十九世紀德國哲學家尼采曾經說過，“凡不能摧毀我的必將使我強大” （Out of life‘s school of war-- what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger”），乍一聽很勵誌，可事實是不是如此呢？這句話的可信度到底如何呢？在人們經曆了能改變人的一一生命運的重大不幸、苦難和打擊之後，人還能劫後重生嗎？是不是像尼采說的那樣人會越挫越勇，變得更強大呢？
2022年出版的書名為What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us就是通過對六位在年輕時(有些是teenages時）遭遇了重大人生不幸的人進行采訪，通過真人真事來探討這個話題。這六個人中有三位是因為車禍造成永久殘疾，雙腿高位截肢，腦部受損，脊椎重創腦部受傷而癱瘓。有兩位是監獄犯，一位因失手殺人被重判無期徒刑，服刑二十年後被州長下文釋放的，另一位是吸毒搶劫在監獄裏待了7年多釋放的；最後一位是遭人強奸，後又雙眼徹底失明的。他們的遭遇讓人唏噓不已，（這裏作者把監獄罪犯列入其中有他自己的理由），在當今崇尚強者（ableism)的社會，他們的生存是很艱難的。
“In one of the notebooks he carried with him, Nietzsche wrote, "We have art lest we perish from the truth." For those leading afterlives, the unadorned facts of what's happened to them can be brutish to bear on their own terms. Contextualizing that hardship through our intellects and imaginations is a critical salve, an act of transforming our perception that can guide and color how we experience our lives. We can knead our experiences into a larger arc, providing the cohesion that helps us form new narrative identities. Or we can look deeper into our afterlives until we ferret out a way of construing them that rouses our spirits or points them toward salvation. In her essay collection The White Album, Joan Didion delivered a pronouncement that was a natural descendants to Nietzsche's line, an admission of how desperately we rely on the subjective fictions we construct: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Those stories--whether they take the form of redemption narratives, personal parables, or the pearlescent beliefs we kneel before each day like shrines offering eternal grace--can elevate our lives and serve as the vessels of private deliverance.”
“Examining our behaviors and thought patterns demands sustained, uninterrupted self-work, and the fullness of our everyday lives and the finite attention spans that rove through them sometimes appear engineered to thwart personal investigations. For many, such an undertaking is undesirable in any case: Those of us content with our lives are not compelled to confront or interrogate our habits, lifestyles, or underlying beliefs. Contentment doesn't incentivize change--it does everything in its power to forestall it. But those of us learning to survive in the ill-disposed, unaccommodating terrain of afterlives--marooned on the desert islands we have little affinity for--must open ourselves up to it.”
“The Lebanese American poet Kahlil Gibran wrote, "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." The catastrophes that carve themselves deep inside of us also leave us with increased depth, augmenting the volume of feeling we're able to hold. And how can we measure devotion but by how much the vessels that we become for our art, faith, saviors, and crusades have the capacity to contain?”
“In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon writes, "It takes an act of will to grow from loss: the disruption provides the opportunity for growth, not the growth itself." Catastrophes do not trigger transformation; they only establish the conditions that increase the likelihood that we will pursue them. Only through our willful, persevering actions can we gradually remake our identities.”
回複 'cxyz' 的評論 : 小C對老子和道德經都很有研究啊， 我也抄過道德經，但是都是似懂非懂的。我也去讀了原詩， 確實是你這裏說的要“歸，順，依律而動”， 我特意把它抄到這裏， 謝謝你的分享！能喜歡上一位詩人的詩並研究他/它，很好的， 讓我想起舒兄，也是好久不見他了。
The wondrous game that power plays with Things
is to move in such submission through the world:
groping in roots and growing thick in trunks
and in treetops like a rising from the dead.
回複 '7grizzly' 的評論 : Thanks, my friend, for your insightful comment. i am still trying to understand what you said here.
You are right that concept of amor fati has been linked to Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher, whom you are very familiar with.
Quoted below is what Nietzsche understood about amor fati in the book:
"My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.
It is indeed a bit passive. Nevertheless, we'd learn to face adversity in life, if any, and be strong.
Have a great week!
I don't take "What does not kill us" as absolute truth. Beyond a limit, a person dies or something dies within. In both cases, however, one is stronger in a sense because of the expansion of experience. Even the Tao said "人死也堅強."
"Amor fati," like many things western, felt hard to translate. "服從" or "順從" suggest a slavish passiveness and foot-dragging. Ancient Stoics seemed to believe 'Amor' was much more than that.
Seneca said "Throw me to the wolves, I'll come back leading the pack." More likely, he would be devoured. It's a worthy ideal, nonetheless. Ditto Nietzsche.
非常喜歡這些暖冬的讀書筆記，廣度和深度必須點讚。 quato 很精彩 -
“ "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." The catastrophes that carve themselves deep inside of us also leave us with increased depth, augmenting the volume of feeling we're able to hold. And how can we measure devotion but by how much the vessels that we become for our art, faith, saviors, and crusades have the capacity to contain?”
十九世紀德國哲學家尼采曾經說過，“凡不能摧毀我的必將使我強大” （Out of life‘s school of war-- what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger”），乍一聽很勵誌，可事實是不是如此呢？這句話的可信度到底如何呢？在人們經曆了能改變人的一一生命運的重大不幸、苦難和打擊之後，人還能劫後重生嗎？是不是像尼采說的那樣人會越挫越勇，變得更強大呢？
2022年出版的書名為What Doesn't Kill Us Makes Us就是通過對六位在年輕時(有些是teenages時）遭遇了重大人生不幸的人進行采訪，通過真人真事來探討這個話題。這六個人中有三位是因為車禍造成永久殘疾，雙腿高位截肢，腦部受損，脊椎重創腦部受傷而癱瘓。有兩位是監獄犯，一位因失手殺人被重判無期徒刑，服刑二十年後被州長下文釋放的，另一位是吸毒搶劫在監獄裏待了7年多釋放的；最後一位是遭人強奸，後又雙眼徹底失明的。他們的遭遇讓人唏噓不已，（這裏作者把監獄罪犯列入其中有他自己的理由），在當今崇尚強者（ableism)的社會，他們的生存是很艱難的。
“In one of the notebooks he carried with him, Nietzsche wrote, "We have art lest we perish from the truth." For those leading afterlives, the unadorned facts of what's happened to them can be brutish to bear on their own terms. Contextualizing that hardship through our intellects and imaginations is a critical salve, an act of transforming our perception that can guide and color how we experience our lives. We can knead our experiences into a larger arc, providing the cohesion that helps us form new narrative identities. Or we can look deeper into our afterlives until we ferret out a way of construing them that rouses our spirits or points them toward salvation. In her essay collection The White Album, Joan Didion delivered a pronouncement that was a natural descendants to Nietzsche's line, an admission of how desperately we rely on the subjective fictions we construct: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." Those stories--whether they take the form of redemption narratives, personal parables, or the pearlescent beliefs we kneel before each day like shrines offering eternal grace--can elevate our lives and serve as the vessels of private deliverance.”
“Examining our behaviors and thought patterns demands sustained, uninterrupted self-work, and the fullness of our everyday lives and the finite attention spans that rove through them sometimes appear engineered to thwart personal investigations. For many, such an undertaking is undesirable in any case: Those of us content with our lives are not compelled to confront or interrogate our habits, lifestyles, or underlying beliefs. Contentment doesn't incentivize change--it does everything in its power to forestall it. But those of us learning to survive in the ill-disposed, unaccommodating terrain of afterlives--marooned on the desert islands we have little affinity for--must open ourselves up to it.”
“The Lebanese American poet Kahlil Gibran wrote, "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." The catastrophes that carve themselves deep inside of us also leave us with increased depth, augmenting the volume of feeling we're able to hold. And how can we measure devotion but by how much the vessels that we become for our art, faith, saviors, and crusades have the capacity to contain?”
“In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon writes, "It takes an act of will to grow from loss: the disruption provides the opportunity for growth, not the growth itself." Catastrophes do not trigger transformation; they only establish the conditions that increase the likelihood that we will pursue them. Only through our willful, persevering actions can we gradually remake our identities.”
