L G C

---

---

L   G   C

I   +   O

=   1   0

C J C : M E M + L E M = …

---

---

M   +   M

/    E   ¬

L   =   M

The Litany Against Fear

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I face my fear.

I permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there is nothing.

Only I remain.

---

The Litany Against Fear is a useful tool for a Mentat facing danger. Fear is the fuel of self-preservation, but you must learn how to control your fear and direct it toward action.

I often feal fear. But the Litany protects me.

On Consistency

A: You’re strange.

B: Why?

A: Because you don’t believe in God.

B: What’s strange about that?

A: Nothing. But you behave like you believe in God.

B: Well, have you heard that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds?

A: Yes. But theological relativism smells like cowardice.

B: I love you.

On Carnality

Je abstrakter die Wahrheit ist, die du lehren willst, um so mehr musst
du noch die Sinne zu ihr verführen.

The more abstract the truth is that you would teach, the more you have to seduce the senses to it.

—Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

On Abstinence

A: So how long’s it been for you?

B: Coming on three months.

A: Is that semen dripping out of your ear?

B: You disgust me.

A: Is that a yes or a no?

On Instinct

Philosophers, Mystics, and Metaphysicians all do Evolution a disservice when they claim cognition and consciousness to be a uniquely human trait. Or, in Nietzsche’s own words:

Nachdem ich lange genug den Philosophen zwischen die Zeilen und auf die Finger gesehn habe, sage ich mir: man muss noch den grössten Theil des bewussten Denkens unter die Instinkt-Thätigkeiten rechnen, und sogar im Falle des philosophischen Denkens; man muss hier umlernen, wie man in Betreff der Vererbung und des “Angeborenen” umgelernt hat. So wenig der Akt der Geburt in dem ganzen Vor- und Fortgange der Vererbung in Betracht kommt: ebenso wenig ist “Bewusstsein” in irgend einem entscheidenden Sinne dem Instinktiven entgegengesetzt, – das meiste bewusste Denken eines Philosophen ist durch seine Instinkte heimlich geführt und in bestimmte Bahnen gezwungen. (Jenseits von Gut und Böse)

After having looked long enough between the philosopher’s lines and fingers, I say to myself: by far the greater part of conscious thinking must still be included among instinctive activities, and that goes even for philosophical thinking. We have to relearn here, as one has had to relearn about heredity and what is “innate.” As the act of birth deserves no consideration in the whole process and procedure of heredity, so “being conscious” is not in any decisive sense the opposite of what is instinctive: most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided and forced into certain channels by his instincts. (Walter Kaufmann, translator)

Or, to put it another way, our conscious awareness is but the tip — the sensitive tip? — of a cognitive iceberg: most cognition is beyond conscious control, and just beneath cognitive awareness.

But although we cannot see it, the iceberg keeps us afloat.

Can you, perhaps, feel it?

On Cruelty

A: Ethics is a science for the weak.

B: Tell that to someone undergoing vivisection.

What am I?

A: So what are you again?

B: I am a Socratic dialectician.

A: But you look fine!

B: Looks have nothing to do with it.

A: Then why are you on a diet?

B: I didn’t say dietician! I said di-a-lec-tician!

A: What does Socrates have to do with electricity?

B: You hate me don’t you?

A: Only when you get too full of yourself.

Nietzsche on Eros

A man’s maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play.

The degree and kind of a man’s sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.

A soul that knows it is loved but does not itself love betrays its sediment: what is at the bottom comes up.

Sensuality often hastens the growth of love so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.

The more abstract the truth is that you would teach, the more you have to seduce the senses to it.

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink: he did not die of it but degenerated — into a vice.

In the end one loves one’s desire and not what is desired.

Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil.

—Nietzsche, Epigrams from Beyond Good and Evil