The Odyssey Controversy (no spoilers)/Intro to Nietzsche

[00:00:00]Hi everybody and welcome back to the Brian Escow show. It's great to be with you. I'd like to do two things in this video. One is basically just pat myself on the back for having the right take when it comes to the Odyssey. Haven't seen it yet, so don't worry about any spoilers. I'm bummed that I haven't seen it. I'm pissed off that I didn't book tickets in advance. But um I want to basically say one more time what I already said in a previous video. I recorded when I was driving home that I haven't had the opportunity to share with my podcast audience. Now that I'm potentially back to podcasting, I want to make this statement formally on here so it can reach a wider audience. And that statement was my opinion on the Odyssey controversy as it was presented in the media up right before it was released. So, I'm going to tell you what I said in that video, which I ended I think ended up being the right take. I mean, of course, I think I have the right takes. That's why I'm doing this, right? I mean, you know, we wouldn't be no one I mean, no one who does a podcast would be offering any sort of opinion if they didn't think that they had a reasonable approach. So, I'm going to basically just pat myself on the back again for not freaking out and assuming the worst about the Odyssey.

[00:01:18]And I'll I'll talk a little bit about what that means, how it relates to communism and Marxism and identity politics and the culture war.

[00:01:30]And it's it what is interesting about it is even though I became a member of the right wing so to speak largely in reaction to the culture war here I am not rushing to judgment and calling something woke before we have our facts. So as I said a few times now I'm going to pat myself on the back about that. And then secondly, I want to share with you what I've learned so far in oh, I don't know 11 or 12 lectures of Jordan Peterson, Jordan Peterson lectures about Nietze, Nietze, got to pronounce it right. Um, now if you know anything about Jordan Peterson, you know that he is basically the preeminent mind, the preeminent scholar, philosopher, dare I say, of our day who understands that was not a great description, but it was a partial description. Jordan Peterson understands Young, Carl Young, right? the psychoanalyst and uh Nietze the philosopher possibly and probably better than anyone alive today. And so I said a few times, sip of water, excuse me online and even in last week's episode and um even prior to temporarily shutting the podcast down, I'd been really high on these Jordan Peterson lectures through the Jordan Peterson Academy. I'm still going through them. I love it. It's not only Jordan Peterson.

[00:03:09]In fact, I started off with several courses not taught by Jordan Peterson, but I'm now getting to what is definitely in his in his strike zone.

[00:03:18]And I'm listening to these lectures and it's it's it's amazing the depth the depth of the knowledge and he's p he's trying his best to pass to us who who don't have the the depth of knowledge. He's trying to give us an extraordinary learning experience and it's pretty good. Uh this one on Nietze. So I took an intro to Nietze which is eight courses. Uh they're all eight lecture, eight one-hour courses.

[00:03:48]And so intro to Nietze was supposed to cover the book beyond good and evil. But Jordan Peterson ended up I don't want to say rambling because that would be pjorative and and not true, but kind of digressing and giving you such full thought that he he didn't get to cover as much material as he might have hoped to. So Peterson had a second course on nature called what is this one called? Beyond um further down the rabbit hole and it's continuing analysis of beyond good and evil.

[00:04:23]So, I want to share my thoughts because one, it'll help me consolidate what I've learned so far. Two, I think it's interesting. Three, I think I think it's very very very related to this whole thing that started my not my interest in politics, but my really paying attention and especially the culture war and certainly my drift to the right, which is um critical race theory, identity politics, the which I would say is pretty pretty strong on the left. It's not fringe, but people hammer me on that and they go, "Brian, you studied in college, so you think it's mainstream, but it's not or law school rather." H So yeah, studying philosophy and it's all about identity and who am I? Who are we?

[00:05:21]what is right? What's the best way to organize a society? I mean that's what it's all about. So yeah, going to talk a little bit about Nietze.

[00:05:32]So let's go back to the Odyssey. This will be very quick. This won't be a very long episode.

[00:05:39]You're welcome.

[00:05:41]What I said about the Odyssey is as it was getting crushed and people were saying, "Don't go see it. It's woke. It has a trans person in it. it has a black person in a traditionally white role XYZ. My response was, "Hey, look, number one, well, substantively I said, look, the bottom line is just because an artist, in this case a director, makes a non-traditional casting choice, a diverse casting choice, a black person in a traditionally white role to be more precise.

[00:06:15]Just because that happens doesn't mean there's anything going on."

[00:06:20]The simple act of putting a black person in a traditionally white role is not woke in my opinion. Now you could say look yes it is because the very it's it's eraser. the very act in itself is eras is white eraser and and I understand that but I am absolutely not willing to say just all things being equal that one decision to put a black person or an Asian person or a woman in a man's role you know one non-traditional or creative or diverse casting choice does not a woke drama make so that's my starting point I said Nolan is one of the directors of our generation telling one of the classic stories of all time. You're damn right I'm going to see that movie. And if it's woke, it's woke. Oh, if it's great, it's great. If it's not woke, it's not woke.

[00:07:12]I mean, who knows? But that was my basic point was the simple act of a diverse casting is not necessarily indicative that you have a woke narrative at play here because the woke narrative is oppressed or oppressed is well, that's basically it. Yeah, it's oppressor oppressed. It's all bad. Tear down the existing structure and rebuild.

[00:07:42]Condemning Western society, collapsing it all into the negative, making it one-dimensional, making it one-dimensional. That's woke.

[00:07:52]Racism, sexism around every corner, that's woke.

[00:07:57]So, there's a difference there. So, I'm very happy that the reviews have been amazing. I can't wait to see it. And that's about it. The only the only other thing, excuse me, I'm going to cough.

[00:08:10]Pardon me. The only other thing I would add is that I don't like the Oscar rules about diversity. I don't like, you know, it just I don't like anything about setting parameters for what could qualify a film to get best picture or some other Oscar.

[00:08:30]You know, I just want the art to speak for itself. I don't like rules in art and I don't like political rules and social engineering rules in art.

[00:08:39]Separate, you know, art is art, man. And we shouldn't be corrupting it with, I know, I don't want to say we shouldn't be corrupting art with politics. Like I'm not a [ __ ] idiot. Like I understand that politics is built into much and most if not all art.

[00:08:59]But there's a difference between, you know, an artistic political statement and a committee saying you're not allowed into the award program unless you have certain preconditions met. I'm just not into that. So, moving on. Let's talk about Nietze.

[00:09:19]All right. Probably gonna screw this up.

[00:09:24]Hopefully, I'll do an amazing job.

[00:09:25]That's like Kurt Cobain in the Unplugged MTV Unplugged performance. Nirvana. What song was it? Was it uh Yeah, it was right before you know they did that cover of David Bowie's Man Who Sold the World. Classic cover. Really good. Bowie has said they took it into a whole another dimension. And it was a much happier song than, you know, originally, but you know, of course, the Nirvana spin on it wasn't very bright or happy and they made it they I would say they brought it to an even larger audience than Bowie had. Maybe someone would argue that, but for me at least, I didn't know the song by David Bowie until I heard it by Nirvana. Unplugged.

[00:10:03]Interesting. U cover.

[00:10:06]So, right before they go into that song, Kurt Cobain says, "I'm probably going to screw this up." And then he plays it flawlessly. So, hopefully the same happens here, but I doubt it for some reason. So, Nche, okay, the basic points Peterson says that this guy philosophized with a hammer. Either Nietze said that about himself or it was said about him. And what that meant is not only did he wield such strong statements and he wrote in such a way that was fun to read and short pathy statements, a lot of information in a short period, very dense.

[00:10:52]And so that's his hammer in one sense.

[00:10:54]in the way he writes. His tool, his writing me style is, you know, forceful, but also philosophized with the hammer means he he he goes right to the core foundations of things. Now, you might say, well, doesn't all philosophy go to the core foundations of all thought? Yes. But I guess Peterson's point is that Nietze, even for philosophers, went to the foundations and was tinkering. And so, look, there's not too much to say because I'm not Jordan Peterson. So, I'll just give you the the minute or two more I have on what I think I understand the basics of when someone says Nietze, what might come to mind, you know, and what do we think of?

[00:11:35]Well, the classic phrase, God is dead.

[00:11:37]And it's not just God is dead. It's God is dead and we've killed him. That is attributed to Nze. And so, God is dead and we have killed him.

[00:11:47]Well, at the very least, even if you're not religious, at the very least, what does God mean?

[00:11:52]Objective morality, object, the objective standard, right? And so, even if you don't believe in God, God, if you believe that there is this objective standard for truth, if God is dead, then we lost that. So, Nietze with this idea that God is dead and we have killed him calls into question the existence of objective truth. objective truth is kind of now gone and without going too much deeper into it again because I'm not Jordan Peterson but Nichze does have this strain of thought where he says that there's the cold reality of the world as it is objectively and then there's the story we tell ourselves to survive.

[00:12:34]Though there is this running thought of maybe maybe none of us truly do experience experience objective reality to begin with because we're organisms trying to stay alive and part of that is telling ourselves a story about the world and orienting oursel in the world. So that that's an aside though. So God is dead and we have killed him. So goodbye objective truth. And so what is the will to power then? And what is the uber mch?

[00:13:04]Well, the will to power is basically the guiding principle of life that Nietze says the core drive that animates all human beings is this will to power, this will to overcome, this will to overcome one's limitations and define one's values for themsel and to live fully and to grow and to transcend, ascend, overcome and master the world perhaps.

[00:13:37]And so it's very much so that's the will to power and it's very much tied to the idea that God is dead. God is dead.

[00:13:44]There's no more objective truth. So what are we going to be niilists? Nature said we're one option is nihilism.

[00:13:51]Nothing matters. Well, that's a problem.

[00:13:53]So nature says the answer is you got to fill the void man with yourself. God is dead. Man must replace him. And man is subjective. So Nichze says after a sip of water, we have to create our own values.

[00:14:08]And the uber mench is the per the superman, the Uberman is the person who does that successfully. Who is who creates their own values and strives and lives that way and lives fully according to those values. Wow. That's the man who can rise above in the face of the death of God. who must rise above in the face of the death of God.

[00:14:33]So it's interesting how to create one's own values is a perver this is a quote actually from Petership is a perverse form of liberalism liberalism not progressive contemporary progressive but classical liberalism where the individual is paramount individual rights this is that to a kind of an extreme right as you can see so Nietze also has this or Peterson rather has this idea that to share a culture is to share They're a set of fictions, right? And so this is where the Marxists, the or rather I should say the critical race theorists, how would you call it, the cultural Marxists, they kind of have a point about subjective reality being important and maybe this obsession with objective reality is inappropriate. They kind of are echoing niche. Now, Peterson would say that they've latched on to this subjective framing, and perhaps that's not wrong.

[00:15:32]But where they make the fatal mistake, the neo-Marxist, the cultural Marxists, is they assume that the will to power means power, pure power, pure dominance, pure coercion. And that the western man, the white man is dominated by this desire to overpower and oppress.

[00:15:53]And Peterson says that is missing the mark very badly. Um, I haven't finished the lecture series, but I'm pretty sure the second one at least, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to end with Jordan Peterson saying, "And you know what the cultural Marxists were right about Nichze." So, it's interesting. It's I said it was relevant because of course the cultural Marxists are all about there is no such thing as objective reality. There's no such thing as objective uh society, objective application of the law. It's all judgment. Even if you have the constitution and the 14th amendment and the equal protection clause, it doesn't matter. In reality, life is not objective. That's the core claim of critical race theory. So, yeah, I told you it was relevant to Nietze.

[00:16:40]But Peterson does not say that they took Nietze to the correct conclusion.

[00:16:45]There's too much because Nietze now I'm going off. I mean, I don't I certainly don't have a script, but and I've already exhausted my bullet points anyway. basically. But Nietze was very against the the slave mentality, the the weak mentality, the oppressor oppressed rather mentality. He didn't have much sympathy for people who were oppressed. He thought, you know, he admired great men of the old days that built things and took adventure and lived life and claimed their freedom and claimed their birthright. So, he wasn't a docile man.

[00:17:24]And so, how did I bring that up? I don't know.

[00:17:31]He wasn't a docile man.

[00:17:34]Yeah.

[00:17:37]He believed that Christianity, he critiqued Christianity for its slave morality.

[00:17:45]This is a quote from Jordan Peterson.

[00:17:47]resenting straight resenting strength and glorifying weakness.

[00:17:53]He resented Christianity. Nietze did because it was a slave morality that resented strength and glorified weakness. Now Peterson says Nietze threw out the baby with the bathwater and criticizing criticism too broad Christianity too broadly there. But he did have a point Peterson says of Nichze that there was among a certain member of the Christian community this what he would call a slave morality slave mind mindset an infatuation with weakness and humility so there's so much to say take my word for it when I say that I have given given you of the core basic ideas oh 30% 20% I mean obviously I've given you less than 1% of the richness and the information and the totality and the clarity and the context of a Jordan Peterson lecture but maybe 20% 25 30% of the overall material I've given to you in this poorly delivered manner God is dead. Objective truth. Now we got to fill the void with something of our own. The will to power must come into play. The uber man is the man who can master the will to power and master life and overcome and create maximize his creative potential output.

[00:19:26]We tied that to liberalism, classic liberalism, individuality and the western ethos.

[00:19:35]So, it's it's it's all very interesting.

[00:19:37]Identity, individuality, morality.

[00:19:44]Where would socialism fit in? Where would communism fit into this?

[00:19:48]I'm not prepared to answer that question. I haven't thought about it.

[00:19:51]But, well, let's see. Communism came slightly before Niche. Uh, so, and I was just listening to lectures. I don't know this stuff generally off the top of my head but I believe the the um manifesto communist manifesto was written in 1848.

[00:20:10]Nichze maybe he was writing his books 30 years later 2530 years later but communism was a huge piece in the puzzle in the battle against religion.

[00:20:22]Communism demanded atheism literally.

[00:20:26]And so perhaps communism is an example of a a bad version of how it could play out in nature's world where God is dead. We filled the void with communism. Well, that's not good.

[00:20:43]God is dead, we filled the void with Nazism. That's not good.

[00:20:47]So Peterson likes to think that Nietze and says quite confidently that Nietze wasn't although there were the seeds of great evil and destructiveness were in Nietz's thought it was it was only because we were operating at the very core level here of God is dead assuming this you know I mean that's profound remember we said he hits with the hammer he goes to the profound the structural bottom well if god is dead and we have you know if morality is no more now The communists said that anything that serves the working party's interest party of the working people is moral.

[00:21:23]That was a numerality. So communism was one answer. Nazism was another answer.

[00:21:30]Is there a good version of Nietian thought? Probably a heroic. Maybe Trump you know you know you know I'm just spitballing but play the hero. Don't be weak. Don't be meek. Be strong. Stand up.

[00:21:47]Believe in yourself. Live your life.

[00:21:49]Now, Trump, I'm not going to sit here and tell you whether I think he believes in God. I would say that he does, but he acts like he does. He He talks like he does. You know, in a way, in a in a certain way. Maybe not traditionally. Nothing he does is traditional, especially the way he talks. But he doesn't strike me as an atheist.

[00:22:16]Trump.

[00:22:18]So, I don't know. But that's what I've got for now. So, thank you very much for listening and I'm going to go do some errands. Have a great day. Bye.