Revitalizing Energy as A Result Of A State of World-weariness To Produce Art

Hello Community, 👋

It is my hope that y'all are doing great.

Well in this update I wanted to share one other last way or mechanism, the philosopher Zapffe posited, the difference with the other three remedies, in my last update being, that this is for the few individuals for whom; Isolation, Anchoring, and Distraction fail to cure the world-weariness.

The mechanism is a matter of transformation rather than repression, in comparison to the other three mechanisms put forth by Zapffe.

The mechanism is referred to as Sublimation. Zapffe referring to it as the "rarest of protective means."

Through the mechanism, the individual harnesses the large amounts of energy associated with being experiencing the heavyweight of the rather sad truths about our existence, utilizing the energy to fashion creative works of beauty.

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As Zapffe stated:

Through stylistic or artistic gifts can the very pain of living at times be converted into valuable experiences. Positive impulses engage the evil and put it to their own ends, fastening onto its pictorial, dramatic, heroic, lyric, or even comic aspects.
Zapffe

The sublimation mechanism, shares similarities with the advice espoused by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to these few individuals, for who he called the "higher humans."

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These being the individuals whose disposition renders them incapable of utilizing Zapffe's repressional mechanisms, which the others are able to utilize and get the much-needed protection from experiencing the world-weariness.

Nietzsche recommends the use of art as a means of utilizing the suffering as a result of looking too deeply into life, for these higher humans, who

distinguish themselves from the lower by seeing and hearing, and thoughtfully seeing and hearing, immeasurably more.

As he wrote in The Birth of Tragedy

The truly serious task of art…[is] to save the eye from gazing into the horrors of the night and to deliver the subject by the healing balm of illusion from the spasms of the agitations of the will
Nietzsche

Nietzsche considered art a highly effective remedy to the individuals, seeing it has the ability to induce what he called Rausch, a German word translated as intoxication or rush.

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The philosopher thought that for one to be able to create any work of beauty or be able to truly appreciate the beauty in art, one must first enter into the state of Rausch. As he wrote in the Twilight of the Idols:

For there to be art, for there to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological precondition is indispensable: Rausch. Rausch must first have enhanced the excitability of the whole machine: else there is no art.
Nietzsche

Nietzsche categorized Rausch as one of the more powerful of experiences possible for a human being. It is a very rare and totally unique state of mind.

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When one experiences beauty and such a state is stimulated, one is vaulted into a higher mode of being, one characterized by power and strength, one also experiences an intoxication which is similar to the excitement of sensuality:

Quoting Nietzsche in his book The Will to Power:

Art reminds us of states of animal vigor; it is, on the one hand, an excess and overflow of blooming physicality into the world of images and desires; on the other, an excitation of the animal function through the images and desires of intensified life; — an enhancement of the feeling of life, a stimulant to it.

The fact that beauty has the ability to stimulate states of Rausch in individuals is what led Nietzsche to posit that art is true:

The great stimulus to life.

Especially for those higher humans whose tragic insights are keen and sensitive.

See y'all in my next update.

Cheers!


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@peeterx