I love this stuff, we should have a thread dedicated to this. I guess I never realize just how much I subscribed to Nietzsche. I've never read his work in detail, but the more I learn the more I realize I was already thinking that way before I read his work.
What I particularly appreciate, and this is something I've experienced first hand and see in so many young men, is the observation and diagnosis of the insipid cancer of societal nihilism. Something that I think as been misconstrued by edgy teens in a lot of ways, they think that they are being counter culture and finding a unique identity by denying meaning in life and rejecting tradition and culture. Understandably so, of course, when the young man's life is dominated by women until he's 15, pushes for feminization, condemns combat and masculinity, turns women against him with feminism and prices him out of owning land or a home. For the average young man there are only two choices, Marxism and the inherent value structure built into that (oppressor V oppressed) or nihilism, though often times they intermix in a sad state of affairs. This is something I've seen all too often. It's a complete breakdown of moral and social standards, leaving young men vulnerable to radicalization, nihilism or criminality. Certainly nihilism lends itself to a disregard for anything but self and the value of self only comes from the inherent biological function of serotonin release that is in all of us. From this we see disregard of time preference or delayed gratification. Instead the individual optimizes themselves to fit their new environment, seen through the value system of nihilism. Now young men are chasing after meaningless pre-marital sex for the sake of sex and, when taken to an extreme, the abuse of drugs. Certainly in my experience I have seen the abuse of 'feel good' drugs absolutely explode, especially MDMA which is a very powerful hard release of all available serotonin the brain has stored away. Certainly endorphins and dopamine can both be mimicked with opioids. Through the nihilistic outlook, when all things are equally valued as meaningless, the quickest way to fulfill the only meaning in your life (try as you might to fight your biology) is with drugs and not a single reason can be given within that mindset /not/ to.
Certainly I suffered at the hands of depression and many other (((mental health))) problems in my time. But only now, looking back on it, do I realize I was lied to. It was not a chemical imbalance as some hypothesize, I was not unhealthy, the problem was fundamentally ideological. I was a suffering nihilist who wandered aimlessly through a neo-liberal hellscape without context or reason. It was only through an appreciation of history, philosophy and aesthetics that I could begin to piece together my place in all of it and appreciate where I was and what I could do.
After that it was a slow course of introspective thinking and experimental self-taught philosophy to come to the idea that a Man's place is to build, guide and fight for his family, so that the next generation may have the opportunity to go on to greater heights and greater glories than you yourself were capable of. In doing so we propel each generation to new heights. By setting our gaze to impossible goals of perfection, we reach out in constant struggle to achieve, falling short each time, but growing stronger and steadying our aim with each new attempt. Humans are meant to fight, to struggle, to miss and to aim again.
We're not suited for abundance and decadence, we fall apart into unhealthy, lazy, degenerative messes. That mess is exactly what the modern neo-liberal society we see in the West now, represents. We live in a society with so much abundance that you can eat yourself to death of fat and salt, drink yourself to death on sugar water. At the same time, in the modern neo-liberal definitions, we've reached the end game. We have (((democracy))), (((free markets))) and free speech (when (((they))) allow it). According to neo-liberal dogma, we won. But what can a man do with an abundance of resources and no greater goals to achieve, except to gorge himself? We must set out definitions of success to impossible heights. We set them in the stars. We need to re-tune our concepts of success from democracy and free markets, to exploring the stars, self sacrifice, protection of future generations and so on.
But I'm sure you already knew that
/rant
Feel free to intellectually beat me up, everything I know is from introspective thinking over years, rather than from learning through books and formal education (which would have been a lot faster).