The way to the beginnings leads to barbarism

Concerning culture and freedom

For the Greek, the presence of culture distinguished the free man from the slave. Do you understand what this means? Do you think a slave was free from entertainment? Without being cultured, that is, trained, in both body and mind, there is no freedom. And a free society is nothing more than a pack of trained men bonding together to expand and protect a way of life. Freedom is indeed a great good, an ideal, but it is not a state in which one can do as one wishes, it is the ideal end of doing what one must. Leisure is required. The Spartan saw himself as freer than other Greeks, precisely because he was subjected to more culture, that is, training. 

Culture is nothing but the way in which life gives shape to itself. A way of life. Generally, we call the artistic and other expressions of this way of life ‘culture’, the buildings, the paintings, the literature, the science that flows out of this way of life. But first and foremost, culture is the way of life. And not all life is formed. Not all ways of life allow life to take on its natural form. Not all buildings, paintings, literature, and so on flow out of culture. Even the homeless create places of shelter and put pen to paper, and many know more about chemistry than you and me. 

Comparing ‘cultures’ is very much like comparing different ways of athletic training. In athletic training, it is a peculiar fact that the style of training undertaken by a culture or a team seems to accord with the spirit of the ‘culture’ out of which it came. If we look at Russian and Eastern European systems of strength training and weightlifting, we often see an extreme emphasis on focussing on the competition lifts, no fluff. We see this most clearly in the infamous ‘Bulgarian system’; snatch, clean and jerk, and squats, each lift trained three times a day, pretty much every day. Most of the time, if not always, to maximum intensity. Variability is the enemy of this spirit of training, constancy is its friend. The same spirit is seen in other strength systems in culturally related nations, even when programs show more variance on the surface.

If a culture is a way of life, and a way of life is nothing but the way in which life lives, that is, the way in which it seeks to expand its powers and overcome the obstacles set before this life, then training systems give us peculiar insight into how the spirit of a culture thinks about overcoming obstacles. With the Eastern European spirit, it is very blunt and direct, pure grit, try over and over. If it doesn’t move, try again. If we look at Chinese systems for example, we often see something quite different. It often looks very similar to bodybuilding really. Train a compound lift + accessory movements to build musculature related to said lift. Then let it rest while other lifts and muscle groups are trained. These two systems can be seen as extremes, and often Western European and American systems display a seeming hybrid of the two. We do well in learning the best from other cultures, and taking what is necessary to build up our own. Nietzsche writes about the Greeks:

“They invariably absorbed other living cultures. The very reason they got so far is that they knew how to pick up the spear and throw it onward from the point where others had left it. Their skill in the art of fruitful learning was admirable. We ought to be learning from our neighbors precisely as the Greeks learned from theirs, not for the sake of learned pedantry but rather using everything we learn as a foothold which will take us up as high, and higher than our neighbor.”

(Nietzsche, Philosophy in Tragic Age of the Greeks, 30)

Speaking of something else, ‘philosophical systems’, Nietzsche writes that they allow us insight into a certain way of life, a certain way of “looking at the human scene.” And such a system, “is a growth of this soil.” (Nietzsche, 24) And likewise, training systems give us insight into the life from which it grew. A different mode of life, a different ‘culture’, a different mode of thought.

But as much as the effectiveness of a system is dependent on the individual nature of the individual, or his type, not all systems produce results. In the same way, not all ways of life lead to life. Hence the most important question; what direction to take? This is the Platonic question, what is the Good, and how do we reach it? 

The most important thing to realize when we look at the meaning of culture; life left to itself is not always worth living. Life is only worth it when it has worth, either given by instinct, nature, or culture. Left to itself, life can never be free, and it can never be that which it is. What is needed is life subjected to something else —training. This is culture. One can of course speak in tautologies, life being given its worth by grace of life itself, a way of thinking which I endorse. But do realize, for life to be given worth by life itself, this giving still has to take place. And as much as it might always already be given, it still has to be brought out to fruition. Even those ‘cultures’ which speak about the individual’s intrinsic worth and the importance of renouncing activity endorse a system of training to arrive at one’s intrinsic worth.

Nietzsche says that it is of the Greek will to surpass the feminine by way of the human form in its entirety. In many Ancient systems, East or West, there is always talk about a feminine principle and a masculine principle. The divine feminine, ‘Gaia’, associated with the body, sensibility, and the principle of biological life. Next to this, there is the divine masculine, the Father, representing order, guidance, and so on, logos. In many ways, the feminine is first, it is what gives life, as the mother gives birth. Some more scientifically minded people say the child’s gut and its biome are inherited from the mother. And one needs good digestion to think properly. But if one leaves it at this, and the feminine remains the only principle that rules over the life of the child, disaster follows, we remain mere walking stomachs. What is needed is a second intervention where, as psychoanalysis says, the father saves the child from the mother. What is first is not necessarily best. And this is the meaning of culture, the subjection of mere biological and sensuous life to the imperative of “order”, so that life can cease being at one with the great earth mother, and rise to its true form as a human being. From animal to man, culture allows life to cease being mere life, and to become truly human. 

In training systems, different types of people resonate with different styles of training. With bodybuilding, there is the popular high-intensity protocol popularized by Arthur Jones and Mike Mentzer. Many flock to it, whereas for me and many others, I can not think of anything less attractive. Training very short and very infrequent, my spirit craves more frequency, repetition, and ‘training’. But still for many it fits perfectly with their psychological and physiological needs. Different types of life want different types of training, that is, want different modes of life. And so the question of culture is: what mode of life is best for this type of life? Which is, really, a tautological question. This does not make it a senseless question however, but gives us the answer: the best mode of life is the mode that allows the life to express its own mode of life to its fullest potential. Some are made for lying on the beach all week and doing a ‘high intensity’ protocol twice a week. Others are made for repeating the same movements every day 365 days a year. Others have legs seemingly made for running long distances. And others don’t think about extremes. And at different periods of life, in different climates, in accordance with certain differing needs, the ideal culture changes too.

Some types of life resonate with certain types of training, but then of course there are others who don’t listen to their instincts, but listen to the science only. But this has nothing to do with making a science out of seeing what the best type of training will be, for science is always too late. And science will always side with weakness. If the Bulgarian weightlifting team had followed the science of kinesiology, rehab, and optimal ranges of vitamins, maybe there wouldn’t have been as many champions. And if Mentzer would have followed the science of ‘optimal frequency’, he would have never fallen into the style of training that allowed him to put his entire power of will into it. A ‘sub-optimal’ training system that allows one to train with vigor will always be superior to the most optimal science-based protocol that drains one’s passion. And one can think about ‘cultures’ similarly. 

There is no question of good and bad here, there is a question of what mode of life fits a certain type of life. What mode of life allows a certain type of life to fully live, to fully exercise its power of will, its passion?

And this, this is what freedom is. But it requires culture. Which is, in all, not the becoming sterile of a mode of life, its enslavement by man-made convention. This is what it eventually becomes, yes. But essentially, it is what allows man to escape from a tyranny much worse, it is a road out of the life of a walking stomach dominated by the Chtonic feminine. 

Rousseau says: “man is born free, and everywhere he finds himself in chains.” Perhaps this is true when born from an unbroken lineage of cultured and/or noble people. But generally speaking, man is born a slave, and he fights himself free through culture. 

What Nietzsche writes about philosophy is true of all life: 

“Everywhere, the way to the beginnings leads to barbarism.” (Nietzsche, 30) 

Searching for what was first, in the beginning, we often only find crude forms and an ape-like man tied to sensuous life. But what is first is not always best. We remember Alexander the Great because of his courage at the spear of battle, guiding his men to conquer unknown lands. We do not remember him because he sucked his mother’s breast as a child. 

Hence the importance of Plato’s question; what is Good? Which direction? Where do we want life to go? Now of course, to know these things, it is useful to know a thing or two about what life ‘is’, but perhaps also only when one lacks instinctual knowledge. The best, however, do not need any of these questions answered. They know who they are and what destiny asks of them, and all these questions, if they’d arise, would be blamed on a sudden drop in self-confidence —disease —, what the desert people call demons.