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Tag Archives: Dionysus
Do Democracy, Mass Education, and Economic Prosperity Weaken God Belief?
Michael Shermer thinks so, and he has some data that supports him. Writing at Scientific American, here he is on democracy and mass education: One factor [in the decline of God belief internationally] is the dramatic spread of democracy around … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, belief, Blake, Dionysus, God, Michael Shermer, Nietzsche, tigers
1 Comment
Dionysus Asks, “When’s the Last Time You Really Danced?”
Daft Punk meets Soul Train. The French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter (who make up Daft Punk) were both born in the 1970s, so this seems an apt remix for one of their songs. And the dancers, in terms of age, are pushing 60 now. … Continue reading
Entropy, the Novel, and Nietzsche
At The New Yorker, Joan Acocella asks why novels, even great ones, so frequently have endings that sag. One of her examples is David Copperfield: The first half of “David Copperfield” leaves you gasping. You laugh, you cry, you think you’re … Continue reading
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Tagged Apollo, art, Dionysus, entropy, literature, maenads, Nietzsche
2 Comments
Would Nietzsche Have Liked the New Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas?
Look at this quote from Friedrich Nietzsche’s essay, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense” (1873). It is Nietzsche’s description of the Dionysian forces that lurk beneath our artistic and “illusory consciousness” (our Apollonian dreams of coherence and control; the … Continue reading
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Tagged Apollo, Charles Darwin, Dionysus, evolution, nature, Nietzsche, Perot Museum, science
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Beauty That Is Also Repellent
Israeli artist Ori Gersht (b. 1967) says that one of the things he tends to aim for in his art is the foregrounding of beauty against a background of violence. In the video piece below, he sets up a traditional still … Continue reading
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Tagged Apollo, art, beauty, Dionysus, Kant, literature, philosophy, the sublime, violence
3 Comments
Correlation-Causation Fallacy Watch: Packers Lost Sunday Because Casey’s Stupid Sister, Megan, Told Her to Put Sparkles on Her Nails
_____ What strikes me about this clip (apart from its humor) is Casey’s fundamentally religious intuition: the reason the Green Bay Packers lost to the New York Giants on Sunday is because the ritual guaranteeing success was not followed perfectly—with … Continue reading
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Tagged apologetics, atheism, critical thinking, Dionysus, drunkeness, football, God, life, logic, New York Giants, packers, reason
2 Comments
Via Satellite, Tropical Storms Remind Me of Einstein’s Hair
Just an observation. . And: . Source for images: Wikipedia Commons via NASA and the World-Telegram.
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Tagged albert einstein, bad hair day, bad hair days, chaos, chaos or cosmos, Dionysus, einstein, hair, hurricanes, NASA, satellites, tropical storms
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Not a Flash Mob, but a Flash Rob
Demonstrating the double-edged sword that technology so frequently represents, and the human propensity to make use of it for both good and evil, this new form of theft—shown in the below video—is, apparently, coordinated using cell phones.
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Tagged cell phones, crime, Dionysus, evil, flash mob, flash rob, robbery, social psychology, technology, theft
12 Comments
Who is Dagny Taggart? Atlas Shrugged Part 1, the Movie, is Coming to Theatres April 15th
Atlas Shrugged Part 1, the movie (which depicts the first third of Ayn Rand’s famous novel of ideas) comes into general release on April 15th, and I must say that the following YouTube teaser clip posted by the film’s producers is … Continue reading
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Tagged Apollo, atlas shrugged, Ayn Rand, capitalism, dagny taggart, Dionysus, film, libertarianism, Nietzsche, philosophy, Prometheus, selfishness
9 Comments
Groovy Park Instrument Players Led by a Singing and Dancing Kybele
Some male devotees accompany their chain-wielding goddess: Below are some fit lines from Euripides’ Bakkhai (from scene 1) describing Korybantes—ecstatic drumming and pipe-playing young men devoted to the Phrygian mother-goddess Kybele: Triple-crested Korybantes Devised for me The circle of stretched hide! In … Continue reading
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Tagged Bakkhai, chains, dance, dionysos, Dionysus, hippies, kybele, life, mental health break, music, parks, poetry
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What Is The Universe? And What Should We Be Doing In It?
My guess is that the universe may be the mind of God calculating—then presenting the sums, before the witness of consciousness, in four dimensions (height, width, depth, and time). The universe, as it were, is the ones and zeroes made flesh; God’s search … Continue reading
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Tagged Dionysus, gandhi, love, Martin Luther King, math, physics, the mind of god, the universe, Tolstoy, wine
4 Comments
Go with the flow? Six plausible options for dealing with change
What is the proper response to this burning, bleeding, milk secreting, honey babbling world? It seems to me that the range of responses are pretty limited, and can be boiled down to six plausible options: acceptance and celebration (go with the flow) … Continue reading
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Tagged Apollo, Bakkhai, dionysos, Dionysus, Euripides, existence, flow, God, life, meaning, philosophy, psychology
5 Comments
In Your Trance You’re Not Unfortunate: Atheism vs. Theism in Euripides’s Bakkhai
In scene 3 of Euripides’s ancient tragedy, Bakkhai, is a brief passage that overbrims with implications for the atheist vs. theist divide. Addressed to the anti-theist Pentheus, king of Thebes, a messenger calls on him to reconsider his hostility toward the divine and … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, atheist, delusion, Dionysus, Euripides, God, Greek tragedy, illusion, Jesus, literature, Richard Dawkins, tragedy
3 Comments
Thinking about the Fifth Dimension (the Imagination and the Musical Group)
In a world where God is dead (or at least silent), what dimension should you live in? In other words, should you live in “reality” (whatever that really is) or might you skip the reality quest and spend your life mostly in the realm of imagination? Here’s … Continue reading
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Tagged atheism, balloons, Dionysus, imagination, Jesus, Nietzsche, Paul, peter pan, romanticism, St. Paul, the fifth dimension, the imagination
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Apollonian Nefertiti Kitty Cats and Dionysian Band Boys
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Tagged 1960s, Apollo, apologies, art, Camille Paglia, Dionysus, Egypt, life, music, Nefertiti, smoldering
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21st Century Bohemian Hippie Joy
The liberated body and free-flowing consciousness. The hope of the world: When I watch this I think of John Keats’s famous lines from “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all … Continue reading
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Tagged bohemian, Dionysus, exercise, hippies, hope, John Keats, joy, life, love, music, self help
2 Comments
Are You a Bohemian?
This nineteenth century person was. She let herself be painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and he named the painting Lise the Bohemian (1868): This appears to be a young woman, amidst a languid summer, in the process of falling in on herself, almost … Continue reading
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Tagged 1960s, 19th century, art, beauty, bohemian, Dionysus, Freud, hippie, Moses, ouroboros, painting, Renoir
2 Comments
