eleusinian NDA

The Apollonian and Dionysian, two great western principles, govern sexual personae in life and art. My theory is this: Dionysus is identification, Apollo objectification. Dionysus is the empathic, the sympathetic, emotion transporting us into other people, other places, other times. Apollo is the hard, cold separation of western personality and categorical thought. Dionysus is energy, ecstasy, hysteria, promiscuity, emotionalism — heedless indiscriminateness of idea or practice. Apollo is obsessiveness, voyeurism, idolatry, fascism — frigidity and aggression of the eye, petrification of objects. … The quarrel between Apollo and Dionysus is the quarrel between the higher cortex and the older limbic and reptilian brains.

Perhaps it really doesn't matter whether we generate a sense of meaning from within ourselves and project it onto a non-sentient universe, or perceive the objective reality of a meaningful, intentioned cosmos. Either way, our lives are changed and enriched.