Last Rant for a while

Tonight i was reading the bio of Nietzsche again. Mencken was talking about how N. and Schopenhauer looked to the Greeks for an explanation of why they behaved as they did. The lived in a sunny and pleasant land and had a mile climate, why all the interest in Tragedies? The answer that Nietzsche arrived at was the initial domination of followers of Apollo and subsequent followers of baccus Dionysus. Apollo being the staid lawgiving hitory reporting artist and musician, Baccus Dionysus was the active baudy brawler who's followers reveled, to the brink of barbarism. Apollo's followers became the police and the priests and statesmen. Dionysus follower's were the warriors, the artists who captured the movements of the day, and poets who eschewed epic poetry for love thomes. Both gods enjoyed favor at different times, but (as Schopenhauer points out with his declaration that the "will to live" is the ultimate driving force behind mans activities and that those forces created experience and experience created memories...) the Greeks came to the crossroads of knowledge that they needed to balance the two in order to have civilization, and move forward. The Apollonians creating social stability and the Dionysians couriously questioning the status quo and experimenting with new ideas.
External infiltration eventually brought them down. But while they thrived they insisted on sad entertainment in the theatre. Why? Because it reflected life as they understood it. One man (everyman is his own hero) fighting a war against powers that are superior and generally losing. Life for the Greeks was that way.
As an aside, that cartoon of a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other was/is interpreted by Christianity as the struggle for your continued walk in acceptability to god. They may say what they want to, however this idea is rooted in the merger of the church with the state. The gospels reiterate it, but only the later ones. Why? Because after the migrations of the apostle Paul, the greek philosiphy began to be applied to Christian dogma to appeal to the greek thought. That confilct was ages old and simplet to translate from Greek religion to Christianity....
Bowe