this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Passion and destruction - a collective exploration (beehaw.org)
submitted 1 year ago by Lionir@beehaw.org to c/chat@beehaw.org
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I've recently been thinking a lot about self-destruction.

I've been thinking about how passion and destruction are interlinked. I've also thought that for creation to exist, destruction must proceed it.

I've had quite the difficulty to try and make sense of these feelings. I thought I'd try to explain and explore this idea with other people.

So here I am - Let's start from the premise above.

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[–] Nemo@midwest.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I forget which book, but Nietzsche refers to this paradox as "the artist of violence". The idea being that originally, things were created out of raw chaos; after that, you need to deconstruct something to create something new. Either way, it's violence: the imposition of one's will onto something else.

Now, Nietzsche said a lot of shit, so take this with a grain of salt; but this is one of the concepts that stick with me, for the same reason you've got this question bugging you. How do we balance our very human urge to create with an ethical imperative against violence?

I settled on not using violence that harms other humans, which is kind of extreme. But creativity thrives on constraints, right?

You have to answer the question yourself, though, of how far you're willing to go, how much destruction you're willing to cause, to create what's important to you.

[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

The idea being that originally, things were created out of raw chaos; after that, you need to deconstruct something to create something new. Either way, it’s violence: the imposition of one’s will onto something else.

I think this matches really well with what I'm getting at. I should read Nietzsche someday.

How do we balance our very human urge to create with an ethical imperative against violence?

Is violence necessarily evil? I understand aversion to it but there are plenty of improvements to society which people unfortunately had to use violence for and many of which I'd continue advocating for.