Reflection (part I)

I just finished reading Bound: The marriage of tragedy and meaning in “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” a thesis by my friend James Shay. If I understand his definition of will to power, it comes to mean the confrontation of personal insecurity in a world of chaos. If we confront it, we become creative, independent, and engaged with the world. In a sense this strikes me as a philosophy of self-empowerment.

If my reading is correct, then it can be a relevant concept in my thesis. If the personal insecurity we experience relative to the chaos that is the everyday world is the primary force in our life, then we are paralyzed and can only follow a pre-determined path in life. There is no creativity in this paradigm, nor is there any true questioning of what passes before us (either as truth or as right/wrong). But an individual with a strong engagement with this chaos and endowed with a “will to power” as it were, will be able to question, to be creative, and to forge their own path.

Power in this sense is the personal, the internal. Thinking about this in terms of the HON299 class I can see that it allows the individual to become aware of the power relationships that exist in the world and for that individual to control their subjugation to those power dynamics. In a sense, will to power allows you to control what your identity is and becomes over time. Will to power assumes, if I understand it fully, that the individual will have a sense of their own identity, or at least an understanding of what they believe, in order to interact with the world on their own terms. This implies self-confidence, a thing that I struggle with as much as I do with my identity.

Putting this in a sporting context, the empowerment that a person feels by being part of team (i.e. with a role to play in life), particularly a successful one, will translate into their non-sporting life and give them a sense of confidence, which, under my interpretation of Nietzsche, prompts them to be more creative and independent from subjugation. This argument becomes something of refutation of Freud’s Group Psycology when you consider that Freud argued the individual loses empowerment through group association. I can see his argument particularly as I have suggested the relegation of the individual to collective occurs, yet the opposite occurs also. Not only does the individual receive a validation of his or her ideas (by virtue of it being the common denominator), but they also gain in confidence and thus are more willing to question and be critical of the group objective, direction, mores, etc.

This result comes from the many benefits of team collaboration, particularly in a sporting context. Without wanting to go into the physiological benefits of sport, it should be clear that an active life is better than a sedentary one, as the former keeps bodily functions more regular and in tune as well as keeping the mind sharp.

Next it gives individuals a sense of responsibility towards their teammates. As I mentioned previously, a team is a group of individuals who must look to the interests of the whole before looking to their own. While their own interests are not necessarily antithetical to the interests of the collective, the order and efficiency of the team relies on the group effort. It’s fine for Lionel Messi to make that darting solo run through the oppositions defense and score because it serve the interest of Barcelona as a whole. A problem occurs if Messi tried this every time he came in possession of the ball. Not only is he refusing to collaborate with the team, but he is also assuming that they are no longer necessary, thus it becomes all about him.
A third point to consider is that this team ethic gives the individuals a sense of identity. The commonality of ideas shared by group members becomes a learning tool and, perhaps less so in a sporting context, an ideology.

I am just now struck by the tribalistic connotation of the “Parma, Parma, Vaffanculo”. If you think about that, the sentence, as it stands suggests that you are telling a whole community (identity) to fuck off. It implies a cultural superiority to those chanting the lines.