It is common for people to want to
eliminate as many hardships and struggles as possible. This may seem like an
enticing idea, but may actually be detrimental to one’s life. Nietzsche talks
about how pleasure and displeasure are so tied together that you cannot have
one without the other, in his “Consolation for Difficulties”. After
reading his thoughts on this subject, it reminded me of the movie “Joy”
starring Jennifer Lawrence.
This movie is about a young woman who
creates a revolutionary mop design, but struggles to get her product on the
market and successful. She goes through many struggles to get her product to
sell. Some of these hardships included getting money together to make the
product, convincing people to buy the product, and keeping her product’s design
safe from other corporations. Throughout the movie, she is put under extreme
stress trying to achieve her goals, but in the end, it is all worth it, as she
eventually is successful with her invention.
Nietzsche explains his ideas on the relationship
between pleasure and displeasure with diagrams of a flower and a mountain. The
diagram of the mountain shows mediocrity at the bottom, pain as the climb, and
fulfillment as the top of the mountain. This diagram is applicable to the movie
“Joy” because the main character was originally just a typical person
with big dreams, at mediocrity, but she went through lots of pain and struggles
(going up the mountain) to get to success, or “the top of the mountain”.
Without going through pain or displeasure,
it is not possible to achieve success from mediocrity. Pain and pleasure are
always intertwined, as pleasure is not achievable without some pain.
I think this is a very good comparison of the two because it gives it so much of a realistic comparison between Nietzsche's ideas and how those ideas actually play out in the real world. I agree so much with Nietzsche's philosophies because I believe he was one of the more realistic philosophers we studied. In the real world, we are going to have hardships and we are going to struggle, just like in this movie, but once we get through these hard times, we can look back and realize all the things that were accomplished because of it. College might not be an accurate example here, but for me, I definitely view it as an uphill battle. There are days when I wish that I hadn't gone or that maybe I should just drop out, but then I realize that once I get up the long, and challenging hill, as Nietzsche describes it, I'll make it to the top and have something to show for it, my degree. This is why I agree that pain and pleasure are always intertwined because major things in life cannot be accomplished without having some of both.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great example of Nietzsche's mountain illustration. Looking back, as Lauren points out, is key to appreciating our success. When we remember what we had to go through to get to the point of accomplishment, it makes those achievements seem so much more impressive. I think it's incredibly important to recognize how connected pleasure and pain are even though they are opposites. Without pain, we wouldn't know what pleasure feels like or appreciate it as much as we should. And without pleasure, our suffering would be pretty much pointless -- we'd have nothing to motivate us and be a lot less inclined to keep pushing for things we wanted. When you think about that idea, it's a lot easier to accept pain when it comes along, knowing that it's tied to pleasure.
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