It's interesting but there is a common tread with christianity or buddhism where 'the world' is an illusion of suffering that must be transcended (escaped) in favour of a spiritual otherworld/afterlife/higher spiritual as opposed to material consciousness. One suffers because one has not denied the world, the body, the self. Reminds me of N quote re 'afterworldsmen'.
I don't know whether it was originally like that or whether this was an abrahamic corruption but it seems clear that nihilism was going strong back then too.
_________________ "I do not exhort you to work but to battle; I do not exhort you to peace but to victory. May your work be a battle; may your peace be a victory." -TSZ
Satyr Daemon
Gender : Posts : 36826 Join date : 2009-08-24 Age : 58 Location : Hyperborea
Abrahamism is to Hellenism and Indo-Euroepan paganism, what Buddhism is to Hinduism and indo-Euroepan paganism. One nullifies the European branch, the other the Indic branch.
Both are nihilistic and emerge when population pressures and historical circumstances create an abundance of urban dwellers, unrelated to each other. Nihilism's anti-nature, anti-past, anti-world dogmatism - founded on semiotics - offers a relief; a coping mechanism.
A healthy mind, body and spirit, is one free of the insidious psychological dysfunction of a guilt complex subverting natural impulses and drives. This, essentially, was what Nietzsche's immorality was about. War and violence, underpins beauty and tranquility. This paradox of existence is one that the average mind cannot reconcile with the way they prefer things to be, rather than rejoice in how things are. This is why Dionysus encapsulates the "cruelty" of life-affirmation within the darkness of its chaos. The ruthless hunger; the voracious appetite of power, of joy. No pleasure, without pain. No light without the danger of being blinded--Blake's Auguries of Innocence.