Friday, May 15, 2009

Nietszche's Hammer

It's been an interesting day. For a 'hostile melancholic' such as myself, social interaction with groups is sometimes  - but not always - outside of my comfort zone. It was ironic therefore to have Nietszche - the archetype of hostile melancholia -  quoted in church. On another matter, Henry Kissinger once wrote '90% of politicians give the other 10% a bad reputation'. It seems that the nail has been hit on the head, the iceberg has been inverted and the mendacious underbelly of British politics has finally been exposed. How very embarrassing - the 'twilight of the idols', perhaps...(see image)
Nietszche wrote 'Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.' A friend, a 'handy man' claimed to know whether a nail had been hammered true by the feel of the interaction between hammer head and nail. I, on the other hand, hit and miss with equal probability, thus should not be asked to attempt anything more demanding than erecting IKEA flatpack. But, perhaps Nietszche was thinking of a more metaphysical hammer and nail. According to Myers-Briggs and the Jung Personality Test I am an INTJ or 'Mastermind' personality type, a type shared by Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking, a merciful rarity  -  less than 1% of the population sharing my misfortune. Perhaps if British MP's were more perceptive and  less extrovert, they might not feel the need to spend large sums of taxpayers' money on frippery for their ' second homes', becoming a 'hissing and a byword', to quote Deuteronomy, in consequence. Obviously, I am not the only one who fails to hit the nail on the head, sometimes.

2 comments:

  1. Brilliant, as always. We, the social butterflies you so wittily entertain truly appreciate the effort it takes to subdue the introvert hostility in order to host the FSC.
    I think though, that I want to be 1% of something ...it definitely won't be the nail/hammer thing. That's HandyMan's deal. I'm lucky if I hit the nail at all. Sadly, I think that's true of a rather large percentage of the population, so I'll have to keep looking for something a little more exclusive. lol

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  2. FSC..excellent. Sometimes known as Friday Friends - but I get confused with bust sizes.

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