One of the questions that Darwinian evolution, as well as Spencer‘s and Nietzsche‘s philosophies, brings up is whether the weak should be helped and coddled, or left to their own devices. Why should the strong spend their time helping the weak rather than spending that time moving forward in their own lives, using that time and energy to go further than those who are weaker and more ignorant can go? Why is it wrong for those who are further along to try to keep moving further? Especially if that is who they really are, especially when the weak are generally not interested in growing up to be strong, but, rather, in bringing down the strong to their level? Why should the strong be penalized for being strong, and why should the weak be rewarded for being weak?
This doesn’t make sense to me. I am not against helping others. Quite the contrary. Rather, I wonder who has the right to decide the value of how one spends his time and energies. There are many ways to help people, and in typical myopic fashion, many people think that if you are not in the trenches, Mother Teresa-style, or giving money away as a way to think you are doing good, that you are not doing good. This is short-sighted and narrow-minded, not to mention quite judgmental and presumptuous.
Is it the duty of the strong to help the weak, or to let them die, leaving only the strong? Natural selection. If someone is stupid enough to lead their life in a way that they get killed, then where is the tragedy? Tragedy is when people have good intentions and still get fucked. But who is to decide what good intentions are? The yardstick must be whether or not a person’s intentions are motivated by selfish desire/interest or rather by love. Most people’s intentions are motivated by selfish desire, and many people have philosophically convinced themselves that this is “human nature,” which somehow not only makes it okay, but necessary and unavoidable, in their minds. But this is weak and lazy. It is also serving the exact desire that they seek to prove is natural: self-interest. It is circular and flimsy.
Is it the duty of the strong to help the weak become strong, or at least try? And what does it mean to be strong, anyway? Is strength to be measured physically or “spiritually”—strength of character and self-control, or strength of muscle? Is this not the crux of the debate over how to interpret a philosopher like Nietzsche?
It is wise to always remember that “good” is a relative concept. It is dependent on a context for its very existence. To decide what is good it must first be decided good for whom, good for what? The real question is how these all-important criteria are decided and on what authority they rest.
Does it take strength for the physically strong to kill the physically weak? Or, rather, does it take strength for the physically strong to not kill the physically weak, though he knows he can? What strength is there in actualizing the obvious? He is already physically strong—killing or harming the physically weak is not needed to prove this, for it is already a fact; to prove it is, for the strong of character, wholly unnecessary. It does nothing to try to prove that which has no need to be proven. It simply reveals a weakness of character, this need to prove that which need not be proven.
.
From my personal notes 12/2/99.
