A Dionysian Interlude

Today’s episode is a going to be little different from the usual style, a bit more blog and a bit less position paper, but don’t worry, we’re still going to get to some philosophy, specifically Nietzsche, in the latter half. We play catchup on what's been happening on my end as far as voiceover work and Dragoncon, then address the potential for Nietzsche to be read as a hopeful redemption narrative.

Obligatory bibliography, or books (and articles) you may also want to check out:

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Genealogy of Morals. “Guilt,” “Bad Conscience”.

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Duncan Large. Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Thomas Common, Helen Zimmern, Horace Barnett Samuel, J. M. Kennedy, and Clifton Fadiman. The Philosophy of Nietzsche. New York: Modern library, 1954.

Not mentioned in this episode, but worth a read:
Deleuze, Gilles. 1983. Nietzsche and Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press.

Transcript

Hello, welcome, and thank you for checking out this episode of Philosophy Versus Work, the podcast that examines the Ethics of the “Work Ethic” and other philosophical and socio-political questions regarding Work, Life, and Death. I am Michael Murray and I’ll be your guide on this philosophical journey. 

Episode 11: A Dionysian Interlude

So, it’s been a minute. Today’s episode is a going to be little different from the usual style, a bit more blog and a good bit less argument or position paper, or however one would describe this podcast, but don’t worry, we’re still going to get to some philosophy, specifically Nietzsche, in the latter half. I wanted to give you guys an update on what’s been going on around here given that there was no episode last week, and it looked like there wasn’t about to be one next week either. I’ve been pretty busy working professionalizing my VO work and a little, well, doing some passive-ish marketing for Philosophy vs Work. 

Going into the end of August and the beginning of September, I was working on applying and compiling VO samples to get my first professional, commercial voiceover demo done. And good news! I’ll be back in Atlanta next week working on just that! Back in Atlanta you ask?  Well, yes! Because this past Labor Day weekend was Dragoncon! And, man, it was a blast this year (as usual). So, if you happened to find this podcast because you found or were given one of my Philosophy vs Work badge ribbons or business cards (which had been left with the Digital Media and Skeptics tracks rooms in the Hilton and the  tables in the Peachtree entry to the Westin, just outside the room where the “So you want to be a Hero, and a Villain” voiceover workshop was held in 2023, or if we met playing some seriously late night Werewolf this year), then, welcome! 

Now, I’ll be posting some photo compilation reels and, if I have enough footage, a video con-tage to YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok soon enough. 

I also received a private commission for an audiobook recording, my first audiobook and that’s going to absorb quite a few chunks of my record/edit time for me over the next several weeks. So, it’s a good thing I checked out a panel on audiobooks, ACX, and networking with indie writers while I was at con. Since it’s a private commission, I can’t use any of it in marketing, or really go into details, but I can use clips as an audio sample if directly requested, or in an audition. As far as I know.  

Let’s see, what else of interest… attended some parties, donned a couple of Star Trek cosplays – including one that got me a few seconds on Atlanta local news for an article about Star Trek and the Trek fandom present at Dragoncon this year – if you’re curious to see it, I dropped a link in a post on YouTube, but you can also find it just searching for Atlanta, Dragoncon, Star Trek, local news; you can see my, um, two sheets to the wind smirk and my Hugh Hefner-inspired Science Officer cocktail suit-uniform around the 30 second mark – the Hefner-inspired suit was for the Bunny Hutch party, which was so slammed we skipped it this year, opting for the 8-bit bash over in the Westin, checked out more than a few main stage bands, my friend Dan and I missed the Muscle Nerds showdown (a hybrid body-building and costume contest) that another friend, Jeremy, placed 3rd in (congrats again, and maybe they’ll have real medals next year?), got to see the voice cast of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon (which was great), several Star Trek cast panels (did I mention I’m a Trekkie?), a really interesting panel on Creativity in Skepticism (it was a couple of authors, a filmmaker and stand-up comic, and a genuine astronaut on the panel discussing the various intersections and interplay of critical and creative thought – I was particularly intrigued by comic book author Tini Howard’s answer to ‘what is creativity?’ as ‘asking questions – a “Science and Fiction” stand-up comedy show hosted by the Skeptics Track, more bands, a podcasting/guesting panel, more parties, some gaming, an hour with Jodie Whitaker (that makes 3 Doctors I’ve seen at DC now), some wandering and cosplaying, and two of my perennial favorites, an hour with Dr. Erin MacDonald (astrophysicist and aerospace engineer) and the real Chief Science officer for all shows Star Trek, doing an audience Q&A regarding the ‘science’ of Trek, and Science vs Movies – now, if you’ve not been able to see Science versus Movies, they pack this room out, it is a late night, game show style romp with a rotating panel of scientists (physicists, engineers, emergency planners, paleontologists, you get the point), being forced to watch scenes from some real gems of “science” fiction like Moonfall and Sharknado (if you haven’t seen Moonfall yet, you’re missing out, but, be warned, you may need an emotional support beverage for that one, whoah, it’s a doozy), where they do not debunk the scene, no no no, that would be too easy, they have to take questions from the audience and defend the quote-unquote science in the “historical science documentary” (thank you Stephen, not with a V but with a PhD for that turn of phrase). 

You may be wondering; you did all of this in the space of not quite 5 days? Yes, and I am so tired. It took about 2 days after con to get back to baseline reality and normal sleep. And, of course, I’m right back on the road in a few days to head right back to Atlanta – where, despite having missed only the 2006 Dragoncon since we started going in ‘97, I believe, (giant asterisk for DC goes virtual in 2020), I’ve still never actually ate at the Varsity, so that’s on the to do list on my way into town next week. It’s close enough, I’m going to call it part of Dragoncon 2024 (hey, if you’re on the Dragoncon Discord, it never ends). 

Alright, so, that gets you pretty much caught up with me, it’s probably about time to get us all caught up on a little Nietzsche. As I noted in the last episode, the intent was to start tackling ‘the violence of hope,’ and that’s still the plan as far as theory and method, but in going through my notes I found something of a short primer paper that I had written that would later become part of my thinking regarding ethics and aesthetics, existentialism, and critical historicity (critical historical-materialism) as central to my arguments for meaningful work as well as against both conservative and liberal capitalism and religiosity. Now, it was a pretty short paper and directed at an audience that would have been familiar with pretty much everything I address, so, where certain contextually dense references come up, I’ll unpack those a bit. Otherwise, the only major changes have been in tone and delivery to keep this whole thing more approachable, in keeping with the casual-academic vibe I’ve been aiming toward so far.

Also, a note on language. Where I refer to “man,” I’m doing so in keeping with the English translation I was reading at the time. As I’ve found with Heidegger as well, English translations often simply use “man” and “mankind” as a stand-in for humanity, though the original German often flows in and out of Der Mann (man, in an interchangeable singular/plural sense), Das Man (one, or the human, in the neuter sense), and Der Mensch (the, singular, man). I, personally, first, do not countenance any gendered limitations on humanity’s capacity for thriving, and, second, linguistically prefer thriving over power, as, thriving refers to a specific form of power that I believe excludes the exercise of power over others, as it can limit their capacity for thriving. If you view increasing your capacity for thriving necessarily as exercising greater power over others, you’re not thriving, you’re oppressing. 

Alright. 

Friedrich Nitzsche.

“Eternal life, the eternal return of life, the future promised and hallowed in the past; the triumphant Yes to life beyond all death and change; true life as the continuation of life through procreation, through the mysteries of sex.”  Nietzsche. Twilight of the Idols. “What I Owe to the Ancients”, Aphorism 4.

It may seem ironic at first to come away from a reading of the same author who referred to man as a “disease” with a sense of their work being a ‘hopeful redemption narrative’, but Nietzsche’s often caustic criticism of society seems aimed at opening his readers’ eyes to what mankind should be.  Rather than allowing a herd mentality or a slave morality to substantiate an inversion of values that glorifies weakness, Nietzsche’s vision of man is one of strength, instinct, and passion.  Civilized man is a disease afflicting the powerful human animal but that does not mean that man is or must be weak.  Being human means that the individual can choose not to be weak; they can exercise their will to power, their will to life, and break from the behaviors of slaves or herd animals.

Now, Nietzsche’s style is, to say the least, unorthodox, but it plays hand in hand with the message of his criticism.  Bodily affectivity – to be a little Heideggerian, the there-beingness of a body thrown into the world, and, specifically, it’s capacity to be stimulated by, process, and express emotion – is inseparable from human experience and Nietzsche’s individual is subjective and emotional, as opposed to Kant’s rational, disinterested subject, and part of the goal of Nietzsche’s writing style is to engage with the reader’s emotions.  As a result much of his texts Genealogy of Morals and Twilight of the Idols come across as a dramatic monologue script rather than abstract scholarly criticism. As in the previous example, a “triumphant Yes to life” is not merely self-affirmation in the form of positive thoughts or pensive reflection, but affirmation in the most basic and bodily form: the propagation of the species through sexual reproduction and all the pain, pleasure, and emotion that go along with it. Also, something to keep in mind in a couple of weeks when we get to Lee Edelman’s No Future. 

The inversion of this emotional, bodily, “triumphant Yes” is what Nietzsche refers to as ressentiment. And, yes, Nietzsche was writing in German, but chose to keep this term in French, so, so do most philosophers, at least that I have read or seen anyway, writing about Nietzsche or his concepts. 

This ressentiment is the source of the inverted values of the slave morality.  Important side note, we’re not talking about the morals of slaves in a historical sense, but the taught or forced morality that arises when those in power seek to make their subjects make slaves of themselves. The slave that risks their life to resist their master in every great and small way is precisely not a person of ressentiment. 

When an individual lacks the agency, or convinces themselves they lack the agency, to resist power, they grow resentful of that power.  The fault in this is that it externalizes that lack of power, attributing the fault of the individual’s weakness to the overwhelming power of the other. Nietzsche follows this idea to an assault on the priestly class.  Not only does the priest externalize power, but he manipulates the masses, convincing them that their weakness is a virtue and that strength is a sin.  They, the priests, turn their own ressentiment toward the powerful into a belief system that externalizes the value of the world in the afterlife, declares the only real will to life to be the will of God, sanctifies pacification, suffering, and labor, and all the while demonizing free will and physical pleasure. Two domains that are reserved to the state (be it the King or the Emperor, or the government) or the Church. To wit, as in Nietzsche’s time as well as ours, it’s not at all difficult to find case after case after case of the members of the priestly class proselytizing asceticism: austerity, abstinence, toil, and self-denial to their congregants and their communities and nations (where they openly engage in politics); while they themselves live lives of ease and luxury, paid for, no surprise, by the faithful (and the lack of political will to tax them). 

In contrast to this externalized, Platonic world of contemplation; Nietzsche refers to the Dionysian as a metaphor for the affirming life.  The Dionysian man is engaged with the world around him bodily, emotionally. The best description of this type is in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, in which he compares the Apollonian (referring to the Greek god Apollo) aesthetic of visual stimulation and cognitive interpretation with the Dionysian (referring to the Greek god Dionysus) aesthetic that takes account of the range of sense perceptions of the body.  For example, an Apollonian viewing of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s 17th century sculpture St. Teresa in Ecstasy would take account of the craftsmanship, the story, the quality of the marble, the value of the gold, the play of light and shadow, etc.  On the other hand, a Dionysian viewing is one in which the viewer places themselves in the position of St. Teresa, feeling what she is feeling.  Nietzsche takes this Dionysian mode from an aesthetic and abstracts it out to a way of living in the world. This isn’t just a way to view and analyze art, but a way of being. 

It is in this Dionysian mode that I believe Nietzsche can be read as a hopeful redemption narrative.  If the reader allows themself to respond viscerally, emotionally to Nietzsche’s writings, then they are already beginning to cure themself of the “disease” of man.  In a way, Nietzsche seems to be venting his own resentment towards man; he sees mankind as falling short of what it is truly capable of.  But it is not that he hates man, or is in some way a power hungry proto-fascist, rather it is frustration with the world he sees around him, a world of individuals that self-identify as a class based on their work rather than as human beings, a world of institutionalized equality (note on equality here, Nietzsche lived from 1844 to 1900, so he saw the unification of the German Empire under Bismark, but not it’s fall and entry into World War One. This new German state of the late 1800s provided a universal right to vote for men, though the power of that vote in terms of elected governments differed between northern ‘Germany’ and Prussia (everywhere else), massive economic disparity between rural/agricultural Germany and Industrializing Prussia, labor surplus and wealth consolidation issues – which were all familiar social crises in the US, UK, France, and Russia as well – so we’re talking about a people that were nominally equal in the sense the Church told them that they were, the State certainly didn’t, and they, unless they had the land and money, or were members of the Church, were equally obliged to work and follow orders. So, an institutionalized equality that ignores the differences amongst individuals, a world wherein religions prey on the weak, convincing them to prize their weakness and shun the material world. It is a world in which the meek inherit nothing but servitude.  

Nietzsche’s “triumphant Yes” to life offers redemption from ressentiment, the disease of man.  By affirming life, by affirming every choice, every action, humanity can take control of its own fate.  Yet as one does so they must also take responsibility for their actions.  Man’s transgressions against man are the result of man’s will, not God’s, and from this principle follows the path to the sovereign, supermoral, individual, “a man who has grown to freedom”.  It is within one’s power to cure themself of the disease of weakness and resentment, all they need do is listen to their instincts telling them that they were not born to be meek, servile, to be a commodity, a subject, a sheep.  We were born to paint, to sing, to run, to dance, to dream, to love, to be an artist, a poet, a Dionysus.

And with that, I’m going to wrap this short interlude episode on Nietzsche. Next episode, the violence of hope, should be in two weeks, presuming nothing insane happens in the meantime. If there is, I’ll blast something out on the socials – make sure to like, follow, etc., the links are on the website, philosophyvswork.buzzsprout.com. 

I hope you’ll join me. 

‘til then, go be a Dionysus! Eat, drink, and be merry! 

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