black Russians...and I was lucky to have the help to get back out again...That was a rather stupid Black Russian moment (there have been a few of them)...probably thought that I was Nietzsche's 'Superman' -- except that I did't really know Nietzsche too well back then, in the 1980s. I think of others like the woman I mentioned above who wasn't nearly so lucky. And like Trudeau's youngest son, Michel, dying in an avalanche in the mountains of British Columbia.
Then I get an eery chill when I remember reading one of Pierre Trudeau's earliest ('Nietzschean-Romantic') writings...written in 1939...I first read this small piece at a cafe overlooking Fairy Lake in downtown Newmarket on a sunny, summer Sunday afternoon in 2008...Now in February, 2009, as I went upstairs to fetch the passage...and found it...Trudeau's words come back even more haunting than ever...like a ghost...like stories of the death of Tom Thomson, the famous Canadian painter...
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These are the last four paragraphs of...'Relative Utopia'...by Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1939)
'...The Skier is a god who makes toys of mountains, who takes gravity into his own hands to do with it what he will, who laughs off the abyss and takes ferocious pleasure in taunting it. The Skier knows the joy of the explorer and scientist and superman. Pressed ahead, by his haversack, his shoulders rounded, his knees tightly held together, his hands close to his thighs, his cheeks whipped by the dry air, and his tuque worn low over his eyes, he clears a path through imprecise nature, leaving behind a long whirlwind of pulverized clarity.
It seems incredible but it is nonetheless true that the Skier should fear ecstasy. His gaze fails, he abandons his body to all unknown forces and drifts infallibly in the pathways of space and time. What a magnificent sport, what an incomparable thing to do: one mogul was enough to send me hurtling into the sky, and from the sky neither mountain nor valley could be seen, only the lights of the village that glowed like a handful of pearls at the bottom of a lake or the Big Dipper hanging like a sign in the sky and th numberless stars like snowflakes.
...Alas! It is the fate of mortals that they can cast off reality for only a brief moment. Blessed is he who completes his heavenly flight with a drop into th coolly real but soft snow.
It falls on others to fall otherwise: a leg rapturously envelops a maple tree, followed by forty days in a cast. Skis of ash, crutches of oak. Utopia is no more.
Brebeuf monthly (1939)
Translated by George Tombs
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We all can be too impulsive...
We all can be too restrained...
DGB Philosophy seeks to dialectically balance...
Dionysian sensory impulsiveness...and romantic aliveness...
With wise, Apollonian ethical idealism and restraint...
Looking for that balanced harmony in the middle...
Where we can all live dialectically passionate, exciting, sensual but sensitive and sensible, Romantic-Enlightenment, Humanistic-Existential lives.
Rather than the discord, divisionism, and/or tragedy...
That is usually found at the polar, righteous, and/or narcissistic...
Extremes...
-- DGBN, Feb. 2nd, 2009
-- David Gordon Bain
-- David Goes Beyond Nietzsche...
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Avalanche education needs to continue: Trudeau
Updated Mon. Jan. 12 2004 6:29 AM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Although another death was recorded in an avalanche this past week, Justin Trudeau hopes that greater educational efforts will mean fewer winter mountain adventures end in tragedy.
"What we need to do is understand where those risks are so that we can make the smart choice about doing it safely," he said after participating in a mock rescue.
To that end, Trudeau -- son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau -- convinced the B.C. government in October to put $125,000 towards the Canadian Avalanche Centre that would co-ordinate regional updates and education across the country.
The Trudeau family has a deeply personal interest in the subject.
Justin's brother Michel died in a back country avalanche in the southern Kootenay Mountains in 1998, his body swept into a deep alpine lake.
A chalet was opened in his memory in B.C.'s Kokanee Pass this past summer.
Last year 24 people died in avalanche accidents in B.C., including seven in one accident. An additional five died elsewhere in Canada.
A coroner's report released in November recommended all commercial ski and snow tour companies which operate on crown land should subscribe to a daily avalanche threat bulletin produced by the Canadian Avalanche Centre.
It also recommended all backcountry lodge and hut operators create their own association -- in part to establish safety standards.
Tim Jones, a rescue worker on Vancouver's north shore, is less worried about a national centre than he is about getting very local forecasts.
"The avalanche advisory for Mount Seymour today," he said. "That would be great if we could have that, please."
Right now, he can get that information faster by calling the mountain directly.
"Our weather system might be different from the coastal mountains. We need to have a local update; real time, too," he said.
Money for new avalanche services would help, but people also need to know what they require to stay safe. For the experts, that means a shovel, backpack, beacon -- and common sense.
