Complex Numbers

Into an Abyss

Time for another one from "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+].

"Trauma does not make you stronger. Trauma makes you traumatized. The end."

Thinking is fun.

That's the basis for philosophy. Literally, "philosophy" means "love of wisdom" where wisdom is assumed to be based on thinking about shit.

Historically, every branch of thinking was deemed to be philosophy. Physics, for example, used to be called "natural philosophy," as if other forms of thinking were unnatural or something.

Anyone who's been following along in here knows that I'm not above making fun of philosophy that I think is ultimately bullshit. And I have, in the past, railed in particular against a certain quote from Nietzsche, commonly translated as "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger."

Now, I'm not ragging on Nietzsche here. Dude was epic, and I'm not just talking about his mustache. But of all his commonly misrepresented sayings, that one ranks right up there with "God is dead."

The sense of the original quote is that it is possible, in certain circumstances, to grow from misfortune. It's probably a better attitude to have than crumpling up into a little ball of tears whenever something doesn't go your way -- but that's not the only alternative. The problem comes in when you start thinking that only the people who grow from suffering are worthwhile, and everyone else is automatically a pussy.

I've mentioned my uncle in here before. An American Jew of partially Polish descent, he entered the Army in WWII, and was in one of the Allied crews that discovered Dachau.

Before that, per my limited understanding, the full extent of the horrors visited upon the perceived enemies of the Nazis, including but by no means limited to Jews, wasn't really known in the US. There were rumors, of course, but it would have been hard to accept that the arguably most advanced civilization in the world at the time would engage in such atrocities.

He found out otherwise, and once the full knowledge of what the concentration camp overseers had been doing hit him... well, he was never the same again. Today, we'd call it PTSD. Back then, it was "shell-shock," and carried its own stigma. And there was no real treatment for it. His health gradually declined, and he eventually died of pneumonia in the early 90s.

The irony that the Germans of the time might have been influenced by Nietzsche is not lost on me.

The point is, sometimes the shit that doesn't kill you, destroys you in other ways. Trauma isn't something that we just "get over." Some people do, I suppose, but their experience isn't universal, and thinking that it is can only lead to marginalizing those who have real issues. "He just wasn't strong enough." Bullshit. If you're going to sit there and tell me that someone whose life you can barely even comprehend just should have shown more intestinal fortitude, you can fuck right off with that shit. And sometimes, becoming "stronger" means losing empathy, compassion, or some other attribute that is essential for being fully human.

I'm curious about one thing, though: in English, "strength" may refer to purely physical strength (which I don't think is the intent of the Nietzsche quote), or mental resilience, or perhaps competence, or several other attributes. Writing in German, Nietzsche proclaimed, without much elaboration, "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker." I'm just wondering what sense "stärker" has in that language, or maybe had in the late 19th century when he was active.

I always assumed the quote referred to mental resilience, but you know what assumptions do.

Also ironically, the best counterpoint I can think of to that aphorism comes from the same source, and it's one that, by contrast, I have always considered to be essential life advice -- and I think it's especially relevant to my uncle's experience:

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.