In Nietzschean View: Defining the conception of truth
Friedrich Nietzsche is critical of the very idea of objective truth. That we should think there is only one right way of considering a matter is only evidence that we have become inflexible in our thinking. Such intellectual inflexibility is a symptom of saying “no” to life, a condition that Nietzsche abhors. A healthy mind is flexible and recognizes that there are many different ways of considering a matter. There is no single truth but rather many.
At this point, interpreters of Nietzsche differ. Some argue that Nietzsche believes there is such a thing as truth but that there is no single correct perspective on it. Just as we cannot get the full picture of what an elephant is like simply by looking at its leg or looking at its tail or looking at its trunk, we cannot get a reasonable picture of any truth unless we look at it from multiple perspectives.
This is a critical point I have arrived at when analyzing the phenomenon of Group (Gang) Stalking with Electronic Targeted Assaults and Psychotronic Torture. The main “go-to” assumption is that this phenomenon represents federal or state authority’s interference into the private lives of its citizens under the historical aegis of “Mind Control.” When in fact, what may be the problem is one of any number of, or multiple of things, such as domestic violence, intimate partner stalking, organized gang activity targeting the gang’s perceived enemies, a real estate scheme to move occupants and conquer territories, a conspiracy within a particular state government, a conflict between business partners, etc., and so forth. And I am not discounting the idea that it may be an invisible war being carried out in response to the torture of many Muslims owing to the “dirty tricks” instituted by former President George W. Bush’s War on Terror following 9/11 and the opening of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
Just a recap and brief history, the Bush administration decided in February 2002 to abrogate the Geneva Conventions regarding detainees. Then it created a legal justification for torture by defining the term in such a way — it must produce pain “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death” — that most acts of torture fell outside it. This standard was embodied in the so-called torture memos drafted in 2002 by the Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee; those documents did for the twenty-first century what the papal bull Ad extirpanda did for the thirteenth. With that threshold in place, the Bush administration drew up a list of techniques — including isolation, twenty-hour interrogations, nudity, hooding, standing for long periods of time, deprivation of light and sound, the use of dogs — and conveyed the list to interrogators on the scene. In fact, many medical doctors were present during the sessions of torture carried out at Guantanomo Bay.
It is no surprise that Guantanamo Bay Naval Base was chosen. It represented a legal black hole. It was not part of the constitutional homeland, the Bush administration argued, or subject to the same legal standards that might be obtained within that homeland. Detainees could therefore be subjected to any legal regime the authorities decided to implement.
Then, following the 2011 raid of Osama bin Laden’s compound, poll research discovered an increase in American’s who believed that “torture of our foreign enemies should be carried out and is deemed “appropriate.” The problem, who and how do you define a “foreign enemy?” When many people perceive blacks, women, homosexuals, immigrants, transgender, the mentally ill, and countless others as “the other,” the “enemy” may very well become any person who represents difference.
Still other interpretations of Nietzsche’s work, particularly those who value Nietzsche’s early essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” argue that Nietzsche believes the very idea of “truth” to be a lie. Truth is not an elephant that we must look at from multiple perspectives under this view. Rather, truth is simply the name given to the point of view of the people who have the power to enforce their point of view. The only reality is the will to power, the truth, like morality, is just another fig leaf placed on top of this reality.
Herein lies the compound paradox: whose “truth” do you believe to be closer to the actual events that have transpired in history and whose are farther away from deception? That is to say, “Are the victims who claim to be electronically stalked with electronic and psychotronic torture in their environment really “mentally ill” or is this a reality someone is trying to impose onto reality, using a term I arrived at, through defunding social capital by implementing torture? (See Pierre Bourdieu’s 1991 work entitled “Language and Symbolic Power”).
Advancing Technology: Replacing Nietzsche’s concept of Christianity with a twenty-first-century enemy
An aspect of Nietzsche’s work was the concept of “Christianity as a life-denying force.” Here, we might make the leap to “advancing technology as a life-denying force” in that, similar to how Nietzsche viewed Christianity as fundamentally opposed to life, so too advancing technology in the control of others offers those in the position of political power the ability to deny life itself. In fact, many medical doctors control much of this power. Much like how the mechanisms of control operated during the Medieval Inquisition, efforts that were driven by political rivalries and personal agendas, the deployment of any device of surveillance in a program to advance state authority and establish power operate in much the same way. And this is most definitely what we observe when we observe the phenomenon of Group (Gang) Stalking with electronic targeted assaults and psychotronic torture in defunding of someone’s mental capacity (their very social capital) through torture.
In Nietzsche’s doctrine, one aspect of the will to power is that the will to power is a psychological insight: our fundamental drive is for power as realized in independence and dominance. This will is stronger than the will to survive, as martyrs willingly die for a cause if they feel that associating themselves with that cause gives them greater power, and it is stronger than the will to sex, as monks willingly renounce sex for the sake of a greater cause. While the will to power can manifest itself through violence and physical dominance, Nietzsche is more interested in the sublimated will to power, where people turn their will to power inward and pursue self-mastery rather than mastery over others. An Indian mystic, for instance, who submits himself to all sorts of physical deprivation gains profound self-control and spiritual depth, representing a more refined form of power than the power gained by the conquering barbarian.
On a deeper level, the will to power explains the fundamental, changing aspect of reality. According to Nietzsche, everything is in flux, and there is no such thing as a fixed being. Matter is always moving and changing, as are ideas, knowledge, truth, and everything else. The will to power is the fundamental engine of this change. For Nietzsche, the universe is primarily made up, not of facts or things, but rather of wills. The idea of the human soul or ego is just grammatical fiction, according to Nietzsche. What we call “I” is really a chaotic jumble of competing wills, constantly struggling to overcome one another. Because change is a fundamental aspect of life, Nietzsche considers any point of view that takes reality to be fixed and objective, be it religious, scientific, or philosophical, as life-denying. A truly life-affirming philosophy embraces change and recognizes in the will to power that change is the only constant in the world.
The major question becomes, “Who has any right to subjugate and force change on others as seen in the torture of Mohammed Al-Qahtani at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and the many electronically targeted and psychotronically tortured Americans living as civilians within the borders of the United States of America?” (If you do not know who Mohammed Al-Qahtani is, look him up! If you possess even half a conscience, you may be appalled at what you discover.)
Historians At The Desk
Henry Charles Lea was one of the most accomplished American historians of his era, and at his desk, in his library, he produced three weighty tomes on the Medieval Inquisition and four volumes of equal heft on the Spanish Inquisition. The achievement is all the more remarkable given that Lea had almost nothing to work with: the relevant research materials simply weren’t available in America during this time. His family was educated and wealthy which worked to his advantage. He was schooled at home by private tutors and when he came of age, he used his wealth to form a very impressive library. He wrote to booksellers across Europe, acquiring what he needed. Libraries and monasteries lent him original manuscripts. If manuscripts were for sale, he purchased them. If they could not be borrowed or purchased, he had them copied. It was a good time to be a book buyer at this time because the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had upended the nobility and the Church. As a result, countless libraries had been dumped on the market.
Henry Charles Lea (September 19, 1825 — October 24, 1909) saw the Inquisition’s work less as a purely religious undertaking than as an effort driven by political rivalries and personal agendas, as would be true of any program advanced by any state power or entity establishing their own ruling authority, state or federally endowed or not.
The perspectives of Phillipp van Limborch (Historia Inquisitionis) and John Locke (Letters of Toleration), who were both close friends, viewed the Inquisition as one of the most imposing counterexamples to the state of affairs an enlightened polity should embrace.”
Just as Juan Antonio Llorente questioned in his published monumental work, Histoire Critique de l’Inquisition d’Espagne, the following inquiries:
“How did the Inquisition’s bureaucracy actually work? What happened on a local level, on the ground, when decisions were sent forth from the tribunal in Madrid? What role did the Inquisition come to play in politics? What long-term effects did it have on Spain’s national life — for instance, on its intellectual vitality and its economic development?”
So too, one might ask the same questions of the phenomenon known as Group (Gang) Stalking with electronic targeted physical assaults and psychotronic torture. That is, “How do they operate on a local level, on the ground, when decisions are being sent forth from the originating pulpit of power?” Even though a state political authority may or may not be involved in its deployment, the implications are definitely political and more likely to be self-establishing sovereignty.
