Nietzsche & Kierkegaard on Gaining a STRONG PERSONALITY | Why We Need HISTORY to be EXCELLENT

We live in a pathologically mediocre society—a world of soy boys and snowflakes—a problem, since any society that is constituted of weak personalities is doomed to self-destruction. When people are too easily triggered, bothered by little things, shaken to the core by events that really do not matter all that much, society breaks down and slowly ceases to function. We do not employ ourselves in meaningful tasks. We are reluctant to pass on our genes. We do not craft items that will remain in our families for centuries. We do not live lives of which others are proud. We sing about ourselves, not others, and no one will sing songs of us. We do not leave legacies. Therefore our cultures cannot advance and our individual lives become little more than paltry searches for a thin sense of meaning.

The Danish Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard diagnosed his own age similarly, writing “There are no longer human beings, thinkers, lovers, etc.; the human race is enveloped by the press in a miasma of thoughts, emotions, moods, even conclusions, intentions which are nobody's, which belong to none and yet to all.” (Journal 49 X I A 16)

How do you overcome your weakness? According to Friedrich Nietzsche, we need a sense of history. To gain a strong personality, one must appropriate the past by means of monumental history. In the words of Kierkegaard, the past must be seen as possibility rather than actuality. We have to change the way we see. We have to form a relationship with the great men and women of the past, making them role models for our own lives.

Lost Frontier by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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