philogrammer and superman

Friedrich Nietzsche had a lot of interesting ideas, many of which were misunderstood. without getting into the bulk of his philosophy, there's one thing I was pondering on tonight. its the idea of the ubermensch. ubermensch roughly translates to superman (although I think something is lost in translation). nietzsche believed that humankind, while evolution's greatest creation, was not quite finished, and that eventually we would eventually evolve into something more complete. the more complete human would be a superman.

this was, of course, a bit of a mischaracterization of darwin's theory of evolution. evolution does not have a goal. its not always survival of the best per se; its more a trend of which mutations are the least likely to die, or simply don't die for whatever reason. it's unfortunate, then, that nietzche didn't really believe in the ability to change one's self. he believed in a deterministic universe in which the person you are when you are born is more or less the person you will always be. ubermensch was not an idea to aspire to, but rather a someone fantastical idea of what we may one day become as a species. its worth noting for the record that quantum theory disproves the notion that the universe is completely deterministic, but that's irrelevant to this discussion.

the idea of not being able to change ourselves was in contradiction to other thinkers at the time, who made a practice of trying to figure out how we should change ourselves. this idea seemed to take for granted that we were our own makers, and that we could be whoever we wanted to be. frankly, I think that both ideas are a bit naive.

I think that it is possible to deeply change the core of who you are. however, I also think that in order for it to happen, something significant has to happen to you. if your life continues exactly as it is from day to day, you're unlikely to be able to make a significant change to it. for example: if you have an ok job, but you want a better job, you probably won't put that much effort in to finding one. you'll think about it, maybe even passively look through classified ads, but when it comes to the actual work it takes to get a new job, you will likely reason with yourself 'the job I has pays enough, and I'm not really unhappy there. by the end of the day I'm usually to tired to job hunt anyway.'

different personalities vary, but the point is that however you are is generally how you will remain. if, however, your wife suddenly gets pregnant, you may suddenly be given the courage you need to do whatever it takes to make sure you're bringing in enough money for a family. I'm also not saying that this is deterministic; I think there is an element of free will here. I think that in the mundane times in our lives, we really sit and think and really galvanize our ideals and how we want our lives to be. the result of this is that when something major happens, we are ready to make those changes that we need to accommodate. its perhaps our free will that determines how we want to act, and then life that gives us opportunity to express our free will.