A conversation with Nietzsche

We never even got to Nietzschean happiness yesterday - did he? - when, at a reporter's request, we flipped our usual process and did reports first. And that was the ballgame, so positively provocative were our reporters' questions. But it's ok, Nietzsche recurs.

I wonder: what would Nietzsche say, in reply to the questions that pre-empted him?

1. Are you interested in illusory happiness?
2. Can you be happy in an unhappy environment?
3. Would you allow or regulate genetic engineering intended to make people happier?

I suspect he'd evade the first question, with talk of masks, perspectives, and rhetorical shots at the very concept of "real" happiness as a pleasure-seeking convention of weakness .

To the second, he'd disingenuously boast of his own icy and superior state of flourishing amidst the warm-hearted herd.

To the third, he'd insist - perhaps rightly - that to truly enjoy and appreciate one's ascent and arrival at the peak, one must have endured the arduous climb. So, no to Happy designer-genes.

And what would Fritz have said about one of the more heated peripheral topics to arise in our free-flowing response to #3, on GMOs? "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger," maybe?

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