Summer jobs and Nietzsche on ganja takes on morality.

In the last few weeks of the semester, around early March, I was already thinking of applying for an on the job training so that I would not waste that much time (note the word “much”) this summer. My main motivation was the notion that some companies provide allowances and pays you for the job you do at their company. But I was really disappointed because the highest allowance I could get was P50 in a bank in Makati. That doesn’t even cover the cost of my fare going to Makati so I gave up and looked for a real job.

Fortunately, the god of work has smiled down on me. He gave me a tutor job in a place not far from my home. It pays P2500 per month with the terms that I go in thrice a week in three hour sessions so it’s not that bad considering that each session pays for P200.

I teach my student math. We started from addition and subtraction and now I am eventually weaving into multiple step operations. As the subject matter is very easy and all I have to do is to give him problems to solve and point out his mistakes, I have a lot of spare time in my tutor job. So I will take the liberty of making a short series on Nietzsche, explaining some of his ideas so that you would suddenly quote Nietzsche in the middle of a discussion (assuming that your friends are having an intellectual conversation and if that happens then I will say that you are a very, very lucky person) and impress your friends.

The paragraphs to follow are from Walter Kaufmann’s The Portable Nietzsche published by the Viking Press in 1954. This book is from Booksale for only P95. It’s quite a find, I must say.

Nietzsche on Morality, Notes, 1880 – 1881

As we all know, morality varies from culture to culture. An act that is blasphemous to a culture may be acceptable, or even normal in another culture. We can say that morality varies as we go from culture to culture because of the geographical separation and the variation of the environment of the society.

In his notes, Nietzsche gives an example – virginity. It is also worth noting that while Nietzsche wrote this almost 120 years ago, it is still applicable to our society today. Moving on, Nietzsche puts a girl who had lost her virginity in a society wherein pre-marital sex is forbidden. Naturally, the society will ridicule this girl for her act while in a society where PMS is acceptable; this girl would be left alone. Morality, being a rule by which society must adhere to, can be seen then as directed towards disobedience, not with the true and the good. The true and the good must be universal, for it deals with the welfare of the people (when I say people, I mean the world, not just those in the confines of society) which is contrary to the nature of morality, which varies from culture to culture and considered subjective.

Taking this point further, we will see that morals advocate control. They seek to control feelings, or in Nietzsche’s example: passion, through thought or the rationality of man. The passion of the individual must be controlled and must wait until that certain individual is married. The individual’s feelings then have been subdued by thought.

Morals, when broken, results in the ridicule and sometimes the casting out of the sinner from society. It is then the fear of being ridiculed and being cast out that motivates people to act within these morals

Therefore, being moral means highly accessible to fear. Fear is the power then by which the community is preserved.