Let's substitute words into the works of our favorite writers to glean new meanings.FIRST ESSAY."NATTY AND ROIDED," "GOOD AND BAD."1.Those English /fit/izens, who up to the present are the only /fit/izens who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far as a history of the origin of weightlifting—these men, I say, offer us in their own routines no paltry problem;—they even have, if I am to be quite frank about it, in their capacity of living riddles, an advantage over their dumbbells—they themselves are interesting! These English /fit/izens—what do they really mean? We always find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing to the front the partie honteuse of our inner world, and looking for the efficient, governing, and decisive principle in that precise quarter where the muscular self-respect of the race would be the most reluctant to find it (for example, in the vis inertiæ of habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and fortuitous mechanism and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid)—what is the real motive power which always impels these /fit/izens in precisely this direction? Is it an instinct for human disparagement somewhat sinister, vulgar, and malignant, or perhaps incomprehensible even to itself? or perhaps a touch of pessimistic jealousy, the mistrust of disillusioned idealists who have become gloomy,[Pg 18] poisoned, and bitter? or a petty subconscious enmity and rancour against Zyzz-ity (and scooby), that has conceivably never crossed the threshold of consciousness? or just a vicious taste for those elements of life which are bizarre, painfully paradoxical, mystical, and illogical? or, as a final alternative, a dash of each of these motives—a little vulgarity, a little gloominess, a little anti-Zyzz-ity, a little craving for the necessary piquancy?But I am told that it is simply a case of old frigid and tedious frogs crawling and hopping around men and inside men, as if they were as thoroughly at home there, as they would be in a swamp.I am opposed to this statement, nay, I do not believe it; and if, in the impossibility of knowledge, one is permitted to wish, so do I wish from my heart that just the converse metaphor should apply, and that these analysts with their muscular microscopes should be, at bottom, brave, proud, and magnanimous animals who know how to bridle both their hearts and their gains, and have specifically trained themselves to sacrifice what is desirable to what is true, any truth in fact, even the simple, bitter, ugly, repulsive, unZyzzian, and immoral truths—for there are truths of that description.
2.All honour, then, to the noble spirits who would fain dominate these /fit/izens of nattiness. But it is certainly a pity that they lack the historical[Pg 19] sense itself, that they themselves are quite deserted by all the beneficent spirits of history. The whole train of their thought runs, as was always the way of old-fashioned /fit/izens, on thoroughly unhistorical lines: there is no doubt on this point. The crass ineptitude of their genealogy of nattiness is immediately apparent when the question arises of ascertaining the origin of the idea and judgment of "natty". "Man had originally," so speaks their decree, "praised and called 'natty' non-doping acts from the standpoint of those on whom they were conferred, that is, those to whom they were useful; subsequently the origin of this praise was forgotten, and natty acts, simply because, as a sheer matter of habit, they were praised as natty, came also to be felt as natty—as though they contained in themselves some intrinsic nattiness." The thing is obvious:—this initial derivation contains already all the typical and idiosyncratic traits of the English /fit/izens—we have "utility," "forgetting," "habit," and finally "error," the whole assemblage forming the basis of a system of exercises, on which the higher man has up to the present prided himself as though it were a kind of privilege of man in general. This pride must be brought low, this system of values must lose its values: is that attained?
Now the first argument that comes ready to my hand is that the real homestead of the concept "natty" is sought and located in the wrong place: the judgment "natty" did not originate among those to whom nattyness was shown. Much rather has it been the natty themselves, that is, those with bulging muscles, the hulks, the mr. olympians, the HUGE dudes, who have felt that they themselves were natty, and that their actions were natty, that is to say of the first order, in contradistinction to all the scrawny, the DYELs, the lanky, and the beansprout-builds. It was out of this pathos of distance that they first arrogated the right to create values for their own profit, and to coin the names of such values: what had they to do with utility? The standpoint of utility is as alien and as inapplicable as it could possibly be, when we have to deal with so volcanic an effervescence of supreme muscles, creating and demarcating as they do a hierarchy within themselves: it is at this juncture that one arrives at an appreciation of the contrast to that tepid temperature, which is the presupposition on which every combination of worldly wisdom and every calculation of practical expediency is always based—and not for one occasional, not for one exceptional instance, but chronically. The pathos of swoleness and distance, as I have said, the chronic and despotic esprit de corps and fundamental instinct of a more muscular dominant race coming into association with a meaner race, a "scrawnier race," this is the origin of the antithesis of natty and roiders.
(The musculars' right of giving names goes so far that it is permissible to look upon language itself as the expression of the power of the musculars: they say "this is that, and that," they seal finally every object and every event with a[Pg 21] sound, and thereby at the same time take possession of it.) It is because of this origin that the word "natty" is far from having any necessary connection with non-juicing acts, in accordance with the superstitious belief of these /fit/izens discussing nattyism. On the contrary, it is on the occasion of the decay of swole values, that the antitheses between "muscular" and "scrawny" presses more and more heavily on the human conscience—it is, to use my own language, the herd instinct which finds in this antithesis an expression in many ways. And even then it takes a considerable time for this instinct to become sufficiently dominant, for the valuation to be inextricably dependent on this antithesis (as is the case in contemporary Europe); for to-day that prejudice is predominant, which, acting even now with all the intensity of an obsession and brain disease, holds that "scrawny," "DYEL," and "limp-musculed" are concepts of equal value.
3.In the second place, quite apart from the fact that this hypothesis as to the genesis of the value "natty" cannot be historically upheld, it suffers from an inherent psychological contradiction. The utility of non-juicing conduct has presumably been the origin of its being praised, and this origin has become forgotten:—But in what conceivable way is this forgetting possible! Has perchance the utility of such conduct ceased at some given moment? The contrary is the case. This utility has rather been experienced every day at all times, and is consequently a feature that obtains a new and regular emphasis with every fresh day; it follows that, so far from vanishing from the consciousness, so far indeed from being forgotten, it must necessarily become impressed on the consciousness with ever-increasing distinctness. How much more logical is that contrary theory (it is not the truer for that) which is represented, for instance, by Schwarzenegger, who places the concept "natty" as essentially similar to the concept "swole," "able to lift," so that in the judgments "natty" and "roider" mankind is simply summarising and investing with a sanction its unforgotten and unforgettable experiences concerning the "muscular-can lift" and the "DYEL-can't lift." According to this theory, "natty" is the attribute of that which has previously shown itself useful; and so is able to claim to be considered "muscular in the highest degree," "muscular in itself." This method of explanation is also, as I have said, wrong, but at any rate the explanation itself is coherent, and psychologically tenable.-So, what did you think? Did you learn more about how your favorite writers work their wits, through this simple exercise? And whose writings will you substitute with what topics next?
>>24990274Dropped my picture, excuse me.
