Name: Nietzsche — We Are Living in an Illusion
Uploaded: 2020-04-23T19:31:15.000Z
Duration: 6 min 52 s
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> Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions.

— Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense

I look out of my window and see two orange trees.

One has roots that run 6 ft deep and the other 3.

One has many branches and the other only a few, yet we call them the same tree.

We simplify the world into useful concepts and fictions: instead of seeing 100 different

We live in a world of illusions that allow us to survive and thrive.

We never see our family, friends, and loved ones as they really are; we only see illusions

He's unkind if he hasn't eaten for a long time.

He's very skilled at mathematics but a terrible writer.

Yet, I simplify him into the concepts of kind and intelligent because that's useful for

To know John better, I would need way more concepts, but even then, it's unlikely that

The mind uses concepts to give a meaningful order to the chaotic world, but order is just

Whether we use science, philosophy, theology, or art, the fantasies we construct help us

Let's return to the orange trees and experience them as the separate entities they really

Let's notice how one smells better than the other, how the bark of one is smoother and

Reality seems more complex than our illusion.

But even if we updated our illusions—if we increased the words and concepts we could

use to describe the tree—does being aware of the details matter?

I think that's what Nietzsche wanted us to think about when he said

Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?

Unless you're a farmer, ignorance might be preferable to the detailed truth.

Maybe, we only care about truth in so far as it empowers us: knowing and thinking about

all of the details of every orange tree would just be a psychological burden.

But—I can't help but ask—is it possible that the mind is actually accessing a deeper

Maybe, the mind is separating the signal from the noise.

But, what constitutes signal versus noise?

A farmer that values knowing all the details of an orange tree will view it differently

Here's Nietzsche's view from Beyond Good and Evil:

Behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, too, there stand valuations or,

more clearly, physiological demands for the preservation of a certain type of life.

For Nietzsche, our values come from our physiological demands, and what does our physiology demand?

To imagine the world a certain way and to be able to make that illusion a reality.

Someone could challenge this idea by saying that they don't seek power or want to thrive:

they won't eat or drink anything to prove this point.

But, they would *still* be seeking a kind of power: they imagine a world in which they

prove the idea wrong and they seek to bring *that* world into fruition—even at their

For Nietzsche, everything we do is an expression of our will to power.

We construct illusions to empower us, and we only care about truth in so far as it helps

To the extent that an idea doesn't empower us, we should question the degree to which

For Nietzsche, something isn't simply true or false: truth contains multiple degrees

Nietzsche is not saying that truth doesn't exist but only that it's complicated.

We might say that the truth of gravity's existence remains constant whether we believe it or

Is there any reason that gravity couldn't just reverse in the next moment?

We predict that it's unlikely based on our past experience, but what's really stopping

And so, we're brought back to the quote I started the video with

Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions.

Our understanding of trees, friends, gravity, and the world, like all conscious understanding,

are illusions that we've created to give us power.

And sometimes, they're illusions that hold up for long enough that we forget that