Hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, eudamonianism:

these are all ways of thinking that measure
the value of things according
to pleasure and pain,
which is to say according to incidental states and trivialities.

They are all
foreground ways of thinking and naivetes,
and nobody who is conscious
of both formative powers and an artist’s conscience
will fail to regard them
with scorn as well as pity.

Pity for you!
That is certainly not pity as you understand it:
it is not pity for social “distress,” for “society”
with its sick and injured,
for people depraved and destroyed from the beginning
as they lie around us on the ground;

even less is it pity
for the grumbling, dejected, rebellious slave strata
who strive for dominance
– they call it “freedom.”

Our pity
is a higher, more far-sighted pity:

– we see how humanity is becoming smaller,
how you are making it smaller!
– and there are moments
when we look on your pity with indescribable alarm,
when we fight this pity
–, when we find your seriousness
more dangerous than any sort of thoughtlessness.
You want, if possible
(and no “if possible” is crazier)
to abolish suffering.

Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, Trans. by Judith Norman, aphorism 225

Are these words the beating heart of Beyond Good and Evil? Perhaps!

Four concepts, philosophies are stated, all are summations of existence, in effect protocols. Four different ways of packaging all of our actions, all of our aspirations, in terms of a purpose for fun (Wasting Away in Margaritaville) or a fate of hopelessness (nothing at all matters) or a rigorous pragmatism (we’ll figure it all out and science-our-way-out of every problem) or the ancient Greek term for happiness (just be as happy as you can.)

Nietzsche observes these approaches to calibrating the scale of pain and pleasure are trivial, because pain and pleasure are trifles! Any artist knows that one need (must) pay no attention to pleasure and pain as long as one desires to create, to discover what is new.

Nor are these philosophies scorned, in the same way that pity is felt for those “throw-away-souls” who are trapped within individual histories of deprivation, whether by fate of birth to parents who despise education, or live in randomly violent places, or…  You know what I mean.  That is, the horror and pity we feel when viewing these stories on the nightly News.

Moreover, a different type of pity is felt for those ensnared within the White Nationalist Myth. The underemployed, just-getting-by Trump believer that believes that “might is right” and their strongman is their savior, their ticket to freedom.  That pity has it’s nuance.

A more universal, actually more bone-deep horrific pity is felt for any and all philosophies that attempt to sum up life in a manner that removes suffering… Living without suffering would constrict us, diminish us, stunting humanity to a gnome-like dimension…

Could there, would there be a Simone Biles without her suffering, or a Galileo, or even an Elvis?

So, you want if possible, to abolish suffering?

That’s crazy.  Really.