Men of value are built around a hardened core, a core which is incapable of bending before it breaks; a core made of certain basic (primordial) drive, a core that has developed immunity to even practical reason- almost like faith- and is inviolable. And this core is the source of extra strength (sometimes of super human strength!) for these men to keep moving forward relentlessly, even under immense burden on their shoulders.
This core resides in man’s soul like a dent, a unique mark, made by God’s own hands. I often visualise this as God picking up each mass produced soul, at the end of a celestial assembly line perhaps, and hitting them one by one with a mallet to wake them up, some times gently and some times hard, to infuse life in them and, at the same time as a result, imparting this unique dent of individuality to each of them. Individuality of drive, that moves each man in the real world- his own personal motor. And, based on the master plan of eternity that God has for this world, and everyone’s role in that plan, God decides the shape and size of this dent- i.e. capacity of the motor.
When Nietzsche said that normal man is ordinary man, it takes a perversion* to achieve greatness, I have no doubt, he was talking about this dent in the soul.
All men of any worth rise only from this core. The truest measure of meaning of one’s wealth is not what one possesses, but what one was offered for compromising this core and one still refused. The value of a man is not defined by ‘yes’, but by ‘no’; ‘yes’ merely is the price.
No doubt this dent in the soul is a blessing given only to a chosen one. It is a source of unending energy for action. It doesn’t let a man sit idle, keeps him perpetually restless. It also endows him with a ‘will to power’; and where ‘will to power’ is lacking there is decline (Nietzsche).
But at times, world becomes so dependent on him for this flow of energy that it takes control of him. i.e. he may never be able to disengage and retreat into the peace, even if he wants to with the age, world that he has created would keep on demanding the energy of his motor to run itself. And that, perhaps, is the implied curse that comes with this blessing.
-Pulastya (On Human Drive)
* (Like all men, Nietzsche was perhaps also limited in his aesthetic sense by his affinity to symmetry, straight lines, and smooth curves. Any deviation from these he saw as deformity, not as a different dimension of beauty. And that, probably, is the reason the word perversion was used by him, but I am sure he was using it in extremely positive sense, like I am using the word dent).
This core resides in man’s soul like a dent, a unique mark, made by God’s own hands. I often visualise this as God picking up each mass produced soul, at the end of a celestial assembly line perhaps, and hitting them one by one with a mallet to wake them up, some times gently and some times hard, to infuse life in them and, at the same time as a result, imparting this unique dent of individuality to each of them. Individuality of drive, that moves each man in the real world- his own personal motor. And, based on the master plan of eternity that God has for this world, and everyone’s role in that plan, God decides the shape and size of this dent- i.e. capacity of the motor.
When Nietzsche said that normal man is ordinary man, it takes a perversion* to achieve greatness, I have no doubt, he was talking about this dent in the soul.
All men of any worth rise only from this core. The truest measure of meaning of one’s wealth is not what one possesses, but what one was offered for compromising this core and one still refused. The value of a man is not defined by ‘yes’, but by ‘no’; ‘yes’ merely is the price.
No doubt this dent in the soul is a blessing given only to a chosen one. It is a source of unending energy for action. It doesn’t let a man sit idle, keeps him perpetually restless. It also endows him with a ‘will to power’; and where ‘will to power’ is lacking there is decline (Nietzsche).
But at times, world becomes so dependent on him for this flow of energy that it takes control of him. i.e. he may never be able to disengage and retreat into the peace, even if he wants to with the age, world that he has created would keep on demanding the energy of his motor to run itself. And that, perhaps, is the implied curse that comes with this blessing.
-Pulastya (On Human Drive)
* (Like all men, Nietzsche was perhaps also limited in his aesthetic sense by his affinity to symmetry, straight lines, and smooth curves. Any deviation from these he saw as deformity, not as a different dimension of beauty. And that, probably, is the reason the word perversion was used by him, but I am sure he was using it in extremely positive sense, like I am using the word dent).
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