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The BBC has a story this week titled \u201cCan filming one second every day change your life?<\/a>\u201d\u00a0(click for video)\u00a0It makes for a useful meditation for the new year.<\/strong> The story features Cesar Kuriyama, who began filming one second of each day at the age of 30. What began as a one year project promises to be a life-long occupation. As he states in the video, \u201cTrying to make the best movie possible is making me live the best life possible.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n This brought to mind one of my favorite philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who wrote in his last (and widely misunderstood) work, \u201cThe Will to Power<\/a>\u201d (1901) that you should \u201cLive your life as a work of art.\u201d<\/p>\n Life as Art<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cLive your life as a work of art,\u201d urged the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He did not have a story in mind but more an art like sculpture, in which one lives by creating a shape for oneself, \u201cbuilding character.\u201d developing what we call style.\u2019 The German philosopher Friedrich von Schelling saw the whole of life as God\u2019s work of art. (We are in effect God\u2019s apprentices.) Artists often describe their sense of mission in life as simply \u201cto create.\u201d but it is the activity itself that counts for then as much as the results of their efforts. The ideal of this view is appropriately to live beautifully or, if that is not possible, to live at least with style, \u201cwith class\u201d we might say. From this view, life is to be evaluated as an artwork\u2014as moving, inspiring, well designed, dramatic, or colorful, or as clumsy uninspired and uninspiring, or easily forgettable.<\/p>\n \u2013 via\u00a0The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy by Solomon and Higgins<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like an artist with her brush strokes, we should be conscious and intentional with every moment of our lives. Even if so much of our life becomes routine, we must\u00a0know it as routine<\/em>. And a routine, simply due to the number of hours we spend at it, should be\u00a0perfectible<\/em>.<\/p>\n Nietzsche\u2019s work is often aphoristic and obscure, and in fact many (conservative\/analytic) philosophers would hardly call his work \u201cphilosophy.\u201d I think there is some truth in this and recommend that he is read through the interpretive lens of someone like the late Robert C Solomon<\/a>. Solomon, who taught at the University of Texas-Austin, was the adviser for one of my own philosophy professors, David Sherman. Both understood the importance of historical grounding when teaching philosophy, which brings a sort of humility to the enterprise because it brings the philosopher\u2019s words out of the clouds and back to the ground from which they, after all, came.<\/p>\n In this way we can see all philosophers as in an \u201call too human\u201d progression which is merely historical and incremental and abandon any fantasies or false projections that one or another got it all right (the same goes for religion as well). All is a work in progress. Even Nietzsche, who might so strongly reject this understanding, is but a layer in our philosophical geology.<\/p>\n As Solomon writes elsewhere, Nietzsche isn\u2019t really in such stark opposition to previous philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, but rather he is attempting to make their systems consistent (to himself and his day).<\/p>\n Generosity and\u00a0kindness are marks of nobility (of strong\u00a0Will to Power), the strong need rarely\u00a0resort to cruelty. At times. Nietzsche goes\u00a0so far as to say it is the\u00a0duty<\/em>\u00a0of the strong\u00a0to protect the week.<\/p>\n Nietzsche\u2019s Will to Power Is thus far removed from the common imagery of military strength\u2014the most powerful are not\u00a0the politician and soldier, but the artist,\u00a0the philosopher, and the aesthete. Will to\u00a0Power Is ultimately control over one\u2019s\u00a0self; it is not license but restraint; not\u00a0power to hurt or destroy but power to\u00a0create.<\/p>\n \u2013 Solomon,\u00a0From Rationalism to Existentialism: The Existentialists and Their Nineteenth-century Backgrounds<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Reading that, Nietzsche doesn\u2019t sound too far from the Buddha, either.<\/p>\n So, in so far as iphone can unleash our power to create, I think Nietzsche would be pleased.<\/strong><\/p>\n And the Buddha?<\/p>\n The Buddhist<\/a> too might\u00a0ponder the karma of his devices<\/a>, as Rohan Gunatillake did recently for wired magazine, UK (here<\/a>):<\/p>\n \u201cFor too long has the narrative around digital and the mind been negative. Pop tech is constantly being accused of fragmenting our attention, ruining our concentration and at worst dehumanising us. This may well be true. But is it because all of that is intrinsic to technology, or because we\u2019ve just not designed our technologies with the mind in mind?<\/p>\n The convergence of three trends \u2026 suggests we will benefit from a new wave of digital tools that not only reduce stress but lead to genuine insight, wisdom and compassion.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Will devices actually begin to liberate us from the frustrations of greed, aversion, and delusion \u2013 frustrations that are to begin with so intimately tied up with\u00a0the stuff<\/em> in our lives?<\/strong><\/p>\n Maybe.<\/p>\n But to be on the safe side, go easy on the Angry Birds.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The BBC has a story this week titled \u201cCan filming one second every day change your life?\u201d\u00a0(click for video)\u00a0It makes for a useful meditation for the new year. The story features Cesar Kuriyama, who began filming one second of each day at the age of 30. What began as a one year project promises to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,10,3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","category-commodification","category-happiness","category-western-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"\n