Are cyclists Nietzsche's Supermen?
downfader
Posts: 3,686
Well I aint the brightest monkey in the tree, but I have read about 6 books in my lifetime. 
Three of them were by Nietzsche and I became fascinated by some of the things he came out with. One of them was this Superman theory.My understanding was that a Superman, not Clark Kent to be specific
was an individual who led their life on on the virtues of strength, intelligence, stamina and tenacity. I could be wrong and completely misunderstood, but it seems we cyclists fulfil some of those criteria at worst. 0
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Infact, it doesn't sound too disimilair to the theory of self actualisation. Does it? I imagine those are essential criteria for fulfilling one's potential.
Cheers
Pedro
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On that basis. Sadly it's not cyclists per se. But those like me who have gone insane are training and competing in Iron Man Triathlons!!! :shock:
Insane? Yes, at some point of the day it all gets too much. You either give up, sit down and cry. Or you start laughing at the insanity of it all.
I regularly get called a fascist on here so...
Why has your sister been rewriting your posts?
Thats a quality cartoon.
I have no idea what that means.
Of course we are the super race but there is a world wide conspiracy (started and maintained by WVM) which has been holding us back. These calculating individuals have taken over the roads and have gained the unwitting support of ordinary motorists and lorry drivers.
To achieve our full potential we must reclaim the roads from WVM and their unwitting henchmen. Banning their vehicles, their means of livelihood, will be a start but we must eventually eliminate WVM.
We need to round them up and send them (by trains) to special 'Camps' where they can learn the benefits of good honest cycling. Obviously most will not succeed and many will regress to their WVM tactics if they return to the community. Therefore we will need to have a 'Final Solution' where we lock WVM in the back of a van and run the exhaust into it. Anyone found trying to help a WVM escape his fate will be dealt with in the same strict way.
This will all take time but gradually our roads will become free of Shitty Post and Fed Ex vans; builders will have to find alternative means of transport for their cracks and scruffy landscape gardeners will be buried in their scruffy landscapes.
We must begin by closing ranks and acknowledging each other. From today, whenever we are on the road we will acknowledge other cyclists by raising the right arm and saying 'Hail Cyclist'.
To consolidate and increase support we will have rallies in Hyde Park with lots of cycling and with all of us saluting the bicycle community with the "Hail Cyclist" salute.
When we have eliminated or subjugated all the WVM in the British Isles then we will launch our next phase i.e. to bring Cycling civilisation to the peoples of the world. We will begin with France and Germany. These both need lessons in civilised behaviour and will benefit enormously from our influence.
I must finish this post here as Nurse has just told me it is time for my medication
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Hail Cyclist!
Poor old Nietzsche often gets wrongly labelled as a sort of proto-Nazi, and this reputation has come about due to his writings being misappropriated and reworked by his sister - who was a fascist. Inevitably, during their rise to power, a certain bloke with an iffy moustache and his cronies took a shine to said texts....
David
Trains packed out like sardine tins and full of pig-ignorant, Daily Sport-reading WVM types? Hardly a new idea, as anyone unfortunate enough to have caught a Kent Coast service out of Victoria on a Friday afternoon will testify.
David
I agree and find it very sad and, at times, frustrating, I think Richard Strauss's music is excellent - but I cannot listen to it without thinking how it is usually so pro German (in the worst possible way). The start of his tone poem 'Sunrise' from, "Also Sprach Zarathustra" will remind most people of the film " 2001" but i get i only get images of Nurenburg rallies skeletal people, some living some dead, at a concentration camp.
Nietzsche's bastardised philosophy was used by his sister to support eugenics based communities - taking a pure idea and slapping warts all over it.
Having said all that, I believe the original philosophy was very pure and it pointed out that we humans can achieve amazing things - both mentally and physically. I think that is more in keeping with the start of the thread - so lets not hijack it with a pro-anti Nietzsche debate.
Never said Nietzche was a proto Nazi. I said the Nazis had elements of Nietzche. :roll:.
If someone has gone to the trouble of rounding 'em up and packing them into trains like sardines who was responsible for letting them go??
Please send your answers to Obergrupenfuher Nazimanmitwhipundbootsundmonocal (SS und BNP).......Und remember that if you know, ve haf vays of obtaining this information from you
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So, to what extent did the Nazis use bicycles to support their (distorted) version of Nietzche's philosophy?
I think it was something along the lines of "strength through joy". Cycling would fall into this category, as does hiking through the countryside.
Given I order a lot of bike stuff online this could be a problem!
Cycling = 'strength through joy'? Anyone who's ever used an indoor trainer will know that said expression is only half-right. 'Strength through purgatory' doesn't have quite the same ring, though....
David
They were great advocates of riding fixed: "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Geschwindigkeit" [1] (also insert obvious gags about certain Austrians only having one of something)
David
[1] According to online translation services. My German is actually pretty ropey.
What about sex? Surely that has to be a contender (From what I can remember of it :oops: )
It may give you a problem but it would save me from the near death experience one of these drivers inflicted on me yesterday morning.
But the gag/song went on to explain that "Himmler didn't have any at all".
Maybe the need to compensate could explain a major part of 20th century history
As for these "camps"? Fat camps?
Other stories abound were that he was homosexual and had been spurned by Wagner iirc. All nonsense. He was celebate iirc, though had been taken to a gay brothel as a young man by a friend, apparently so in shock he sat at a piano playing the ivories to take his mind off.
He was also a war hero, but was injured when he tore his chest open on the saddle of the horse he'd lept upon. He nearly died as a result.
Darwin also inspired majorly the Nazis. You'd better burn his books too!
I missed out the middle man and didn't buy them in the first place....who does?
Anyway it was more Eugenics wasn't it? They applied the theory of evolution to the Human Race. Did Darwin do that?
Even if he did, there is a difference. Darwin came up with a widely respected theory based on observation - evolution. Nazi boy wrote philossophy which is totally subjective and 'decided' to write about strength, supermen etc.
Naziboy, lol!!? Have you read any of his books?
IIRC Eugenics, as with many of the darker things in life was a British invention.It was a bastardised ideal formulated from the theory of artificial selection (eg farming and agriculture being one use of artificial selection), Darwin partly used AS to prove that natural selection takes place and that species can change over time.
"inspired".
Social-Darwinism was around long before the Nazis. It was one of the key features of colonial justification.
Google the "white man's burden" if you are unsure about that. Cecil Rhodes and Harry Johnston were big fans.
Social-Darwinianism was (is?) tends to share some Nietzchean ideas. The colonial expereinces in Africa are the obvious example.
It was also a feature of the Belgian rule of the Congo Free State, which possibly was even more lethal than the holocaust, but that's been very easily forgotten unfortunately.
As for the above post. I never for once made the distinction between Germany and Britain - we had our Nazis too, still do.
'Nietzche has inspired Eugenics and colonilaism too' isn't much a defence of the bloke by the way! I just think that you CAN judge organizations and people by their legacy...the road to hell is paved with good intentions etc. I mean Ghandi did OK - his legacy was positive and few would disagree.
There was something inherent to Nazi boy's work that led to this legacy....even if he was a terribly nice guy!
The Congo is a mess, as is other parts of Africa, no doubt destroyed partially by European and US involvement in recent years (diamond mining is one source of major aggrevation for parts of the Continent there. War, torture and disease have all come about because of diamonds)
You mean the first European I presume. Africans are people too? Or do they not count? Or have you been reading too much of Stanley, who will happily shoot a man in his caravan if he drops anything of Stanley's in the river? Not that he ever considers the local people as equal as men. :roll: