Thomas Vayos, Period 6, 10/23/2023

Literacy and Learning

The singular fact that Jesus, in many ways, mirrors Dionysus, has been on my mind for a while. Culture and society change, often day-by-day. New York City sinks, inch by inch. Science progresses exponentially.

And over the millenia span between Dionysus and Jesus, the reflection of humanity as a god never changed.

If there was another god created in the likeness of man today, would it be the same as Jesus, and therefore the same as Dionysus? What if that god was created 1000 years into the future? Dualistically, it is sickening to think that we could not have spiritually progressed at all for 1000 years, and it is comforting to think that we maintained mercy and kindness are one of our attributes which should be lauded timelessly. (Although I can’t find any sources on it now, it reminds me of an instance where a caveman – our most distant ancestors – had broken or deformed teeth, and yet was cared for.)

I should also question that, if Jesus and Dionysus were represented in the same way, why would the former go on to be the figurehead of a global religion and the other a footnote among a much crueler pantheon? And if we could always make kind and merciful Gods, then why did we always subject ourselves to the brutal rituals and the savage ceremonies?

I feel that I have always looked for complex or transcendent allegories in stories and media. I’ve always had an interest in the occult or eldritch, and now that seemed to be a single minded focus which blinded me to other interpretations. One phrase stood out to me, in particular, which went along the lines of “They (the Gods) are you.” It’s equally important to enjoy the strange and elusive as it is to understand how all of it stems from a mind much like your own, and there within contains emotion and feeling much like your own.

With that in mind, I do want to reread The Man Named Poe, not as a mystifying drama, but as the story of a man.

It increasingly feels as if we have made all haste to abandon cultural and spiritual growth. People are more connected than they ever have been in the past, yet feel increasingly alone. We have bolstered our institutions, so that they stand high above the populations they’re meant to represent.

New York is sinking. The White House is sinking. It is only coincidental that they were both built on swamps, but nonetheless it parodies the societal rot we seem ignorant to. The world gets exponentially more complex, but people stay the same.

If our collective view on a humanistic deity had not changed then – 1000 years in the past – then what else still remains unchanged today? There are many things which are incomprehensibly cruel, that could only ever be understood through a primitive state of mind, having no place in society. It seems impossible to conceive of the celebration of the kidnapping of US civilians by a terrorist organization, or the funding provided by the US being used to bomb civilian centers. It is hard to imagine the thought process behind trafficking rings which are partaken in by all parts of society, in all parts of the world.

It doesn’t make it any easier to understand, but there is the slightest chance that we could glimpse the solution to all these problems, and the path to a more fair, more kind future, if we began to understand that all the horrors of the world stem from a human mind, if not a human mind terrorized by misfortune and circumstance.