General Philosophy
Create or Criticize: The Philosophy of Enmity
From: follow the white rabbit… YT Transcript, from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche synthesis and integration by Mistral
Create or Criticize?
A woman wakes up at 3:00 in the morning. Not because of insomnia, not because of a nightmare. She wakes up thinking about someone she hates. His face appears in the darkness of the room like a silent obsession. She picks up her cell phone and almost without realizing it, she is browsing that person’s social media looking for something, anything to justify the anger she feels. A new photo, a political comment, an opinion different from hers. She finds it. She feels a strange satisfaction. She goes back to sleep. This scene is repeated in millions of homes every night. People waking up not for those they love, but for those they despise. Devoting the first and last thoughts of the day not to their dreams, but to their enemies. Building brick by brick an invisible altar where they deposit all the energy they could use to create something of their own.
There is a disturbing truth that no one wants to admit. Our enemies occupy more mental space than our loved ones. We think about them more, talk about them more, dream about them more. Without realizing it, they have become the secret deities of our existence. Negative deities that we worship through hatred, that we feed with our indignation, that we keep alive with our contempt.
But why does this happen? Why do we devote so much of ourselves to what we claim to reject? Why do our enemies seem more real, more vivid, more important than anything we claim to value? The answer lies in a brutal philosophical discovery. We need our enemies. Not by accident, not out of weakness, but out of a deep existential need. They are not obstacles in our path. They are the path itself. They are not interruptions in our lives. They have become the reason for our lives.
Friedrich Nietzsche saw this with piercing clarity. He realized that behind every great hatred, there is a small disguised impotence. That every enemy we create is in fact a mirror onto which we project not what we despise most in the world, but what we fear most to discover in ourselves. This is not a story about others. It is a story about the secret architecture of our own identity. About how we build who we are, not only through what we choose to be, but mainly through what we choose to hate and about the terrible price we pay for that choice. Because there is something even more disturbing than needing enemies to exist. Discovering who we would be if they simply disappeared.
Every morning before he even has his coffee, he already knows who he’s going to fight today. He opens his phone and there they are. The politicians who destroyed the country. The influencers who spread futility. The former colleagues who achieved the success he deserved. They are familiar faces. A gallery of adversaries he cultivates with the care of a gardener. He doesn’t realize it, but he has developed a sacred routine. He wakes up, checks to see if his enemies still exist. Feels relief when he confirms it and then he can start his day. It’s as if their presence in the world is a guarantee that he also exists. As if the hatred he feels is irrefutable proof that he is alive, that he has an opinion, that he matters.
Nietzsche called this slave morality, a way of living that can only define what is good through what it considers bad. It’s like having an identity built entirely on negation. I am everything he is not. I am virtuous because he is corrupt. I am intelligent because he is stupid. I am authentic because he is fake. But there’s something more subtle going on here. This man doesn’t just hate his enemy’s actions. He hates their very existence. It’s not that he disagrees with their ideas. It’s that he can’t stand that they have the right to exist in the same world as him. And that reveals something terrible. His identity is completely dependent on the moral inferiority of others.
Notice how this works in practice. When he sees a news story about corruption, he doesn’t just feel outrage, he feels a strange satisfaction. “I knew it,” he thinks. “I always knew they were like that.” It’s as if the evil in the world is confirmation of his own goodness. As if every scandal is a medal of honor pinned to his chest.
Nietzsche realized that this dynamic is not accidental. It is a complete system of values. An inverted religion where the sacred is not in what you love but in what you hate. Where prayer is not a thanksgiving but a curse. Where the altar is not dedicated to God but to the devil you have chosen for yourself. And like every religion, this one also has its rituals. The endless discussions on social media where no one wants to convince anyone, just confirm that the other is wrong. The WhatsApp groups where only news that confirms how despicable your enemies are is shared. The conversations at work where the main topic is always the same. How the world is lost. How people are blind. How only we see the truth.
But there is something even more disturbing about this dynamic. When he criticizes others for being selfish, for seeking power, for wanting to stand out, he is criticizing exactly what he also desires but does not have the courage to admit. The enemy becomes the receptacle for everything we reject in ourselves. We project our own shadow onto him and then feel pure for hating it. It’s a brilliant psychological operation. We transform our envy into moral indignation, our impotence into ethical superiority, our mediocrity into virtue. And best of all, we do this without having to change anything about ourselves. All we have to do is find someone worse to hate.
Nietzsche saw that this way of existing is in fact an escape. An escape from the responsibility of creating one’s own values, of building something original, of affirming one’s own life. It is easier to define oneself against something than in favor of something. It is more comfortable to react than to act. This discovery reveals something even more disturbing about our nature. We are not just people who occasionally find enemies. We are enemy-producing machines. Our minds function like factories that constantly need to find new targets for our contempt. Because without them, we would be faced with a terrible question. Who are we really?
Observe your own conversations. Count how many times a day you talk about someone you admire versus how many times you talk about someone you despise. The tally never adds up in our favor. We talk about our heroes when they die. But we talk about our enemies every day. They are more present in our lives than the people we love. And that leads us to a disturbing realization. Maybe we don’t hate our enemies. Maybe we love them. Maybe they are the most important people in our lives because they give us purpose, identity, a reason to exist. They transform our mediocre existence into an epic crusade between good and evil.
But there is a price to pay for this dependence. A price that is only beginning to be revealed. She was 8 years old when she discovered the secret power of resentment. At school, a classmate won the award for best student. That night, alone in her room, she didn’t cry over her defeat. She constructed a narrative. The girl only won because her parents had money to pay for private lessons. Because the teachers had favorites, because the world was unfair to children like her. It was the first time she turned her pain into moral superiority. And it worked. The wound of humiliation healed. But it left something behind. The certainty that she was better than the winners because she knew how dirty the game was.
30 years later, she continues to use the same formula. Every promotion that didn’t come, every relationship that ended, every dream that didn’t come true, everything is transformed into the same comforting narrative. The problem is in her, it’s the system. It’s not her lack of effort, it’s the lack of character of others. Nietzsche called this resentment, but not in the usual sense of the word. For him, resentment is a whole philosophy of life. It is a way of existing that transforms every personal failure into a moral victory. It is the talent of converting impotence into indignation, mediocrity into virtue, conformity into wisdom.
The resentful person doesn’t need to achieve anything because they have already achieved the most valuable thing of all, the certainty that they are right. While others chase after vulgar successes, money, recognition, power, they already possess the supreme treasure, moral purity. They are poor but honest. They are failures but they have integrity. They are invisible but they are right.
Observe how this works in practice. When they see someone successful, they do not feel envy. They feel pity. “Poor thing,” they think, “they don’t know they sold their soul.” When they see someone happy, they do not feel sadness for their own life. They feel superiority. “They are happy because they are alienated. I suffer because I see reality.” It’s a perfect alchemical operation. It turns lead into gold, defeat into victory, inferiority into superiority. And the most brilliant thing of all is that it works without changing anything in real life. All you have to do is change your interpretation.
Nietzsche realized that this dynamic is not an individual flaw. It is an entire cultural system. A civilization built on resentment where the supreme virtue is not to create but to criticize. Where heroism lies not in affirming one’s own values but in denying the values of others. Think about your most animated conversations. They are almost always about something you hate, not something you love. Think about your strongest opinions. They are almost always against something, not in favor of something. Think about the moments when you feel most intelligent. They are almost always when you are demonstrating why someone else is wrong, not when you are creating something original.
If this reflection is bothering you, it’s because it’s working. The discomfort doesn’t come from hearing something false. It comes from recognizing something true. But there is something even more disturbing about this dynamic. Resentment not only justifies our mediocrity, it makes it necessary. Because if we started to win, to create, to conquer, we would lose our moral superiority. We would have to admit that maybe the world isn’t so unfair after all. That maybe the problem isn’t always with others. That’s why the resentful secretly and unconsciously sabotage their own chances, not out of masochism, but out of existential necessity. They need to keep losing in order to remain virtuous. They need to keep suffering in order to remain superior. It’s a perfect prison. The bars aren’t on the outside, they’re on the inside. And the key isn’t in the hands of the jailer. It’s in your own hands. But using it would mean giving up the only thing that gives you your identity. The comforting certainty that the world is to blame for all your failures.
Nietzsche saw that this way of living is not just a personal tragedy. It is an existential tragedy because it wastes the only real gift we have: the possibility of creating something of our own, of affirming our own life, of saying yes to who we are instead of no to who others are. But the deeper we dig into this dynamic, the more we discover something disturbing. Perhaps our enemies are not just projections of our resentment. Perhaps they are something even more intimate.
A man spends 40 years of his life criticizing corrupt politicians. Every day, religiously, he reads news about scandals and is outraged. He writes indignant comments on social media. He sends messages to family groups. He tells his friends how the country is lost because of these scoundrels. One day, by chance, he is offered a small government job. It’s a minor position without much power but with some privileges. He accepts immediately. Within 6 months, he is doing exactly what he used to criticize. Using his influence to get favors, taking advantage of perks, turning a blind eye to minor irregularities. When someone points out the contradiction, he doesn’t feel ashamed. He feels irritated. “It’s different,” he says, “I’m doing it for the right reasons. I deserve this after being honest for so long.”
This story reveals something devastating about human nature. We don’t hate our enemies because they are different from us. We hate them because they are just like us. They openly do what we would do under the same circumstances, but we don’t have the courage to admit it. Nietzsche called this the will to power, the fundamental impulse of every living thing to grow, dominate, expand. But he realized something brilliant. When this will cannot express itself directly, it inverts itself. It becomes the will to moral power. Instead of seeking real power, we seek symbolic power. Instead of dominating through force, we dominate through virtue.
The resentful don’t want less power than their enemies. They want more power. But since they can’t get it through traditional means, they invent a new kind of power, the power to judge. They become the moral court of the world. And there is no power more absolute than that. Notice how this works. When you criticize a rich person for being greedy, you are not criticizing greed, you are claiming the right to decide how much money is morally acceptable to have. When you criticize a politician for seeking power, you’re not criticizing power. You’re exercising the power to define who deserves to have power. It is a refined form of domination. Instead of competing on the same playing field, you change the rules of the game. You create a new field where you always win, the field of moral superiority.
But there is something even more subtle about this dynamic. The resentful don’t just want what their enemies have. They want to be exactly like them. They want the same wealth, the same power, the same recognition. But because they can’t admit this even to themselves, they project these desires onto others and attack them with violence. That’s why their criticism is always so specific, so detailed, so intimate. They know exactly how corruption works because they fantasized about being corrupt a thousand times. They know exactly how betrayal works because they fantasized about betraying others a thousand times. They know exactly how manipulation works because they fantasized about manipulating others a thousand times. His enemies are not strangers. They are alternative versions of himself. Versions that had the courage to do what he did not. And for that very reason, versions that he hates and envies with equal intensity.
Nietzsche realized that this dynamic is universal. We all carry within us potential that we never realize. We all have fantasies that we never admit to. We all have desires we never confess. And when we see someone living out that potential, those fantasies, those desires, we feel an explosive mixture of attraction and repulsion. That’s why our enemies fascinate us as much as they disgust us. That’s why we know their lives better than those of our friends. That’s why we talk about them with a passion we rarely devote to the people we love. They are ourselves without masks, ourselves without moral restraints, ourselves doing what we never dare to do. And hating them is a way of maintaining the illusion that we are different, that we are better, that our limitations are virtuous choices rather than simple cowardice.
But this discovery leads us into even darker territory. If our enemies are projections of ourselves, if they are mirrors of our unfulfilled possibilities, then symbolically destroying them is not just an attack on them. It is an attack on our own potential. It is a way of mutilating ourselves, of keeping ourselves small, of ensuring that we will never become what we could truly be. And maybe that is exactly what we want.
There is a moment in every human being’s life when they look in the mirror and recognize the face of the enemy they hate most. This is not a metaphor. It is a literal experience. The same character traits, the same vices, the same weaknesses that they have spent years condemning in others are suddenly revealed stamped on their own face. That moment is devastating because it means that the entire moral architecture we have built, our entire identity based on superiority over others, collapses at once. We discover that we are not the heroes of our own story. We are just another character in the same human drama we have criticized so much.
Nietzsche called this moment beyond good and evil. Not because there are no moral differences, but because we discover that these differences are much smaller than we imagined. That we are all capable of the same horrors and the same beauties. That the line between virtue and vice does not run between us and others. It runs through each of us. When this happens, two things can occur. The first is total despair. The feeling that if we are the same as our enemies, then there is no hope for humanity. If we are no better than them, then the world is truly lost. But there is a second possibility, much rarer and much more dangerous: Freedom. The freedom to stop wasting energy hating alternative versions of ourselves. The freedom to stop building our identity on the denial of others. The freedom to finally create something of our own.
This freedom is scary because it means giving up the most comfortable thing we have: the certainty that we are on the right side. It means accepting that maybe there are no sides. That maybe good and evil are not opposing teams in a cosmic game, but possibilities that coexist within every human soul. It means accepting that the corrupt politician we hate so much probably started out wanting to change the world just like us. That the greedy businessman we criticize so much probably grew up in a family that valued hard work just like us. That the superficial person we despise so much probably just wants to be loved and accepted just like us.
This does not mean forgiving everything, accepting everything, relativizing everything. It means something much more radical. It means stopping using the evil of others as an excuse for our own mediocrity. It means taking on the terrible and liberating responsibility of creating our own values, of affirming our own life, of saying yes to what we want to be instead of no to what others are.
Nietzsche realized that few human beings can bear this freedom. It is easier to remain a slave to one’s own resentments, a prisoner of one’s own indignation, addicted to one’s own moral superiority. It is more comfortable to continue hating versions of ourselves than to take responsibility for becoming who we really can be. But for those rare individuals who manage to cross this chasm, a unique possibility opens up. The possibility of a creative life instead of just a reactive one. The possibility of building instead of just destroying. The possibility of loving instead of just hating.
When we stop needing enemies to define ourselves, something extraordinary happens. We discover who we really are beneath all the masks, all the hatred, all the projections. We discover a person we may never have known, a person capable of creating their own values, of affirming their own existence, of saying yes to life without having to say no to others. It is a painful process like all childbirth because it means killing the person we have always been—the moral judge of the world—in order to give birth to the person we can become—the creator of our own reality.
And perhaps that is the most disturbing truth of all: that our enemies were never the problem. The problem was always our need for them. And on the day we managed to dispense with them, we will discover something they always knew and we always denied. That we are exactly like them. And that this equality is not a condemnation but a liberation because it means that if they can be everything we condemn, we can also be everything we admire.
What enemy have you created to avoid looking at yourself? Write it in the comments. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve already taken a step beyond most people. You watch the videos. You reflect on each idea. Now the question is, how far do you want to go with this?
If you want to take the next step and truly apply this knowledge to your life, the codes of the white rabbit are ready for you. The link is in the pinned comment. Remember, success is a decision. The choice is yours.