Are you the monster you want to be?

[vulcanlogician]

There he compares two facets of human nature (Apollonian and Dionysian). More recently, a YouTuber renamed them "Moral" and "Aesthetic" qualities

This seems a bit odd to me. 

The Apollonian faculty is purely aesthetic, in that it creates from the chaos of the world dream images which we need to function. Our perceptions are aesthetically produced by this faculty. I suppose we could say that morals are a part of this production. 

The Dionysian is aesthetic in a different way, since it allows us an honest vision of the chaos which the Apollonian conceals. It isn't quite direct, though, as the only way we can see the chaos and survive is through the eyes of Silenus, the satyr chorus, etc. 

Without making me watch a YouTube, can you clarify what this YouTuber had in mind? Thanks.

I like your assessment. But, at the same time, you seem to say that everything is aesthetic. Apollo offers one purely aesthetic vision and Dionysus another. Where is the real in all that? I assume (as Plato does) that there is a distinguishable reality behind all the appearances-- something upon which the appearances rest. Just like a mask creates a certain appearance because it is situated in front of a (very real) face, all appearances must be founded upon a (very real) reality--and only thus can they appear real. To know this fundamental reality is the goal. Once one knows "the real," knowledge of appearances becomes superfluous.
The Birth of Tragedy is not really my favorite work by Nietzsche, but here goes my assessment anyway.

As I understand Nietzsche, the Apollonian is our drive to accomplish great things: to improve society, to become moral exemplars, to live to our potential. But, in his opinion, the Apollonian gets too much attention. Sure, our highest goals, our achievements, and our greatest works are an essential part of the human experience. But Dionysus embodies our darker thirsts which must be quenched. He is the sweetness in our forbidden fruit, the darkness upon which our brilliance as a species is cast. A yin to the yang of idealism. A necessary "other half." A hungry and ruthless savage.

To me, Nietzsche sets himself up (in his later works) as a spokesman for the Dionysian (because he feels that Christianity and philosophy are too Appolainian. Might be a bit of interpolation in there, but that's the gist of what I got from the Birth of Tragedy.

I couldn't find the specific YouTube video I was referencing (I only remember the author, ContraPoints), so I guess you're off the hook.

Don't click the box below that says "show content." It's a waste of time. You'll thank me later. 

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The genius of the heart, as that great hidden presence possesses it, the tempter-god and born pied piper of the conscience, whose voice knows how to climb down into the underworld of every soul, who does not say a word or cast a glance in which there does not lie some concern with and trace of temptation, whose mastery includes the fact that he understands how to seem - and not what he is, but what for those who follow him is one more compulsion to press themselves always closer to him, to follow him ever more inwardly and fundamentally: - that genius of the heart, who makes all noise and self-satisfaction fall silent and teaches it to listen, who smooths out the rough souls and gives them a new desire to taste, - to lie still as a mirror so that the deep heaven reflects itself in them -; the genius of the heart who teaches the foolish and over-hasty hand to hesitate and reach out more delicately; who senses the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under the thick cloudy ice and is a divining rod for every grain of gold which has lain buried for a long time in a dungeon crammed with mud and sand; the genius of the heart, at whose touch everyone goes forward richer, not divinely gifted and surprised, not as if delighted and oppressed with strange, fine things, but richer in his own self, newer to himself than previously, broken open, blown upon and sounded out by a thawing wind, more uncertain perhaps, more tender, more fragile, more broken, but full of hopes which as yet have no names, full of new will and flowing, full of new dissatisfactions and opposing currents . . . But what am I doing, my friends? Whom am I speaking to you about? Have I forgotten myself so much that I have not once named him to you? It could be that you have already guessed for yourself who this dubious spirit and god is who wants to be praised in such a way. For just as things go with anyone who from the time he walked on childish legs has always been on the move and through alien territory, so many strange and not un-dangerous spirits have crossed my path, too, above all the one I have just been speaking about, who has come again and again, namely, no less a spirit than the god Dionysus, that enormously ambiguous and tempter god, to whom in earlier times, as you know, I offered up my first work, in all secrecy and reverence - as the last person, so I thought, who had offered a sacrifice to him: for I found no one who understood what I was doing then.

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