I have a few theories based on what he wrote and how he lived. But first, a bit of context because Nietzsche was very far ahead of his time, placing his finger upon profound societal shifts in the 19th century which we’re still grappling with nowadays – shifts exacerbated by our fixation with celebrities and dependence on social media.
(He discussed his post-humous popularity, predicting “I have a terrible fear that I shall one day be pronounced holy“, and he set the date somewhere around Y2K: “Let us assume that people will be allowed to read (my work) in about the year 2000.” He was confident they would enjoy it when they did: “It seems to me that to take a book of mine into his hands is one of the rarest distinctions that anyone can confer upon himself. I even assume that he removes his shoes when does so – not to speak of boots.” This was especially striking because Nietzsche died penniless and alone in an insane asylum, partially due to the fact that during his lifetime his work went largely unread and he toiled in obscure poverty.)
In addition to accurately predicting upcoming societal shifts, Nietzsche was also basically alone amongst philosophers in that he addressed suffering in a radically different way: Instead of attempting to assuage one’s suffering with his writings, he advocated that one should cultivate what caused suffering in order to turn it into something beautiful.
(Nietzsche wanted to be a professional gardener at one time, and he viewed one’s problems as the roots of a plant. Ugly and gnarly though they may be, if you properly cultivate your problems they could produce something beautiful like a flower.)
In other words, he didn’t view suffering as a net negative or as something to be embarrassed about. And he thought that the pursuit of temporary happiness as a means unto itself was a sure route to hell; that this sort of “cozy well-being” or, as Nietzsche put it, “the religion of comfortableness” would lead to “small, mean people hiding in forests like shy deer.”
Instead Nietzsche wrote that lasting happiness in one’s life comes from rising to the occasion and overcoming one’s suffering. He realized that difficulties of every sort were to be welcomed by those seeking fulfillment.
This is why he famously wished those closest to him to be afflicted in some really awful ways because he believed that it was through the overcoming of life’s obstacles that one gained real meaning:
“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.”
Instagram has become a great sewer, just like Twitter, only worse.