Dionysian Futurism
Because the future should be worth living in
A few weeks ago, someone on X casually asked why every image of a techno-optimist future looks so sterile, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. These visions feel engineered, not lived in. They look like CAD drawings for a master-planned civilization no one actually lives in, much less has sex in. Where’s the joy, the fun, the feasting, the romance? Where’s the life? Hell, where are the humans?
At the time, I was reading Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition and writing a piece on the humanities revival. Then this past weekend I read Bronze Age Pervert’s essay on fertility and Peter Banks’s on Nietzsche, and something clicked. What’s missing in these visions is Dionysian energy: romance, chaos, emotion, feast, laughter. Life itself.
So I’m calling for a movement of Dionysian Futurism. The mission: to envision, build, and fight for futures that center our messy, joyful humanity — before AI washes over the world and others decide for us. If we don’t imagine a future we’d actually want to live in, who will? Marc Andreessen? I wouldn’t bet on that.
In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche argued that Apollo and Dionysus represent the two drives of civilization. Apollo is structure, reason, and order. Dionysus is chaos, emotion, and ecstasy. High art requires both. So does civilization. Yet the West, he warned, had grown dangerously Apollonian, crowding out its own vitality. Through this lens, today’s techno-optimistic visions do not look optimistic at all. He would call them “corpselike and ghostly” in the glow of the Dionysian reveler.
I should confess that I am not Dionysian by nature. I’m introverted, Germanic about time, Mormon-raised, and better suited for nerdy book clubs than sexy raves or dinner parties. Yet I can see the gap clearly. I’m making the argument, not hosting the launch party.
Dionysian Futurism is an invitation to imagine positive, technological futures that center the joy, mess, and friction that make life worth living — the things we don’t want optimized, outsourced, or handed off to an AI agent. It welcomes technology and growth. It just refuses to let them flatten and sanitize our humanity. Not everything should be frictionless, scalable, or orderly. Our humanity lives in that friction: sex, celebration, breakups, and intimate conversations.
When I floated the concept in a note over the weekend, I included a cheesy, AI-generated image that looked like the cover of a Greco-futuristic romance novel —a buff man and busty woman drinking wine and showing some skin. Some people were triggered by the aggressive heterosexuality. That made me laugh. I’m gay. I posted it without much thought.
One person replied: “I think we’re going to have something like that except everyone will be morbidly obese, vaping, and streaming on Twitch.”
Ouch. That’s the dystopian Dionysian — all appetite, no transcendence. It’s indulgence to the point of numbness, like apes with unlimited bananas.
Dionysian Futurism is about vitality, not degeneracy. Our visions of it will differ. That’s the point.
Mine comes in fragments. A dance hall in Barcelona where people still gather every Sunday evening. A couple picnicking on the grass, technology invisible except for the towering cityscape in the distant background. An older man with a firm wine belly, hosting regular feasts for friends and neighbors, with every logistical detail automated except the cooking, which he enjoys. Holy spaces — more sacred and ornate than ones today — where humans commune with the divine, get married, and say goodbye to the dead.
Apollonian advances tend to produce Dionysian counter-movements. The Romantic Movement emerged in reaction to Enlightenment rationalism and early industrialization. The Arts and Crafts Movement challenged the sterility of mass production. Beatniks and Hippies rebelled against postwar conformity. AI will too.
Dionysian Futurism patches a blind spot in the techno-optimist movement. Many are engineers and coders by nature — apex Apollonians. Their leading voice, Marc Andreessen, recently said he practices zero introspection. It’s no surprise their rallying cry is to build. But building for whom? For what purpose? Dionysian Futurism balances that impulse with a beating heart.
For those anxious about where AI is taking us, Dionysian Futurism offers something techno-optimists don’t: a future that centers their lives. Much of that anxiety is about powerlessness — the understandable sense that Silicon Valley is shaping the future without giving them a say. Dionysian Futurism insists the future is for humans, not robots, and not just engineers and venture capitalists either. It invites people to imagine a future where they can still dance, love, and feast.
When I imagine myself living in the images put out by today’s techno-optimists, there’s no spark. It’s like staying in a generic airport hotel or driving a Kia. Everything is convenient, ordered, and exactly where it should be. But it doesn’t feel juicy. It doesn’t steal your heart or make it race. It’s a Dionysian desert.
This is the moment to stake a claim. Engineers and coders shouldn’t be the only ones shaping what the future looks and feels like. Musicians, artists, and dancers — this is yours to build too.
Set your mind loose. Sing it into existence. Toast it with a Manhattan. Paint it, then splatter it all over. Lie on the grass under twinkling stars. Dream it into being.
"An older man with a firm wine belly, hosting regular feasts for friends and neighbors, with every logistical detail automated except the cooking, which he enjoys. Holy spaces — more sacred and ornate than ones today — where humans commune with the divine, get married, and say goodbye to the dead."
This is every Sunday for us. I would advise more people live in the now and not wait or fret about a possible future.
Dude, that AI picture makes me want to be heterosexual. Love it. We need to at minimum make Dionysian Futurism an officially designated aesthetic. Suck it, Scandi Rustic.