To contemplate our world today with the detached gaze of a spectator is to witness the grotesque carnival into which much of social reality has been transformed. The news stories that make up the daily chronicle of courts and events show us human specimens disguised as Berber pirates, sensual 18th-century marchionesses, decadent romantics, exotic caliphs of promiscuous harems… These are the delirious masks that, day after day, parade before our eyes in vulgar performances. They gleefully conceal the denunciation of a despicable world and simulate the profile of an exhausted existence, yet one outlined with contours of delight.

Its actors made the display of frivolity—affecting everything from their outward appearance to the most intimate aspects of their private lives—the breeding ground for their own destruction. How this attitude became so deeply ingrained in such people that it ultimately subdued their will is a well-known fact: it begins with a bland view of everything that exists, continues with the abandonment of any spiritual spark that might enliven reality, and ends with reducing reality and the human body itself to mere matter susceptible to unrestrained consumption.

It is an undeniable fact that frivolity is a quality that can take root in the life of any human being. It is even easy to recognize that there are always those who compete to win first prize in the race for superficial banality. The crucial thing in this regard is to take personal measures so that, if one cannot prevent frivolity from coming and going, at least it never stops, for it is then that one risks falling into the Dionysian spiral that has wreaked so much havoc throughout the history of humanity.

Also known as Bacchus to the Romans, Dionysus is the deified symbol of pagan mythological frivolity. On Mount Olympus in ancient Greece, he is often depicted playing his flute, whose music, accompanied by wine and the frenzied dances of possessed women and satyrs, could liberate his followers from their own repressions and subvert the oppression of the dominant social order. He embodies the intoxication and joy of one who, singing, laughing, and dancing, abandons all restraint and celebrates untamed nature.

The excess and unbridled nature of Dionysus has characterized certain behaviors of individuals and organizations against the majority religion in our country in recent months, during which there has been a resurgence in the already chronic incidents of vandalism, desecration, and blasphemy against Catholic churches. Adding to this, at the 40th Goya Awards ceremony, an award-winning actress and two presenters mocked the Christian faith during the televised broadcast. Similarly, during the past Holy Week, a derogatory scene featuring the image of Pope Leo XIV was circulated, a scene that had already been included for some time in a series on a well-known American streaming platform.

Besides demonstrating through their actions a crude attempt to gain notoriety by exploiting the sacred as a tool for self-promotion, those involved are worthy disciples of Dionysus. Their disposition is that of an orgiastic will to life: a crude rejection of traditional morality, an anti-spiritual attitude, and a heartless exaltation of the most primitive passions. They could all benefit from a little of the knowledge of the human soul possessed by Gregorio Marañón (1887-1960).

From his intellectual heights, he warned that when people do not purify themselves through their own initiative, rekindling the dignity of our species’ spirit, the pain of social crises inevitably unleashes itself collectively upon a corrupt society. This communal suffering acts as “a providential sieve through which the unrepentant egoists are stopped, those incapable of finding their perfection in sacrifice.” How blind humanity must be if it is only through this collective drift that it can learn that the true glory to which it is called is not that of earthly powers of evil, but rather that obtained through the dynamism of that inner principle of life which transforms all things into signs of God’s presence and traces of his historical passage through this world!

Pedro Paricio Aucejo – Dametresminutos