#horst hutter

The chief aspect of the Internet that seems to furnish its considerable melancholia is the fact that the anxious Apollos inhabiting it are solitary and isolated. Any reconditioning via dance would hence have to begin with solitary forms. These could constitute the beginning of a return of Dionysus. It may pointed out here that the res cogitans contains many forms of groupings, with such aspects as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. This cannot be denied. Perhaps it might be possible for Facebook friendship groupings to meet for regular Dionysian encounters. Thereby the isolation of anxious Apollos may be overcome and the res cogitans enter into the service of both Apollo and Dionysus. All is not lost, and the Internet may yet establish a better connection between all species, become the noösphere and thus save the earth and the biosphere.

Indeed, I am arguing that the evolution of the digital world and the Internet is a technological development of the concept of the res cogitans. The Internet is the result of Descartes’ concept of a collective immortal soul, with all of its problems, chief among which is the absence from the Internet of anything bacchantic and Dionysian. As such, it is a major threat to the further evolution of the human species, and the saving of the earth, if nothing Dionysian can be recuperated. So far there is no digital Dionysus, and there cannot be, given the forceful separation of soul/mind from body that the Internet has established. As such it is, however, a most powerful tool for the Apollonian ordering of the totality of the social and political realities of the human species. The Internet is the profoundest way so far of realizing the Christian project of separating mind and soul from body. As such it is the most efficient way of crystalizing the Cartesian project of separating the res cogitans from all physical reality, the earth and all of its forms of life. It creates a whole world where the body is a nuisance.

Nothing lasts, except the constant regeneration of new forms of growth and movements toward the future that transit brief presents, before becoming memories of the past. From this perspective we are indeed all goats that sing and dance for a while before vanishing into the nihilating nothing.*