# The Death of Zarathustra ## Metadata * Author: [Graeme Donald Snooks](https://www.amazon.comundefined) * ASIN: B00CWP9A70 * ISBN: 0980839424 * Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CWP9A70 * [Kindle link](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70) ## Highlights culture is a response to the type of dynamic strategy pursued by a society, together with the way it unfolds. — location: [1599](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=1599) ^ref-48241 --- To exercise power over the people, the clergy, who were usually without military weapons, needed to possess psychological means of control. — location: [1822](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=1822) ^ref-16470 --- Even in our contemporary world, secular intellectuals, or worldly philosophers, advise democratic leaders how to maintain the dynamic materialist systems that provide modern prosperity and liberty. — location: [1917](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=1917) ^ref-64589 --- By adopting these powerful gods as their own, they were, it was no doubt thought, also adopting the successful strategic logos over which these gods presided. This is just another example of the powerful mechanism of strategic imitation. — location: [1951](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=1951) ^ref-12110 --- just as we “know” the hidden individual personality only by its actions in the wider world, so we “know” the hidden strategic logos only by what it achieves in the wider world. — location: [1987](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=1987) ^ref-16478 --- He is not only driven by strategic desire to achieve his fundamental objectives of survival and prosperity, but also possesses a highly sophisticated instrument – the strategic cerebrum – that plans and supervises its achievement. — location: [2016](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2016) ^ref-27650 --- Within an antistrategic logos, man is still driven by strategic desire and guided by the strategic cerebrum, but he is not free to explore or exploit strategic opportunities or to follow the lead of successful strategists in other countries. Instead, strategic desire and thought is constrained and redirected – leading to total frustration – by political decree based on a perverted form of idealism. — location: [2116](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2116) ^ref-39309 --- Fiction is also generally preferred to the truth, because of its diverting and entertaining qualities. Reality only becomes the focus of attention when its understanding is essential to the achievement of strategic objectives. — location: [2162](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2162) ^ref-35646 --- In times of crisis, particularly when the strategic pursuit is under threat, we know that it is best to assume that very few people will tell the truth. Some of course, will tell the truth no matter what. They are the first to perish, as we saw in Nazi Teutonia. Truth, therefore, is not an objective, merely a selective and flexible tool that is highly responsive to strategic demand. — location: [2175](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2175) ^ref-3307 --- The only reason there are periods in human history when truth about reality unfolds rapidly – periods I have called technological paradigm shifts – is because of the systematic emergence of demand for these ideas as the strategic logos transforms itself. — location: [2242](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2242) ^ref-9993 --- The dynamic strategies of genetic and technological change generate a demand for physical abilities that provide greater access to new and existing natural resources, for instinctual drives of curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and values (freedom of thought and intellectual property rights) that facilitate innovation. — location: [2259](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2259) ^ref-24541 --- The family-multiplication strategy requires increased fertility and mobility, greater sexual and adventure drives, and values (mutual self-help, and solidarity) that support family formation and migration. — location: [2261](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2261) ^ref-36527 --- The commerce strategy needs greater abilities to monopolize and trade in scarce resources, drives of acquisition and adventure, and values (sharp practices and mercenary attitudes) that favor commercial activities. — location: [2262](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2262) ^ref-39301 --- And the conquest strategy demands the abilities to wage war and administer a larger captive resource base, the drives of aggression and power, and the values (valor, brutality, and teamwork) that support conquest. — location: [2264](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2264) ^ref-54212 --- the strategic cerebrum is interested in reality to the extent that such a knowledge assists the unconscious organism in its pursuit of survival and prosperity. — location: [2471](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2471) ^ref-18551 --- This ability to recognize real-world patterns and to generalize about them – what I call strategic thinking – emerged with early man some 2 to 3 myrs ago. At the micro level, strategic thinking involved observing and assessing clues about the presence and passage of both animals and other humans, and using those clues to develop simple inductive theories (stories really) about the activities of their prey and their competitors. Strategic thinking, at various levels of sophistication, had to be undertaken by all active members of the society of early man. This involved comparing current sense data with memories of patterns in the recent past, and projecting these amended patterns into the present and future. It was an intellectual process that directly assisted their hunting, gathering, and raiding activities. — location: [2472](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2472) ^ref-45647 --- Strategic thinking, therefore, involves an imaginative response to the changing patterns of nature and society, in order to develop new and better ways to survive and prosper. This is achieved by being able to develop entirely new dynamic strategies and substrategies when the old ones have been exhausted. It involves both individual and group responses. The successful strategic pioneers are followed by all other members of society through the process of strategic imitation discussed elsewhere. This is the process by which individual decision making is transformed into the dynamic strategy of the entire society. — location: [2483](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2483) ^ref-25805 --- deductive thinking should be notorious for what it leaves out, rather than famous for what it includes. There is just no substitute for effective pattern recognition and inductive generalization for understanding what is happening in reality, particularly if one’s life depends on it. Deductive thinking, on the other hand, is prone to flights of fantasy, which can be very dangerous for one’s health in critical situations. — location: [2492](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2492) ^ref-12614 --- This is not the first time in world history that the strategic logos has been threatened by the metaphysical philosophers. Everyone is familiar with the way the radical Marxists under Lenin were able to hijack the Moscovian revolution, owing to the crisis created by the First World War. Armed with Marxist fantasies, the Bolsheviks mortally wounded the Moscovian logos, which eventually expired some seventy years later despite the ministrations of the “experts”. Also in ancient Egypt during the 18th Dynasty (fourteenth century BC), Akhenaten (“spirit of the sun-disc”) threatened the logos of the Nile by changing not only the capital (to Akhetaten – “horizon of the sun-disc”) but also the nature of the divinity and the country’s dynamic strategy. — location: [2558](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2558) ^ref-28783 --- The metaphysical philosophers of the First World are imposing their flawed ideals on both the former Second World recovering from Marxist ideals and the lesser-developed Third World through the IMF, World Bank, and WTO. — location: [2566](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2566) ^ref-3510 --- when our intellectual faculties are liberated from a subservience to strategic desire and left to follow their own dictates by employing deductive forms of thought, we are usually unable to find the truth. — location: [2572](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2572) ^ref-51382 --- At one end of the normal range are individuals who possess a relatively good understanding of their own nature and the role desire plays in their lives. While even these individuals are not free from self-deception – reflected, perhaps, in their belief that they fully understand their own motivation – they are more able than most to distinguish between their convenient constructions of “reality” and the real thing. The price of this ability and integrity is a degree of anguish that emerges as they approach the truth about themselves. — location: [2705](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2705) ^ref-851 --- At the other end of the normal spectrum of self-knowledge are individuals who have at least some difficulty distinguishing between their intellectual constructions of convenience and reality itself. They have a tendency to feel a degree of comfort with untruth. This difficulty sometimes generates faulty decision making, but, by way of compensation, they experience less anxiety in life. — location: [2711](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2711) ^ref-57153 --- These clinically observed defense mechanisms are, in fact, the various ways that the conscious mind is able to compartmentalize its participation in, and philosophy of, existence. It enables our kind to avoid acknowledging the unpleasant outcomes generated by the materialist driving force in life — location: [2734](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2734) ^ref-45844 --- Truth is a doubly dangerous commodity. Its pursuit can result not only in mental disorders, but also in retaliation from others. These others are the truthsuppressors, who dominate organizations throughout human society. Usually holding positions of authority, the truth-suppressors can be found in government, law, business, the church, and even – nay, especially – in intellectual groups. They wish to suppress the truth because it either exposes their dishonest/immoral practices or undercuts their achievements and livelihoods. — location: [2777](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2777) ^ref-17032 --- Strategic frustration arises from problems that affect entire societies as well as individuals. At the societal level, it arises from the persistent failure of strategic leadership. As a global phenomenon this problem is very modern. It characterizes contemporary governments throughout the First World, owing to their obsession with neoliberal (or economic rationalist) policies, which in turn is an outcome of the triumph of neoclassical (read deductive) economic theory. The problem with this theory is that it has lost contact with reality, and has nothing sensible to say about the dynamics of human society. In particular, it denies that governments should play a proactive leadership role in market economies. The problem for the rest of us in democratic societies is that while our electorates can change governments unwilling to provide strategic leadership, they can’t change their neoliberal policies, owing to the tragic fact that all major political parties take their advice from neoliberal economists. — location: [2863](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2863) ^ref-34125 --- In normal individuals, mood savings involving hypomania and mild depression play an important role in sustaining the strategic pursuit. Feelings of elation arising from successful strategic participation provide the emotional incentive to continue with present strategies, whereas depressed feelings arising from unsuccessful participation provide the emotional incentive to abandon present strategies and circumstances and to seek out new and more profitable ones. — location: [2874](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B00CWP9A70&location=2874) ^ref-51106 ---