This world is the will to power–and nothing besides! – Nietzsche
What is real? What is reality? How can I answer that in a few short paragraphs?
Reality is the continuous, inter-subjective expression of a process. That process is a system of disequilibrium (power) and the actions that use that power (actualization). It could be called the power-process, or Nietzche’s “Will to Power”. The power process is “happening”, and Reality is a by-product, a side-effect, of that happening.
Actualizers, or realized abstractions (reference points) of actualization, experience this process as Desire. It can also be said, therefore, that Reality is an expression of Desire. The process of using power through actions, as expressed by actualizers, becomes the satisfaction of Desire. All actualizers can be said to “want” this, because it is contained in their definition and is tautologous.
It is important to separate ends from desires or Desire. Creation is a by-product of desire, so in a backwards way we seek to create because of Desire. But it is not the creations themselves that are desired, it is the opportunity (power and ability) to create that is desired. That’s why we commonly experience “stuff” as not being satisfying. Money doesn’t buy happiness and all that.
We do not seek satisfied desires. We seek the satisfaction of Desire.
But we don’t want to sit around desiring all the time either – we want to go through the process of satisfying it. Think about hunger and food. You clearly don’t want to sit around being hungry all the time. However, when you eat, you aren’t eating in order to experience being full – being full isn’t very satsifying after a relatively short time. You eat because you enjoy satisfying hunger.
Every action, thought, or expression of truth is driven by the Satisfaction of Desire. From this, Reality becomes.
I’ll eventually talk about humans as actualizers and the meaning of the “soul”. There’s a lot more to talk about in terms of reference points and abstractions and information. But to summarize all that for its application here, because every actualizer, even if it is self-realized, is a unique reference point, its experience of Desire is entirely subjective. The satisfaction of desire is the only value that holds across the subjective/objective barrier – it’s the only thing we can all “agree” on, because we’re all doing it, all the time. We express our experience of subjective desires as Values.
This realization of values will let us segue into the Ethics portion of the philosophy, but I’ll save that for another post.
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