Nietzsche, "The Birth of Tragedy"
What were you thinking of, overweening Euripides, when you hoped to press myth, then in its last agony, into your service? It died under your violent hands; but you could easily put in its place an imitation that, like Heracles' monkey, would trick itself out in the master's robes. And even as myth, music too died under your hands; though you plundered greedily all the gardens of music, you could achieve no more than a counterfeit. And because you had deserted Dionysus, you were in turn deserted by Apollo. Though you hunted all the passions up from their couch and conjured them into your circle, though you pointed and burnished a sophistic dialectic for the speeches of your heroes, they have only counterfeit passions and speak counterfeit speeches.
Is the internet all about perpetuating "counterfeit" emotions, much like television and MSM media, so as to distract us from the possibility of contemplating lives "better" spent, not simply as the "consumers" of Hollywood produced faux Euripidean emotionality?
Great question.
ReplyDeleteBut what makes the emotions counterfeit?
Is it that there is usually no accountablity?
That there is no mundacity to balance out the intensity (positive or negative), which creates an "artificial" representation of the other person, or the experience itself?
I do agree that it is a tool to avoid engaging in face to face life, or more accurately, facing oneself.
It's tricky, though...when you can learn so much about yourself by engaging in the very activity that takes you away.
But what makes the emotions counterfeit
ReplyDeleteStories, scripts, movies, blogs, on-line games about fictional events.
Is it that there is usually no accountablity?
Yep
It's tricky, though...when you can learn so much about yourself by engaging in the very activity that takes you away.
But if there are no consequences, are you really learning anything, for if there were, wouldn't you likely react/behave differently?
Oh, but there ARE consequences.
ReplyDeleteLost opportunity, a consequence as well.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of addiction and learning the wrong lessons, I'd agree. It's what keeps the whirlwind spinning.
ReplyDeleteIt depends on how you define 'addiction'.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading "War of The Gods of Addiction" and it's pretty good.
I'd agree that obsession is a consequence.
And then you ask the question: Am I here by choice or compulsion? And that hurts.
We're a lot more "determined" than most people imagine. Free will, is IMO, a "myth". There are very few people in the world with anything approximating a "free" will.
ReplyDelete