In moments when a man is surrounded by his people, his brothers, he is overwhelmed with the feeling of frenzy. The frenzy is a state of mind. It is chaotic, but it is not chaos. In that moment, a man is ready to act, he is militant, and he is flooded with vigour. He is together with those who are willing to die with him to bring the glory of all they can live for, for the Overman.
The frenzy, however, is a shattered artefact of yore that is gone today and has been for a long time. Instead what exists is a poisonous degradation of the frenzy’s energy, it is split into pieces each used as a poison against a man’s own ideals and own vision and expression. The trifecta of poisons I will discuss today are as follows: Sports, music, and nightlife. Each their own expression of an aspect that makes up the frenzy yet remains sullied.
Their jealousy leadeth them also into thinkers’ paths; and this is the sign of their jealousy — they always go too far: so that their fatigue hath at last to go to sleep on the snow.
In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.
But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!
They are people of bad race and lineage; out of their coun tenances peer the hangman and the sleuth-hound.
Distrust all those who talk much of their justice! Verily, in their souls not only honey is lacking.
And when they call themselves "the good and just," forget not, that for them to be Pharisees, nothing is lacking but —power!
- Thus Spake Zarathustra, 29. The Tarantulas
Sports are one of the most obvious, and we have seen them tear civilisations apart in the past. Roman Emperors had to play the sides of sports teams or else face the wrath of fanatics whose team has been bested. Sports take from the frenzy a man’s pride and allegiance, and point it towards strangers. His fanaticism, his passion for his people, both pointed towards a group of athletes who often have nothing to do with him. Who do not fight with him, who do not sit with him, and who do not often look like him. Sports are a competition where men pick sides with no stakes, and create stakes that would never otherwise exist for allegiances that would never otherwise exist. This leaves the frenzy unfulfilled as he is excited but has no true stake in any of the affairs which he finds himself to invested in.
It is impossible for the Dionysian artist not to understand any suggestion; no outward sign of emotion escapes him, he possesses the instinct of comprehension and of divination in the highest degree, just as he is capable of the most perfect art of communication. He enters into every skin, into every passion: he is continually changing himself. Music as we understand it to-day is likewise a general excitation and discharge of the emotions; but, notwithstanding this, it is only the remnant of a much richer world of emotional expression, a mere residuum of Dionysian histrionism. For music to be made possible as a special art, quite a number of senses, and particularly the muscular sense, had to be paralysed: and thus man no longer imitates and represents physically everything he feels, as soon as he feels it. Nevertheless that is the normal Dionysian state, and in any case its primitive state. Music is the slowly attained specialisation of this state at the cost of kindred capacities.
- Twilight of the Idols, Skirmishes in a War With the Age, 10
What we see as music now is a more degenerate form of that which came before us. It is less sophisticated and attacks directly an emotion, something engineered as a weapon to influence the sensations more than it is to inspire. From the frenzy, it takes inspiration and creativity, the bodily attunement of sense and mind. Where music still allows inspiration and creativity, and the bodily expression of these feelings, the attunement of bodily sensations, it is targeted towards idolatry. These sensations are focused upon a point decided by someone else somewhere else, for you to feel. The fetishisation of an emotion, of a feeling, of a sensation, and of a person. Performance today being a worship of idols, music the chant of the worship, and a ritual dance invoked into the body by participation.
Of course music does not end in itself. Music inspires the mind and the body, and the youth are the most inspired of all people. Youth desire community, they desire vigour and expression. The frenzy offers these, but nightlife only allows them to be released in a controlled manner. The worship of status in nightlife, the false sense of community, the vainness is intentional. If the youth were allowed frenzy they would be truly free to pursue what they desire, and not to be cowed into obedience for fictitious senses of status and belonging. The vigour is abused as well, and used to promote harlotry in nightlife, where all are a slave in every sense but name, and some go to such extents as to become overtly public slaves. The abuse of drugs falls into nightlife as a natural complement, as intoxication enhances the senses that feed one’s sense of reward, relief, accomplishment, and belonging — making the delusion feel all the more real.
Frenzy is not present today. It is destroyed and given in a controlled manner where it cannot be used in its most natural expression. Where it does find a real place, in fraternity, in men who fight and belong together, it is often controlled, subdued, and attacked. There is no monolith that men are beholden to. Divine structures that call them to greatness. Yet that only makes room for them.
Those who are incapable of experiencing the frenzy, who fear it. They are the ones who peddle the debauched form of the frenzy. They cannot experience it, and if they can they fear it. They are thus entranced by it and their debased forms of it become overpowering to them, where it remains only an unfulfilling and sapping experience to the enjoyer of the frenzy.
It is the duty of men to welcome the frenzy, it is their desire to express fully through the Dionysian spirit their vigour and power. For man to be surrounded by his kin, his community, his tribe, his nation, his people, his brothers. This is the power to bring on the frenzy. Those who wish to destroy the frenzy are those who fear it, and in fearing it they condemn themselves to be destroyed by it. For as Zarathustra said,
With these preachers of equality will I not be mixed up and confounded. For thus speaketh justice unto me: "Men are not equal.”
And neither shall they become so! What would be my love to the Overman, if I spake otherwise?
- Thus Spake Zarathustra, 29. The Tarantulas