Thread by @pmarca

"In Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus are both sons of Zeus. Apollo is the god of the sun, of rational thinking and order, and appeals to logic, prudence and purity. Dionysus is the god of wine and dance, of irrationality and chaos, and appeals to emotions and instincts."

"Apollo represents harmony, progress, clarity, logic and the principle of individuation, whereas Dionysus represents disorder, intoxication, emotion, ecstasy and unity, the omission of individuation."

"For Camille Paglia, the Apollonian is light and structured while the Dionysian is dark and Chthonic (she prefers Chthonic to Dionysian, arguing the latter concept has become synonymous with hedonism and is inadequate, declaring that "the Dionysian is no picnic")."

"[For Paglia] the Chthonic is associated with females, wild/chaotic nature, and unconstrained sex/procreation. In contrast, the Apollonian is associated with males, clarity, celibacy and/or homosexuality, rationality/reason, and solidity, and the goal of oriented progress."

"Paglia argues that there is a biological basis to the Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy, writing: 'The quarrel between Apollo and Dionysus is the quarrel between the higher cortex and the older limbic and reptilian brains'."

"Paglia attributes all the progress of human civilization to masculinity revolting against the Chthonic forces of nature, and turning instead to the Apollonian trait of ordered creation. The Dionysian is a force of chaos and destruction, the chaotic state of wild nature."

"Nietzsche introduces a dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian (reality as disordered and undifferentiated, versus reality as ordered and differentiated). Life always involves a struggle between these two, each battling for control over the existence of humanity."

"In Nietzsche's words, 'Wherever the Dionysian prevailed, the Apollonian was checked and destroyed... wherever the first Dionysian onslaught was successfully withstood, the authority and majesty of the Delphic god Apollo exhibited itself as more rigid and menacing than ever.'"

"The issue is how to experience the Dionysian side of life without destroying the obvious values of the Apollonian side. It is not healthy for an individual, or for a whole society, to become entirely absorbed in the rule of one or the other. The healthiest foothold is in both."

"Portraying Western culture as a struggle between phallic sky-religion on the one hand and chthonic earth-religion on the other, Paglia... associates Apollo with order, structure, and symmetry, and Dionysus with chaos, disorder, and nature."

"On July 16, 1969, 1M people, from all over the country, converged on Cape Kennedy, Florida, to witness the launching of Apollo 11. On August 15, 300K people, from all over the country, converged on Bethel, New York, near the town of Woodstock, to witness a rock music festival."

"What the conflict of reason versus irrational emotion means is Apollo 11 versus the Woodstock festival. You are asked to make a choice between these two — and that the whole weight of today’s culture is being used to push you to the side of and into Woodstock’s mud."

"Apollo is the symbol of beauty, order, wisdom, efficacy the symbol of reason. Dionysus is the symbol of drunkenness or, rather: wild, primeval feelings, orgiastic joy, the dark, the savage, the unintelligible element in man — the symbol of emotion."

"Apollo represents the principle of individuality, while Dionysus leads man 'into complete self-forgetfulness' and into merging with the 'oneness' of nature."

"Reason is the faculty of an individual, to be exercised individually; and it is only dark, irrational emotions, obliterating his mind, that can enable a man to melt, merge and dissolve into a mob or a tribe."

"One million people came to Cape Kennedy for the launching of Apollo. Those people were not a stampeding herd nor a manipulated mob; they did not wreck the Florida communities, they did not devastate the countryside..."

"...they did not throw themselves, like whining thugs, at the mercy of their victims; they did not create any victims. They came as responsible individuals able to project the reality of two or three days ahead and to provide for their own needs..."

"...There were people of every age, creed, color, educational level and economic status. They lived and slept in tents or in their cars, some of them for several days, in great discomfort and unbearable heat; they did it gamely, cheerfully, gaily..."

"...they projected a general feeling of confident goodwill, the bond of a common enthusiasm; they created a public spectacle of responsible privacy — and they departed as they had come, without benefit of press agents."

"The most profound breach in this country is not between the rich and the poor, but between the people and the intellectuals. In their view of life, the American people are predominantly Apollonian; the 'mainstream' intellectuals are Dionysian."

"The people are reality/commonsense/technology-oriented ('materialistic' and 'middle-class'); the intellectuals are emotion-oriented and seek, in panic, an escape from a reality they are unable to deal with, from a technological civilization that ignores their feelings."

"And this is the whole shabby secret: to some men, the sight of an achievement is a reproach, a reminder that their own lives are irrational and that there is no loophole, no escape from reason and reality. Their resentment is the cornered Dionysian element baring its teeth."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonia…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Pe…
courses.aynrand.org/works/apollo-a…