Let's discuss what Nietzsche arguments mean...

Nietzcche said a number of things, many of which were well ahead of his time, and that I agree with. I'll periodically be updating this post with some of Nietzche's assertions, their place in our current scientific findings, and we can discuss them...

One of Nietzche's assertions is that emotions and their components (the notion of a mind, or of a self) are illusions. They are just the psychological manifestations of whichever of our drives are currently dominant,(the drives pushing life forward, to reproduce, to be liked and accepted etc).

Nietzche unfortunately never went into much depth into what these drives are. Frued however credited Nietzche for his statement that drives underly our behavior because it formed the basis for his id, ego and superego (which I personally think is a bunch of hooey that had no basis in science).

Fortunately, Maslow at around this same time as Nietzsche postiluated that we, our interpretation of self, is just a congregartion of needs, came up with a similar philosophy. He even postulated a Hierarchy of Needs to account for these drives.

"Physiological Needs

Physiological needs are the very basic needs such as air, water, food, sleep, sex, etc. When these are not satisfied we may feel sickness, irritation, pain, discomfort, etc. These feelings motivate us to alleviate them as soon as possible to establish homeostasis. Once they are alleviated, we may think about other things.

Safety Needs

Safety needs have to do with establishing stability and consistency in a chaotic world. These needs are mostly psychological in nature. We need the security of a home and family. However, if a family is dysfunction, i.e., an abusive husband, the wife cannot move to the next level because she is constantly concerned for her safety. Love and belongingness have to wait until she is no longer cringing in fear. Many in our society cry out for law and order because they do not feel safe enough to go for a walk in their neighborhood. Many people, particularly those in the inner cities, unfortunately, are stuck at this level. In addition, safety needs sometimes motivate people to be religious. Religions comfort us with the promise of a safe secure place after we die and leave the insecurity of this world.


Love Needs

Love and belongingness are next on the ladder. Humans have a desire to belong to groups: clubs, work groups, religious groups, family, gangs, etc. We need to feel loved (non-sexual) by others, to be accepted by others. Performers appreciate applause. We need to be needed. Beer commercials, in addition to playing on sex, also often show how beer makes for camaraderie. When was the last time you saw a beer commercial with someone drinking beer alone?


Esteem Needs

There are two types of esteem needs. First is self-esteem which results from competence or mastery of a task. Second, there's the attention and recognition that comes from others. This is similar to the belongingness level, however, wanting admiration has to do with the need for power. People who have all of their lower needs satisfied, often drive very expensive cars because doing so raises their level of esteem. "Hey, look what I can afford-peon!"


Self-Actualization

The need for self-actualization is "the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming." People who have everything can maximize their potential. They can seek knowledge, peace, esthetic experiences, self-fulfillment, oneness with God, etc. It is usually middle-class to upper-class students who take up environmental causes, join the Peace Corps, go off to a monastery, etc. "

http://web.utk.edu/~gwynne/maslow.HTM

In what came as a startling revelation to me, it seemed apparent that Maslow's hierachy of needs is eerly similar to Nietzche's will to power. Both men argued that satisfying these inherent needs is healthy, depriving ourselves of them is not. Maslows even said that satisfying needs is healthy and moves us to self actualization and unselfish behavior, and blocking gratification makes us sick or evil.

Needs are prepotent. A prepotent need is one that has the greatest influence over our actions. Everyone has a prepotent need, but that need will vary among individuals. A teenager may have a need to feel that he/she is accepted by a group. A heroin addict will need to satisfy his/her cravings for heroin to function normally in society, and will not worry about acceptance by other people. According to Maslow, when the deficiency needs are met: At once other (and higher) needs emerge, and these, rather than physiological hungers, dominate the organism. And when these in turn are satisfied, again new (and still higher) needs emerge, and so on. As one desire is satisfied, another pops up to take its place.

Nietzche similarly argued that our actions are dependent on what drives dominate us at the time.

If you follow darwin, these drives to be liked and accepted, evolved out of the drive to propagate and are a byproduct of evolution, all the way down to bacteria. A logical interpretation of evolution is that it is the move towards adopting whatever behavior most easily ensures propogation of itself, like a virus, quickly propogating to inhabit as many cells as possible, the force behind evolution seems intent on having it's current form inhabiting every space it can.

It seems intuitive that meeting these needs in this order makes us more and more likely to be able to reproduce, care for our offspring and thus propagate itself. So this is how our emotions are derived. But what about the simplest of living things, bacteria, they don't seem have emotions, what mechanisms underly their propagation?

If you follow chemical evolution, these bacteria themselves evolved from sparks of lightning, that caused mud to become charged and aggregate into circles into which the charges caused chemical to concentrate more and more so. An experiement 80 years ago, proved that given enough time, these muddy aggregations of chemicals react into simple amino acids, and when they get big enough, divide into two muddy circles. All this happens as a result of laws of physics, primarily entropy, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism. And advances since then have shown the remaining steps that seperate these propagating and dividing muddy circles from the simplest of bacteria.

Recent advances in neuroscience have even shown the underlying chemical reactions and interactions that power our senses, our thoughts, emotions, and reflexes and have even traced them through the brain as the chemicals propagate from photons hitting modified neurons in the retinas of our eyes through various chains of neurons that interact with vibrating waves of air (sound) hitting the hair cells all mixing in our temporal and occiptal lobes and causing a number of effects that account for the thoughts, emotions and behaviors they trigger.

Advances in computer engineering have allowed us to engineer circuits that functionally work on the same mechanisms to take in input and produce complex output. If these circuits modified their shape slightly each time electricity passed through them, and took in input not just from a keyboard but from photons, air vibrations, physical force on their shape, and surrounding chemicals, then they could serve as a very basic and simple model for the funcitioning of primative brains such as those of a worm.

So when you put this all together, what do you conclude about what seperates "living" things from just a pool of chemicals that fragmented off of rocks? Are you as awestruck at the complex consequences that a few laws of physics can have given enough time as I am?

And how do you think Nietzche would interpret these new findings?