The Götterdämmerung Syndrome

The book Ministry of the Future is still rattling around in our collective WLBOTT heads.

How can people not see the undeniable?

Author Kim Stanley had to place himself in a very dark place to understand the “burn it all down” attitude. He understands Our Republican Friends’ response to climate change:

“The Götterdämmerung Syndrome, as with most violent pathologies, is more often seen in men than women. It is often interpreted as an example of narcissistic rage. Those who feel it are usually privileged and entitled, and they become extremely angry when their privileges and sense of entitlement are being taken away. If then their choice gets reduced to admitting they are in error or destroying the world, a reduction they often feel to be the case, the obvious choice for them is to destroy the world; for they cannot admit they have ever erred.”

“This explained the world they lived in; the murderers were willing to kill to get their way. In a fight between sociopathic sick wounded angry f*****-up wicked people, and all the rest of them, not just the good and the brave but the ordinary and weak, the sheep who just wanted to get by, the f*****s always won.”

“Ideology, n. An imaginary relationship to a real situation.”

“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.”

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future

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What is Götterdämmerung?

[ed. note: It is so infrequent that we get to use umlauts, or talk about umlauts, or just repeatedly say the word “umlauts” that we are going to maximize the experience here.]

“Götterdämmerung,” which translates to “Twilight of the Gods,” is the last of four operas in Richard Wagner’s epic “Ring Cycle.” In this opera, the story reaches its cataclysmic conclusion as the gods, including Wotan and his family, meet their downfall. The plot revolves around themes of power, love, betrayal, and the inevitable collapse of the world order. It culminates in the fiery destruction of Valhalla, the realm of the gods, and the restoration of the world to a more natural and harmonious state. The opera is known for its intricate music, rich symbolism, and its grand portrayal of the end of an era, making it a monumental work in the history of opera.

ChatGPT, Fine Arts Consultant

“Twilight of the Gods” and “the inevitable collapse of the world order” are pretty scary concepts. It begs a comparison of Steve Bannon’s twisted view of history.

Bannon, a voracious autodidact, embarked upon what he described as “a systematic study of the world’s religions” that he carried on for more than a decade. Taking up the Roman Catholic history first instilled in him at his Catholic military high school, he moved on to Christian mysticism and from there to Eastern metaphysics. (In the Navy, he briefly practiced Zen Buddhism before wending his way back to Catholicism.)

Bannon’s reading eventually led him to the work of René Guénon, an early-20^th-centry French occultist and metaphysician who was raised a Roman Catholic, practiced Freemasonry, and later became a Sufi Muslim who observed the Sharia.
….
Guénon, like Bannon, was drawn to a sweeping, apocalyptic view of history that identified two events as marking the beginning of the spiritual decline of the West: the destruction of the Knights Templar in 1312 and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Also like Bannon, Guénon was fascinated by the Hindu concept of cyclical time and believed that the West was passing through the fourth and final era, known as the Kali Yuga, a 6,000-year “dark age” when tradition is wholly forgotten.

Vanity Fair

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Separating an Artist from their Art

(or, What’s the Deal with Richard Wagner?)
(or, Ted Nugent: Can we still listen to “Stranglehold”?)

We asked our spiritual and moral advisor, ChatGPT, what to make of this. Here’s a summary:

The debate concerning the separation of an artist and their art revolves around whether it is possible or ethical to divorce an artist’s personal life, actions, or beliefs from their creative work.
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Ultimately, the stance one takes on this issue can vary greatly depending on personal beliefs and values, and there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of whether an artist’s personal life and art can or should be separated.

ChatGPT

So basically, we’re going to take the expedient path while we mull this over: Love the Sin (Götterdämmerung / Stranglehold), Hate the Sinner (Wagner / Nugent).

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Heading Back to Götterdämmerung

Götterdämmerung (German: [ˈɡœtɐˌdɛməʁʊŋ] ⓘ; Twilight of the Gods),[1] WWV 86D, is the last in Richard Wagner’s cycle of four music dramas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung, or The Ring Cycle or The Ring for short). It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 17 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of the whole work.

Wikipedia

The horse appears to be overly attached….

Some very cool modern opera stagings:

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Brünnhilde

Brünnhilde is a main character in the opera Götterdämmerung. But who is Brünnhilde?

In the Norse tradition, Brunhild is a shieldmaiden or valkyrie, who appears as a main character in the Völsunga saga and some Eddic poems treating the same events. In the continental Germanic tradition, where she is a central character in the Nibelungenlied, she is a powerful Amazon-like queen.

Wikipedia

But this raises more questions. What is a shieldmaiden? What is a valkyrie?

A shield-maiden (Old Norse: skjaldmær [ˈskjɑldˌmæːr]) was a female warrior from Scandinavian folklore and mythology.

Wikipedia

In Norse mythology, a valkyrie (from Old Norse: valkyrja, lit. ’chooser of the slain’), is one of a host of female figures who guide souls of the dead to the god Odin’s hall Valhalla. There, the deceased warriors become einherjar (Old Norse “single (or once) fighters”[1]). When the einherjar are not preparing for the events of Ragnarök, the valkyries bear them mead. Valkyries also appear as lovers of heroes and other mortals, where they are sometimes described as the daughters of royalty, sometimes accompanied by ravens and sometimes connected to swans or horses.

Wikipedia

[ed. note: the etymology does not suggest a relationship to the Christian prayer “Kyrie“]

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It’s great to be able to see some historic opera singers dressed as Brünnhilde!

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There are also many imaginative modern takes on Brünnhilde.

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