Nietzsche, Damasio and soul loss

Nietzsche makes abundant sense if you read him in a shamanistic way. You can understand what he means by “loss of instinct”. In shamanistic terms, he is referring to “soul loss” — the loss of which can make full experience of the present difficult (due to unacknowledged dissociation from it). Such “soul loss” can make it difficult to negotiate reality effectively on one’s own behalf.

One makes poor choices, due to being dissociated from the present. Neurologist Antonio Damasio also refers to the inability to get access to one’s emotional store of knowledge effectively, leading to the making of poor decisions, in his book, Descartes’ Error.   I believe I have been inclined to suffer from soul loss, which began with the trauma of migration, which led me to repress my feelings without being aware that I was doing so. This led me to conform to many conservative mores, when I had no joy in doing so. I consequently suffered from chronic fatigue. By means of shamanistic recapitulation, I recovered my pleasure in life. My decisions are sound. I also find no problem giving the excess of what  I have to others, if they really need it.

It is very clear to me now that what he meant by “instinct” was not political instinct as such, nor  concerned with accumulating wealth. Nietzsche did not accumulate any wealth himself.

The “virtue of selfishness” triumphed by Ayn Rand and her followers has no place in Nietzsche’s shamanistic lexicon.

Rather:

Insatiably striveth your soul for treasures and jewels, because your virtue is insatiable in desiring to bestow.

Ye constrain all things to flow towards you and into you, so that they shall flow back again out of your fountain as the gifts of your love.

Verily, an appropriator of all values must such bestowing. love become; but healthy and holy, call I this selfishness.Another selfishness is there, an all-too-poor and hungry kind, which would always steal- the selfishness of the sick, the sickly selfishness.

With the eye of the thief it looketh upon all that is lustrous; with the craving of hunger it measureth him who hath abundance; and ever doth it prowl round the tables of bestowers.

Sickness speaketh in such craving, and invisible degeneration; of a sickly body, speaketh the larcenous craving of this selfishness.

Tell me, my brother, what do we think bad, and worst of all? Is it not degeneration?- And we always suspect degeneration when the bestowing soul is lacking.

To imagine that Nietzsche is applauding the virtues of the capitalist by attacking those who have to struggle for a living is just too obscene.

Clearly, it is the state of PSYCHOLOGICAL abundance that wants to give.  Nietzsche’s idea of health evokes a sense of something akin to Ubuntu, not factory-line productivity.