Banned on X

Dear Elon Musk:

I am an American philosopher. One of the things I write about is a new art form that I discovered in the work of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. I am the only one who has discovered this new art form, and I am the only one who knows how to read it and render it. The essays I write, which now comprise four books and a website chock full of free information, are all meant to provide instruction in the rendition of Nietzsche’s new art form, which is called dithyrambic drama. (For pronunciation, the ”y” is silent, and the other three syllables sound out just as they look: dith-ram-bik.) I have devoted my entire life to the advancement of Nietzsche’s new art form, first in learning it, and now in teaching it. And I have been banned from writing about it on X.

And that is because I am also a dissident, and your staff believes it is in the best public interest for me not to publish my dissent on X. I think you will disagree. Thus, I am publishing this open plea with an ever so diminishing hope that it might actually make a difference for me if you understood a little about dithyrambic drama and how it made me a dissident.

Philosophy is something I was born into. It runs through my blood all the way down to my bones. This is not something I chose in life. Instead, I found myself drawn into it, even at the young age of seventeen, when I began studying theory of becoming and theory of being. I knew that the focus of my study was rare, and I knew that I would be alone in it all my life, which did not deter me in the least. And then I discovered Nietzsche, and that all changed.

As is often the case with young philosophers, I studied my teacher for as long as it took me to understand him, which was fifty years. And that was no small task because Friedrich Nietzsche is among the most difficult of all the philosophers to understand, comparable to Heracleitus, who liked to speak in riddles. The difficulty reading Nietzsche is due partly to his genius and partly to his very poor writing skills, at least with regard to the transmission of idea via the articulation of concept, like all writing. However, in another, new form of writing, Nietzsche’s mastery was ingenious, as with the transmission of apprehension, instead of concept, via a representation of will and passion, and especially the passions that arise from a bad conscience.

Nietzsche found a new way of teaching idea in an exercise of will. Then, by teaching the will, via its representation in dithyrambic music, the pupil learns the ideas that Nietzsche wants to teach, but only if the pupil succeeds in embodying the will represented in the dithyrambs. Nietzsche’s new way of teaching is quite extraordinary. But it is entirely new and must be learned. And unfortunately, he died without teaching anyone how to do it. I now come forth with a testament to Nietzsche’s new dithyramb that is fifty years in the making.

And I am banned on X.

In order to understand the good that the dithyramb brings to society, and why X should not ban my writing about it, it is necessary first to understand a new concept, and that is the concept of proto‑tragedy. Proto‑tragedy is distinguished from the modern use of the word, which is just “tragedy,” by many very disparate things, one of which is the fact that it does not play out upon a stage amongst a troupe of actors, nor does it play out as a cataclysmic catastrophe in a dangerous world. Rather, proto‑tragedy plays out within human nature as part of a particular process of healing that unfolds within in a bad conscience that is buried deep within the subconscious. Proto‑tragedy plays a fundamental role in that process. In fact, without it, that process cannot happen.

Tragedy is one of those things in life that vastly affects how we think and live but which is nothing more than a theory, like the theory of gravity, about which mistakes can be made. If we get the theory wrong, then our lives are less successful, and in many ways, not just one. But if we are spot on, then we succeed in navigating our way beyond our limits, as in the case of our navigation to the moon in 1969 with scientific theory. But these great endeavors all rely on basic theories, like the theory of gravity. Another one of those basic theories is the theory of tragedy.

Aristotle wrote about theory of tragedy because it is the job of the philosopher to examine these fundamental theories by which we live, and then to correct or improve them, but in a way that is easily and convincingly demonstrable to us, in other words, in a way that is natural, which is very easy to recognize, like common sense.

Although philosophers have debated a theory of tragedy since before Aristotle, it was Aristotle who made the examination famous with his theory that tragedy presents a catharsis of pity and terror, which leaves us less tense, perhaps, or relieved, as if through a catharsis. Aristotle’s theory has been dogma since the days when he wrote it. It’s what we take to be truth and reality. And Aristotle was wrong.

In fact, the ancient Greeks were indeed the first to write tragedies and the first to celebrate them, but that was in a day long before Aristotle. His predecessors had found delight and pleasure in the destruction of magnificent individuality, and that is an oxymoron, which led directly to the riddle of tragedy and the philosopher’s preoccupation with understanding it, getting it. Why and how did the ancients derive pleasure in witnessing the destruction of magnificent individuality? It took us two thousand years to figure out this theory and get it right a second time, which now puts us back in the great company of the ancients who first figured it out. But first, we must tend to the task at hand, which is embracing and advancing the rebirth of tragedy, and that begins with an education in Nietzsche’s new art form.

But I have been banned from writing about dithyrambic drama on X. I have no publishing rights on X. And everything I post is shadow banned or given limited visibility.

Since the days of Socrates, when tragedy was taken out of the hearts and minds of men and put upon a stage, modern man has misunderstood the theory of tragedy, and this has resulted in, among other maladies, a particular nihilism that can be characterized as a systemic nausea with life, a most dreadful malady, compared to an antipodal enthusiasm for life.

To fix this, Nietzsche offered a new theory, and then he created a new art form with which to provide the experience of proto‑tragedy, as a demonstration of proof for his new theory and to prevent any misunderstanding. That experience is what Nietzsche teaches and provides in his magnum opus, which is called Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Nietzsche’s theory speculates that tragedy, which we now designate as proto‑tragedy, was an integral part of an inner process of healing and regeneration that led directly to a redemption of one’s innermost bad conscience. In fact, Nietzsche discovered and chartered a new consciousness within man, the previously undiscovered supra‑conscious, which exists only in a redemption of the bad conscience. Along the way, he also came up with an entirely new theory, which had never before been written about or debated by any other philosopher, which he called the theory of eternal recurrence. It is impossible to understand Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence without experiencing the will out of which it arises. It is not learned through concept and certainly not appreciated either.

Indeed, for Nietzsche to teach what he had set out to do in his Napoleonic quest, which was to conquer the subconscious and then heal the bad conscience, teaching with concept would not work. He needed something entirely new and much more powerful, and he found it in dithyrambic drama, which first requires learning how to read dithyrambic music, which isn’t all that difficult. It’s like looking at a piece of sheet music for the first time; once you know what the markings on the paper denote, e.g., musical sounds, then you know what to do with them, how to render them. You just need to know what you’re looking at and then learn how to render or perform it. But the first time you looked at sheet music, without knowing that’s what it was, you saw absolutely nothing that made sense. And that is the case with Nietzsche’s magnum opus, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. For more than a hundred years now, no one has known what they are looking at. In fact, they are looking at dithyrambic music.

The text that makes up a dithyramb does not denote concept; it denotes will, by which I do not mean will power but rather a sophisticated and carefully cultivated confluence of hope and desire, instinct and suffering. That is how Nietzsche teaches his ideas, as an experience, as part of a certain willfulness, as a struggle whose moving forward prompts the formulation of apprehensions, not concepts, which then make the movement possible.

Nietzsche chose to teach his ideas via direct apprehension, not via an ascertained concept, or in other words, through will. Nietzsche’s teacher, who was Arthur Schopenhauer, taught Nietzsche that music was intrinsically an expression of our will. Conversely, when Nietzsche composed his dithyrambs as a representation of human will, the first since Plato, who was the last philosopher to compose in the dithyramb, he called it music, specifically dithyrambic music. Unfortunately, he left all of this to his readers to figure out entirely on their own, having left no instruction whatsoever. But he went on to use his new art form to teach all his wonderous ideas that enable inner personal healing, but via will, instinct, and passion, not concept. And it is now up to us to learn Nietzsche’s new art form and then to learn about tragedy and inner healing.

But X has banned me from publishing anything about it.

The tragedy, or proto‑tragedy, that Nietzsche teaches in his dithyrambic tragedy arises out of a very strong desire to find oneself, a will to self‑empowerment, which Nietzsche himself called a “will to power.” And it teaches the need and the value of learning to feel, just feel, our inner angst, our inner vexations of conscience. In the course of doing that, simple though it may sound, one’s Ego collapses like a false flooring that is no longer useful, due to the Ego being nothing more than a stopgap that stupefies or inures oneself to the bad conscience. And in the wake of that collapse, like a miracle, a truer version or apprehension of Self appears. That is the reason that the ancients found pleasure in tragedy; because it is healing, even redemptive, and most definitely enlightening. That is the miracle of tragedy. And that is the solution to a riddle that lasted more than two millennia. I speak with a testament built on fifty years of study, analysis, and experience.

With Nietzsche’s dithyrambic tragedy, what we are witnessing is the rebirth of ancient tragedy, or proto‑tragedy, since the beginning of time. It is a glorious moment, which I predict will cure nihilism, if we embrace it. The rebirth of tragedy in modern times is a milestone in the history of Occidental philosophy, but only if we help it come into being, into practice.

But I am banned from writing about it on X.

In the course of my undertaking Nietzsche’s dithyrambic tragedy, whose drama entails a journey into the subconscious, I discovered that I had been kidnapped when I was a child, which I had completely and utterly repressed, though I spent decades in talking therapy. But that’s how horrible it was for me. I suffered massive injuries when that happened. Back then, people knew what had happened and did nothing for me; they deliberately left me to suffer. I think that was unconscionable, and I think they are unconscionable people.

Then, when I started looking into things, I discovered that some ultra‑privileged Boston Brahmins had covered up the crime, which effectively condemned the children who could not speak about what had happened to them, due to the horror that it cleaved in their minds. I am trying to defeat that cover up sixty years later, so I write about it. That is my focus as a dissident writer.

And the persecution I have had to endure as a result of my dissent, which I leave unstated in this brief post, includes your X staff banning my X account, which is @gvoice2006, in direct violation of your celebrated efforts to bring free speech to the X platform. All my posts are now invisible, although some seem to have limited visibility, and three credit cards have been refused. When my premium plus subscription tries to renew at the end of the month, I expect it to be cancelled, since none of my credit cards are working any longer. Numerous support tickets have done nothing to help.

The only hope I have of reversing my situation is by getting this plea to you somehow because I just do not think you would go along with this censorship. Therefore, I am going to plaster this plea for free speech to Elon Musk, which I have entitled “Banned on X,” all over the Internet.

Banned in Boston. And banned on X.