There are ages,
when
the rational and the intuitive man
stand side by side,

the one full of fear of the intuition
and the other full of fear of the abstraction;
the latter just as irrational
as the former is inartistic.

Both desire to rule over life;
the one knowing how to meet
the most important needs
with foresight, prudence, regularity;
the other as an “over-joyous” hero
by ignoring those needs
and taking that life only as real
which simulates appearance and beauty.

Whenever intuitive man,
as for instance in the earlier history of Greece,
brandishes his weapons more powerfully and victoriously
than his opponent,
there under favorable conditions,
a culture can develop
and art can establish her rule over life.

That dissembling, that denying of neediness,
that splendor of metaphorical notions
and especially that directness of dissimulation
accompany all utterances of such a life.

Neither the house of man,
nor his way of walking,
nor his clothing, nor his earthen jug
suggest that necessity invented them;
it seems as if all were intended
as the expressions of a sublime happiness,
an Olympian cloudlessness,
and as it were,
a playing at seriousness.

On Truth And Falsity In Their Extra-moral Sense by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Oscar Levy p. 142

Nietzsche takes the measure of homo sapiens, the wise creature.  Intelligence is a composite of desire/feeling and ratiocination. Like other mammals, survival is expressed by fulfillment of biological needs, the emotions which are the interface between organism and external reality, and at the same time unlike every other mammal, reason calculates with foresight to imagine possible futures. Reason and intuition standing side by side as we might imagine Nietzsche’s model of a human being.

Nietzsche is the diehard skeptic that human beings are endowed with the capacity for truth.  Indeed, we are “bedeviled” with an allergy to truth.  Our rational side, has a deep distrust, unease and suspicion toward the wild, improvisational, emergent creativity of the intuition, and of creative people. And we must confess that our intuitive side reacts with discomfort toward the individual who inclines toward a rigidly arranged life, every thing in its place, rules make perfect.

Both tendencies are present within us.  One will be ascendant, as it is natural that one’s life and world be organized, viewed either under the aegis of reason’s pragmatism or the boundary-less-ness of art.  There is the quest for certainty, prudence, routine or the serendipity of dance, the overflowing exuberance of life’s possibilities.

From the distance of perspective Nietzsche writes that the mind of homo sapiens necessarily is involved in distortion, or to say it plainly, “lying to ourselves”.  There is one and only one thing necessary for every member of our species: survival.  Difference comes, at root, because both approaches are important for our survival.  World views, opinions – necessarily and inevitably contradictory, are sure to generate friction.  The rational tribe is artless, they have no soul.  Those who are intuitive, the self-confessed liberals are irrational, they want to redefine everything.

What has “truth” to do with it any of this?

Speaking personally it’s nothing but the expression of my repertoire of tools, the spectrum of skills which I have managed to develop so that I can survive.  I will fashion the illusion that is my comfortable habitation.

Yes, – and my house, my personal style, my preference for jeans and sneakers, my Starbucks coffee cup (the jug) despite those efforts to express the essential self that is “me”, — are something of illusion.  The illusion that you find comfortable, perhaps is quite different.

Yet both of us are a basic-model-human being, a standard edition.

Let us be human!

Always there is time enough for a song. This by Dire Straits, The Walk Of Life is an rollicking anthem to life.  The video celebrates pro sports.  Is there anything more symbolic of the modern era in the USA than the ubiquity of pro sports, the illusion that “turns our nighttime into the day.”

Oh, yeah, the boy can play…
He turnin’ all the nighttime into the day

And after all the violence and double-talk
There’s just a song in all the trouble and the strife
You do the walk, yeah, you do the walk of life
Hmm, you do the walk of life