I feel like it might be time to rejoin the online community. subtxt. ‘hello computer, I’ve missed you.’

Working Aphorisms

I’ll give you a peek into my note book, and my philosophy.

“I don’t mind men unendangered in their comfort, but my purpose has always been to seek out greater joy”

“We ought to redefine ‘culture’, not by what is most bought and sold, but by what is best. Economic dogma has plagued the dignity of culture too long”

“Music may be judged by the degree to which it assembles an ‘over-coming’, as with war, racism, and social issues still yet to be sublimated heroically through art.”

“We are the only species able to consider our own evolution; it would be irresponsible not to consider it.”

“If I call out your delusions, and you call out my intoxication, who will be more ashammed?”

“The ill-health of our culture rests entirely on the mechanized education system that has bred us for hasty lives”

“Change or die — Hans Sachs; I add: change in the most exemplary way”

“Our most spiritual aims should not be to transcend the world, but rather to transfigure it, positively”

“The best artwork is that which promotes the digestion of great ideas”

“Nationalism isn’t bad if egoistic tensions are sublimated through acts of art, athletics, philosophy and science”

“Competition is our instinct to evolve/’over-come’ adversity.”

“Over-coming oneself, includes a courageous amount of self-denial.”

“Our true selves are not repressed within us by society; our true selves lie in a ‘task’ high above us which we must long to accomplish.”

—- all aphorisms by Mike Hargreaves

Apollonian vs. Dionysian Art Forms

It took forever for me to start putting this together. If you are already familiar then forgive my ignorance. I’m explaining this also for my own sake (almost a journal-entry).

One of the first books I read by Nietzsche was ‘The Birth of Tragedy’ (out of the spirit of music). It was a book that I really really loved, though admittedly, I had no clue what it was really about. It had lots of values that interested me, but I couldn’t get a proper perspective as to what it was really about. I knew that it was about the dichotomy between the Greek God Apollo and the Greek God Dionysus.

Through reading Julian Young’s helpful biography of Nietzsche as well as it’s focus on Richard Wagner (the composer who Nietzsche was closely connected) I began to piece it together.

Apollo has a variety of different connections to Greek culture which wikipedia can outline for you, but I wanted to understand why it was that Nietzsche and Wagner decided to pit Apollo specifically against Dionysus.

It’s connection springs from the depressing philosophy which Schopenhauer impressed upon Wagner and Nietzsche. In light of the many intellectuals of the 19th Century losing their faith in Christianity (‘God is dead’), Schopenhauer had created a philosophy which attracted the disenfranchised.

The philosophy is in short, that life is but a dream, and ultimate reality is hidden behind a veil of personal (or individual) delusion. The ultimate reality behind the veil of delusion is what mystics and philosophers could discover to be ‘oneness’ (pantheism). Schopenhauer also sees life for humans to be nothing but suffering. The most primal desire of creatures is the ‘will to live’, and without God the ‘will to live’ becomes a bit pointless, making life suffering. And suicide is pointless.

The only way for a human to return into the ‘oneness’ of the universe behind the veil of personal delusion, is to die. But if everything is suffering, becoming part of the oneness of the universe is to continue on into more suffering. This is the pessimistic view of life that Schopenhauer subscribes to: we get to choose between hell and hell. 

Albert Camus explained this existential suffering as the ‘nauseous’ character.

Not my personal philosophy, and too much of a bummer for me to even spin my wheels on.

So how do we get out of it?! What can we do!!? 

Nietzsche believes the Greeks had the best answer to this issue, and that was transcendence through art (specifically music)! Schopenhauer also had this view. Nietzsche goes to look at the art of Apollo and Dionysus in particular. Apollonian art best exemplified in the work of Homer, and Dionysian art best exemplified in Sophocles.

APOLLONIAN ART

This is art tries to help you ignore the fact of death and suffering by putting it in the context of heroes (primordial examples of the ‘will to live’). It’s not about the hundred people that are dead on the battlefield, it’s about the hero with the athletic horse and shiny armor that refuses to give up. Sort of the same effect that we get from popular magazines. It’s not about how destroyed the celebrity is in her divorces and scandals, it’s about her remaining a star despite. This comforts our own ‘will to live’ and makes death a form of drama rather than reality.

DIONYSIAN ART

The God of Wine! What more can you expect from the God of wine than intoxication. Getting stoned, and getting drunk. Oh boy! Life turns into a wave of feelings and experiences where the individuality is sort of gone. We go into a sense of ‘oneness’ with the universe through intoxicated ecstasy.

Greek ekstasis ‘standing outside oneself,’ based on ek- ‘out’ +histanai ‘to place.’

It’s our way of getting out of the trap of suffering that comes with being an individual. 

So both forms of art try to relieve the pain of being the ‘nauseous’ character. Apollonian art, through action (literally existing like an actor). Dionysian art, through ecstasy.

Nietzsche prefers the Dionysian art, but it’s pretty hard to stay in a state of ecstasy forever. Wagner would write a five hour opera and have to include scenes of action to give the audience a break from the ecstasy. The crowd upon leaving enjoyed and believesthese prolonged states of artistic ecstasy to be beneficial, but are ultimately relieved that they can go on acting their lives out.

PITY

Your love is not extended,

With good wisdom you claim.

But your wisdom is technological

And distant from mine that is rain covered

Your compassion has you suffering with everyone

You mosaic of morals! Full of pity and arrogance

And made worse by the ‘Righteousness’ of your pity

You’ve overcome so little in yourself

You have no honourable love to offer

Love escapes you like a vapour —

An aftermath of consumption

Woe- to the soft spirits

Your greatest foolishness came in testing my coals

That the rocks of my spirit are always furnished with heat

Yearning to be like the Greek gods

— Human

You may move your pity through the low lands

I will remain at my peaks with your unloved

Where we boldly look the sun in the face

And retreat with it to underworlds

Darkness is a pause before sleep in your mind

Lest your love twist your passions into pains

And have you resting in a serpents coil

I rest soundly in my mountain cave

In unaffected peace

wow cool!