Some months ago, I wrote a post on how the Trump presidential campaign was a comedy. Just hours after I published that post, the first and most serious assassination attempt was made on Trump’s life. A couple of months later, I published another post on Trump, and then on the exact same day there was a second assassination attempt. That was two too many synchronicities for my liking, and so I’ve avoided writing on the topic again so as not to make it a third-time-lucky scenario.
Well, everybody knows that the comedy came to fruition yesterday, and I feel motivated to write something about it, not least because I’m in the middle of a series of posts on the relationship between Wagner and Nietzsche (you can find it on my substack), and I’ve come to some startling revelations that the topic of comedy versus tragedy goes much deeper than I thought.
Old Europe is the culture of tragedy. Another way to say that is that European culture has a death wish. It is Thanatos in action. The secret subliminal desire at the heart of the European soul is to die. Yes, I’m deliberately invoking the language of romanticism because romanticism was the purest expression of the European death wish, and Wagner’s operas were the purest expression of romanticism.
What every European is looking for is an excuse to die. Give a European such an excuse, and they will willingly hurl themselves into the flames like Brünnhilde at the end of Wagner’s ring cycle.
Freud was right. The death wish is closely related to orgasm. Wagner’s music is the most orgasmic ever written. Every Wagnerian hero dies in a rapture of musical ecstasy. Many audience members experience the same orgasmic feeling from Wagner’s operas. There’s a reason he was once so popular.
The final scene of Tristan and Isolde is the greatest musical orgasm conceivable. The whole opera is a four-hour long love-making exercise, quite literally so since the entire opera revolves around the illicit love between the titular heroes.
And what can be more orgasmic than illicit love? Wagner knew a thing or two about the subject. His entire life was full of illicit love affairs. He had an uncanny ability to make the wives of his patrons fall in love with him. Given that he also constantly failed to pay his debts, it’s a wonder none of those patrons had him knocked off. They sure had good reason to do so.
Wagner rewrote the rules of opera for the sole purpose of making it more orgasmic. What used to be considered serious opera seems trivial by comparison. After you’ve experienced Tristan and Isolde, a Mozart opera becomes the musical equivalent of a Wiggles performance.
Devoted Wagnerians will tell you that Wagner is a religious experience; a brush with the orgasmic ecstasy of sweet death. Wagner’s operas are the most sublime, grandiose, and glorious expression of the European death wish. The Ring Cycle takes fourteen hours to get to the point where everybody finally gets to die. Every character gets to die in the full realisation of why they are dying, while every audience member is fully aware of the symbolic meaning of their deaths.
Every European wants a reason to die, whether that reason be expressed in opera, music, history, politics or philosophy. When a European doesn’t have the imagination to think up a reason to die, he turns the lack of a reason into a reason; hence, nihilism.
Mostly, though, Europeans find the most ingenious of ways to express their death wish. The comparative historian Spengler wrote a thousand-page book with the express purpose of letting everybody know that Western civilisation was going to die and why it was going to die. It’s basically the Ring Cycle expressed as a quasi-scholarly work.
Spengler is worth mentioning because he named the civilisation that he believed was dying after Goethe’s Faust and he correctly identified the core property of Faustian culture as a striving for the infinite. But what is that if not the psychological counterpart to Thanatos? Faustian culture is Eros in action.
The paradox is that Spengler couldn’t help but reinterpret Faustian culture according to the old death wish. Spengler’s history is the scholarly counterpart to Wagner’s operas. It’s a gigantic, epic work of genius whose sole purpose is to find the greatest possible reason for dying. History-as-orgasm.
But Faustian culture had escaped old Europe and set sail across the seas. It set up camp in many places but found its most perfect expression in America. Americans thought, and still think, that they had escaped the old world and yet they keep getting sucked back in.
The story of America is the story of Bugs Bunny. It is the Faustian spirit of Eros always finding ingenious ways to escape from Thanatos. Whoever cast Elmer Fudd as Wagner’s Siegfried hit the nail well and truly on the head.
America is Bugs Bunny. She is Luke Skywalker getting pulled off the farm to go and fight in some dumbass European war. She is Neo trying to escape from a matrix of culture inherited from old Europe that is predicated on the death wish.
America is always trying to escape and always getting pulled back into the European swamp for reasons that no American understands. Why is America in Ukraine? Has any leader in the US even tried to present a coherent argument for that?
Of course, the real reason America has to be there is the same reason it had to stick around after WW2: to stop Europeans killing each other. The second America pulls out of Europe is the second the whole continent reverts to its primal death wish.
And so there is a mutual misunderstanding between America and Europe that might never be resolved; the difference between tragedy and comedy. Europeans are fond of saying that America has no culture. What they mean is that America has no tragic culture. For a European, all culture must be tragic. If it’s not tragic, it’s not culture.
Europeans instinctively translate America into tragedy. They do the same thing for Trump. Trump is a strong leader. Therefore, he must be about to amass a giant army and go to war. That’s what a strong European leader would do. Ergo, Trump is Hitler.
Hitler loved Wagner, of course, and there can be little doubt that Hitler manifested the Wagnerian death drive in politics. But can you seriously imagine Trump sitting through the Ring Cycle? The very idea is ludicrous. On the other hand, you can certainly imagine Trump sitting in front of the TV with a Big Mac and fries watching Bugs Bunny cartoons.
The Trump comedy is the latest chapter in the American comedy. Once again, Bugs has slipped through the grasp of Elmer Fudd and lives to fight another day.
It’s interesting, I think you can extend the American thing to the entire Anglosphere. Monty Python made a great point to absolutely take the piss out of the seriousness and over emoting of the Continentals.
Australians too (at least those of us who haven’t been so to speak over cultured and maintain some of the national character) can’t help but laugh and poke at the silliness. If any of the great German philosophers or Wagner had toured here I’m guessing they would be laughed at for taking life and death so seriously.
There is the great saying of Edmund Burke when confronted with the French zeal for the rights of man that the retorted with we demand our rights as Englishman. He argued Americans value practical Liberty rather than abstract liberty because they are descended from Englishman. It could well be argued that America is now more Anglo than England itself.
In fact, most of the differences between the Anglosohere and Europe (including the property stuff we were talking about earlier) can be summed up in Burke’s speeches on these matters.
Skip – I think it was Bill Bryson who wrote how when two British strangers make acquaintance on a train, you’ll soon find them laughing, but that very rarely happens with continental Europeans.
The practicality versus ideological distinction also brings me back to my gripe about neoliberalism which is that it is yet another ideological pipe dream, which is how I know it must have originated on the continent. It doesn’t seem to matter what the ideology is, it will fail when put into action. I used to think it was a good thing about Australia that we were governed by pragmatists and not ideologues but that’s another thing that changed with neoliberalism. Hopefully, we can find our way back to it.
Simon. Many thanks for putting Once Upon a Time in Tittybong into the ether. I jus finished. It had me chuckling from start to finish.
It were as if Gary Larson had married Schiller, given up his day job and decided to take his talent for concocting images that are simultaneously grotesque and bitingly true to string to together in prose scene after scene of absurdity to make, in toto, an irresistible case that the Australian alt-right has an alchemical potential to bring harmony to the spheres.
My favourite scene is the ecstatic connubial embrace of Wally and Svenson. Who could one not shed tears of hilarity and sympathetic joy at their long awaited release: the moment when, finally, their day of “The glorious victory!” had come.
Though I have my doubts on the reality of the matter, I would have it that Trump is JJ the Changer who will bring down the Empire to usher a New Age presided over by a benign and self-assured Goddess of non-interventionalism. May this too tale have the happy ending waiting behind successful individuation.
Jinasiri – thank you for that. I’d forgotten all about that scene. Maybe I should go back and read the book!
If by chance you have an account on amazon, goodreads or another review site and have some time to rate or review the book, that would be awesome. For some reason, the book has only one review by somebody who apparently bought a book called “Once Upon a Time in Tittybong” without knowing what they were getting into 😛
Don’t have the accounts. But will do what I can it to spread the word through other means.
Simon: “What every European is looking for is an excuse to die.”
Gaaaah. Simon, don’t write such trivially impeachable prose. Really? “Every” European? All three quarters of a billion of us? Ugh.
Cultures can have a general kind of disposition that influences the lives of people raised in that culture (both on the micro level, and the macro/historical level) without somehow describing the inner essence of individuals. That applies to all cultures, not just the European kind. Christianity, in particular, is a pretty morbid religion (an execution tool as its central symbol – nice). Being brought up within that culture, or even in a successor culture, will influence people in certain ways. But while some individuals fully embrace it, others merely accommodate themselves to it to the best of their abilities (and abandon it if opportunity presents itself), and a small number utterly reject it. But again, that applies to all cultures, not just the Christian/European kind.
Irena – technically speaking, I think my claim is still valid in light of your criticism since I wasn’t talking about the “inner essence of individuals” I was talking about their “European essence”.
Hi Simon,
Europe has a culture of expansion, and meagre resources. There’s an old saying about champagne tastes and a beer budget, and there is truth in there. Except the use of the name champagne has now been withheld. Should they stop expanding things will go badly for them. On a purely practical note, if you look at Ukraine from a satellite image, it being the second largest country in Europe, is also east to west, north to south farmland, or more correctly, was. They’re in a bit of trouble, and perhaps they know it. And wise to not post the third in your series.
Cheers
Chris
Chris – a lot of that expansion was people trying to escape from Europe or, like Australians, being kicked out!
I’ve been reading a bit of the reactions from various quarters and the whole comedy angle is fascinating because it seems the big difference is that people simply aren’t in on the joke.
The fact that Trump is so repulsive is the whole point of it, it’s so dripping with farce but the problem is everyone is so tragically serious these days. He really isn’t very different from the most silly and obtuse Kings of England in that the faction he represents is who is really getting into power, but detractors are so focused on him they can’t see the trolling laughing face that lurks behind all of it.
Skip – that’s one of the main themes in any comedy story. The hero is a fool, but the antagonist is an even bigger fool. The only difference is that the hero knows they’re a fool (or knows they are playing the fool) while the antagonist thinks they are smart. No surprises that the people who hate Trump the most are the university educated.
The blind spot is conceit. What else is it when a person thinks, “I don’t understand them … ipso facto they, all 72 million of them, must be idiots”?
Jinasiri – exactly. But also, we should remember that enormous sums of money get spent on American elections and large parts of that go to the “experts” whose job it is to win elections. What Trump did was to show that those experts are not actually experts at all. He threatened their entire business model. By extension, he threatened the business model of all “experts”. We might be witnessing the end of the bureaucratic-managerial class as the dominant political power. A man can dream 😛
Yes we can only dream, especially here in Aus. What does it really means for us? Maybe Dick Smith gets inspired and runs on a coalition with Clive Palmer, Pauline and Bob Katter. Outside of something like that we don’t have much hope of a new class kicking the current bureaucratic mob out.
Skip – we have to remember that the government and bureaucracy in Australia does work far better than in the US, which is a big part of the reason why it has more support. The bureaucracy in the US is absurdly incompetent, corrupt and outright vicious.
I’m more interested in what happens economically. If Trump can really can neuter the bureaucracy and use tariffs to re-industrialise, that’s gonna cause big problems for China and should drive down demand for Australian resources. Australia will presumably stick to our free trade philosophy which means we’ll have cheap Chinese products dumped into the market here, which doesn’t matter for us cos we apparently have no desire to bring manufacturing back. At what point does the money run out for the massive infrastructure projects that are propping up the economies of the big cities?
My guesstimation: When the global rich stop sinking their money into the Ozzie property market as if it were a Swiss bank. That may take a while as Australia has a peculiar range of economic and geopolitical factors on its side that make it an unusually safe and attractive wealth preservation option – lots of land and natural resources, relatively competent government, capable and sheepish population, a near infinitude of natural beauty and lots of distance from anything that anyone has a reason to nuke. Oz will persist as a heavenly realm especially as things get worse elsewhere because the global rich want to preserve someplace as a zone of comfort and beauty while all else unravels. Big cities are the main financial beneficiaries in this respect, but the Ozzie population is small enough for most ordinary people to be sustained in a good-enough sense by the wake of the ride.
That story is vulnerable, however, to oil shortages. Oz sells lifestyle but the infrastructure propping that up is still heavily dependent on heavyweight transport. That, however, could be surmounted technologically so long as there’s enough money flowing our way. So Oz may remain a golden cage for a while yet.
Short of economic collapse Ozzie’s would have to rebel on principle. This,
of course, does happen from time to time, in the presence of inspiring leadership and a population accustomed to conflict. Australians, however, have no serious history of rebellion and its difficult to imagine imagine Dick or Clive rallying the faithful.
But stories and dreams are the seeds of future culture and it’s from little things that big things grow. It also makes sense to grow seedlings in greenhouses.
Jinasiri – Australians are peculiarly conflict averse too. Combine that with tall poppy syndrome and the chances of a Trump-style demagogue are infinitesimal. There have been some interesting ructions in the labour movement here of late. Seems that the bureaucrats in the Labor Party are trying to liquidate the last of the old-school unions. It’d only take a failure to finance one of these infrastructure white elephants to throw the cat amongst the pigeons there. But, I suspect you’re right that little is likely to change in the short term.
If a white elephant goes down it can be revived with even more debt, no? That way the infrastructure of utopia is preserved for the lenders to enjoy nice holidays while being served by locals who are ever more under the thumb. Priceless!
Simon: “Irena – technically speaking, I think my claim is still valid in light of your criticism since I wasn’t talking about the “inner essence of individuals” I was talking about their “European essence”.”
Nah. “Every European” means just that: every European. Individually.
As for “European essence”: y’know, I was gonna write that Europe (collectively) was mostly over its death wish, but now I’m having second thoughts:
https://united24media.com/latest-news/ill-issue-putin-an-ultimatum-end-the-war-in-24-hours-or-ill-supply-ukraine-with-taurus-missiles-says-german-chancellor-candidate-merz-3673
Gawd. And what does it say about me that my first response was to laugh out loud? Well… I’ve always been something of a tragicomedy fan.
Jinasiri – indeed, and our banking overlords love a good infrastructure boondoggle.
Irena – Germany is death-wish central. They appear to be in the process of enforcing the Morgenthau Plan on themselves!
Yeah I suppose you’re right there Bhikku but what you’ve described is what Australia has always been; a very wealthy place with lots of foreign assets ownership (originally British), an industrious population that is divided between complete prisoner like subservience and anIrish/Scottish inherited fatalistic form of resistance that bursts out every now and then and always fails spectacularly, rule by financial overlords (usually foreign) and a very sharp divide between urban and rural.
This hasn’t stopped trade-related global economic headwinds causing epic meltdowns here from time to time, and real crisis and poverty setting in. Federation was preceeded by an enormous financial collapse and a sharp reactionary movement.
The 1890s in Melbourne had perhaps the biggest property crash (per capita) in history. All the fundamentals point to the possibility of something of a similar magnitude if global capital flows dried up.
The comedy just got funnier, Elon Musk in charge of “DOGE” and will no doubt be live tweeting as he sacks bureaucrats in real time – https://nypost.com/2024/11/12/us-news/trump-announces-elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-to-lead-new-department-of-government-efficiency/
I think you mean live x-ing.
It’ll always be Twitter to me 😛
Speaking of Twitter/X, Jordan Peterson is getting hauled over the coals for enunciating the tragic European ethos I described in this post – https://x.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1856354907856540154
@Simon
Years ago, I read a blog post in which the author claimed that practices/philosophies such as stoicism or Buddhism [and we might add: Christianity] only get developed in those cultures in which anomie is a widespread phenomenon. Most primitive societies do not have such issues (and I imagine that those that do usually just wither and die), but civilized societies do.
And Jordan Peterson and his tweet fit into it. “You’ll never be happy, but you should find meaning regardless.” That’s an ethos of a person who’s given up on happiness. (*) Mind you, giving up on happiness can be an entirely appropriate response to circumstances that have been (and still are) quite common in civilized society. In that case, you need a cope, and Jordan Peterson is espousing it. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that it *is*, in fact, a cope, and one that’s only reasonable to adopt if nothing better is available.
(*) Or more accurately: of a person who’s largely given up on those things that typically lead to happiness. Happy people don’t become happy by pursuing happiness for the sake of happiness, but rather by doing those things that tend to lead to happiness as a biproduct. However, such a course of action is not available to everyone, and it’s dishonest to pretend otherwise.
Irena – what if we modified Peterson’s claim as follows: “Life is happiness. The purpose of life is not to suffer needlessly, but to find meaning in happiness.”
It’s possible to suffer and be happy in a “meaningless” fashion.
There was an interesting idea floating around in the 19th century which was that the attribution of meaning is itself a distraction and that the thing to do was precisely not to try and find meaning but just sit in the feeling directly and not try to escape from it.
Simon – “There was an interesting idea floating around in the 19th century which was that the attribution of meaning is itself a distraction and that the thing to do was precisely not to try and find meaning but just sit in the feeling directly and not try to escape from it.”
There really is nothing new under the network of satelites. Presently, this is precisely what the cult of present moment mindfulness prescribes – a teaching which is the polar opposite of what the Buddha actually taught. The foundation of the Buddha’s teaching is the 4 Noble Truths, including the 4th which is the path leading to sufferings end. It is a call to action/adventure.
The most lucid exponent of Early Buddhism today, Ajahn Thanissaro, criticises these modern versions of Buddhism as being a form of Romanticism born out of late 18th and early 19th century European indulgence in sex, drugs and novels. Fittingly, he has coined this reification of pure acceptance – something that takes all sorts of guises in different epochs, philosophies and religions – “the equanimity of a loser”.
What is it find meaning? A meaningful act is an act that comprises part of a path that leads to a goal that one truly believes in. The development of such goals and paths requires contemplation of future and past.
Dwelling purely in the present moment gets rid of anxiety and stress (the main sources of suffering for wealthy members of the first world) because these two are inherently bound up in fear of failure. So the easy way out is to have a profound reason not to even try to achieve anything in the first place. The pendulum swings from destructive virility in the Protestant work ethic to the celebration of aimlessness in the cult of present moment awarenness. Both ends of the scales preclude any real path to self-mastery and the cunning sell one or the other with the assistance of the pious to keep the masses in line.
Irene –
“However, such a course of action is not available to everyone, and it’s dishonest to pretend otherwise.”
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Can you expand, please?
Jinasiri – it wouldn’t surprise me if the idea was taken directly from Buddhism (and then misunderstood). Buddhism enjoyed a lot of popularity in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries as the respect accorded to Christianity began to dry up.
I agree about the need for a goal. To paraphrase Nietzsche: when you have a goal in which you believe, you can endure an almost limitless amount of suffering. In fact, I would argue that what would be counted as suffering in the absence of a goal, ceases to be suffering at all when it’s in service to genuine belief.
Yeah that’s when Indology took off in Europe. Then Schopenhauer and Nietzsche got into it and misunderstood (at least the Buddhist part) and that’s had knock on effects. But at least they brought Indian thought to public attention.
While it’s true having a deeply felt purpose can being meaning to suffering, a goal alone is not enough. Absent a path, and one that yields discernible and gradual results, one is prey to frustration and despair.
The function of being in the present moment isn’t to just watch and accept but to make careful observations and act with skill and precision in order to enact one’s path as effectively as possible. By focusing the mind on doing quality work we access the joy of mastery which more than compensates for the pain associated with the struggle to achieve. Being part of some sort of tradition wherein others will assist the process and recognise attainment should one succeed is a good source of comfort and joy too.
Peterson strikes me as being very Christian – into self-flagelation and so proud of it he entices others to do the same. The story of Jesus is a weird sort of mirthless comedy.
Just got through the Universal State of America, btw. Great work. I thought of a way to incorporate Alyosha’s goodness into the your sine-wave fractal. I’ll unpack when I see you next month.
Jinasiri – the self-flagellation stuff is also shared by certain sects of Islam too. Peterson strike me as a modern-day Martin Luther, with all the good and bad qualities that come with that. Like Luther, he’s trying to get back to a perfect world that never existed in the first place, which is exactly what Islam was trying to do back in the day.
Being part of a tradition that can recognise one’s mastery certainly makes the job easier. What happens when that tradition doesn’t exist? Actually, I would argue that that’s what creates the Luthers, the Nietzsches and the Jordan Petersons, who had no choice but to create their own tradition.
[Sorry. My phone’s playing up. Last post was abortive. Here it is again.]
“… the Luthers, the Nietzsches and the Jordan Petersons, who had no choice but to create their own tradition.”
Yes. I sympathise. The downside is that when insufficiently qualified, a prophet (read: proto-ancestor) can inadvertently create something worse than what they replace. Furthermore, even if one sets up a tradition which is in its outset good, true and beautiful, absent wise constitutional safeguards, it can easily mutate into something monstrous. But how to tell? Especially when one is entrenched in the monstrous from the womb.
I propose that the fundamentals of prerequisites of reasonable discussion be protected, nurtured and fostered in all circumstances: ethical restraint, generosity and universal care. I believe a person who does not live in line with these three principles is unqualified to enter into a public debate in relation to a prejudicial issue. This would give public discourse a chance at spotting false potential proto-ancestors and improving the ideas of the genuine ones.
Yes, but to do that you need some Platonic Philosopher Kings and history shows that they seem to be in short supply. The desire to avoid the corruption of tradition is what lies behind Plato’s search for the eternal forms. That’s what Nietzsche would have said. And he would have further said that it’s a way to avoid the tragedy of life rather than face it square on.
Not necessarily. If a culture where there is a common understanding that in the long term there is no separation between self-interest and the common interest is set up, people voluntarily behave in accordance with ethical restraint, generosity and care. What is needed is not philosopher kings, but philosopher-teachers.
I don’t disagree. But the problem is the same as the one in Plato’s time: how to find and cultivate them.
Yep. A perrenial problem requiring integral solutions …
Simon, I thought that you were only writing on Substack. Now, I have to catch up what you have written here. This essay was definitely hilarious. I had to laugh multiple times.
I once said to my wife that I would rather starve to death with the 6th Army in Stalingrad than work another day in the office. Is this my expression of the European Death Wish?
Secretface – maybe that’s why Marx wrote an encyclopedia against capitalism – he didn’t want to go to work 😀