The Irish Music Stories project explores Irish, Scottish, and other Celtic traditions. To accompany podcasts Shannon shares bite-sized essays and poems. This piece is bonus content from the Season 9 “IMS SIDEQUEST” (Episodes 81-86), written one early March morning after walking around the Middlesex Fells Reservation. Winter was melting. Early blooms were peeking through. And bees were flying around in the woods, all working for the hive, and pollinating plants in the process, just as they’ve done since Aristotle’s day.
Aristotle admired the organization of bees and thought that, like bees, humans survive and thrive by setting up systems and coordinate for a common purpose. He called people political animals.
Aristotle in Spring
(March 2024)
In the 4th Century BCE, Aristotle sat by the Néstos River as worker bees foraged, taking advantage of pear and almond tree blossoms, creeping thyme, Syrian-grass, myrtle, and poppies. Younger bees would have been back in the hive nursing larvae, cleaning cells, building wax combs, and making honey, while male drones mated with the queen, who was busy laying eggs.
Every bee working for the good of the colony.
Butterflies would have also flitted around in the Spring in Ancient Greece, emerging from hibernation, looking for places to land. Most people believed that these blooms and beautiful creatures were a show of joy from Demeter, to celebrate the annual return of her daughter Persephone from the Underworld.
Aristotle compared butterflies to human souls, with their capacity for metamorphosis and order. To help political animals evolve and find consonant order, Aristotle preferred a representative system of government. He thought individual citizens voting for every single thing would lead to voters weighing in on things they don’t understand. He worried about ignorant voters. Better to have representatives mediating between different groups and keeping power balanced. Better to have wise, virtuous people casting votes for the good of the hive. Public servants, working for the collective. Public, not private welfare. Democracy, not oligarchy (which Aristotle defined as men in power who have property).
The bees and butterflies were important features of early Spring. So was the annual Spring festival at Dionysus, a multi-day event with parades, processions, and a profusion of tragedies, comedies, and slapstick satyr plays. Pollinators are still key players of early Spring. And some of the most dynamic actors these days are politicians.
In the Spring of 2024, one of the rising stars of the U.S. presidential election play delivered lines about propping up his richest friends. Wearing his signature orange face make-up, he declared that he’d reward billionaires; and he’d cut services and programs for people—and pollinators.
Aristotle said no one would willingly vote for a system “with a view to its own advantage… not to that of its subjects.” No free man, he said, “if he can escape from it, will endure such a government.” Yet this actor was killing it with many American working class and poor people, even as he vowed to dismantle basic social services. And even as he boasted about his own riches.
When he wasn’t flapping around the country, when he was stuck in courtrooms for felony and rape trials, the elderly orange-colored politician showed disdain and disregard for the justice system. He issued threats. He hurled insults at his critics. No remorse. No metamorphosis.
In the theatre of Aristotle’s day, the very best Greek heroes eventually fell. They sinned, manipulated, and clawed at power and wealth. Audiences watched while a chorus helped interpret inevitable downfalls. When protagonists learned and repented, the crowds would cheer. The more regretful the tragic heroes, the more sympathy the public judges and jurors showed. As they consumed bucketloads of transformation (and fermented grapes, pollinated by the bees and butterflies), they experienced emotional release together,
2300 years ago, these plays helped people gain communal insights. They helped make sense of the human and the divine world, with all its violence, loss, and mystery. They gave people power: with the cross-examining chorus they could render judgment and offer pity and prayers for the remorseful, or rotten tomatoes for the smug.
Aristotle might have given low marks for a show with characters who don’t face meaningful downfalls, and who don’t glean any insights about destiny or the will of the gods. Without concern for “appropriate and pleasurable language… or incidents arousing pity and fear,” there’s no catharsis for the audience.