If we had not welcomed the arts
and invented this kind of cult of the untrue,
then the realization of general untruth and mendaciousness
that now comes to us through science
–the realization that delusion and error
are conditions of human knowledge and sensation
–would be utterly unbearable.

Honesty would lead to nausea and suicide.

But now there is a counterforce against our honesty
That helps us to avoid such consequences:
art as the good will to appearance. …

As an aesthetic phenomenon
existence is still bearable for us,
and art furnishes us with eyes and hands
and above all the good conscience
to be able to tum ourselves into such a phenomenon.
At times we need a rest from ourselves by looking upon,
by looking down upon, ourselves and, from an artistic distance,
laughing over ourselves or weeping over ourselves.

We must discover the hero no less than the fool
in our passion for knowledge;
we must occasionally find pleasure in our folly,
or we cannot continue to find pleasure in our wisdom.
Precisely because we are at bottom
grave and serious human beings
–really, more weights than human beings

–nothing does us as much good
as a fool’s cap:
we need it in relation to ourselves
—we need all exuberant, floating, dancing,
mocking, childish, and blissful art
lest we lose the freedom above things
that our ideal demands of us.

It would mean a relapse for us,
with our irritable honesty,
to get involved entirely in morality and, for the
sake of the over-severe demands
that we make on ourselves in these matters,
to become virtuous monsters and scarecrows.
We should be able also to stand above morality
–and not only to stand with the anxious stiffness
of a man who is afraid of slipping and falling any moment,
but also to float above it and play.

How then could we possibly dispense with art
–and with the fool? …

The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, aphorism 107

This passage is extended.  I’ve violate the rule of “less is more” for screen based text.  These ideas are pivotal for everything else that Nietzsche has to say.  I trust a reader will mindfully, read line by line at a pace consistent with reflecting upon his/her own experience in the light of the ideas offered.

The arts are nothing but a certain angle of view of ‘reality.’  Every form of an artist’s expression, – pottery, sculpture, every style of painting, cuisine, dance, theater, is a composition of someone’s insight, skill, transforming a material…  An artist’s work is a partial, if compelling statement which (if the artist is fortunate) becomes the center for a circle of devoted patrons.

Nietzsche writes that science shows us our proclivity for forming stories, tales about ourselves, that we celebrate both heroes and villains, and these embellished projections are what we come to believe about ourselves, — a welcome relief to the stark truth of ourselves.  We need delusion and error.  Art is a emolument which aids us, lightens our conscience, relieves our deficit of esteem so that we become like a work of art ourselves.

Who doesn’t feel better when laughing at themselves?  The alternative — to be come a virtuous prick.

So, do not be dismissive of yourself, and you are no simple fool.  Even if you may wear a dunce cap from time to time.  There is pleasure to be found in folly.

Be grateful if you are in good company with others who are “able also to stand above morality.”

In fact serious work is to be done.  Let us make common cause!