cell913blog.com #4

While in conversation with a practising political operative, I heard these words, “If you want to engage this population in a social change, it has to have a ‘task’ associated with the change.” The same observer also advised a professional group of ‘change-agents’ attempting to move government policy, law and practice, “You will have to frame your proposal on the basis of an already-established policy, law and practice. Your proposed change is more likely of achievement if the government can ‘see’ it in a pattern they have already established.” In another conversation with an executive of a arts and culture non-profit, in a discussion of a somewhat ‘left-field’ idea and project, I was asked, “Have you been here before, to see and to sample what we do?”

My answer, somewhat sadly was, ‘No.’  And then the conversation meandered through data and perceptions of the demographics of the local area. The bottom line of that portion of the conversation was that multiple generations in the area had participated in an industrial economy and were not interested, nor had time for ‘ideas’ or for ‘learning’ or for ‘newcomers’ with ideas for learning. Ideas and new learning would be feasible, and therefore worthy of the effort, if directed to the youth, was the essence of the observation.

Demographics, patterns, tasks, frames of consciousness, embedded in a culture in which medical and legal, scientific and professional vernaculars not only rely on ‘tasks’ and ‘categories’ and ‘classifications’ and ‘conditions’ have combined to generate a cultural perspective of “task” and “classification” or ‘condition’ or diagnosis.

We are the aged or aging; we are ‘rich’ or ‘poor’; we are ‘educated’ or uneducated’; we are ‘connected’ or ‘loners’; we are ‘from here’ or ‘from away’; (and the nature of our arrival conditions our acceptance, reception, tolerance and integration); we are engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, clergy, nurses, social workers, politicians, economists, scientists, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, heavy-equipment operators, arborists. And with each ‘designation’ comes a vocabulary, a tradition of practice, rules of the profession, a social ‘fit’ or position, a current and projected income or stipend, a fully developed intrinsic and applied ‘mask’ of identity. As patients of the medical profession, we are as soon and as definitively as feasible, labelled as a “case” of X, or Y….whatever and however the nomenclature and our symptoms align. And the treatment is then designed to address the symptom(s), to reduce the pain, to prevent recurrence of the pain, or to manage the pain.

At the core of this model is The Enlightenment, and the triumph of reason, scepticism and the potential of analysis and understanding that can and will only come from reason. “Cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am… Descartes) to be later followed by sentio ergo sum (I feel therefore I am) or facio ergo sum (I do therefore I am) or for the existentialists, “sum ergo…cogito, sentio, facio….and apparently missing in the line of evolution is what we might conjure as, ‘conjecto ergo sum’ (I imagine therefore I am)

We swim, breathe, munch on, converse about, perceive and value those aspects of our existence that we can ‘categorize’ and ‘manage’ and ‘control’ as if we are ‘in charge’….and then we fall off our cliff or pedestal when those ‘frames’ of both our reference and perception, and the meanings and purposes of those ‘tasks’ or ‘conditions’ fail to integrate or ‘compute’ with what we might consider our hard wiring, or even the soft wiring of our education, our theology, our ideology, our ethnicity, or our family tradition. Just to sustain and uphold our ‘stable’ connection to the universe, based on our previous rational thought, we defer to the ‘experts’ whose writing, academic credentials, economic prowess, political power and stature, religious and/or theological and/or ecclesial stature whose opinions, research, theorizings, speculations and even imaginings serve as touchstones or guideposts to ‘frame’ our perceptions and attitudes of the world, our place in it, and the ‘condition’ or ‘classification’ of ‘the other’.

It is not only true, but also tragic, that, as Emile Zola reminds us, ‘We are like books. Most people only see our cover, the minority read only the introduction, many people believe the critics. Few will know our content.” Although none of us would want to live in a world in which our ‘inside story’ were open and available, like a book on a library shelf, inviting all readers, nevertheless, there is a kind of isolation, alienation, and separation from others, and even from ourselves, in a world in which only the ‘book covers’ have a place. Think of a library housing only the hard and soft covers of thousands of books, without the pages of the content of the writers’ imagination, research, thought, creativity and passion.

And yet, like ghosts we walk into and out of our ‘rooms’ and ‘chores’ and encounters and even our walks in the forest or along the river bank, replaying those audio and video ‘tapes’ of both our experiences and our initial interpretations and meanings of those experiences as if they constitute ‘our biography, our life, and our place in that life. Occasionally, we will encounter an experience, perhaps a chat in a coffee line or a bank line, or a supermarket line, that hits a note of insight, or harmony or surprise and wakens us from our comfort zone. Occasionally, too, we might catch a glimpse of a sky painted with clouds and back lighting that evokes a film we have seen or even a feeling that seems to capture the mood and the feeling of the sky portrait….and we ‘feel’ part of something different from our daily chores, circles and frames. And that experience, for some might even be a little ‘strange,’ or even disorienting, or perhaps simply a ‘wow’.

Psychologists and psychiatrists tell us, based on their adherence to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) that we are not our ‘diagnosis’ even though their professional modus operandi strictly adheres to its dictates in their perception, allegiance and treatment modalities. And, the archetypal model, deeply embedded in the Western culture, of ‘pain/suffering/depression/anxiety/grief/and many psychic conditions, that while we manage the desperation, we rarely delve into its roots from the perspective of models and mythic figures from the history of our species. Superficially, Apollo and the Apollonian, in literature, relating to the god Apollo often means ‘harmonious, measured, ordered, or balanced in character comparison to Dionysian, from Dionysus. In the nature of human beings, Apollonian and Dionysian theory represents two fundamental forces in our nature. Apollo represents clarity and intellectual progress, while Dionysus represents disorder and emotion. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict, used the terms to describe cultures that value restrain ad modesty (Apollonian) and ostentatiousness and excess (Dionysian). Musicologists describe musical compositions as veering between Apollonian and Dionysian tendencies. The Renaissance polyphony of Palestrina is Apollonian-0serene, balanced, ordered—while the early Baroque vocal music of9 Monteverdi is Dionysian-exuberant, expressive, dramatic. Another pair of concepts closely parallel to Apollonian and Dionysian are Classical and Romantic, and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)  historically forms the nexus between the two. Beethoven apprenticed in the world of Haydn and Mozart, perfecters of what has come to be known as Viennese Classicism. Beethoven inherited their solid forms and logical procedures of thematic development. However, he came increasingly to embody early Romantic attitudes, both personally and aesthetically. (As Donald J. Grout wisely reminds us: ‘He himself is neither Classic nor Romantic; he is Beethoven.’) Such works as the Third and Fifth Symphonies push through the boundaries of t18th century decorum, both in terms of intensity or emotional statement and of sheer length. We thrill to the ‘daemonic energy’ (Grout’s words again) of Beethoven’s mature works, its volcanic and exuberant qualities, its bumptious humor and demented fury. (fromtheimaginativeconservative.org)

The ‘both/and’ of Beethoven’s ‘nexus’ between Apollonian and Dionysian, however, seems to have been largely eviscerated from both our lexicon and our perceptions, attitudes, and tight-assed culture and its expectations. There is no Fifth Symphony without both Apollo and Dionysus. And there can be no Mandela without both. And there can be no individual human being without both. And there is no individual human being without both. And we sacrifice more than the demonic, the demented, the abnormal and the unacceptable by denying Dionysus, culturally and psychically.

As the Greek god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetations, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy and theatre, with the capacity to transform himself in to a bull or lion, with the power to drive mortals insane, Dionysus has been effectively and essentially left to the poets, the thespians, the playwrights, and the composers and the artists. Of course, for the purpose of making money, and thereby for the purpose of designing ‘creative’ advertising, and even the cliches of political character assassination, we defer to the Dionysian as a means to our ‘end’. Commercializing Dionysus has sadly, demonized and yet capitalized on his capacity to generate great revenues and produce wealthy business tycoons.

In a moralizing, literalizing and ‘book-cover’ culture, we fall easily into our own seductive moralizing, legalizing, medcicalizing and some kind of faux ‘comfort zone’ of both compatibility and compliance. And we fail to acknowledge the full nature of our reality…not only cultural and societal reality, but also our psychic depth and reality.

In order to re-capture the fullness of our own ‘interior book’ as well as the fullness of the ‘cultural soul’ (anima mundi, from Hillman), we can begin to look in the mirror of our person, not only from the perspective of the pain and anguish we have endured and perhaps overcome, but also from the perspective of the ‘madness’ that is neither our immorality nor our enemy. There is just as much risk in an over-fed Apollonian, as there is in an over-fed Dionysian. And there is even more risk in a culture reliant and dependent on Apollonian thinking, restraint, mind-set, expectation-set, and tolerance-limit. And the limitations of such an extremely leaning cultural vessel, verging on capsizing, can be seen in multiple political, psychic, economic, military, environmental and relational stages and theatres.

In and through our complicit, if somewhat unconscious, obeisance to the Apollonian, and the requisite ignoring of the Dionysian, we are in danger, as Hillman reminds us of ‘mass suicide’….all the while wondering why this (and the many this’s) is happening.

Peering through the fog of compliance, complicity, unconscious adherence to the literal, the empirical, the ‘book-cover’ of our many shared ‘issues’ we are trying to see differently, and to ‘read’ the pages and the tea-leaves and the symphonies that we have heretofore missed, or failed to recognize, both within and without.

Our headlines, our project analyses, our diagnostics and our treatment modalities, in each and every one of our endeavours need the lens and the courage and the imagination of both Apollo and Dionysus…And the balance, really a new attempt to ‘see’ and to ‘hear’ and to ‘read’ both ourselves and each other, and the world itself…is available to each of us, irrespective of our faith, our ethnicity, our ideology, our philosophy and our needs.

In fact, the inheritance of the mythical world is awaiting our dedicated anthropological, psychological, historical and poetic ‘dig’!