It's a Greek Thing: Cosby, Dionysus, and the Jews.

If there’s one thing that we know about the Devil, it is that he is a deeply serious man. Ancient depictions of him disagree, though we have long since enthroned those depictions as standards to be pursued. There was a time when Casanova and Don Juan were synonymous with Satan. It is not so now.

The earlier Christian depictions of the Devil were in fact most probably based upon Dionysus, the Greek demigod, familiarly half-man and half-goat, who ruled over sex, drugs, and orgies. Long before rock-n-roll, the ancient Greeks held orgies in the service of their demigod, a practice which Romans adopted in service to their own version of Dionysus: Bacchus. Intellectuals for the past two hundred years have tried to break us out of our priggishness by analogy to the ancient Greeks. Aldous Huxley spoke of the Bacchic orgies with great admiration, despite his satirical predictions about the fashion in which they would return in Brave New World. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote his first book on the Dionysiac virtues, hoping to stir the German people towards a reaffirmation of their common identity through the ancient and sacred art of drug-taking and copulating. Nietzsche would have been sorely disappointed; instead of heeding his wisdom, (though they certainly misappropriated half of it, rendering his entire project futile by preserving the same one-sidedness against which the scholar had protested) the German people decided to take out their repressed aggression, their sentimentalism, and their sexual frustration, to say nothing of their need for fantasy, (with which drugs would have helped) on the Jews, the homosexuals, the Communists, the infirm, and pretty much anyone else who would stand in their way for the next few decades. Nietzsche was right, of course; the Germans needed some sort of irrational release by which to get back in touch with their animal nature and by so doing to restore community. Yet the Germans were far too proud and hopelessly repressed to simply take drugs and screw. So they murdered an estimated six million people instead. We learned an important lesson from this, and that is that the God of Orgies only BECOMES the Devil when he is repressed, and in the same manner that the Christians adopted the practices of the same pagans whom they condemned, Dionysus, leader of the druggies, seducer of women, becomes the scapegoat.

This entire analysis would be irrelevant and archaic today, were it not that people still exhibit the same Dionysian inclinations. Pop musicians, comedians, and filmmakers have ensured for generations that this would be a rite of passage: recognizing the fact, if not participating in it, that adults not only have sex but take drugs together. Robin Williams, Doug Stanhope, and Joe Rogan are only three examples of men who spoke openly about this lifestyle to riotous applause and ongoing praise. The sheer existence of the entertainment industry is a constant reminder that the half-goat is alive in our hearts and minds. So why is it that we still scapegoat his avatars?

I have written about how peculiar the Bill Cosby conviction was in terms of how unoriginal his “damning deposition” was. The aging comedian made no attempt to conceal his lifestyle. Did he purchase illegal narcotics? Yes; they were the popular thing at the time. Did he intend to use them on women that he intended to sleep with? Of course. To be clear: yes, he intended to give them to people that he liked, as any generous gentleman would do. And yes, he probably intended to give them something else as well.

The Greeks would have deified him for it.

And the Ancient Greeks would not have been alone today!! Whether it’s Tove Lo or Snoop Dogg, artists constantly get away with promoting a life of ecstasy that blurs the boundaries between consent and dissent, as Bill Cosby had depicted. Why do we pretend that America’s Dad had invented it?? It’s a Greek thing!! Whether you like it or not.

The truth lies in that Nietzsche was right; we need it, and if we cannot get it one way, we’ll get off on it another. Deprived of compassion, people get high by joining special interest groups, finding solidarity in instances of mob rule that are so absurd that no TRULY rational, dour intellectual would have dreamt it up.

What’s worse is this: supposing you devote yourself to the SOBER life, seeking relationships by the prescribed avenues of legal consent and discourse. How quickly you will be proven a fool for it!! Time and time again the very fact of your frumpy nature will inspire contempt in people who imagine themselves, as Cosby did, to be sexual lions. If you want to know why TRULY so many women had it in for him, it’s this: the man was old, and we forget there was a time when someone would have WANTED to sleep with him. Was this not the sentiment that Seth MacFarlane adopted towards Weinstein? Is this not the sum of all our finger-pointing? Let’s face it: were YOU without sin in this respect, you too would know the finger, pointed in your face, not because you are either vicious or irrational, but because you are repressed, and if we judge you to deserve this fate, you are a creep. The judgement needs no warrant, just as your honesty alone can be turned against you, in place of physical evidence.

It’s not as though the people pointing the finger are not repressed; verily, they are not without THAT sin, either, but that makes them all the more likely to project that sin upon the celibate. People who tend to join movements such as #MeToo are typical of proto-Fascists; they have done enough Dionysiac things to be ashamed of it, and they have done few enough to displace that shame. On one hand, they take it out on the celibates, who simply are too “unattractive” to testify in a Kangaroo Court (of Public Opinion) that amounts to sheer popularity and attractiveness. On the other hand, they take it out on the “date rapists”, such as Cosby, whose old-fashioned proclivities are presumed to be vestiges of a barbaric time that is in FACT not far behind us, where in actuality it is the fact that he is old and blind, two things attractive people do not EVER wish to become, that leads us to otherize him and to equate him with rapists.

If there’s one thing that we know about the Devil, it is that he is not a comedian. If there’s one thing we know about Hitler, it is that he desperately needed to get laid and to smoke something potent.

Dm.A.A.