[MD] The Birth of Tragedy/CH2 and the MOQ

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Ron]
Coincidentially, I have been reading Joe Campbells "Hero with a thousand faces"
concerning the hero's journey which plays right in with what you are talking
about.

[Arlo]
I think Campbell's work rates among some of the most important out there.
"Hero" would be on every reading list for schools that I'd put together. 

I think you can also map out Nietzsche's Apollonian/Dionysian division onto
Campbell's consideration of Exoteric/Esoteric religion. Exoteric religion, the
impetus towards form, is concerned with the Absolute Truth is controlled,
specified structural form, where Esoteric religion, the impetus towards
dissolution, is concerned with awareness beyond the world of form. 

Make no mistake, where Nietzsche points out the effects of Apollonian dominated
cultures, there is a strong emphasis on fundamentalism, which is the dominant
theological perspective these days in nearly every western and mideastern
society. It correlates (Apollonian) with the Victorianism of LILA, and as
Pirsig comments modern society is definitely slipping backwards towards
Victorianism.

Moreover, I think Campbell is a great co-investigator with Nietzsche (and
Pirsig, and DMB's fantastic Four Horsemen analogy). Just like Nietzsche,
Campbell would say the myth, to be creative/art, must include enough Apollonian
form to be understandable by the people it reaches. It has to master the form
of the culture to such a degree that the Dionsyian impulse it brings, the
finger pointing beyond, is understood and recognizable out of the corner of
one's eyes.

"Whether we listen with aloof amusement to the dreamlike mumbo jumbo of some
red-eyed witch doctor of the Congo, or read with cultivated rapture thin
translations from the sonnets of the mystic Lao-tse; now and again crack the
hard nutshell of an argument of Aquinas, or catch suddenly the shining meaning
of a bizarre Eskimo fairy tale, it will be always the one, shape-shifting yet
marvelously constant story that we find, together with a challengingly
persistent suggestion of more remaining to be experienced than will ever be
known or told." (Campbell)