The Odyssey of the Irrationally Rational

“It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.”
— Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

To be human is to live in tension.

Friedrich Nietzsche saw that clearly in The Birth of Tragedy, where he explored how Greek tragedy wasn’t just a form of entertainment—it was a mirror. A reflection of the struggle between two opposing forces at the core of life itself: the Apollonian and the Dionysian.

Apollo stood for clarity, reason, harmony, and control.
Dionysus embodied chaos, instinct, passion, and surrender.

Greek tragedy, according to Nietzsche, worked because it didn’t try to resolve these forces. It held them together. It let them clash. In that clash was beauty. In that beauty—truth.

The Greeks didn’t flinch from contradiction. They built myths and temples, yes—but they also honored madness and ecstasy through ritual. They debated politics in the agora and danced in Dionysian frenzy at night. Their genius wasn’t in picking sides—it was in holding the paradox.

That’s why tragedy mattered. It wasn’t just about a hero falling. It was about a hero trying—desperately—to hold order in a world ruled by forces beyond his control. Oedipus seeks truth and destroys himself with it. Pentheus fights chaos and gets torn apart by it. Neither wins. But in the attempt, something is revealed.

That’s the point.

The Greeks called it arete—excellence. Not just skill, but the pursuit of becoming your fullest, most complete self. It applied to warriors, poets, athletes, and citizens alike. Arete was effort. It was character. It was a lifelong attempt to live well.

But even as they pursued excellence, the Greeks didn’t pretend the path was clean. They knew that within every rational aim lurked irrational drives. Every push toward perfection was shadowed by chaos, temptation, loss. That was life. That was the tragedy.

And Nietzsche knew it too. His writing wasn’t a call to give in to disorder, but to acknowledge its presence. To see the wildness and work with it—not against it.

In a world obsessed with control—optimization, metrics, systems—the Apollonian has won the culture war. We praise what we can measure. We reward order. We idolize the person with the plan.

But beneath the surface, Dionysus waits.

The burnout. The breakdown. The burst of inspiration. The sudden loss. The gut feeling you can’t explain. The need to dance, cry, break something, quit something, create something. That’s Dionysus knocking.

To strive for arete today is not to silence that voice—but to include it. To make space for the irrational, the unpredictable, the ecstatic. Because without it, the picture is incomplete. And worse—it becomes brittle. It cracks.

Greek tragedy never gave us heroes who won cleanly. It gave us heroes who tried—who stepped into the chaos, who acted, who fell, and in falling revealed something true.

That’s still the task. To strive for excellence. To structure our lives with intention. But also to let in the wild. To accept that we are not fully in control. That we’re shaped not only by plans, but by what resists them.

To live well is to hold that tension.

To strive with discipline and act with instinct.
To lead with reason and move with passion.
To stay irrationally rational.

The Drip and the pursuit of Kleos

“I too shall lie in the dust when I am dead,” Achilles says. “But now let me win noble renown.”
— The Iliad

Kleos—glory—was the highest value in Ancient Greek culture. It wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t about personal enlightenment or quiet virtue. It was about being remembered. Being talked about. Being known. A name that echoed after death.

You see it throughout Homer’s Iliad. Achilles chases kleos through unmatched skill in battle. Agamemnon seeks it through command and authority. Even Helen, at the center of the war, becomes immortal not through action, but through beauty—her name inscribed in legend.

The Greek worldview was deeply human-centered. Gods had human shapes, flaws, rivalries. Glory wasn’t a gift from heaven—it was earned through contest (agon) and excellence (arete). And this excellence wasn’t just a private virtue. It had to be witnessed. Memorialized. That’s kleos.

This wasn’t just personal ambition. In a world where even the best souls faded into shades in Hades, where there was no heavenly reward for righteousness, kleos offered a kind of immortality. If your body would vanish, your name didn’t have to. People would know what you did. They would tell the story.

So the Greeks built their culture around competition. Athletics, warfare, politics, art—every domain became a stage for excellence. They even made artistic commissions and political roles into contests. The very word agon, which gives us “agony,” came from this mindset of struggle toward greatness.

And what did kleos look like? Materially, it was armor, horses, robes, epic poems. Tangible tokens of accomplishment. Homeric warriors fought over spoils not just for wealth—but because those items meant something. They proved you’d done something worth remembering.

Sound familiar?

Kleos may sound ancient, but the chase hasn’t changed. Today, we flex with different gear—shoes, watches, cars, stories we post, images we curate. It’s not the battlefield of Troy. It’s the arena of visibility. What we wear, collect, or share signals something about who we are—or who we want to be seen as.

You see it clearly in the world of collectibles. A holographic Charizard isn’t just a trading card—it’s status, story, nostalgia. It’s a symbol that says: “I knew. I played. I valued this before it was valuable.” Or sometimes: “I can afford to own what others can’t.” In either case, it’s legacy through possession.

The rarest cards sell for hundreds of thousands, not just because of condition or rarity, but because of the cultural memory tied to them. They become modern heirlooms—proof that someone reached the top of a certain kind of mountain, whether through mastery, money, or timing. They’re kleos, slabbed in acrylic.

Think beyond cards. Think of luxury brands. Championship rings. Signed memorabilia. Concert posters. Even social media timelines. What’s being constructed isn’t just a record—it’s a persona. An echo. Our own digital or physical version of immortality. We want to be remembered, or at least recognized, for something.

The Greeks didn’t see the pursuit of kleos as ego-driven vanity. It was a way of striving toward excellence. Of becoming more than ordinary. In Homer’s world, glory wasn’t guaranteed—but it was worth pursuing.

Still, the competitive ethic wasn’t without its dangers. The Greeks’ obsession with glory often led to conflict. When politics failed, they turned to war. Their city-states, each proud of its legacy, tore themselves apart. Kleos was a double-edged sword: it inspired greatness, but also division and destruction.

That tension remains today. The pursuit of status, recognition, and legacy can push us to achieve, to innovate, to stand out. But it can also lead to burnout, comparison, consumerism, and hollow ambition. When kleos becomes the only goal, we risk building a life that’s seen—but not felt.

In Ancient Greece, the symbols of glory were inseparable from the effort behind them. If we’re going to chase glory today—through what we own, collect, create, or share—maybe we should ask: does it point to something real? Something excellent? Something worth remembering?

Because while the gear has changed, the impulse hasn’t. To be seen. To stand out. To leave a mark.

That’s kleos. Ancient—and still alive.

Importance of Friendship

"For without friends no one would choose to live, though they had all other goods."
— Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

We’re more connected than ever—group chats, playlists, tagged stories. And yet, loneliness lingers.

Aristotle saw this coming. In Nicomachean Ethics, he stated that even with all the riches in the world, no one would choose to live without friends.

He laid out three kinds of friendship: pleasure, utility, and virtue.

Friendships of pleasure are built around shared joy—surfing at sunrise, being in a flow state while rolling, solving a bouldering problem together. They’re light, energizing, often fleeting.

Friendships of utility are about mutual benefit. A training partner prepping you for comp. A last-minute belayer for an outdoor climb. These relationships are helpful, practical—and sometimes transactional.

Django Unchained - Dr. Schultz (left) and Django (right); Dr. Schultz helps Django find his wife, inexchange Django helps Dr. Schultz find bounties.

But the rarest, and most powerful, is the friendship of virtue. The kind where two people challenge each other to grow. Where you're seen—not just for who you are, but for who you could become.

Jujutsu Kaisen - Itadori (left) Todo (right); Itadori and Todo sincerely care for one another while at the same time they push one another to become not only better sorcerers but also better people.

These friends hold you accountable, lift you up, and walk with you toward something better.

That tension cuts deep: we have endless ways to stay in touch—and still, real connection slips away. That’s why real friendship—the kind that Aristotle believed was the foundation of a good life—matters now more than ever.

In Ancient Greece, the gymnasion wasn’t just a training ground. It was where people came to debate, move, learn, and grow together. 

We like to think our gatherings carry that same spirit. Surfboards, mats, crash pads—modern pillars for the same kind of connection. But the impulse is the same.

To show up.
To be seen.
To belong. 

To become more than you were when you arrived.

At SANTO-FI, we honor all three friendships. Because every kind of friend has a place. Our gatherings aren’t about status or competition. They’re about building the kind of community where any of these friendships can take root—and maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll find that rare one.

SANTO-FI Top Roping Gathering - 06Apr2025