7. Moral code for psychologists —-

Never observe for the sake of observing!
That gives a false perspective, a squint and something forced and exaggerated.

A born psychologist guards instinctively against seeing in order to see;
the same is true of the born painter. He never works “from nature”;
he leaves it to his instinct, to his camera obscura, “dark chamber”
to sift through and express the “case,” “nature,” that which is “experienced.”

… Nature, estimated artistically, is no model.
It exaggerates, it distorts, it leaves gaps. Nature’s chance.
To study “from nature” seems to me to be a bad sign: it betrays submission, weakness, fatalism;
this lying in the dust before ‘little facts’ is unworthy of a whole artist.
To see what is — that is the mark of another kind of spirit, the anti-artistic, the factual.

One must know who one is.

— excerpt Twilight of the Idols, Expeditions of an Untimely Man by Friedrich Nietzsche p. 82

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How did we get here?  What is meant by “here?”  I mean a social condition riven with injustice and with violence.  Swaths of big cities are economic dead zones, visibly abandoned, crippled by disinvestment.  And there’s Portland, a city recognized as eminently livable, progressive (another word for humane) in policies.  Portland is roiled by Proud Boys, a white supremacist demonstration this past weekend.

Factory floors, warehouses are often the 21st century equivalent to an antebellum deep-south cotton field.  Part time work is barely enough to make rent and buy food, without any benefits.   Regarding opportunity to rise in the company to higher pay and more responsibility, — technology eliminated middle management long ago.

As for Blacks especially, the impact of white privilege continues to be suffered as it has for generations since June 19, 1865, when the Emancipation of Slaves was announced in Texas in the aftermath of the war.

What did we miss?  We Americans, so fact based, eager to characterize our advanced democracy, celebrating profitability of our large corporations, our innovative management techniques  — now have a grifter* residing in the White House.  Questions are raised whether he will leave no matter the outcome of the November 3rd election. 

Were we wrong about the facts?  Nietzsche offers that observing facts distorts one’s perspective.  What about the “big picture,” details which are noticed — that is if one knows who one is?

We have lain in the dust for too long, squinting in submission before “little facts”…

*Grifter: a con man who preys upon other people