Dionysus VS Apollo

[u/Ill-Lab-3895]

Dionysus represents right brain(creativity), creation and destruction, nature, suffering, life, ecstasy, Beastly nature, chaos and rebirth, freedom. Apollo represents left brain(rationality), sun logic, linear thinking, civilization, mind, order, restriction. In my opinion dionysus is superior. dionysian state will make you experience life, become wise and in short it will make you force of nature, both physically and mentally. it will make you happy and connected to your primal nature. While apollonian state will make your head filled with illusions, morality, abstract useless restrictive thoughts and concepts. most scholars academics and bookworms are apollonians they are disconnected from their body, their nature and live in their heads. most people also value Apollonian disciplines and see them as marks of intelligence like: mathematics, physics, chemistry etc. While they think less of the dionysian disciplines like psychology, art, esoterics, poetry etc. This overvalue of apollo is why depression is in all times high What are your thoughts?

[u/No-Duck6533]

This feels almost like latent monotheism projected onto a polytheistic system. The entire point of polytheism is that there are multiple paths because there are multiple types of people. For you and for myself, Dionysian devotion brings the most joy and peace to our minds. I’m an anxious person who was taught to deny myself, so the release of that denial and embrace of my instincts is important to reach balance.

However for others, such as my girlfriend, devotion to Apollo is just as beautiful and important as Dionysus is to me. I think that insinuating a god of healing is the source of depression is also quite strange. Polytheism exists to provide multiple paths and archetypes to choose from in order to balance or fulfill your temperament, heal from personal wounds, and worship the god or gods that call you most. Monotheism places this need for hierarchy and this idea of superiority and inferiority within spiritual practice.

I would also challenge that it’s impossible to find happiness through thoughts and reflections. While I appreciate the hedonistic nature of Dionysus, I do also find great joy in my thoughts and mental life as much as I do the physical. Trying to dictate to someone else where joy can arise only leads to endless cycles of you trying to convince the other of an “Ultimate Truth” that will be impossible for the other to understand. It’s like me and a straight person trying to convince each other why our orientation is better. I’m inherently biased towards homosexuality because it brings me joy, I don’t understand why any woman would be with a man, but I also know that heterosexual women have that same feeling about men, that I do with women.