Live dangerously!

Because believe me! — The secret to reaping the greatest fertility and enjoyment from existence is: perilous live! Build your cities on Mount Vesuvius! Send your ships to uncharted seas! Live in war with your kind and with yourself!¹

Nietzsche has these sentences for the Happy science authored. And somehow — admittedly — they always spoke to me. A tempting saying that vaguely promises more of life: adventure, intensity, contempt for death! This interest, which can hardly be concealed, has led others to often ask me whether I think I am living a dangerous life. And as much as you might want to answer this question with a cocky “yes,” it is difficult to live in a picturesque holiday town like Freiburg and to sincerely say “yes” to it. Who knows, it is certainly possible that Nietzsche's words worked their magic in the background of the idea of traveling through Southeast Asia by bicycle. Once to this question with a hearty “Yes! “That would be something to answer!

I have probably missed the fact that the eruption of Vesuvius is a very rare event and that it is therefore not so dangerous for individuals to make themselves comfortable at the foot of the volcano. At least a good half a million people have either decided that Nietzsche is absolutely right in his words or that this area simply lends itself to cities with sonorous names. In Ercolano and Torre del Greco, via Torre Annunziata and San Sebastiano al Vesuvio to Somma Vesuviana and Ottaviano, residents have decided to defy the risk of fire, even though the villages are within the “red zone” of the active volcano.

I do not know for sure whether the residents — as I have read — are as aware of the risk of an outbreak, which is difficult to calculate, as I am aware of the risk of being run over by a car in Malaysia. And to stick with what I'm sure of: Malaysia is a dangerous country for bike travelers! I am therefore happy that Malaysia was the last country of our trip. Not because I would have seen at least three other countries before if I were run over, but in general. If I had started here, I would probably have turned around.

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Driving dangerously in Vietnam and Cambodia

Vietnam was startling due to its loud traffic. Every truck driver who wanted to prevent the cyclist dreaming in front of him from missing out on — possibly due to an existing hearing loss — what large vehicle was feeding him from behind, said with a roaring horn: “Attention, I'm coming! Don't turn around now because I'll overtake you right away.” These truck horns, like the trucks themselves, were frighteningly loud and may have cost me a good deal of my hearing.

Cambodia offered the choice between wide, busy highways or winding, unpaved, bumpy side roads. When you had enough of screeching traffic, you could turn onto small forest and miracle trails, which often ended in front of a fence. If you had enough of these labyrinthine paths, you could switch to heavy roads again.

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Deathfahrthailand

But it wasn't until “Deadly Thailand” that I felt the icy grip of existential anxiety for the first time. Why In contrast to Vietnam and Cambodia, the roads are well developed, but that is exactly the problem. It's so nice to race on Thailand's roads. And in addition, there are far more four-wheelers than two-wheelers — but all of them are more heavily motorized and have it: in a hurry.

Speeding offences are considered a minor offense; no driver's license, drunk, safety deficiencies? You just have to pay 30 euros — and you can continue driving. Thailand is one of the leaders with its number of road deaths and is regularly in second or third place in the global ranking. Only Liberia and the Dominican Republic can surpass Thailand. While Thailand has 38.1 per hundred thousand inhabitants per year, the average number in Germany is between 3 to 4 deaths.

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Murderous Malaysia

So how can Malaysia be worse than Thailand? Malaysia is unable to get into the top ten. By contrast, even Vietnam has far more road deaths per hundred thousand. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that Malaysia is far more dangerous for cyclists. Because it is the first country whose expressways regularly have no shoulder for smaller and slower vehicles such as scooters or bicycles. If fewer cyclists die in Malaysia, it is probably because there are very few cyclists there who travel outside the city at all. Malaysia's expressways are almost exclusively driven by cars and motorbikes and, when they see a speeding, swaying large vehicle in the rear-view mirror, they can press on the tube and escape the danger with some probability.

The situation is different for us cyclists. All motorized vehicles overtake us, meaning that every approaching car, truck or bus driver has to make a small turn to get past us. On a busy road, there are several hundred truck and car drivers making a small curve around us at over 100 km/h. A very tiny one. Anyway, they should. With every carefree accelerating motor sound behind us, I sincerely pray that these wheels may also roll past me.

What does that feel like? Like adventure, intensity, contempt for death?

No More like the cold breath of a rather ordinary and impersonal death. Being able to stick to Malaysia's street as a flat frog doesn't seem like the worthy end result of a dangerous life to me. I almost suspect that Nietzsche did not have any bicycle tourists in mind when he wrote his sentence. So maybe I've taken Nietzsche's appeal too literally?

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Preparatory heroism and experimental findings

And it's worth taking a look at the surrounding lines. Because this quatrain is not the entire aphorism 283. With Nietzsche, there is sometimes a risk of misunderstandings and the most famous accusation, which is directed against overly hasty interpreters, is: Wasn't something taken out of context?

The aphorism begins with the keyword printed in blocked form in the original:”Preparing people“, which is not so easy to reconcile with the call to live dangerously. Because for adventurers, preparation shouldn't be the main part of their story.

So let's take a look at the first few lines until the call:

I welcome all signs that a more masculine, warlike age is beginning, which will above all honor bravery! For it should pave the way for an even higher age and gather the strength that that will one day need — that age that brings heroism into knowledge and Wages wars for the sake of thoughts and their consequences. This requires many preparatory brave people who cannot spring out of nowhere — and just as little out of the sand and slime of current civilization and big city education: people who understand how to be silent, lonely, determined, satisfied and consistent in invisible activity: people who, with an inner attachment to everything, search for what is about them to overcome is: People who share the joy, patience, simplicity and contempt of the great vanities, as magnanimity in victory and tolerance against the small vanities of all the defeated: people with a sharp and free judgment about all victors and about the part of chance in every victory and fame: people with their own festivals, their own workdays, their own mourning periods, living and safe in command and ready, It is important to obey, equally proud in one way or the other, serving their own cause: more vulnerable people, More fertile people, happier people!

I have to say that I imagined an adventurous life in a different way, quite apart from the fact that I sympathize far less with Nietzsche's heroic ideals of courage and perseverance. So I'm not surprised that “live dangerously! “became a memorable part of the aphorism, while the first lines are quoted less frequently. Sounds more like the work of founding a company, which, although it also has its holidays, has far more “working days,” on which the “preparatory people” “silently, alone, resolutely” simply pursue their “invisible activity [s].”

And speaking of “invisible”: When Nietzsche writes of the “heroism of knowledge” and of “wars [...] for the sake of thoughts and their consequences” or even just about “wars [...] with yourself,” I ask myself whether I am actually called upon to move into the world — be it with a sword or by bicycle — or whether my world of thought itself is the playground of all dangers and all dangerous life Should. Do we prefer not to pursue the former option in aphorism 283 of Happy science, which finally offers the prospect of a dubious rule of philosophers:

Be robber and conqueror as long as you can't be ruler and owner, you discerning! The time will soon pass when it was enough for you to live hidden in forests like shy deer! The knowledge will finally reach out to what it deserves: — it will rule and possess want, and you with her!

Let's take a look at another branch of labyrinthine thinking:  

And the insight itself: may it be something else for others, for example a resting bed or the way to a resting bed, or a conversation, or idleness — for me it is a world of dangers and victories, in which heroic feelings also have their places to dance and play. ”Life as a means of knowledge“— with this principle in your heart, you can not only be brave, but even Live happily and laugh happily! And who would actually be good at laughing and living who wouldn't be good at war and victory for now?²

Here too, war, heroism and danger. And yet: Life in this aphorism is a life in thought, i.e. in the service of knowledge — which, however, is not one or the last insight itself, but offers a field of experimentation. So don't you even have to travel the world to live a dangerous life? Can life be risked just thinking? That is what the aphorism seems to suggest. Intensity and enjoyment come from adventurous thinking (!) promised.

Have I taken this aphorism out of context? Well, you'll have to check that out for yourself. In any case, I'm turning my back on Malaysia and home to my cozy room with the books, notes, pens and I feel ready:

For a dangerous life — in thought!

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The pictures for this article are photographs by the author.

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footnotes

1: The happy science, Aph 283.

2: The happy science, Aph 324.