Q: What is the meaning of life?
A: You're soaking in it!
It has been said that this list is a cloaca of the soul. I
disagree. I think Lambda C was making an observation that is
more appropriate to much of the Internet in general, not this
list in specific (although that trusty trooper in the Army of
Acolytes of Tommaso Aquino, Paul S. Rhodes, will no doubt
disagree). If you want to see a cloaca of the soul, you should
check out, for instance, pigdog-l@gigantor.arlington.com, which
is where my drinking buddies post while they're drunk.
As for the true meaning of the Eternal Recurrence (a question that
gets asked here about once every three months with stunning
regularity, ironically enough) I think it's much more fun if you
figure it out for yourself. While you are thinking of it, recall
that Nietzsche's calling was first and foremost that of a psychologist.
I am amazed that people get so absorbed with this facet of Nietzsche's
thought. That he was absorbed in it himself is little excuse.
People have been writing and singing of the great wheel in the sky,
the voice out of the whirlwind, for millenia and Nietzsche's most
interesting bits are about less common things. I mean, the very
name of something as prosaic as the Rotarians is an ER joke.
As for the literary figures most representative of Nietzsche's
Uebermensch (someone asked this question a few months ago), my
flavor of the month for that is the Communion in Linda Nagata's
novel DECEPTION WELL, or perhaps the overmind in Arthur C. Clarke's
novel CHILDHOOD'S END. On a more mundane (and more broadly
comprehensible) level, how about the Borg Queen?
As for Will to Power, I still have no idea what that is,
although I see it and its droppings in front of my face every
day. Perhaps we should take a tip from Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda
and just start calling it The Force. Much more effective in
these postmodern, pop-culture times of universal (il)literacy.
Then we can all have fun explaining to everyone how the Dark
Side of the Force is the same thing as the other side, while
Paul S. Rhodes can launch pious objections with fearsome
regularity from the side.
P. S. Paul, what is your opinion of the practice of burning heretics?
-- Eric Watt Forste ++ www.pigdog.org ++ expectation foils perception -pcd
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