Die Gier nach Macht

... ist nicht nur höchst aktuell die Triebfeder unserer Politiker (und anderer »Big Player« in Bürokratie, Wirtschaft und Medien), sondern auch das Thema eines gedankenreichen Essays von Donald W. Miller, Jr. auf »LewRockwell«:

Wagner's Ring on the Lust for Power

I can’t listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland. Woody Allen

The opera world is celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Richard Wagner (born May 22, 1813) with 15 productions of his four-opera music drama Des Ring der Nibelungen (Ring of the Nibelung) in 2013—10 in Europe, 2 in the UK, 2 in the U.S., and 1 in Australia. Putting on this many productions of The Ring in one year testifies to the growing appreciation of the artistic genius of its composer. [...]

Wagner’s Ring is a story about gods, dwarfs, and giants; a dragon; and several humans, including a young Siegfried, billed as the hero of the piece. It has murders and incest and magic, where a dwarf turns himself into a giant snake and then into a tiny toad. One need not know anything about The Ring to become absorbed in the story and moved by it when attending a good production that has captions of the libretto displayed above the stage (supertitles). As Stephen Wadsworth, director of the Seattle Opera Ring points out, “It’s a fantastic story, a story that resembles a complex modern novel more than a dusty old Norse epic.”

The Ring’s tale comes from Norse mythology, in large part from 13th century Icelandic texts (Poetic and Prose Eddas and Völsunga Saga). Myths reveal the basic truths about human nature. They are a symbolic distillation of human experience, and The Ring is especially important to us today for what it tells us about the pursuit of power.

The two principal components of power in The Ring are an all-powerful ring made of gold and a magical metallic veil the ring’s possessor is empowered to make called the tarnhelm. The tarnhelm can render its wearer invisible and able to watch unobserved everything that is happening. The tarnhelm in myth presages what we now must confront living in the U.S. Surveillance State with its all-seeing National Security Agency (NSA). Apropos the allegorical tarnhelm, power brokers like to call the NSA “No Such Agency.”(Hier weiterlesen)

Der Autor des Artikels ist Mediziner — und es ist interessant — und eine (wenigstens in Wien) signifikant häufige Tatsache — , daß Mediziner oft eine besonders tiefe Beziehung zu Musik haben. Daß sie darüberhinaus noch über das polit-ökonomische Interesse und Verständnis verfügen, hinter die Fabelwesen einer Opernhandlung zu blicken und sodann die symbolische Handlung in die Sprache der Realität zu übertragen, ist schon weitaus seltener.

Lesenswert!