No. If you study Nietzsche’s tone and the issues he obsessively dwells on, by reading between the lines, you can find that there is no overlap at all between Nazism and Nietzsche’s actual philosophy.

You have to see that what he didn’t like was that quality in thinking, quality in action, quality in art, and in culture, were all being undermined by the sentimentalizing attitudes of the herd, who were quite prepared to treat outsiders as “haughty” but were oblivious to their own faults. Nietzsche gives them a run for their money.

The whole of Will to Power can be read in this way, and immediately it becomes clear that “quality” is the trophy that is being fought for. The rhetoric of power is designed to oppose the sentimental illusions of the masses who proclaim, “All we want to do is love one another, and live in peace,” when their actions and their behavior point in quite another direction. In addition their hostility to those who think differently from them reveals a very nasty vibe and inclination.

As for the issue of Darwinism, Nietzsche thought that it was the fundamental principle that underpinned the decline of humanity into a lower and lower state — “a progress in similitude”. That is to say, if humanity is left to its own devices, without the introduction of a countervailing principle, it will become very bland, dull and uninteresting.

As far as I can tell, it is because for some reason all events in life have to be projected back into the early childhood years. The idea is that adults, as such, cannot be hurt by life events. We can’t really be betrayed, we can’t really be deceived, and fundamentally, above all, adults are not capable of experiencing anything. “Experience” itself is a feature of childhood, and above all an expression of susceptibility to pain.

Implicitly (and this seems a totally unrecognized part of the theory), adult have muted their capacity to experience pain. The meaning of adulthood is that one can no longer experience pain. But the “child within” an experience it.

I can’t really go much further with this without noting that there has been a considerable advancement of slavery in modernity, such that it has now become normalized to have next to no subjectivity at an adult. Perhaps this is because the modern workplace demands, not just desires, a perfect machine. In general this imposed a systematic state of discipline so that any deviation from machinelike attitudes is viewed by everybody as unwelcome. It makes one more noticeable and brings one to harm.

The current psychotherapeutic paradigm is a reflection of Judeo-Christian morals (which Nietzsche called “slave morality”) and the norms of our industrialized societies. The aspect of slave morality expressed in these norms is codified in the idea that there simply cannot be any deviation from the standard line of conformity, unless it is caused by “pain/vulnerability”. In other words, one does not desire to be different from a slave, but if one ends up expressing something outside of the brackets, the only possible cause of this must be “pain”. (In any case “pain” and “childlike vulnerability” go together.)

All of this makes me think (also in line with Nietzsche) that is must be pretty rare for there to be a fully fledged human being, who does not feel that their identity is consolidated in conforming to the system that makes us into machines. But even more to the point, as I have noticed in the past ten years, the ability to believe that one could be non-conforming from a position of strength (not from a position of “pain” generally) has become almost totally diminished.

I have noticed that the new psychologists among us are inclined to create an ideology of vulnerability out of almost anything that one might say. This is alarming, but it reflects a decline in Western culture in terms of self-belief. For instance, only ten years ago, “high pain tolerance” meant that you were able to achieve more than the normal person, perhaps on the athletics field, or in another arena where one’s efforts were required to be elite. But, nowadays, the very same terminology has precisely the opposite meaning in popular culture. In fact it implies habituation to abuse. Rather than being thought an athlete or an exception, those who claim “high pain tolerance” are liable to be thought mentally ill.

So we have come to a very low ebb in contemporary culture. It seems we don’t believe we can be truly “adult” anymore. And if we rise above the norms of convention and conquer our fears, we may nor receive recognition for doing so. Rather, we may be considered acting only on compulsion, and expressing “fearlessness” because “we must be mentally ill”.

The rot has set in, truly.

Because they’ve exhausted all avenues?

The thing is that what is called “psychology” typically has an underlying moral structure to it, based on a theologically shaped epistemology. This structure is so implicit that it is never actually observed.

So what is the underlying assumption that the typical psychological paradigm makes, regarding human life? It has the idea that “pain” is caused by making emotional and behavioral errors. So, the typical psychologist will try to look at you to determine what is causing you pain. And then they will aim to enforce changes in you to eliminate that pain.

Since the psychologist assumes that they can “see” the cause of the pain, whereas you cannot, the psychologist sometimes feels justified in imposing elimination strategies on you “for your own good”. It is justified, in their minds, to use shame, because (perhaps as a last resort), it may force you to get rid of your own pain, by making changes in your life.

Anyway, the thing is, psychology itself can NEVER have a full picture of a client’s life situation, because psychology on principle avoids making the necessary connection between “being alive” and “experiencing pain”. All sentient life forms experience pain, and humans do perhaps more than most because our societies are intrinsically complex, and because there actually isn’t really any blueprint to tell humans how to live their lives. Moreover the more adventurous of us may not consider “pain” to be so negative a prospect that we prioritize eliminating it entirely. (Take in my own case, where in order to discover a more pulsating and visceral side to reality, I investigate the lives of wild animals, and do not turn my glance away from seeing them enduring pain.)

But pain is very necessary, too, for all walks of life. Students who study despite not feeling that they want to do it, those who take the next step in planning adventures, for instance learning to skydive, or learning to box —- all of these involve pain. The fact is that society approves of some sorts of pain, as overseen by the profession of psychologists, and disapproves of others. For instance, nowadays, even participation in the sport of boxing is disapproved of, on the basis that it causes pain.

It is very arbitrary, but psychology believes it has the right to police the moral structure of our beings, and to reinforce how much pain is allowable. But this is notably not done on the basis of trying to stop others from causing one pain, but on the basis of eliminating any source of difference (or “deviation”) in the client.

That’s the illusion that some people have about creativity, that it is kind of like a froth that you can generate on top of life’s general activities. In my case, I have always been extremely creative, ever since I was a small child. And I was intellectually sharp, too. For instance in nursery school, when I was three, I grappled with the problem of how to draw human hands. Another child indicated how it was supposed to be done, by drawing stick figures. But I remember thinking, “That’s not right! That is not a way to solve the problem!” I’ve always resisted stereotypes and cliched thinking.

My daily boost rises from me like the force of a volcano, because my style of thinking hasn’t changed, it has only intensified.

What has been difficult for me is the opposite challenge of trying to understand how others think in terms of embracing stereotypical cultural norms.

That’s the illusion that some people have about creativity, that it is kind of like a froth that you can generate on top of life’s general activities. In my case, I have always been extremely creative, ever since I was a small child. And I was intellectually sharp, too. For instance in nursery school, when I was three, I grappled with the problem of how to draw human hands. Another child indicated how it was supposed to be done, by drawing stick figures. But I remember thinking, “That’s not right! That is not a way to solve the problem!” I’ve always resisted stereotypes and cliched thinking.

My daily boost rises from me like the force of a volcano, because my style of thinking hasn’t changed, it has only intensified.

What has been difficult for me is the opposite challenge of trying to understand how others think in terms of embracing stereotypy.