In 1969 America experienced the thrall of two Greek gods at play on the stage of our national psyche. One at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and one in upstate New York. The first event happened on July 19, when a rocket named after the Roman god Saturn blasted from a launching pad at Cape Canaveral firing three astronauts toward the moon. The moon landing program
On July NASA, a governmental organization rooted in rationality, logic, mathematics, science, and technology worked to deliver on President John F. Kennedy’s dream of landing an American on the moon. On July 21, 1969 Neil Armstrong left a boot print in moon dust and spoke his famous words: “One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” The moon program was named after the Greek god of rationality, Apollo. The Saturn 5 rocket, name after the Roman god Saturn, from where we get Saturday, Saturnalia, and saturnine meaning melancholy.
Three weeks later in Bethel, New York at a music festival known as Woodstock, another Greek god took the stage: Dionysus the god of wild revelry. Young men and women danced in the mud and the rain as the music released from bound American bones the excesses of the irrational.
In his book The Birth of Tragedy the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche elucidates these polar opposites alive in the human psyche and the cultures created from their colliding forces. Is it a coincidence that the gifts of these gods stepped onto the national stage within three weeks of each other. All of us over sixty remember where we were fifty years ago when we witnessed the moon landing and when we learned of the Woodstock Festival on Yasgur’s farm. It was a time of attractive opposites, two energy sources deeply rooted in our human essence, one driving us toward calculation and scientific achievement, one driving us toward feeling and expressing the instinctual power of being alive.
Which one would we like to live without? Neither, of course. Neglect one and we reap disaster.
In Euripides’ play The Bacchae we witness the disastrous results of ignoring the god Dionysus. In the play Dionysus enters the city of Thebes and visits the king Pentheus. The god tells the ruler (notice the word ‘rule’ in ‘ruler’) he does not want to cause trouble for the king. He just requires a little respect. The king is disrespectful of the newly arrived god, so different from the repressive values that rule the city. Yet the king is fascinated by the excitement the god offers. The king wants to observe the wild revelry but not participate. This turns out to be a fatal decision for Pentheus.
Individuals and societies integrate and release both Apollonian and Dionysian energies