SYNOPSES OF LITERARY WORKS
IN OPERA D’OEUVRE BY
JOHN O'LOUGHLIN
OPUS
01
DOSSHOUSE BLUES: My
first real collection of poems, written on and off during 1973-5, reflects the
lyricism and formal simplicity of youth, showing the influence of poets like
Rimbaud, Ezra Pound, Adrian Henri, and Doors lead singer Jim Morrison on my
formative years as a writer. - A modest but by no means insignificant start to
my literary career, which began pleasantly enough in Merstham,
Surrey, before progressing first to Finsbury Park and then to Crouch End in
North London (where I got the inspiration for the title poem), DOSSHOUSE BLUES
will intrigue those who have personal experience of solitary life in cheap
lodgings.
OPUS
02
A MAGNANIMOUS OFFER:
This little collection of prose pieces is composed of four one-act plays, or playlets, two of which are straight dialogues, together
with a couple of short stories which I wrote at about the same time (1976), and
which I believe to have a loosely poetic quality and deserve, for stylistic
reasons, to be included with the playlets, the title
piece of which is a shamelessly facetious spoof on Oscar Wilde.
OPUS
03
CHANGING WORLDS: My
first novel, written during the summer of 1976, is a largely autobiographical
account of three days in the life of a clerk-turning-writer by name of Michael
Savage, whose disillusionment with the drudgery of office work has led him to
quit his job in London's West End in order to dedicate himself to a literary
career ... come what may. In this
regard, Savage is a sort of Henry Miller, who doesn't believe in doing things
by half-measures and, consequently, to him there is no sense in remaining a
clerk when one has an imperative desire to become a writer and thus effectively
'change worlds'. For him, it is a
make-or-break situation, all the more poignant for its
unfolding against a background of indifference or hostility from colleagues and
relatives alike! Of all my novels,
CHANGING WORLDS is (together with FIXED LIMITS) by far the most subjective,
with long passages of interior monologue which often overlap, to ironic effect,
with conversational or observational settings, though I have taken extra care
to differentiate reflection from conversation by utilizing single quotes in the
one context and double quotes in the other - a stratagem which, though
unorthodox, has probably done more than anything to condition my preference,
contrary to literary norms, for double quotes in relation to conversational
passages virtually right the way through my fictional oeuvre. However that may be, it was probably the
degree of this novel's subjectivity combined with its revolutionary technique
which alienated most London publishers (apart from 'vanity press' ones) when
first I attempted to have it published back in the late 1970s, and to this day
I am proud of the fact that I was able to subvert literary objectivity to such
a radical extent that ... the result is more philosophic than fictional, thus
heralding my true destiny in the more unequivocally philosophical works to
come!
OPUS
04
FIXED LIMITS: If CHANGING
WORLDS betrays the influence (through souped-up
interior monologue) of James Joyce on my early fiction, then the chief
inspiration behind this fictional journal was undoubtedly Jean-Paul Sartre or,
rather, Sartre's first novel Nausea, which made such a profound
impression on me ... that I simply felt I had to attempt something similar -
albeit within a necessarily different milieu and social setting. This was in the autumn of 1976, and the
result was an account of some three weeks in the life of the very same
character whom we first encounter as a disillusioned clerk in the earlier
novel, but whose existence here, as a budding writer, is nothing short of a
spiritual rebirth! Now that Michael
Savage has become or, at any rate, is in the process of becoming his
intellectual self ... we are led into an even more subjective world than that
of his previous incarnation, with further opportunities for both
autobiographical and philosophical speculation on my part. In fact, FIXED LIMITS should be regarded as
the sequel to CHANGING WORLDS, without prior reference to which much of its
subject-matter and settings would seem difficult if not impossible to
understand. For me, this was the
literary Black Hole which led into a new universe of fictional writings thereafter,
beyond the reach of my early mentors.
OPUS
05
BETWEEN TRUTH AND
ILLUSION: My first exercise in philosophy, originally penned in 1977, takes
dualism as its starting-point and develops its commonsensical logic through
three parts, the first of which is essayistic, the second of which is a series
of aphoristic reflections on the philosophy outlined in Part One, and the third
of which is a dialogue between me, the so-named 'philosopher', and an imaginary
student ... that strives both to clarify and enlarge upon the main contentions
of the work.
OPUS
06
THE ILLUSORY TRUTH: Also
divided into three parts, of which the first is by far the longest, this
companion volume to the above expands on the dualistic theories outlined
before, abandoning the more literary approach of BETWEEN TRUTH AND ILLUSION for
an essayistic and aphoristic purism in which I began to develop an almost
existentialist awareness of the extent to which many so-called truths are
founded upon illusory concepts and, to that extent, are not really 'true' at
all.
OPUS
07
A QUESTION OF BELIEF: I
first got the idea of writing a series of dialogues from reading the French
philosopher Diderot, one of the great masters of the
genre, and the result, several weeks later, was four fairly lengthy
philosophical dialogues, which enabled me to continue developing the dualistic
theories begun the previous year (1977).
Their subject-matter ranges from book collecting as an art and the
morality of films to the influence of astrology on writers and historical
perspectives, and although they tend to be a little one-sided, they are at
least broad enough to be of some interest to the general reader.
OPUS
08
THE FALL OF LOVE: The
six essays included here, dating from 1979, signify a transitional stage away
from the dualism of the above works towards the Spenglerian
historicism that, with the influence of environment upon the rise and fall of
civilizations, was to characterize my literary work at around this period. Subjects discussed in such a light include
literature, music, meditation, art, environment, and love.
OPUS
09
CROSS-PURPOSES: This
novel moves beyond the largely autobiographical concerns of my earlier
experiments in the genre towards a more fictional integrity which led me by the
nose, so to speak, into contexts and settings largely outside the domain of
personal experience. To be sure, the
subjectivity of my first novel is in some degree still present (witness the
opening chapter ... with its highly philosophical considerations), but it is
now subordinate to the unfolding narrative ... as we follow the fortunes of
James Kelly, a self-styled philosopher, through successive love-affairs which
clash with his loyalties to friends and benefactors alike, culminating in
deception and tragedy for all concerned.
One would think that CROSS-PURPOSES was a
philosophical-novel-turned-romance, and so, up to a point, it is. But it is also a tribute, in no small measure,
to both Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller; though one
might be forgiven for detecting an implicit condemnation of the latter in the
'Paris chapter', as I like to think of Chapter 7, where Kelly's attitude to
sexual promiscuity is concerned!
However, that is still my favourite chapter in what is probably my best
novel.
OPUS
10
AN INTERVIEW REVIEWED:
This novel was written just after the above and is both more complex and
subtler than its stylistic precursor.
Basically, the plot revolves around the efforts of Anthony Keating, a
young correspondent for an arts periodical based in London's West End, to
conduct a prearranged interview with
world-famous composer Howard Tonks when, to his
dismay, the person who would normally have conducted the interview had gone
down with influenza at the last moment.
Due to lack of experience in this field
Keating fails to complete his assignment on the specified day and is
obliged to accept an alternative date for later that same week, when Tonks is due to return from a professional engagement in
Birmingham. However, the composer is
detained there an extra day and, due to a combination of unforeseen factors,
Keating ends-up seducing his daughter ... with disastrous consequences for both
of them! For they are discovered in flagrante
delicto by Mr Tonks'
elderly housekeeper, and word eventually gets back to the composer himself,
causing serious allegations and misunderstandings which put not only the
interview but Keating's very career as a correspondent for 'Arts Monthly' in
jeopardy. Ultimately only Howard Tonks' daughter, Rebecca, can save Keating from additional
humiliation, but not before several turns in the plot have led him into deeper
trouble with his boss and colleagues, and duly resulted in his dismissal. However, thanks to Rebecca's influence with
her father, the interview eventually goes ahead, and the resulting dilemma for
'Arts Monthly' is whether to publish or shelve it in view of the surrounding
circumstances and the dismissal of its principal instigator from his post. It is the composer himself, however, who has
the final say, and it comes as both a shock and a delight to Anthony Keating.
- Those looking for philosophy in AN
INTERVIEW REVIEWED will find much food for thought, as will those for whom
humour is a sine qua non of literary entertainment.
OPUS
11
A VISIT TO HELL: My
first real collection of short prose, written during the autumn of 1979,
combines literary and philosophical themes.
Surprisingly, the overall result is not displeasing and, although the
subject-matter and settings of one or two of the contents are slightly dated,
the best of them retain a freshness and relevance to the contemporary and, I
hope, future world which should stand them in good stead for several years
to-come. Of the eight examples included,
I especially recommend the title piece, 'A Visit to Hell', as a reflection,
albeit slightly distorted by literary licence, of contemporary life in all its
diabolical frenzy and hell-bent cacophony!
OPUS
12
THE TRANSCENDENTAL FUTURE:
This collection of philosophical writings, dating from 1980, begins with an
introductory essay and progresses through some five lengthy dialogues. Subjects tackled include spiritual truth,
environmental transformations, the concept of a transcendent future, psychic
evolution, and the rise of transcendentalism in art. In sum, THE TRANSCENDENTAL FUTURE is a far from
definitive but nonetheless highly engaging and sometimes mind-boggling debate
on a variety of controversial issues.
OPUS
13
THWARTED AMBITIONS:
This, the first of three loosely-related novels written in 1980 and dealing
with art and artists, is the tragic and, in some sense, pathetic account of a
young artist by name of Robert Harding who is so obsessed with advancing his
career ... that he becomes blind to the sexual machinations of Henry Grace, a
wealthy and influential art critic, to seduce him whilst ostensibly posing as
his admiring patron. For Grace seems to
be just the answer to Harding's professional ambitions, and the artist allows
himself to be led from commission to commission by the older man without the
slightest suspicion of what the latter is really all about. But it is Carol, Harding's modelling
girlfriend, whose suspicions are first aroused and, together with both the
writer Andrew Doyle, who is Harding's next-door neighbour, and a professional
acquaintance of hers, she plots to thwart Grace's sexual ambitions - with
tragic consequences for the critic, as things turn out in this far from
implausible narrative!
OPUS
14
SECRET EXCHANGES: An artist is invited by his girlfriend to visit her parents in
the provinces and, failing to get on with her father, duly finds himself
inviting her mother to his London studio where, to his shame, he allows himself
to be seduced by her whilst apparently teaching her to meditate. Thereafter things go from bad to worse for
Matthew Pearce, not to mention his girlfriend's mother, whose tetchy and ailing
husband has discovered what he believes to be concrete evidence of her
infidelity. Yet Deirdre Evans is
determined to capitalize on Matthew's previous hospitality, just as the latter
is having serious doubts not only about her but, thanks in part to their
affair, about his relationship with her daughter, Gwendolyn, as well! Then, one evening, a friend of Gwen's turns
up at his place and, before long, she precipitates him into a new and more
passionate affair - in fact, the kind of affair for which he had been hoping
all along! So now it seems he can
dispense with both Gwen and her mother and take up with Linda instead -
provided, however, that she can secure a divorce from her husband on grounds of
incompatibility. For Linda Daniels is
also a married woman, and, like Mrs Evans, the man to whom she is married
proves himself to be no friend of Matthew Pearce! Could that be the main motive for Pearce's
willingness, bordering on recklessness, to enter into affairs with both
women? The reader is left to decide this
and so much else for himself in what is, by any
account, an ironic commentary on human relationships and their social and
ideological interactions!
OPUS
15
LOGAN'S INFLUENCE:
Invited to a party by his friend, Martin Thurber, the avant-garde writer Keith
Logan quickly begins to turn their host against him by his radical views on
God, evolution, religion, literature, etc., with a result that he quite spoils
the party atmosphere for Edward Hurst, and unwittingly puts the future of
Thurber's employment as an art critic for Hurst's magazine in jeopardy ...
when, under duress of a hangover the following morning, the publisher decides
to dispense with his art reviews partly in revenge for the intellectual
humiliations inflicted upon him by Logan the previous night. Yet Hurst has a crush on Thurber's
girlfriend, who was also at the party, and, bumping into him in the street one
afternoon, Greta Ryan elects to place her body at Hurst's disposal if only he
will agree not to take any disciplinary action against Thurber. Reluctantly,
OPUS
16
FROM THE DEVIL TO GOD:
Largely following-on from the above, this collection of short prose, written on
and off during the winter of 1980-1, starts in a relatively literary fashion
with the account of a clandestine visit of a masseuse to a priest who can no
longer cope with his celibacy, and ends in a profoundly futuristic manner with
an account of evolutionary progress towards a definitive Beyond, as envisaged
by a radical philosopher. In between
there comes a fairly balanced alternation between literary and philosophical
subjects ... as we follow the voyeuristic pleasures of a man covertly watching
his wife getting dressed from the comfort of his early-morning bed; explore the
evolutionary revelations of a de Chardinesque gnostic in the face of atheistic unbelief; witness the
horror of a Mondrianesque ascetic, whose rural
daytrip out of London with some friends proves to be more unsettling than he
had bargained for; and go beyond conventional concepts of the Millennium, as of
Millennialism, with a revolutionary thinker who believes that only when human
brains are artificially supported and sustained will there be any prospect of
heavenly salvation of a definitive order.
OPUS
17
SUBLIMATED RELATIONS: A
young religious writer named Timothy Byrne accepts an invitation from Lord Handon, an aristocratic admirer of his work, to spend New
Year's Eve in the company of a select gathering at Rothermore
House, Handon's country retreat, and winds up first
dancing and then falling in love with one of his fellow guests, who happens to
be an opera singer. Much debate and
festivity take place before Timothy discovers, in conjunction with the other
guests, that the real motive for their presence there is to learn of and offer
his services to the 'Voice Museum', an extraordinary project situated in
London's Piccadilly which houses voice recordings of famous people in
soundproofed booths where, for a small sum, the public can sample words of
wisdom and/or folly at the touch of a button.
Thus it is that Timothy Byrne agrees to allow his voice to be recorded
for future use by the museum's principal director, Girish
O'Donnell - as, of course, do each of the other guests, all of whom are either
established or budding talents in the arts.
Meanwhile Lord Handon has been attempting to
conduct a low-key relationship with Sarah Field, the opera singer, though with
little success, in view of her preference for Timothy and knowledge of the
viscount's secret - a secret which has more than a little to do with the
strange nature of his relations, necessarily sublimated, with women. Equally unsuccessful are Handon's
attempts to subvert Byrne's spiritual standing as a self-styled guru through
his daughter, Geraldine, though, unbeknown to anyone else, the writer has
already undermined it through Sarah and has no need of further seductions! Another of my philosophic-turned-romantic
novels, SUBLIMATED RELATIONS is nevertheless much bolder and freer than the
others.
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18
THE WAY OF EVOLUTION:
Dating from 1981, this collection of nine essays is thematically more
homogeneous than those included in THE FALL OF LOVE, and reflects a more
optimistic outlook on evolutionary progress, as something which should
culminate in a future paradise having nothing whatsoever to do with the cosmic
inception of life. Art, literature,
music, sex, gender, history, technology, and religion are the principal themes
under consideration here, and they are generally treated in relation to my
philosophy of evolution, which owes not a little, in its origins, to the
estimable likes of Nietzsche, Spengler, and Theilhard de Chardin. As usual for my work of this period, THE WAY
OF EVOLUTION ends with a series of maxims, which both summarize and encapsulate
its overall philosophy.
OPUS
19
DREAM COMPROMISE: This collection
of short prose, dating from the autumn of 1981, includes what is arguably the
most literary piece I have ever written - namely 'A Canine Crime', which deals
with the problems of dog ownership in an age and society which has turned
against such a thing, making it illegal.
Also of special note here is the fetishistically
erotic 'Nolan's Investigations', which opens the collection,
and the partly autobiographical title piece 'Dream Compromise', which has a
trick in its tail, so to speak.... As, incidentally, does the volume as a
whole, in that it ends with a series of aphorisms, in keeping with the broadly
philosophical bias of my maturer literary works.
OPUS
20
DECEPTIVE MOTIVES: With
an opening chapter that highlights the duplicity of a husband towards his wife,
this novel builds on the marital dissatisfactions and grudges of its principal
heroine, Julie Foster, and couples them to the literary and social
dissatisfactions, grudges, etc., of one Peter Morrison, an unpublished and
seemingly unpublishable writer, as the two characters
bump into each other in a restaurant, after many years, and Julie agrees to
accompany Morrison back to his squalid flat where, contrary to her
expectations, he simply proceeds to expatiate on his political and philosophical
views, and to disburden himself of a number of anti-social grudges. He does, however, invite her to visit him
again and, to his surprise, she accepts the invitation and turns up a couple of
days later. This time they get down to
some serious sexual congress but, in the process, Julie impulsively reveals
that she is married and Morrison, aghast at her deception, loses his temper and
proceeds to strangle her. Overcome with
remorse, he attempts to mollify Julie, now a corpse, by taking photographs of her
in a variety of erotic poses, and is then faced with the unsavoury task of
disposing of her body. However, an old
friend of Julie's becomes suspicious by her failure to turn up at a
pre-arranged rendezvous and, aware from a prior phone conversation that Julie
was intending to visit Morrison, begins to make inquiries about him from what
little information she has. Eventually,
she tracks him down to his latest address and, mindful of the fact that he once
had amorous leanings towards her, falls into a frantic sexual coupling with
him. Things are looking good for Peter
at this point but, whilst he is out of the room, Deirdre discovers photographic
evidence of Julie's murder and proceeds to accost him with it on his
return. Unable to calm her down or explain
away the evidence, he is obliged to kill her too, thus saddling himself with
the problem of disposing of yet another corpse!
Subsequently he moves to
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21
THE IMPORTANCE OF
TECHNOLOGY: Written in the winter of 1981-2, this collection of dialogues is
more stylistically and thematically evolved than those included in THE
TRANSCENDENTAL FUTURE, with subjects ranging from the significance of spiritual
development to the nature of philosophical truth, the unitary goal of
evolution, different types of decadence, and the parallels between literary
figures such as Henry Miller and Malcolm Muggeridge. Also featured, as per custom, is an
aphoristic appendix, which both subsumes and expands on a variety of the
subjects under discussion.
OPUS
22
STRESSING THE ESSENTIAL:
This little collection of twenty-five mainly philosophical poems, written
during 1982, should confirm, more than anything, that I had considerably
deepened my approach to and concept of poetry since DOSSHOUSE BLUES, and the
result should not prove displeasing to anyone who would prefer to see me, as I
myself do, primarily as a philosopher (albeit a self-taught one) who
occasionally dabbles in other things, poetry not excepted. Doubtless the fact that I am an Irish citizen
who, brought to England as a young child, has spent the greater part of his
life in exile from his native country ... has something to do with this
paradoxical state-of-affairs, since one is often exposed to contrary influences
and predilections, both natural and artificial, neither of which greatly
ingratiates one to less complex or, perhaps I should say, paradoxically
confused people? Be that as it may, I
accept that I have, at various times in my life, been prepared to dabble in
poetry, even if from a philosophic rather than a strictly poetic standpoint,
since the adoption of alternative genres makes for variety both in the
presentation and conception of one's thought, and that can be most beneficial
to the writer himself, who could otherwise bog down in one mould and grow stale
or bored, as the case might be. STRESSING
THE ESSENTIAL, the first of four collections of philosophical poems written in
successive years, precluded me from experiencing such a stultifying fate, and
was thus of indirect benefit to my philosophical will. It was not, however, any the less easy to
write!
OPUS
23
FUTURE TRANSFORMATIONS:
This volume of philosophy, combining essays, dialogues, and maxims, goes way
beyond the scope of my earlier philosophical works in outlining what I consider
to be the logical stages of evolution beyond man which will have to be passed
through before definitive salvation can be achieved in a transcendent goal of
evolution ... analogous to Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point.
One could say that I have attempted to concretize Nietzschean notions
concerning man's overcoming ... in respect of specific post-human stages. Hitherto, when I wrote about more advanced
stages of life, it was generally within the scope and definition of man. Here, by contrast, the attainment to a more
artificial stage of evolution is, ipso facto, chronologically beyond
man and thus implicitly post-human. Such
was the revolutionary break with my earlier thinking which occurred early in
1982, and it is, I believe, of momentous significance! Henceforth my philosophical task was largely
to be a refinement upon and modification of contentions outlined here. Obviously, in the many years that have passed
since then, several changes, some of them quite drastic, have occurred in my
perspective. But the beginnings of my
mature philosophical oeuvre are here, in FUTURE TRANSFORMATIONS, and it
was from this time onwards that I began to grow into what I like to think of as
a sort of messianic self-awareness.
OPUS
24
FALSE PRETENCES: Written
in the late-Spring of 1982, this novel has something of a Spring-like
ebullience about it which takes us to the Norfolk countryside and to the
stratagems of a radical writer-turned-artist by name of Jason Crilly (who for the most part remains veiled behind
first-person narrations) to shake off a depression he contracted while living
alone in an insalubrious part of North London.
His wife Susan, whom he married shortly after moving to
OPUS
25
BECOMING AND BEING:
Divided into two parts, the first of which is autobiographical and the second
biographical, this project strives to outline my development as a writer and
the influences, both literary and philosophical, which shaped me over the years
leading up to 1982. The first part,
containing subjects ranging from sex and politics to health and writers, is
slightly Nietzschean in its speculative approach to autobiography, while the
second and more voluminous part, which deals with the estimable likes of John
Cowper Powys, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul
Sartre, Arthur Koestler, Lawrence Durrell,
Henry Miller, and George Orwell, is intended to provide a biographical summary
and fairly blunt appraisal of authors whose works were to inspire me during my
formative years as a writer. It is as
though they were the beings whom I was eventually destined to become or,
rather, that I became being - and hence a writer - through them. Finally, there is an appendix comprised of a
list of reading material borrowed from Hornsey Library over a twelve-year
period from 1977-89, which should intrigue those interested to discover how a
self-taught, and even self-made, person can fare with regard to the acquirement
of a literary culture that owes little or nothing to school or college.
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26
POST-ATOMIC
PERSPECTIVES: Combining maxims with aphorisms, essays, and dialogues, this work
goes beyond the scope of my previous philosophical projects in both its form
and content, opening out towards a post-atomic future in what amounts to an
entirely new civilization. As conceived of
here, the aphorisms are slightly longer and freer than the maxims and thus
lead, logically enough, to the essays, which constitute Part Three of the
book. Subjects include the direction of
literature in the civilization to come; the transitional nature of contemporary
literature; revelations concerning future life forms and their relationship to
what is called the Ultimate Creation; the nature of divine love in relation to
other types of love and its bearing on messianic credibility; antithetical
equivalents - such as birds and planes or horses and motorbikes - in the
evolution of human and other life; how the State 'withers' and why; the
paradoxical allegiance of Christian pagans, or so-called Christians whose
loyalty is rather more to the Creator than to Christ; and transcendental transvaluations in a world that has largely turned its back
on nature. Part Four is comprised of
four dialogues, which continue the philosophical debate in a slightly more
dramatic vein.
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27
POST-ATOMIC INTEGRITIES:
This little novella, based around an autobiographical fantasy, shares with
FALSE PRETENCES the stylistic device of first-person narrative, and relates the
nocturnal visit of an old acquaintance to the flat of an admirer who had
optimistically written to her in the hope of receiving a positive response. What follows is a romantic pact in which
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28
MILLENNIAL PROJECTIONS:
This fictional compilation, dating from 1982, combines some sixteen short-prose
pieces with subjects ranging from musical evolution to Christmas trees, Black
Holes to Esperanto, and space travel to modern art. Of this number, my favourite is the title
piece, a fantasy projection into a millennial future in which we enter the mind
of a superman who is preparing to undergo an 'acid trip', view life in what is
called the 'post-human millennium' from a spiritual leader's standpoint as he
grapples with his counselling responsibilities vis-à-vis the superhuman flock,
and sample a controller's perspective on post-human life from the
administrative sidelines. One could
argue that this is my Brave New World, but it was with a view to refuting
Huxleyite cynicism that I set out to fashion so
positive a futuristic projection.
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29
SPIRITUAL INTIMATIONS:
Comprised of thirty-four poems, this collection of verse is slightly freer, overall,
than the previous one, and ranges across a wide variety of topics ... from
politics and sex to literature and money ... in what I prefer to regard as a
loosely poetic way, though not one devoid of stylistic methodology or thematic
consistency!
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30
THE WILL TO TRUTH: My
main philosophical project of 1983 combines dialogues and essays with aphorisms
and maxims in a four-part volume of which essays form the greater
proportion. However, nine dialogues is
no mean undertaking, and they range from subjects as diverse, albeit
interrelated, as the freeing of art from mundane attachments as it evolves from
pagan to transcendental times; the distinction between Jews and Israelis; the
development of awareness at the expense of feeling in art; the moral implications
of sexual sublimation; the evolutionary struggle from gravity to curved space;
the development of religion from the personal to the universal; the nature of
petty-bourgeois art; the possibility of denominational progress in Western
religion; and the apotheosis of the 'universal man'. Such, then, is the scope of Part One, while
Part Two enlarges on many of the subjects touched upon in the dialogues, as
well as introduces a number of new ones, including the main distinction between
Christianity and Transcendentalism; the psychology of swearers;
the irrelevance of punishment to a transcendental society; architectural and
sartorial relationships to gravity both upwards and downwards; understanding
Jazz in relation to other types of modern music; the distinction between
philosophy and pseudo-philosophy; and the nature of ultimate music. Originally intended as a sort of sequel to
the above, Parts Three and Four move us from the phenomenal realm of dialogues
and essays to what I like to think of as the noumenal realm of aphorisms and
maxims, in which the will is One with the truth it strives to convey through
the most concise means and is, if not Truth itself, then at any rate certainly
truthful! Subjects treated here include
the relation between sexuality and dress; the nature of the self; the
significance of Israel; the role and nature of worship in popular religion;
poetry verses philosophy; the evolution of the arts; the metaphysics of modern
music; the psyche; God; ideology; and gender.
Although THE WILL TO TRUTH should not be taken for the Truth, it
signifies a significant stage on the road to my achievement of greater degrees
of philosophical truth in due course, and is certainly more radical than
anything preceding it in this field.
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31
A SELFISH MAN: Another
volume of short prose, in which a number of my principal philosophical themes
are recycled in literary guise for the benefit of a wider understanding, A
SELFISH MAN begins with the title piece, a first-person narrative by an advocate
of spiritual selfishness, and winds its way through fifteen other examples of
my art in this field, culminating in a section of interior monologues which
features twelve different thinkers who successively elaborate on their likes
and dislikes from a similar ideological standpoint, thereby establishing a
unity of mind which transcends their phenomenal separatenesses. In between these two extremes there are
varying amounts of unity and disunity between the characters, but all are
caught in the throes of a vigorous philosophical debate. For here, as in other kindred works, action
is subordinate to thought, whether we are dealing with a drive to the cinema, a
couple watching television, reflections on a soapbox orator, a clandestine
affair, or the vicissitudes of a revolutionary politician. Sometimes the characters have names,
sometimes not. Sometimes they are a
fairly transparent projection of me, at other times a degree of fictional
objectivity has gone into their fashioning.
Whatever the case, A SELFISH MAN, dating from 1983, bears ample witness
to this philosopher-artist's search for literary perfection through thought.
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ABSTRACTS: The
essayistic introduction to this little collection of abstract poems attempts to
clarify a distinction between poetry and antipoetry,
and then to contrast both of these with what I have termed superpoems
- the abstract poetry of a transcendental age or civilization which strives to
dissolve grammatical appearances into a non-descriptive essence. Whether or not I was successful in my
clarifying endeavour, or even correct in my theorizing at this time (1983),
ABSTRACTS is a collection of poems which, whilst mostly readerly,
is devoid of conventional significance, and therefore has to be read or,
rather, understood in relation to the underlying significance, where apparent,
of the form, which lifts each poem above the usual phenomenal realm of
descriptive poetry towards a transcendent realm of pure abstraction.
OPUS
33
SOCIAL TRANSCENDENTALISM
- 'Means to an End': This collection of essays, dialogues, aphorisms, and
maxims, dating from 1983-4, is largely the reverse, in formal terms, of THE
WILL TO TRUTH, inasmuch as its first part is essayistic and its second part
entirely composed of dialogues, thereby again bringing these two modes of
philosophical phenomenality into harmony or, at any rate, close
juxtaposition. Here, as before, the
essays constitute the main part, and they are once more conceived within the
protective umbrella of a uniform ideology - namely the Social Transcendentalism
which I had been building towards in earlier works but which here comes to
ideological fruition. Thus, whatever the
subject, it is treated from a uniform standpoint, the standpoint of a socially
transcendent outlook upon life, and this even when I am not consciously aware
of the fact. Such an outlook is beyond
humanism and all other worldly ideologies, having to do with evolutionary
striving towards a 'divine kingdom'. Yet
this 'divine kingdom' does not follow death, as we customarily understand it,
but presupposes the ordering of society according to certain idealistic
principles designed to free mankind from its atomic past. Hence in each of these essays and dialogues,
not to mention the ensuing aphorisms and maxims, a Social Transcendentalist
concern with Truth is what really matters, and it is this which leads us
towards the heavenly millennium to-come.
Whether the subject is art, literature, sex, politics, psychology,
drugs, or whatever, the emphasis on Truth from a specific ideological
perspective is what lifts SOCIAL TRANSCENDENTALISM beyond the sterile realm of
intellectual speculation to the potent challenge of universal freedom.
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34
BEYOND THE PALE -
'Growth of a Messiah': Comprised of various autobiographical sketches, this
literary work is divided into four sections, the first dating from 1983, the
second from 1985, the third from 1993, and the fourth from 1996. These sketches are written in the notational
vein of my mature philosophy (especially from 1985 onwards) and often overlap
with general speculations on a variety of subjects which have played a
significant role in my personal life.
Thus they are anything but purely autobiographical, although
autobiography forms the basis of this project, which is certainly beyond the
pale of 1983 so far as three of the four sections are concerned.
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THE MODERN DEATH: Dating
from 1984, this collection of forty-four poems continues in the free-verse style
of SPIRITUAL INTIMATIONS, albeit the verse is at all times prevented from
degenerating into prose through the application of a methodological consistency
which continues to favour the definite/indefinite article at the expense of
lesser words. More significant of this
collection is its greater concern with metaphysics, or subatomic theories,
which, though far from definitive, enabled me to dig beneath the surface of my
themes to what I hoped would be their spiritual depths. In retrospect, I can see how much ground I
still had to cover, or perhaps I should say unearth? in
order to arrive at the Truth. But this
was still a significant stage in my progress as a metaphysician, even if it
took a poetic turn.
OPUS
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THE POLITICS OF
SEXUALITY: A six-chapter novella of first-person and loosely autobiographical
tendency, THE POLITICS OF SEXUALITY explores the concept of sexual politics, or
the notion that every mode of politics has a sexual corollary. Although such an idea was by no means new to
my work at this time (1984), it hadn't been explored to anything like the same
extent before, and it is a theme to which I have since returned quite
frequently, always seeking to improve upon my initial theories, which, through
bitter experience over the years, I've learnt to regard as more of a
springboard to better things than as a definitive statement.
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A TRUE EXTREMISM: This
collection of fifteen short-prose pieces puts my ideological philosophy through
a literary prism, as we explore a variety of interrelated themes from a loosely
fictional standpoint. In fact politics,
whether associated with a correlative mode of sexuality or not, also figures
quite prominently here, though usually in connection with Social Transcendentalism,
which is both political and more than political. Those especially interested in philosophy
will find the last three titles in this collection particularly intriguing,
since they were conceived in a loosely aphoristic vein, the final one being a
kind of oblique tribute to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
OPUS
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EVOLUTION: The sixteen
prose poems here should be ideally suited to those who prefer their poetry
prosy and mainly concerned with philosophical issues or, at any rate, with a
philosophical treatment of issues and subjects that could be treated more
frivolously, if one lacked the intellectual machinery and moral insight with
which to tackle them in this way. I
suspect that my first attempt at prose poems, back in DOSSHOUSE BLUES
(1973-5), was more poetically frivolous than is to be found here, though that
would be in keeping with my work of the period.
Ten years later and the results are far more interesting, with perhaps a
little hint of Baudelairian influence here and there,
albeit without conscious intention on my part.
However that may be, these prose poems are not essays, whatever
appearances might suggest to the contrary, but painfully contrived pieces which
never part company with the context in which they were conceived.
OPUS
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TREES: It seems that I add
ten poems to each new volume of poetry, for this collection has some fifty
four, dating from 1985, which carry on, both stylistically and thematically,
from approximately where those in THE MODERN DEATH leave off, with, if
anything, a slightly deeper metaphysical and ideological bias. The title derives, as usual, from one of the
poems, and has to be read to be believed!
OPUS
40
CONTEMPLATIONS: Unlike
my previous collection of abstract poems, simply called ABSTRACTS, this project
is non-readerly and hence abstract in a patterned and
completely formal way such that requires nothing more than contemplation, as
suggested by the title, of its monosyllabic structures. Thus all 395 (divided into 3 volumes) of these
lower-case poems are intended to assist one in developing a contemplative
frame-of-mind at the expense of readerly norms,
thereby transcending the intellect in what could be regarded as a mode of
literary salvation.
OPUS
41
PORTRAITS: Comprising
thirty-three biographical sketches of some of the twentieth-century's most
influential and powerful people in both politics and the arts, including
Hitler, Stalin, de Valera, Mussolini, de Gaulle,
André Malraux, Bertrand Russell, Dali, Lenin, Simone
de Beauvoir, and David Ben-Gurian,
PORTRAITS (1985) seeks to provoke as well as to praise, and should prove of
interest to those who are curious to learn how various exceptional men - and
one exceptional woman - measure up to a Social Transcendentalist analysis or,
more correctly, to the scrutiny of someone who approaches life from a specific
ideological standpoint with a view to measuring the achievements of others in
relation to it. Although I had dealt
with some of the subjects, including Sartre, Huxley, and Durrell
before (see BECOMING AND BEING), my treatment of them here is much more
subjectively critical and thus a reflection, in large measure, of the way my
thinking had progressed in the intervening three years since my earlier
excursion into biography which, characteristic of a more relativistic approach
to literature colouring my work at that time, also embraced a series of
autobiographical sketches. No such
relativity applies here, however, although the choice of both politicians and
artists is anything but absolutist.
OPUS
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EVALUATIONS AND
REVALUATIONS: Although a relatively minor work in itself, this volume of
essayistic aphorisms and aphoristic notes is significant inasmuch as it
signifies another of my attempts to approach and develop Truth from a
consistently aphoristic not to say ideological angle, and may be regarded as a
harbinger of the types of projects that were to preoccupy me during the years
1985-93. Divided into two parts, both of
which are largely concerned with evaluating and revaluating various
philosophical positions either already taken or common to my work in general,
it paved the way for the systematic evaluating and revaluating which was to
become so characteristic of my work from now on, and to prove of such
significance in my ability to develop and summarize Truth thereafter. The principal theme and concern of
EVALUATIONS AND REVALUATIONS is Social Transcendentalism and its relation to
what I term 'the Centre' - a politico-religious concept which the ideology in
question wishes to democratically advance at the expense of traditional
state/church relativity.
OPUS
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DEVIL AND GOD - 'The
Omega Book': Originally intended to be my last and ultimate book, this project,
dealing with distinctions between the Devil and God, embraces over 250 supernotes, my definition of which is something that falls
between an essay and an aphorism, not generally as long as the former nor as
short as the latter. In fact, it is the
indeterminacy of this genre which most characterizes DEVIL AND GOD, since one
can proceed straight from a few-line entry to one which is several pages in
length. Also significant of my
definition of supernotes is the fact that they are
anything but scrappy or off-the-cuff, like notes often tend to be, but have
been carefully fashioned with the attention one would give to an essay or an
aphorism. They also follow a strictly
determined philosophical path, not veering wildly between disparate subjects
the way notebooks often do, and are subject to the sort of evaluating and revaluating
I outlined above, so that no theme is ever wholly laid to rest until it has
been explored from a variety of angles and reconsidered in the light of greater
insight. In such fashion, any project
based on these supernotes will have a curvilinear
inner structure which is the product of spiralling ideas, and which contrasts
with the outer, book-based structures more typical of academic or conventional
philosophy. In that respect it is
effectively theosophical.
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FROM MATERIALISM TO
IDEALISM: Akin to the above in structure, this 1986-7 project combines nearly
250 supernotes (or essayistic aphorisms and
aphoristic notes) in its investigation of a wide variety of subjects, with
particular reference to the relationships between materialism, naturalism,
realism, and idealism in what is conceived to be an evolutionary
framework. Hence the
title FROM MATERIALISM TO IDEALISM, in which a fourfold view of history and of
the world is systematically developed.
OPUS
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TOWARDS THE SUPERNOUMENON:
Carrying on from where the above leaves off, this volume of supernotes
is more intensely philosophical, as it introduces to the aforementioned
fourfold structures the concept of devolutionary/evolutionary antitheses in
historical evolution, coupling this to an investigation of certain key
philosophers, including Schopenhauer, and contrasting his noumenal-phenomenal
approach to philosophy with what I have called a superphenomenal-supernoumenal
one intended to illustrate the distinction between 'artificial' modernity and
'naturalistic' antiquity. In this
respect it could be said to reflect a contrast between philosophy, as
traditionally practised by alpha-stemming thinkers like Schopenhauer, and
theosophy, in which an evolutionary drive towards the omega of things is
discernible.
OPUS
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ELEMENTAL SPECTRA:
Dating from 1988-9, this more philosophically advanced work investigates the
significance of the basic elements, viz. air, fire, water, and earth, with
regard to a variety of different contexts, including science, politics,
economics, and religion, and seeks to draw ideological and moral lessons from
the apperceived correlations. Of
additional significance in relation to the elements are the relationships
between being and doing, awareness and emotion, mind and brain, nature and
artifice, and individualism and collectivism.
There is also, within ELEMENTAL SPECTRA, a critique of Arthur Koestler's tripartite theories, as developed in books like The Act of Creation
and Janus - A Summing Up, as well as a
refutation of his psychological pessimism concerning the dichotomous
relationship between what he calls the 'old brain' and the 'new brain'. In fact, Koestler
is no less the principal philosophical target of this work than Schopenhauer
was of the previous one, and although I acknowledge my debt to him as an
influence on my thought, I was able to move beyond him at this point and
accordingly dispense with a number of his theories.
OPUS
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CRITIQUE OF
POST-DIALECTICAL IDEALISM: Although not a critique in the strictly analytical
sense, this work is nonetheless sufficiently methodical and wide-ranging in its
comprehensive treatment of a variety of interrelated subjects to warrant
serious consideration as a vehicle for the advancement, on a Social
Transcendentalist basis, of post-dialectical idealism (truth) in a world too
long torn between the conflicting claims of realism and materialism. Of especial significance here are the T-like
diagrammatic structures which enabled me to flesh-out, in fairly comprehensive
vein, the various components of any given subject and to analyse it in relation
to my overriding idealistic bias.
Subjects tackled include a theory of the connections between a given
mode of attire and the most appropriate approach to sexual intercourse in
relation to it, as well as an investigation of the relationships between
'naturalistic' and artificial products or technologies at both 'head' and
'bodily' levels.
OPUS
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PHILOSOPHICAL TRUTH:
Akin to the above, this work builds from its initial dualistic introduction to
a fully-fledged Social Transcendentalist critique, in which the by-now familiar
quadruple structures of the earlier work are examined in regard to a number of
new contexts, with particular emphasis on music and its relationship to
ideological parallels.
OPUS
49
VERITAS PHILOSOPHICUS:
This book derives its Latin-sounding title from the use of 'V' structures in a
majority of the diagrams which characterize it and which enabled me to approach
Truth from a more systematic and comprehensive standpoint, building on the 'T'
structures common to both the CRITIQUE OF POST-DIALECTICAL IDEALISM and
PHILOSOPHICAL TRUTH (see above), until I had amassed a considerable number of
diagrammatic quadruplicities of the sort deriving
from their 'elemental' theories. Of real
significance here is the modification of perspective which develops from the
use of two different types of diagrammatic structure, and it is characteristic
of my methodology that the earlier perspective is either corrected or refuted,
as we move into a more logically advanced structural mode.
OPUS
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LAST JUDGEMENTS: This is
the final (and shortest) volume of what I now like to loosely think of as 'The
Omega Octet', i.e. all the volumes of supernotes stemming
from DEVIL AND GOD - 'The Omega Book', and, not surprisingly, it tends to sum
up or refine upon a number of the principal theories already discussed, as well
as lay the foundation for the next stage of my philosophical advance.
OPUS
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MAXIMUM TRUTH: If the
essayistic aphorisms and aphoristic notes of 'The Omega Octet' are of
indeterminate length, then what follows here, dating from 1993, is of an
aphoristic purism which allows for little or no deviation from the basic form. One could say that I had passed through the
darkness into the full light(ness) of Truth at this
point, and the result is a vindication not only of the aforementioned octet,
but of my entire philosophical quest to-date.
Comprised of 707 maxims which have been given 'a/b' subdivisions,
MAXIMUM TRUTH succeeds in achieving the sort of metaphysical comprehensiveness
which I had been struggling towards all along.
One could say that it signifies a refinement upon the essayistic
aphorisms and aphoristic notes of 'The Omega Octet', though the tendency to
recycle ideas, by now a veritable principle of my work, persists here to even
greater effect, insofar as it was this technique that made the attainment of
what is in some respects a maximum degree of truth possible.
OPUS
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TRUTHFUL MAXIMS:
Following on from the above, this text is written on a slightly more
straightforward, though no less truth-intensive basis, and extends beyond most
of the material contained in MAXIMUM TRUTH.
It is also comprised of 707 numbered maxims.
OPUS
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INFORMAL MAXIMS: This
collection of maxims, also dating from 1993, continues from where the above
left off, and does so in a similar, albeit less stylistically intensive vein,
achieving what I hold to be the elaboration and exploration of a conceptual comprehensiveness
quite unique to philosophy. Comprised of nearly 600 maxims, some of which are slightly longer
than in the earlier compilations, INFORMAL MAXIMS duly paved the way for
MAXIMUM INFORMALITY (see below).
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MAXIMUM INFORMALITY: The
text of this work is not only stylistically less formal but thematically more
complex, as we proceed through over 1000 maxims of disparate length in what is,
by any standards, a demandingly mind-expanding philosophical adventure!
OPUS
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SUPERCONTEMPLATIONS:
This little collection of non-readerly abstract
poems, also dating from 1993, is comprised of sixty poems utilizing a
combination of lower and upper case monosyllabic words, thereby extending
beyond the lower-case scope of CONTEMPLATIONS (1985) into more complex and
aesthetically-gratifying examples of the genre.
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FROM SATAN TO SATURN:
Conceived in a loosely cyclical form, this 1994 project harks back to the works
comprising essayistic aphorisms and aphoristic notes in respect of the greater
variety of length and treatment between the contents, some of which are
arguably aphoristic, others essayistic, but all of which thematically carry-on
from my previous philosophical work in a no-less comprehensively methodical
vein.
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FROM PUNISHMENT TO
GRACE: Akin to the above in structure, FROM PUNISHMENT TO GRACE develops its
curvilinear style through some seventy-two cycles each comprised of a number of
aphorisms, which continue my quest for philosophical perfection along both old
and new channels of speculative investigation.
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ULTRACONTEMPLATIONS:
Another and more structurally advanced example of my non-readerly
style of abstract poetry, ULTRACONTEMPLATIONS (1994) is comprised of some
sixty-four poems which have been entirely constructed, along monosyllabic
lines, with the use of upper-case characters, thereby passing beyond the
mixed-case style of SUPERCONTEMPLATIONS to what I regard as a conceptual
plateau of poetic abstraction.
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OCCASIONAL MAXIMS: This
1994 project is composed of some 323 notational maxims of variable length and
quality, most of which are nevertheless significantly more complex than
anything previously attempted in the genre, with subjects, as usual, ranging
right across my philosophical spectrum, from science and politics to economics
and religion.
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MAXIMUM OCCASIONS: This
text, comprised of over 170 maxims of which not a few are virtually essayistic,
is in effect largely a refutation of OCCASIONAL MAXIMS ... as we move from a philosophical
bias to one that is effectively theosophical, and develop, in the process, an
enhanced sense of logic which both contrasts with and complements a number of
the earlier contentions.
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LAST (W)RITES:
Continuing the revolutionary transvaluations
characteristic of the above, LAST (W)RITES returns us, in due cumulative
fashion, to the cyclical style adopted in FROM PUNISHMENT TO GRACE, albeit with
the use of side titles rather than numerals, and with a view to bringing to
completion a task which really began several years ago ... when I boldly set
out on the long and difficult path that leads to Truth. Little did I realize, at the time, that not
only would I eventually get to the Truth (which, in any case, I maintain no-one
had previously done to anything like the same extent) but ... actually overhaul
it, in what is effectively a literary parallel to Heaven.
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ETERNAL LIFE - 'Supernotes From Beyond': Progressing through 125 cycles of
essayistic aphorisms/aphoristic notes, ETERNAL LIFE ... brings my philosophy to
a theosophical head in what is arguably one of the most thematically perfect of
all my works and one which, so I believe, should stand near the conceptual apex
of my oeuvre,
as I both sum up and elaborate on and/or revaluate previous truths with a view
to advancing the cause of eternal life in a world which is still, alas, all too
temporal!
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BOOK OF BELIEFS - 'The Omegala': More informally cyclic than the above, this 1996
project combines aphorisms with notes in what is one of the most
comprehensively exacting and demanding of all my works, but also, in the long
run, one of the most thematically rewarding.
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OMEGA MAXIMS: Dating
from 1996, OMEGA MAXIMS is a further instalment of the aphoristic purism to which
I had last committed my pen with MAXIMUM OCCASIONS, and constitutes what I
regard as the best work of its kind prior to its companion text MAXIMUM OMEGA
(see below). In all, there are over 1000
maxims in this project.
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MAXIMUM OMEGA: Also dating
from 1996, this work constitutes possibly my finest collection of maxims, doing
more justice to Truth, and thus philosophy, than any of the previous works,
including the cyclical ones mentioned above.
In fact, here at last, in this collection of 575 maxims, is my magnum
omega, bringing to completion, in this particular genre, my quest for
philosophical perfection through what is arguably the most advanced philosophy
ever elaborated.
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OMEGANOTES OF AN
IDEOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHER: Despite the above, 1996 saw me bring to a close a
further instalment of philosophical writings which rose above what I had
already achieved in terms of the degree to which I was able to refine upon and
perfect my concept of Truth, bringing to a head my quest for the most
exactingly comprehensive and logically definitive text, a text both more
thematically essential and structurally informal than ever before, and one
which was to serve as a springboard to the two texts listed below. Such, at any rate, is how these OMEGANOTES
... now strike me, as I cast my mind back over the torturous paths that were to
lead to the definitive realization of Truth and set me free of metaphysical
uncertainties.
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REVOLUTIONS OF AN
IDEOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHER: One could regard this 1997 project as being
conceptually similar to the OMEGANOTES ... mentioned above, since it is no less
essential and informal in structure, and just as thematically exacting in the
extent to which philosophical comprehensiveness is achieved at the expense of partisan
or partial perspectives. But it is also
deeper and more radical in its scope, bringing my philosophy to an all-time
peak, as we progress from cycle to cycle in what is, by any standards, a
consummate resolution of the contending elements.
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REVELATIONS OF AN
IDEOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHER: Also written in 1997 and originally intended as a
sequel to the above, this work continues the cyclical progressions from
approximately where they left off in the previous text, with, however, greater
depth and philosophical insight, such that completes a loose trilogy of works
sharing a similar compositional structure.
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THE IDEOLOGICAL
PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL TRANSCENDENTALISM: Structurally following on from the
above, this work enlarges on the scope and content of the aforementioned works,
as we are made aware of the extent to which Social Transcendentalism is both
ideological and philosophical, that is to say practical and theoretical,
serving not merely as a vehicle for Truth, but also, and no less significantly,
as a catalyst for radical social change.
OPUS
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DEISTIC DELIVERANCE VIA
THE IDEOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL TRANSCENDENTALISM: Also penned in 1997,
this work - originally and somewhat over-politically entitled 'Deistic
Liberation' - returns us to a more thematically-oriented cyclical structure of
philosophizing, as it passes beyond a number of formative stages to a
definitive working-out of the ideological philosophy of Social
Transcendentalism in relation to both psychology and psyche, as they impact
upon and are in turn conditioned by both physiological and elemental factors.
OPUS
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ULTRANOTES FROM BEYOND
('The United Kingdom/Ireland'): Abandoning cycles, this collection of what, in relation
to earlier 'notational' integrities, I am wont to regard as ultra-notational
aphorisms, brings to a resounding conclusion my quest for philosophical
perfection, as it addresses a variety of Social Transcendentalist concerns in
relation to 'Kingdom Come', not the least of which being the salvation of what
I have called Subchristians from theocracy, and the
correlative presentation of a meritocratic
alternative to all forms of religious tradition.
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THE SOUL OF BEING:
Conceived in continuous aphoristic terms, this 1998 text is nevertheless
divided into twelve sections, each of which bears a headed title in
quasi-essayistic vein. Examples of such
titles include 'Fair to Life', 'Collective and Individual', 'Self vis-à-vis
Not-Self', 'Form and Content(ment)',
and 'Metaphysical Salvation'. There is
also, at the end, a fairly long appendix which has the merit, not
uncharacteristic of my appendices, of both summing up the text and, in this
particular case, illustrating the reculer pour mieux sauter, or stepping back
in order to leap forward, attitude which underlines much of the foregoing
philosophy. Certainly this text goes
deeper than the previous one ever did, in terms of its understanding of the self
and the methodology of self-actualization or realization by which the bridge
from ego to soul is crossed.
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THE CORE OF THE SELF:
Continuing on from above, this further text in my philosophical or, as I now
prefer to think of it, superphilosophical journey
brings us, via twenty-three headed sections numbered afresh in each case, to
the 'Core of the Self', the 'Holy Grail' of self-fulfilment which lies at
journey's end as its heavenly reward.
Although principally concerned, like the previous text, with the self,
this work does more justice to the totality of the self, including, for
virtually the first time, the id, which it analyses both in relation to the
self as a whole and to modern society, with particular reference to the West. The id, however, is not the 'Holy Grail' of
self-fulfilment for me but, rather, the antithesis of the soul which needs to
be guarded against and, if possible, transcended in favour of that path which
truly leads to the 'Core of the Self'.
Let the reader judge for himself as to the
success of my journey and the sincerity of my conclusions!
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THE KINGDOM OF THE SOUL:
With implications that stretch into 'Kingdom Come', this text adds one or two
fresh ideas to the above, as well as highlighting the extent to which kingdoms,
when genuine, are commensurate with one or another extreme of the self. The extreme I favour is, of course, alluded to in the title, and it is one that I believe could
have wider application than simply to the
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TERMINOLOGICAL
DICTIONARY OF SOCIAL TRANSCENDENTALISM: Conceived in alphabetical order, this
'dictionary' of my philosophy ranges from A - Z in what is arguably the most
thematically comprehensive and structurally definitive of all my texts, one
that not only sums up the ideological philosophy of Social Transcendentalism
but still manages to refine upon and remodel, in typical cyclic vein, some of
the accepted wisdom of the past, as well - dare I say - as add new material to
the overall corpus of philosophical ideas.
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THE TRIUMPH OF BEING: No
sooner had I completed the above-mentioned TERMINOLOGICAL DICTIONARY ... than a
seismic shift occurred in my thinking not only in regard to the subject of morality,
about which I had theorized on a somewhat different basis in the past, but
also, and more importantly, with regard to such concepts as 'superman', 'supermasculine', 'supernatural', and so on, which, in
long-standing deference to Nietzsche, I had previously taken too much for
granted. Now, with a deeper concept of
nature, I was in a position to revaluate such terms and effectively displace
them from what had been a metaphysical perch, setting up a new evaluation for
that which sensibly pertains to the divine.
The result, not surprisingly, may come as a shock to those who had
supposed me too set in a Nietzschean mould.
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BEYOND IMAGINATION: This
is another high-point in a long and winding philosophical career which has led
this pilgrim, inexorably, towards the 'celestial city' of heavenly truth and
thus towards the omega point of his oeuvre, wherein many subjects are explored
afresh and one or two long-standing assumptions or presumptions summarily
abandoned. Certainly the title was based
on conclusions I had reached about the religiously undesirable nature of
imagery, imagination, and other such appearance-based variations on a common
metachemical theme, from the standpoint of philosophical essence.
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BRINGING THE JUDGEMENT:
This delves deeper into the distinction between primacy and supremacy, the
inorganic and the organic, than any of my previous texts, and arrives at
conclusions which make it impossible to underestimate the part played by
contemporary urban civilization in the destruction, through environmental and
technological factors, of inner harmony and peace. Fortunately a solution to the problem is
offered, but it is not one that is likely to ingratiate those for whom
contemporary materialism is an end-in-itself rather than something to reject in
the interests of self-respect. The
'judgement', however, has yet to come.
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THE TOTALITY OF NATURE:
Each time I write a new book or, rather, word disc, it is as though it were the
literary equivalent of a music CD, with a number of titles that, by and large,
are independent of each other and which encourage one to proceed from one
subject to another in what is invariably a cyclical progression. In this particular project there are some
twenty cycles, all of which are self-sufficient and yet also interrelated in
what becomes a bigger picture of an overall philosophy stretching ever further
omega-wards, as it were, in the quest for ultimate truth and perfection. I needn't elaborate on any of the subjects
here, because most of them will have been explored to some degree in my work
before, but I doubt whether I have ever written or, rather, composed,
methodically and meticulously, anything better, least of all in relation to the
complex philosophical and moral problems posed by the distinction of 'right'
and 'wrong', which here undergoes what I believe to be a morally definitive
presentation.
OPUS
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THE PROMISE OF 'KINGDOM
COME': Similar to the above in structure but more consciously tailored to the
space limitations of aural CD transcription, this work proceeds through nine
cycles with titles ranging from 'The Wisdom of Sensible Truth' to 'Saving
and/or Damning from the World'. Not all
of it, however, is profoundly philosophic, and some lighter material is
certainly provided by 'Bottles, Cans, and Beakers', arguably one of my most
thought-provoking cycles!
OPUS
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THE RIGHT TO SANITY: Yet
another cyclical text of aphoristic purism which goes to the roots of Western insanity
and offers both an explanation of and alternative to the dilemma of what I call
the paradoxical primacy afflicting modern society which, granting undue
prominence to the inorganic, has the effect of twisting moral and other
evaluations towards an anti-natural perspective in which ugliness passes for
beauty and falsity for truth, to name but two categories. Also of especial note in this text is an
attack on what the author likes to think of as the delusion of curved space in
relation to spatial space, and his solution not only to the nature of space as
something divisible between straight and curved, but to the division of time,
volume, and mass along similar gender-based, albeit element-conditioned, lines.
OPUS
82
MAGNUS DEI: With a title that is obviously a pun on 'Agnus Dei', this eighteenth example of my cyclical
philosophy expands on the above to embrace a deeper analysis of the distinction
between 'right' and 'wrong', or immorality and morality, and does so in
relation to a number of dichotomous contexts, including sensuality and
sensibility, competition and cooperation, insanity and sanity, race and
culture. In fact, this text delves into
the racial dichotomy between Nordic and Celtic and seeks to deduce certain
moral distinctions between the two races, as well as to compare them with the
generality of darker races on this planet from what the author contends, on the
basis of metaphorical illustrations, to be a higher racial standpoint. Not least of the subjects under investigation
here is the distinction between immanence and transcendence, which few thinkers
would seem to have treated with the subtlety and profundity it deserves.
OPUS
83
OPUS D'OEUVRE: With
subjects that range from modern architecture and myth to the relationship of sensuality
to sensibility and the evolution of media technology, this text is sufficiently
variegated to be of general interest even if it did not contain material which
expands on the above - as, for example, race - and is instantly recognizable in
relation to the nature and development of my philosophy within an elemental
structure which not only evaluates things or situations from a standpoint based
in the four elements, but embraces a moral evaluation of them on both sensual
and sensible terms in either inorganic or organic contexts. This text certainly does that to a conclusive
degree, and a fuller understanding of some subjects, including literature, the
Arts in general, and the relationship of science to religion or of politics to
economics, would not be possible without such a comprehensive perspective
which, whilst doing justice to every element or subject discussed, never looses
track of its priorities and the goal that such a philosophy inexorably leads to
when, as here, a proper moral and ideological evaluation of the various options
has been systematically undertaken and achieved.
OPUS
84
PATHWAYS TO 'THE
KINGDOM': Composed in part of an overspill from the above and also of several
fresh cycles, this short text expands on the relationship between sin and grace
on the one hand and crime and punishment on the other by incorporating, in more
detail than ever before, anthropomorphic distinctions between Father and Son in
the one case, and Daughter and Mother in the other, showing how such symbols can
be applied to religion and what the consequences are when they are seen in a
religious light. Also of especial
importance here is the correction which I was at last able to make concerning
an old phrase ('salvation from sins and/or punishments of the world') that had
been taken for granted in certain previous texts but was dealt its final
death-blow here in what, with its philosophical consistency and greater
profundity, I like to think of as my ultimate cyclical work.
OPUS
85
PRIVATE OBSERVATIONS - 'Personal
and Universal': Here, at last, is a much more informal and even relaxed work
which enabled me to lay one or two old autobiographical ghosts to rest while
still continuing to haunt the realm of philosophy in no uncertain metaphysical
terms. In fact, it may be that this
further 2001 project enabled me to lay one or two long-standing philosophical
ghosts to rest as well, since I did not shy away from a fresh look at some old
theories and was duly rewarded, I think, by a new perspective on certain things
which I had begun to take - foolishly or naively - for granted, even though my
previous treatment of them had been anything but conventional or standard. I believe that courage is its own reward, and
that he who dares to venture where none has gone before deserves the beneficial
consequences, whatever they may be. All
I can say is that in this text certain very complicated and even paradoxical
philosophical and moral issues have been tackled afresh and solved, to the best
of my ability, in a way and with a structural comprehensiveness which leaves
very little room for dissent. In that, I
think I have achieved, with a text that went on to become more universal than
personal, far more than I could possibly have hoped for at the beginning!
OPUS
86
THE MYTH OF EQUALITY:
Reworking much of the material contained in the above, this text goes deeper
into the distinction between gender-conditioned forms of culture and
civilization, as well as develops a more comprehensive perspective on sin and
grace on the one hand, and crime and punishment on the other, specifically with
regard to a distinction between nature and psyche in both sensuality and
sensibility. Also of special note here
is the departure from previous ascriptions of will, spirit, ego, and soul to
each gender in favour of the modification of psyche attendant upon a natural
bias and, conversely, the modification of nature attendant upon a bias for
psyche. All in all, THE MYTH OF EQUALITY
succeeds in bringing my philosophy to an inequalitarian
and very pluralistic head, such that confirms the desirability of elemental
comprehensiveness on both class- and gender-conditioned terms.
OPUS
87
FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM
- 'The Gender Agenda': Building on the greater comprehensiveness
achieved above, this text returns us to the concept of the triadic Beyond and
explains the distinction, hitherto unstressed, between primary and secondary
forms of both salvation and damnation, according to denominational
predisposition and gender affiliation, within the subdivisions of any given
tier. It also builds upon the dichotomy
between nature and psyche in both sensuality and sensibility to explain in
greater detail why either nature conditions psyche or, more sensibly,
psyche conditions nature. Of course, the
author openly acknowledges the extent to which gender factors-in to the
distinction between free nature and free psyche, but suggests that, through
environmental progress, we have the ability to change
the relationship of the one to the other in the interests of a more sensible
outcome. Finally, he reaffirms
his opposition to religious affiliations based on psychic determinism and
argues in favour of the environmental justification for an ultimate religious
manifestation, within the triadic framework alluded to above, of psychic
freedom, simultaneously restating the terms and means by which this may
officially be brought to pass.
OPUS
88
POINT OMEGA POINT - 'The
Omega Standpoint': This directly follows on from the above text not only with a
deeper understanding of the distinction between Nature and Civilization, but
with greater insight into the division within both Nature and Civilization of sensual
and sensible alternatives, as well as with a wider interpretation of Nature and
Civilization such that brings a more exactingly comprehensive perspective to
bear on each, whilst still adhering to a specific civilized bias, as
before. But as well as an enlargement of
perspective which allows for a sharp differentiation between the natural and
the man-made, there is an enhancement of logic such that clarifies the issues
of salvation and damnation as never before, so that there can be no doubt as to
the issues involved and on what basis a sensible alternative to a sensual
predominance must be achieved, if it is to be achieved. In this respect, the distinction between
freedom and binding, so characteristic of various earlier texts, is less
symptomatic of the one or the other than of both sensual and sensible contexts,
if with vastly different emphases, as described in some detail in what is, by
any accounts, the most lucidly and logically consistent apologetics for an
omega alternative to an alpha-besotted decadence and/or barbarity that could be
imagined. Finally, I have to say that
the appendix is virtually as significant as the work itself in the way in which
it brings to a long-overdue head a dichotomy which until quite recently I
hadn't realized was expressive of a generalization but which at last, in rather
more than Kantian or Schopenhauerian fashion, I was
able to utilize in both concrete and abstract, natural and psychic realms on
terms which do it altogether more specific contextual justice - the dichotomy,
I mean, between the phenomenal and the noumenal which, at long last, I have
decided to bring into line with that elemental comprehensiveness for which, I
hope, my philosophy will be esteemed in times to-come.
OPUS
89
THE OMEGA POINT OF
CULTURAL TRUTH: The real point of this philosophical text becomes obvious
enough as we proceed ever more comprehensively through the elements and their
various subdivisions, and discover the actual basis of the distinction between
soma (formerly nature) and psyche and of how they exist, according to gender,
on both primal and supreme terms. In
fact, this text tightens-up on so many of the theories and findings which
preceded it that it would be difficult to imagine anything tighter and
effectively more definitive in relation to them, since it provides logical
evidence for the distinction between profanity and sanctity as applying not
merely to men, much less women, but also to gods and devils, as explained in
some detail. Yet it also drives home the
real point of cultural truth, contrasting it not merely with the moral
bankruptcy of civilized knowledge, but with the agonizingly annihilating
prospect of those secular realities which hang over the contemporary world in
self-denying philistinism and are likely to claim ever more victims as time
goes by, unless the alternative I have suggested, and advocated all along, is
democratically put in place and permitted to develop in the logical unfolding
of an evolutionary solution to the problem of Man (as defined in the
text). For modern Man is a problem, not
a solution, and until his reign is officially consigned to the rubbish bin of
world history, it is impossible to see a brighter future for mankind in
general, the sort of future outlined in the above title which is but the final
player in the game of life.
OPUS
90
ALPHA AND OMEGA -
'Beginning and End': This work, divided into four evenly-structured parts,
takes a closer look at such age-old questions as to whether mind precedes
matter or matter precedes mind, and answers them in a way which does equal
justice to both, as well as throws new light upon the distinction between 'the
Father' and 'the Son' which amounts, for me, to a complete rejection of my
previous standpoint and a reappraisal of their respective standings on the
basis of a logically incontrovertible insight such that I had been building
towards all along, not least of all in relation to the dissimilar ratios and
significances attaching to soma and psyche according to gender. It is this work above all others that, when
the contents of all four parts have been taken into account and their
conclusions carefully analysed, will expose the humbug of conventional wisdom
and morally challenge all who would stand in the way of evolutionary progress
and seek to undermine that very sharp distinction between right and wrong,
honesty and cowardice, sincerity and hypocrisy, truth and lies.
OPUS
91
VALUATIONS OF A SOCIAL
TRANSCENDENTALIST: Carrying on the multipart style of writing of the above,
this text is divisible into three six-chapter parts entitled 'Revaluations',
'Evaluations', and 'Transvaluations', and therefore approaches
the task outlined in the title from three different standpoints, albeit without
undue inflexibility or too methodical a distinction between them. Nevertheless the result, overall, isn’t
logically displeasing, and each part has something new and different to offer,
not least of all the third, which is closer to the 'transcendentalism' of the
ideological title than to its 'social' aspect in the way the emphasis has been
placed on transvaluating; that is, on shifting the
concept of various notions or ideals or realities from alpha to omega, soma to
psyche, not-self to self, in the interests of a transvaluation
of society along lines likely if not guaranteed to lead to the sort of positive
outcomes which I have identified with virtue and, hence, morality, as befitting
an alternative kind of society to that which generally prevails at present, and
not only in countries or contexts where it is demonstrably official, but also
wherever it exists unofficially in consequence of the overwhelming influences and
pressures which have been brought to bear on virtually all Western societies by
their more powerful neighbours.
Nevertheless this text is by no means defeatist but, on the contrary,
cautiously optimistic as to the prospect of some kind of alternative dispensation,
broadly identified with 'Kingdom Come', for the future. With certain revaluations of previous
philosophical positions taken by me and a number of fresh evaluations also
included along with these transvaluations, I feel
that I can confidently claim to have finally reached the omega point of my
oeuvre, and thus satisfied my claim to messianic credibility, whatever others
may think.
OPUS
92
TOTAL TRUTH: Here at
last, in this four-part work, is the actual omega point of my
philosophical oeuvre as far as the achievement of a definitive insight into the
relationship of freedom to binding in both sensual and sensible contexts is
concerned, with an enhanced sense of the distinction between a variety of terms
that may previously have been used interchangeably or as equivalents. Here, too, I can safely claim to have done
more justice to the conflicting relationships between the individual and
society than in previous texts, as well as developed a superior understanding
as to the desirability of universal culture in the service of genuine religion
for a world that needs to reject its factual and/or illusory shortcomings if
civilization is to attain to its omega point in the blessedness of sensible
freedom and be truly at peace with itself.
OPUS
93
ETHNIC UNIVERSALITY -
'The Next Totalitarianism': Once again I must swallow my words and put aside
claims to any given work being the 'omega point of my oeuvre', for this text
takes my philosophy to an even more definitive level in relation to those attributes of each of the elements which make
will, spirit, ego, and soul possible and jostle for primacy or supremacy,
according to the context, in individuals both separately and collectively, in
civilization as a reflection of one sort of society or another, depending on a
variety of factors, not least of all environmental. But this text is equally definitive in
relation to its understanding of people's civilization and why, despite
appearances to the contrary or what anybody might say, such a largely urban civilization,
built around the proletariat, can only be totalitarian and is, even now,
totalitarian in what most characterizes it and what the author holds to be the
precondition of an ultimate totalitarianism, as alluded to in the title, which
will take this civilization to its omega point and therefore definitive
realization.
OPUS
94
NO MAN-OEUVRE: Conceived
on the more informal basis of the above text, this title lays down the case for
godly rights in relation to the development of globalization to its universal
summation, and contends, with the aid of comprehensive logical structures which
stretch through the elements (in general terms) from cosmic and natural to
human and divine, that since godliness has still not attained to its per se manifestation there
is no reason to regard such godliness as has and does obtain as the end of the
religious road but, rather, to see how religion still has to develop beyond its
traditional structures if God is to supersede and, in a sense, supplant man as
the logical outcome of historical development and, indeed, evolution. To that end, it has been part of the duty of
this text to de-bunk conventional religion, both Western and especially
Eastern, in order to demonstrate that all religions leave something to be
desired from the standpoint of true universality in relation to the final
development of religion, of soulful totalitarianism, in genuinely global terms.
OPUS
95
THE HIGH-WAY OF TRUTH:
Following on from the above, this companion text takes a closer look at people's
civilization as it bears upon the development of globalization, and
distinguishes between national and international forms of 'people's ideology'
in a way that seeks to demonstrate that even here a 'gender war' is in
operation which pits not only Fascism against Communism and Socialism against
Capitalism but the female forms of Fascism and Socialism against their male
counterparts and, conversely, the male forms of Capitalism and Communism
against their female counterparts, with interesting implications for the future
development of ideology as bearing upon the most logically desirable outcome of
such dialectical struggles in relation to the most universally credible form of
globalization. As a corollary of this,
one is left in no doubt that the people who count for most within the framework
of globalization are more likely to be atheistically opposed to traditional and
conventional religion than staunch believers in their deities and even in such
flawed notions as the Second Coming, their own entitlement to godliness - and
hence religion - being a matter of future judgement when they are able to come
into their religious own in consequence of their willingness to take their
global destiny to its universal conclusion.
OPUS
96
THE END OF EVOLUTION: This
text brings my theorizing to a very absolutist head that refines upon the
pluralistic consistency of what has preceded it in relation to the
administrative aside to and the triadic Beyond of 'Kingdom Come', as described
in earlier texts. For the trend of
globalization towards a unitive peak in a more genuine universality at the
expense of both Western and Eastern traditions alike presages a
transcendentalist resolution which
cannot but be equally, if not more, absolutist, and thus beyond both humanistic/nonconformist
relativity and fundamentalist absolutism. Such, then, is the import of this text as
it develops its revolutionary message for the proletariat and enters into a more
complete solidarity with proletarian internationalism than might have been
expected even as recently as a few years ago.
In this respect, too, it signifies a worthy component in the long
struggle for Truth which has characterized this oeuvre over several decades of
consistent philosophizing with the end of a revolutionary transformation of
society always in mind.
OPUS
97
THE VIRTUOUS CIRCLES:
This further text in the ever-advancing oeuvre achieves a more comprehensive understanding
and delineation of both the convolutional realities
of female hegemonic contexts, regarded as vicious circles, and the involutional realities or, rather, idealities
of male hegemonic contexts, regarded as virtuous circles, and therefore as bearing
upon the title in terms of a positive alternative to and solution of the problem, from a male standpoint, of the
vicious circles which are established whenever somatic freedoms take precedence
over their psychic counterparts, as in all heathenistic or secular
societies. It is also subtler in its
understanding of the distinctions between binding and pseudo-freedom as a
precondition of genuine freedom, whether for better, in respect of psyche, or
for worse, in respect of soma. There is
also a certain religiously-oriented terminological comprehensiveness, mirroring
the above-mentioned circles, which does maximum justice to the various
metaphors which are convenient shorthand for gender and class realities and idealities in both sensuality and sensibility, thereby
leaving absolutely no room for doubt as to the significance and status of such
metaphorical terms, irrespective as to which stage of life, from cosmic to suprahuman (cyborg), they can be variously applied. Therefore with careful study there should be
no doubt as to the applicability or significance of these definitions, or how
to distinguish between them on an underlying descriptive basis. In that respect, this text achieves a logical
definitiveness which it would be difficult if not impossible to improve upon,
and may justifiably be regarded as the intellectual culmination-point of my
philosophical oeuvre to-date.
OPUS
98
THE STRUGGLE FOR
ULTIMATE FREEDOM: I ought by now to have learnt my lesson in respect to the
sort of claim made above about definitive texts but, frankly, some further
philosophical progress has been made, if in regard to a revaluation -
evaluating and revaluating being germane to the cyclical structures of my work
- of a quite long-standing evaluation concerning devolution, which only
confirms that intellectual progress happens by degrees and is a long and often
tortuous process during the course of which new insights and logical
configurations come to light which enable one to re-address an old contention
or, in this case, bone of contention, to a more satisfactory resolution....
Which does not mean that progress towards some definitive position is not
possible or is simply a delusion, as some would have us believe, but that it
takes time and involves many rethinks and revaluations along the way such that
only a very brave and honest type of person, more likely male and not overly
concerned with commercial viability or attractiveness, would be capable of
undertaking, given all the complexities involved. Nevertheless further progress or perhaps I
should say redress has emerged here, in this well-nigh definitive text, and it
is to my cyclical credit that I have been able to recycle old material and
thereby fashion something new, not least in respect of a more developed concept
of religious freedom which will require the ideological subordination and even
democratic supersession of political freedoms if
globalization is ultimately to emerge in a more credibly universal guise - a
contention which, although touched upon before, here achieves something like a
definitive presentation.
OPUS
99
APOTHEOSIS OF THE
GNOSIS: If anything seems like a definitive text it is this, which enabled me
to draw the various strands of my philosophy together and to enunciate my
worldview with such logical consistency and comprehensive exactitude ... that I
felt as though nothing significant had been overlooked and there was even room
for one or two long-standing grudges and resentments to be aired in the
interests of enhanced credibility. This,
to me, is akin to a Seventh Heaven, for it is in actuality the seventh text in
the series of similarly-structured aphoristic works stemming from ETHNIC
UNIVERSALITY, the titular independence of all of which is designed to maintain
a sense of and commitment to individualism in the wake of the rather more
closely-collectivized and structurally-integrated texts which, divided into
book-like parts, came to a head with TOTAL TRUTH. What has come to a head here, with APOTHEOSIS
OF THE GNOSIS, is a sense of freedom which owes more to theocracy than to
democracy but could not materialize, in any ultimate form, without the
assistance of democracy. That, in
itself, is not new to my work, but the way it has been described and the extent
to which I have exposed the penalties of not embracing psychic freedom more
absolutely is really quite something else, not least in respect of the covert
subversion of male virtues by female moralities in sensibility which is the
price to be paid in the absence of a more complete freedom.
OPUS
100
ESCHATOLOGY OR SCATOLOGY
- 'Judgement at the Crossroads': One can take humble or vulgar means, including
slang or casual obscenity, and seek to develop them philosophically in such a
way that things come to light that would otherwise probably have remained
buried and hidden from view. Sometimes
it were better that such things did remain buried, but if one can bear to
contemplate them and grow to understand them better, then the reward is not
insubstantial but arguably well worth the trouble. So it has been here, and in this final
individualized instalment of homogeneously-structured aphoristic texts I have
come full-circle, as it were, and highlighted a significant distinction between
the two types of people's radicalism which all those of a progressively
unworldly or extreme left-wing persuasion have to choose between, often
unconsciously and according to the kind of society or civilization in which
they find themselves or to which they relate - namely the Social Theocracy of
the highroad and the Social Democracy of the low road, the former
incontrovertibly determined to bring one aspect of the world to Heaven, the
latter just as incontrovertibly determined, so far as I am concerned, to bring
a neo-diabolical mode of Hell to the other aspect of the world, though to find
out which is which you will have to read the text and thus undertake a journey
the likes of which you will never have taken before, one which may even
overtake your prior expectations and leave you marvelling at the situation in which
you then find yourself, for better or worse.
OPUS
101
APOCALYPSO - 'The New
Revelation': Divided into four sections,
this text carries on the task of highlighting the distinctions between Social
Theocracy and Social Democracy, though always from a perspective favouring the
former, and brings a fresh sense of exactitude to bear on a number of terms
which have either been used interchangeably or in a more general way in the
past, while simultaneously developing a more comprehensively exacting 'take'
upon what pertains to free psyche and bound soma and what pertains, by
contrast, to free soma and bound psyche, so that one need be in no doubt that
criteria applicable to the former are largely if not completely irrelevant to
the latter....Which is why I have developed a different set of terminological
markers for each context, whether in respect of noumenal or phenomenal, upper-
or lower-class criteria, so that there can be no ambiguity or ambivalence as to
the sense in which these terms are being applied, and no justification, in
consequence, for confusion over their use.
But the 'new revelation' alluded to in the subtitle has to do with more
than specific terminological practice, no matter how comprehensively exacting,
since it is a revelation, above all, about life and the means by which life can
be enhanced in respect of the more than Christian order of salvation which is
what Social Theocracy is really all about.
OPUS
102
AT THE CROSSROADS OF AXIAL
DIVERGENCE: As suggested by the title, this text continues to explore the
distinctions between what have been termed the bureaucratic-theocratic axis of
a rising diagonal and the autocratic-democratic axis of a falling diagonal, and
to do so in such a way that there can be no doubt as to the outcome of each
axial progression, whether it be in respect of Social Theocracy or Social
Democracy, with eschatological implications which give a contemporary twist to the concept of Judgement and the
consequences of what is at stake in any contest between the two axes, the
divergent natures of which have been more comprehensively fleshed out here than
in the preceding text. But as anyone
familiar with the preceding text or texts will agree, there can be only one
path for the self-respecting righteous to follow, and such a path leads up and
in rather than down and out.
OPUS
103
OPTI-MYSTIC PROJECTIONS:
Although structurally and thematically similar to the above text, composed as
ever of aphoristic notes, this work represents a quantum leap forward in
certain areas which are explored more accurately and rigorously than ever
before, progressing from a consideration of the distinctions between sacred and
profane ego to the cultural and political differences between Europe and
America, and of how Britain's attraction towards America undermines Europe and
creates problems which even France cannot avoid being affected by, much as
France differs from Britain in respect of its cultural and political traditions
and should be judged, I believe, by criteria closer, in essence, to those
obtaining in countries like Eire, where the influence of the Catholic Church is
omnipresent. But America is an
altogether different proposition from France, never mind Eire, and its influence
on Britain is such as to make one desirous of a radical change in the British
Isles which will make it easier for any residual influence to be minimized or
even marginalized in the interests of greater European unity and cooperation, a
change which, as the reader may have guessed, points in the direction of Social
Theocracy and its politico-religious aspirations, as outlined in previous
texts, which besides embracing the supranational transcendence of the
British/Irish divide include a more authentic order of religious
transcendentalism as its raison d'être.
Finally, as a word of advice, one should not read this text before one
has progressed, step by step, through all the preceding ones, but once one has
read it one would probably incline, as I do, to regard it as the best thing I
have ever written in terms of what projects furthest into a mystical, or
metaphysically transcendent, future with the logical optimism which only
loyalty to self can vouchsafe.
OPUS
104
UNFLATTERING
CONCLUSIONS: More than ever I should like this text to speak for itself,
because it does not paint a flattering picture of Anglo-American relations
vis-à-vis Europe as a whole and the world in general but strives to show not
merely how but why the United Kingdom is
a problem for Europe and the prospect of greater European integration. However, all problems tend to invite
solutions, and my own solution to the problem of the UK vis-à-vis Europe in
general but Eire in particular draws on my ideological legacy as a
self-proclaimed Social Theocrat who, like the French philosopher Michel
Foucault, is not only ranged against an overly Social Democratic 'take' on
progress, but has an alternative path to offer which owes a lot more to
European tradition than ever it does to the long-standing opponents of that
tradition who would be among the last peoples, as things stand, to either
understand or be able to tread this new path which, as far as I am concerned,
is the path to universal harmony and therefore of an end to national divisions.
OPUS
105
RADICAL PROGRESS - 'The
Only Way Forward': As suggested by the title, this text has a concept of
progress which is radical and far-reaching in its left-wing implications,
albeit in relation to the sphere of religion rather than economics, which is
the only sphere, so far as I am concerned, which can be genuinely progressive,
provided, however, that the religion itself is genuine and therefore
transcendentalist, stemming, as I have argued in the text, from an antihumanist precondition.
But that is only one axis, or diagonal, in the totality of axial factors
at work in different kinds of societies, whether on a primary or a secondary
basis, and in RADICAL PROGRESS I have gone into the distinctions between church
hegemonic/state subordinate and state hegemonic/church subordinate societies in
no uncertain terms, outlining the different ideals and fates which pertain to
them with a logical consistency that leaves one in no doubt as to the relative
value of each type of society, whether rising diagonally or falling diagonally,
and making a conclusive case for the society that has the capacity to lead
people higher rather than simply rule them from a height in opposition to
something lower which is nevertheless distinct from the kind of lowness
obtaining across the great divide of the world, as explained in this my most
definitive and outstanding text to-date.
OPUS
106
STAIRWAY TO JUDGEMENT -
'The Way to the Eternal Life of Social Theocratic Truth': Continuing on from
the above work, this text is not only more comprehensively exacting than
the previous one - and indeed all the earlier works - in relation to the
various ideological permutations of both state and church, politics and
religion, but more logically insightful of the diametrically opposite ways in
which what has been termed 'world overcoming' operates, whether from a secular
or an ecclesiastical point of view, to the end of maintaining either the alpha
ideal of somatic freedom from the standpoint of a female hegemony or the omega
ideal of psychic freedom from the standpoint of a male hegemony, neither of
which kinds of ideal, respectively criminal and graceful, are or ever can be
compatible, and therefore necessitate and invariably result in contrary types
of society which, for obvious reasons, rarely if ever 'see eye to eye' but
remain at gender loggerheads with each other for as long as 'the world'
persists. The 'world' as defined in the
text, however, is no simple monolith where the people are concerned but is
divisible, on the above-mentioned basis, between those who take the earth for
granted in what I have described as a democratic/plutocratic type of worldly
bias and those, on the contrary, who live in hope of salvation from the world
in what has been called a bureaucratic/meritocratic
type of worldly bias which, scorning the earth, is avowedly anti-earthly in
character and the precondition, through sin, of heavenly grace. Therefore, split asunder between two types of
worldly society, the people, 'the meek', the electorate, the many, etc., cannot
be evaluated according to any one set of criteria but have to be differentiated
on the basis of whether they pertain to the one manifestation of 'the world' or
to the other, with contrary fates in both state and church, as described in
this, my most ideologically conclusive text to-date.
OPUS
107
A PERFECT RESOLUTION: As
suggested by the title, this text resolves some outstanding problems and
anomalies appertaining to the preceding one, including not least the relative positions
of what has been called pseudo-sin and pseudo-grace on the one hand and
pseudo-crime and pseudo-punishment on the other hand, drawing them closer to
their respective primary complements in both state and church, so that a more
integrated conclusion has been reached in which the hegemonic gender of either
axis, as redefined in this text, conditions the nature of the subordinate
attribute in relation to the presiding ideal, and conditions it, moreover, in
its own image. However, this text does a
lot more than correct the 'heathenistic' aberrations of the previous one; for
it also exposes the extent to which criteria appertaining to good and evil, not
to mention wisdom and folly, are significantly dependent on the nature of the
society of which they are a part, so that at the end of the day it is not
whether this or that is right or wrong, good or bad, but what exactly is
conditioning people to take one view or another that really matters, and this,
not surprisingly, is to a large extent dependent on which gender is effectively
controlling society and whether or not there has been a 'transvaluation
of values' sympathetic to a formal departure from sensuality to
sensibility. For what is 'right' in
sensuality can become very 'wrong' from the standpoint of sensibility, provided
society has officially gravitated to such a standpoint - something, I have
argued, which contemporary civilization, characterized as urban proletarian,
has yet to do, with consequences that would reverse much of what currently passes
for 'good' and 'wise', as explained in the text.
OPUS
108
THE LAST JUDGEMENT:
Despite its portentous-sounding title, this work in the continuing oeuvre progresses
through four sections in much the same way as the previous works and with all
or most of the same concerns, except that its grasp of the distinction between
soma and psyche, not-self and self, in relation to the divergent axes of
state-hegemonic and church-hegemonic types of society is more consistent and
methodical than had previously been the case, with a consequence that one can
differentiate quite sharply between the somatic emphasis or bias of the one
context in relation to evil and good and the psychic bias or emphasis of the
other context in relation to sin and grace - something that puts a new
complexion on the corresponding complements of crime and punishment on the one
hand and of folly and wisdom on the other hand.
However, it must be said, in relation to the title, that if we are to
accept a Last Judgement, we are obliged to acknowledge a First Judgement; for
no less than God the Father logically obliges us to come to terms with the
contrary existence of Devil the Mother, so Judgement, conceived in this
fashion, compels us to distinguish between alpha and omega, metachemistry and metaphysics,
in terms of antiphysical and antichemical alternatives which have applicability
to our own age and civilization in a way which leaves no doubt as to the
significance of gender in bringing such contrary concepts to pass. For here as elsewhere, nothing can be
understood without reference to the axial divergence which follows from the
hegemony of this gender or that gender, making for a sharp distinction between
alpha and omega, the first and the last, whether in respect of Judgement or of
anything else.
OPUS
109
THE FREE TESTAMENT OF A
BOUND GENIUS: Beginning with doubts about a certain number too often used in
religious connections, this text progresses through a development of my own
religious theories and numbers towards a conclusion which, while not entirely
removed from the magical number cited at the beginning, endorses a rather
larger figure when once the numbers attaching to my divisions and subdivisions
of each axis - descending and ascending, female and male - have been multiplied
by four in relation to what has been regarded as the principal stages of both
death and life as applying in previous texts to element-conditioned
environmental means, from the Cosmos and nature to mankind and cyborgkind, the
latter of which is already here, if rather more on sensual than sensible terms
at present. Nevertheless, this text is
about a lot more than numbers, however significant or insignificant one chooses
to regard them, being an extension and refinement of my recent axial
theorizing which, frankly, leaves little or nothing to be desired - at least
not in terms of the way and extent to which everything adds up in what must be
a definitive comprehensiveness that takes my philosophy-cum-theosophy to an
all-time peak, and establishes if not proves, once and for all, my pre-eminence
as arguably the foremost metaphysical thinker not only of this age but of
virtually any age, a self-thought thinker whose corporeal existence remains
bound even as his largely ethereal thoughts range freely over the entire
compass of devolutionary and evolutionary actuality or possibility, from the
alpha-most point of Devil the Mother/Hell the Clear Spirit to the omega-most
point of God the Father/Heaven the Holy Soul.
OPUS
110
REVELATIONARY
AFTERTHOUGHTS: Stemming in large measure from the above text, this work
restates in greater detail many of the principal contentions of my recent
philosophy and arrives at some new conclusions which render it all the more
logically unassailable and entitled to be regarded as the criterion by which
not only contemporary morality but the distinction between morality and
immorality, the light and the dark, should be judged, even if this does mean
that some or many of one's treasured illusions should ultimately be discarded
in order that the light of truth may shine through in as unimpeded and
unequivocal a way as possible. Frankly,
I had no idea, when I tentatively began this text, that it would blossom into
what is unquestionably the most eloquent and comprehensively exacting
presentation of my philosophy so far, a presentation that has the right to be
called revelationary in that much of what it reveals
is so compellingly cogent as to be positively divine, the divine revelations of
a thinker who knows the difference between
God and the Devil but does not make the reductionist
mistake of conceiving of history, much less life, as a struggle between Good
and Evil when all the philosophical evidence points to the conclusion that good
is merely the relative counterpart of Evil and no more than a just retort to
something which is not merely antithetical to anything godly but the principal
obstacle to the salvation of the sinful to that which, gracefully transcending
the world, is as far removed from being engaged in any such struggle as
it is possible to imagine, but not, on that account, indifferent to the plight
of the meek.
OPUS
111
REVOLUTIONARY
AFTERTHOUGHTS: Dealing with essentially the same subject-matter as its
companion text above, this work is even more exactingly insightful in its understanding
of the differences between the Eternal freedoms that rule or lead and the
temporal bindings that submit, in worldly fashion, to the alternative
dispensations so antithetically ranged above them, whether in contemporary or
traditional guise. Here there is no
question but that the worldly division between what has been called the meek
and the just is symptomatic of two entirely different and largely
independent axial orientations, an ascending axis of church-hegemonic criteria
and a descending axis of state-hegemonic criteria, and that the salvation of
those who meekly pertain to the former is crucial to the undermining if not,
eventually, complete invalidation of the latter, but that salvation, for it to
work, must be conceived on higher and more radical terms than has ever before
characterized the diagonally ascending axis if the meek, as defined in
the text, are to be more lastingly and efficaciously delivered not only from
their own worldly limitations but from the sorts of netherworldly predations to
which, via those limitations, they are perforce subjected by the Vain, or those
who rule the just to their mutual exploitative and immoral
advantage. As in all my works, there is
both further logical progress and, in the achievement of such progress, the
necessary correction, from time to time, of previous contentions, and this work
is no exception, all the more gratifyingly so in that what it has progressed to
is nothing short of an unequivocal endorsement of a truth that dares to speak
its name because it is genuinely universal and capable of resolving, once and
for all, the dilemma of worldly division.
OPUS
112
JUDGEMENTAL
AFTERTHOUGHTS: This text brings to a 'judgemental' head a loose quartet
of works beginning with THE FREE TESTAMENT OF A BOUND GENIUS, and has
been subtitled 'As Testamentary Evidence of a Free Genius', since it rather
departs from the terminological bounds set by the other work, not to mention
the two intervening ones, as it explores, in some detail, the use and
applicability of common slang and verb-noun expletives from a comprehensively
exacting philosophical standpoint, with many interesting and novel conclusions,
some of which might well contribute towards undermining the mindless alacrity
with which certain persons go about denigrating others in carnally reductionist terms.
Therefore I have, in a sense, 'judged' such terms, however
irrational their common usage, and, I trust, brought some logical sense to bear
on them, thereby removing them from the pit of vulgar or obscene slang in which
they tend, with unthinking people, to languish. But that is not all I have done in this
highly demanding text; for the reader will soon discern that I have a gift for
parables and metaphorical irony which should shed some light on recent history
and the contemporary political scene most especially, thereby preparing the
ground for progressive radical change in the decades and centuries to come. Finally, I have returned to one of my
favourite subjects, which might be described as the ideological or ontological
understanding of literature in respect of its four principal branches, viz.
drama, poetry, prose, and philosophy, and have, with the assistance of my
customary elemental and axial theories (here brought to a veritable
apotheosis), endeavoured to shed some light on their differences, in both
gender and class terms, thereby indicating the path which leads
not only to the understanding of literature in a deeper and wider sense but, hopefully,
to its eventual overcoming on the most synthetically artificial basis, with
especial reference to philosophy of the utmost truth-oriented order which, with
me, attains to an all-time peak of metaphysical perfection which should suffice
to expose the poetic half-truths and perhaps, indirectly, see off the dramatic
lies and prosaic half-lies in the difficult but interesting times ahead.
OPUS
113
FATHER OMEGA’S LAST
TESTAMENT: Despite its slightly ironic title, this text is perfectly serious in
its most exactingly comprehensive analysis of the four main
elementally-conditioned class/gender contexts which have been described as
noumenally sensual, phenomenally sensual, phenomenally sensible, and noumenally
sensible, the first and third of which form an axial integrity on a diagonally
descending basis and the second and fourth of which such an integrity on a
diagonally ascending one, so that they divide into two types of society which,
as in previous works, have been characterized as either state-hegemonic and
church-subordinate or church-hegemonic and state-subordinate. Therefore each of these contexts is more
complex than the initial terminology might suggest, because further divisible
between male and female elemental positions which in turn subdivide into
psychic and somatic aspects which conform to either church or state on what has
been described as primary or secondary terms, depending on which gender is
hegemonic in any given context, be it upper- or lower-class, in sensuality or
in sensibility. Consequently our four
basic contexts quickly mutate into eight positions that further subdivide along
somatic and psychic lines, each of which is subdivisible
between will and spirit in the case of soma and ego and soul in the case of
psyche, as described in previous texts but not, I believe, with the same
logical authority as comes to light here and reveals, for the first time, just
how interdependent state and church can be for better or worse, depending on
the axis. The conclusions that have been
drawn, however, are not such that any self-respecting person could quibble
with; for they point to a solution to the problem of contemporary
state-hegemonic civilization which would return civilization, in duly
transmuted church-hegemonic
guise, to its true stature as something worthy of the utmost
respect for its moral insight and accomplishments.
OPUS
114
REVALUATIONS AND
TRANSVALUATIONS: This text not only revaluates certain positions
recently postulated in my philosophical works, and therefore corrects or
modifies their conclusions, but extends my transvaluating
towards a totally new understanding and conception of Christianity and what
logically followed it, so that the path is prepared, as it were, for the
revelations concerning religion and the destiny of the phenomenally sensual
'meek' which owe more to this transvaluation than
ever they do to any conventional or traditional notions concerning such
subjects as the Immaculate Conception, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and,
indeed, the entire belief system of Christianity in respect of a Second Coming
and Day of Judgement. In the end, what
transpires is a revaluation of Christianity in light of my mature philosophy
and its Social Theocratic commitment to Truth of an ultimate order which
exposes the errors that stem from presumption of the death of God on the Cross
and lead, inevitably, towards a humanistic dead-end. I also expose the limitations of terms
like 'mankind' and 'man' in relation to the full-gamut of class and gender
possibilities which actually exist and condition or characterize life from one
standpoint or another, and show more fully how things actually divide into two
axes which are not only divisible in themselves but antithetical in virtually
every respect, even in regard to sport and sex, on both somatic and psychic,
state- and church-oriented terms. In
sum, this important text not only revaluates a number of important
philosophical contentions on my part, making for a new and better understanding
of ideological distinctions between 'Left' and 'Right' and of how amorality
factors in to the opposition between immorality and morality in such fashion
that they are never strictly polar, but extends my thinking towards a
culmination-point which is the fruit of both a correct premise and an ability
to transvaluate certain presumptions concerning God
and man which turns things around and enables one to make sense out of the
historical struggles leading, as it were, from the 'Garden of Eden' to the
world and from the world, hopefully, to 'Kingdom Come', as reinterpreted from a
standpoint firmly centred in an ultimate transvaluation,
the product of all previous revaluations.
OPUS
115
THE CLASSLESS SOLUTION:
As it follows on from the above, this text is bound to restate many of the
philosophical positions and contentions already taken, but it does so with even
greater certitude and a more exactingly comprehensive assessment of the various
components of the total picture which leaves one in no doubt that
something philosophically definitive has been achieved, and that any further
revaluations or transvaluations are only likely to
happen in relation to that which is already broadly or essentially true, not
contrary to it. Yet even then that would
not be entirely the case, for this text still manages to refine on and even to
modify certain of the contentions or positions taken above, not least in
respect of the evaluation of class on a more axially specific basis which
helps, I believe, to clarify the distinctions between noumenal and phenomenal,
noble and plebeian, in such fashion that one could never again accept anything
less comprehensively exacting for gospel or fail to understand just how different the two axial
positions really are.... As in the case, for example, of their contrary social
and moral fates, not least in respect of salvation and damnation, and who or
what is saved or damned, counter-damned or counter-saved, and how that should
be morally or socially interpreted. But
I would be understating the achievements of this text if, quite apart from its
contribution to our understanding of literature from a more axially
comprehensive point of view, I were to ignore the original contribution it
makes to an understanding of how civilization progresses or regresses on both
positive and negative terms in an alternation, stemming from primal action,
between reaction and attraction which takes it through successive stages of
devolutionary or evolutionary development on both liberal and totalitarian
terms towards the possibility of a culmination which, antithetical to how it
began, will signify a sort of omega freedom that contrasts with the alpha
freedom as the most positive psychic reaction with the most positive somatic
action, having passed through several intermediate phases of reaction and
attraction in soma and psyche which both confirm and advance a dualistic
alternation between pluralistic and monistic systems.
OPUS
116
THE DIALECTICS OF
SYNTHETIC ATTRACTION: As suggested by the title, this work carries on my
investigation of the dialectical process in terms of successive stages of
civilization from alpha to omega, and does so in considerably more detail than
THE CLASSLESS SOLUTION, not only correcting but expanding certain of the
theories put forward at the tail-end of the above-mentioned work, with a
consequence that what was virtually embryonic there has come to something
approaching full maturity here, even down to the way in which the outcome of
the historical process is envisaged. For
this work leaves nothing, so far as that is concerned, to be desired, and I can
confidently say that I have achieved here the summation of my life's work,
bringing to a very confident conclusion matters that were first broached
several years, if not decades, ago, but with nothing of the logical clarity and
sophistication which has since ensued.
It is even good to be reminded that one's texts are cyclical in
character, spiralling up towards an ever-more comprehensively exacting summit
which brings to a centro-complexifying
head things that, in the very nature of such matters, it was only
possible to introduce in more general terms earlier on or, rather, lower down
the work's inner structure. In that
respect, what I have achieved here with regard to the interaction and interrelativity of psychological and physiological factors
on either a female or a male basis, depending on the elemental context,
surpasses, by far, whatever had been achieved before, and not only, I wager, by
myself. For this final working out of
such psychological/physiological dualities puts everything in perspective, and
it only remains for those who are capable of reading and appreciating my work -
in all probability a tiny minority - to confirm me in the correctness of my
vision and the accuracy of my truth, a truth which should endure for ever.
OPUS
117
THE DIALECTICS OF
CIVILIZATION: This work proves like no other that the use of certain colloquial
expressions can, if revaluated on a sufficiently comprehensive basis, with one or
two original additions thrown-in for good measure, lead to startling insights
and enable one to deepen and/or broaden one's philosophy in such fashion that
it ends-up doing greater justice to the truth (in both specific and comparative
terms) than had been the case hitherto.
Thus with THE DIALECTICS OF CIVILIZATION I have carried what was
achieved in the preceding text to a new and, I would suppose, altogether more
definitively comprehensive level, a level which plots the development of
civilization, in the broadest sense, from its alpha-most inception to its
projected omega-most consummation, and does so with respect to both linear and
axial perspectives which combine to permit of yet another fresh perspective
which takes my theorizing to an all-time peak of dialectical insight, a worthy
culmination to my philosophical quest!
For in this text I have achieved a well-nigh definitive insight into the
distinctions between Space and Time which should leave one in no doubt as to
the path that leads to Eternity and thus to a definitive resolution of life,
the culmination not only of all civilization but, in a deeper sense, of that
which transcends civilization in truly post-historical terms.
OPUS
118
THE
DIALECTICS OF GENDER AND CLASS: As the logical successor to the above, this
text delves more profoundly into the distinctions between 'historical' and
'post-historical' civilizations, not least in respect of the shift from a
genuine phenomenal and pseudo-noumenal status in the one to a pseudo-phenomenal
and genuine noumenal status in the other proportionate to the degree of
post-historicity actually obtaining.
With that in mind, we also find, in this work, a more definite sense of
the relationships between gender and class, as well as the extent to which the
seemingly complementary co-existence of the genders on a given class basis
requires a hegemonic/subordinate dichotomy between them which, however it pans
out, enables such a co-existence to prevail in the first place, quite apart
from the modification of relations which results from the interactivity of
antithetically complementary classes when once axial polarities have been
established, with their gender paradoxes, as also described in one or two
previous texts but with less methodical exactitude than here and certainly less
overall certainty as to the specific class status of a given elemental
position, be it phenomenal or noumenal.
For the linking of class with element and/or of anti-element with anticlass is now brought to a conclusive resolution which
reaffirms the standing of gender in relation to each, making the relationship
between gender and class complementary to an elemental persuasion, whether in
sensuality or sensibility, that is the basis from which all gender and class
distinctions spring. Yet my philosophy
would not be true to its genius if it did not also, and categorically, affirm
an ideological bias in respect of a specific elemental and anti-elemental
persuasion, thereby bringing to the plethora of options and findings a destiny
which, for the seeker after ultimate truth, would leave him in no doubt as to
the correct solution to the problem of choice and reality of options - a
solution which can have only one outcome, and that of divine devising.
OPUS
119
YANG
AND ANTI-YIN: After a brief flirtation with numerology and a kind of oblique
debunking of the esoteric or occult significance of triple-digit figures, this
text quickly sets about its main task, which was to explore in more detail the
dialectics of Yang and Anti-Yin, as already intimated at in previous texts, and
bring to a conclusion matters which, in respect of noumenal sensibility, had
been pending a more definitive resolution such that, as often in my work, could
not but spill over into a more general resolution of other factors that had
still not reached that definitive comprehensiveness which has been my goal all
along and which, once reached, would confirm and enhance the truth of what most
specifically pertains to the Truth as an exemplification of godly
resolve. But for every advance in the
development and, ultimately, achievement of such a definitive working-out of
all the parts in all the right places, there must come a corresponding advance
to one's commitment of what most constitutes Truth and a willingness to illustrate
or exemplify it in terms of an appropriate textural presentation, one that
cannot be merely phenomenal and 'human all too human', but must first
acknowledge and then scale and finally conquer the heights of a presentation of
Truth that is incontestably godly and thus the only apt vehicle for what would
traditionally have been called 'the Word of God' but which I, fearing
worshipful devotion, shall simply call 'godly word' and leave for others to
approach according to their abilities or capacities for the noumenally sensible
heights, whether on a metaphysical or, indeed, an antimetachemical basis, as
explained, together with so much more, in this definitive presentation of my
philosophy which summarizes and brings to a conclusive resolution what in previous
texts had still been in a formative stage of logical development and by no
means as categorical a statement of Truth, together with what is less than and
contrary to Truth, as is to be found on the pages of Yang and Anti-Yin, the End
and Anti-Beginning of all philosophizing.
OPUS
120
LAMB
AND ANTI-LION: Taking its thematic structure from the previous text, this work
delves deeper into noumenal sensibility and its full gender and ideological
implications, taking the biblical metaphors of ‘lamb’ and ‘lion’ to their
ultimate conclusions in what becomes an exact parallel to the ‘yang’ and
‘anti-yin’ of our metaphysical and antimetachemical elemental positions. But these elements are also investigated in
greater detail, and provide ample scope for the enhancement or clarification of
certain terms, including those with other elemental affinities than that with
which we are chiefly concerned here.
Thus a broadening out from the central and core position of my philosophy
is once again to the fore, and other positions are accordingly revaluated and
modified in the light of my principal contentions. Also modified, in this respect, are theories
concerning life-after-death, which are now shown in a new light, not least in relation
to my philosophy of history and the subdivisions which accrue to each of the
three principal stages of civilization.
I think this is one of the factors which, in this text, has made it
possible for me to be tougher on the Catholic Church than ever before and to
demonstrate, logically and rationally, that the destiny of globalization can
only be independent of both Western and Eastern traditions, since the
full-flowering of noumenal sensibility is beyond the scope of any tradition
rooted in its noumenal antithesis, no matter how obliquely.
OPUS
121
CELESTIAL
CITY AND ANTI-VANITY FAIR: Like its two textural predecessors, this text takes
what I had been building towards in the previous works to its ultimate logical
conclusion and establishes, categorically and without equivocation, a definitive
presentation of my work such that reaffirms the gender distinctions that exist
at all points of what I am rather metaphorically wont to call our ‘axial
compass’, and underlines the importance of taking such distinctions to their
logical conclusions in the interests of philosophical certitude and, where
noumenal sensibility is concerned, enhanced credibility in respect of godly
truth. For anything short of this
logical distinction between the various gender positions, not least in relation
to metaphysics and antimetachemistry, will betray Truth and render it difficult
if not impossible to realize. I hope
others will agree with me, when they come to read this text, that it is the
crowning achievement of my philosophy and the product of one who is in no doubt
as to what Truth is and of just how difficult it will be, even with the best of
ideological wills, to grant it its proper place in the edifice of religious
progress and, what’s more, keep it there at the expense of everything else, not
least that which appertains, in one way or another, to beauty. Difficult, yes, but not impossible! For this is the summation of reason, which is
mind utilized in the interests of a beingfulness so
supreme as to be heavenly and nothing short of the resolution of godly intent.
OPUS
122
JESUS!
– A SUMMING UP (of supreme theosophical genius): As suggested by the title
(which happens to be a pun on Arthur Koestler’s ‘Janus - A Summing Up’), this is my final text and one
that brings my philosophizing-cum-theosophizing, if
not philologizing-cum-theologizing, to a cumulative
head as I restate some of the conclusive Social Theocratic theories of my
previous work and modify, expand, and refine upon various of the more
characteristic theories of the recent past.
Also, not altogether usual for me, I have allowed these theories to be
invaded by a degree of autobiography which I needed to get out of my system and
which, in any case, provided a springboard, as it were, to an enhanced approach
to my more regular approach to writing and thinking. As also noted in this
text, much of the writing is more blog-like than has
usually been the case, and that doubtless owes something to the fact that I now
blog on the Internet and regard blogging
as the electronic successor to my e-books or, rather, e-scrolls, since I prefer
HTML files to, say, Adobe-type files if only because there is a scroll-like
continuity involved which takes text to an altogether different place on the
axial compass, so to speak, from where it would otherwise be, and one, I am
sure, which does more justice to universality in relation to global
civilization than must any electronic extrapolation from books which, to my
mind, are simply more Western in character.
However that may be, blogging is gradually
taking over from book and/or scroll writing in my literary predilections, and
therefore it is fitting if my conclusive text happens to be more blog-like than book-like.
Also, now that I have so many web sites, I find it laborious to the
point of exasperating to add a new short text to each directory, especially
since this requires an updating if not
replacement of any lists and synopses which may already be there in
order to incorporate the new work.
Frankly, even my synopses are now something of a major work in their own
right! But, that said, I am first and
foremost a writer of literary texts and have progressed, over the years, from
philology to theology and philosophy to theosophy, sacrificing knowledge to
truth and pleasure to joy. My work is
its own vindication, and anyone with enough intelligence who reads it will
sooner or later come to the conclusion that it both adds up and provides a
basis or blueprint for what has been colloquially described as ‘Kingdom Come’,
a radically progressive alternative to either regressive or sensually-based
structures of society that should lead, among other things, to the salvation of
the world, as defined in this and other texts, and to eternal peace (for males)
in the transcendent Beyond which it has been the privilege of this self-styled theologist (the suffix is intentional) and theosophist to
delineate for the benefit of those who come after me and may well inherit, if
all goes according to plan, the ‘Kingdom of God’ in question, such a ‘Kingdom’
being anything but a kingdom in the
usual sense but, in actuality, the theocratic antithesis to anything
autocratic.
OPUS
123
OPUS POSTSCRIPTUM VOL.1: This is simply bonus
material dating from the autumn of 2005 and extending into July 2006 that was
drafted in standard word processor and subsequently copied to one of my blog sites for enlargement or revision. Less aphoristic in character, as befitting my
general approach to weblogs, it is nevertheless
highly philosophical in its treatment of a variety of subjects common to the oeuvre-proper
and should stand as icing on the cake, so to speak, of my journeys to the
centre of truth.
OPUS
124
OPUS POSTSCRIPTUM VOL.2: No sooner had I finished
the above than I began working on what was to become a second volume of
aphoristically supernotational writings which,
reversing the transcription process began above, takes my philosophy a step or
two further towards what would now seem to be a definitive position in which
everything is known about everything and nothing remains to be added to the
oeuvre, not even on a supplementary basis such that I am happy to consider a
fitting postscript. Incidentally, the
‘icing on the cake’ alluded to in the previous synopsis is also a fair metaphor
for what transpires here, albeit the cake … of my oeuvre in general … is
decidedly round and therefore anything but square, still less rectangular or
elliptical in shape. It not only deals
in metaphysics but brings metaphysics and an understanding of correlative
factors to an all-time peak such that should confirm my pre-eminent status as
one of the greatest thinkers of all time and certainly as the foremost thinker
of my own age.
OPUS
125
PHILOSOPHICAL RUMINATIONS: Originally drawn from a
variety of lesser blog sites and subsequently
enhanced at a new one, these aphoristic essays complement the above volumes and
could almost be regarded as constituting Vol.3.
However, I decided to keep it separate in view of its final derivation
being from a different blog site than OPUS
POSTSCRIPTUM, and some of the material may already have been broached. Much of it, however, is fresh, and it
achieves an intensification of the definitiveness to which my works have laid
claim for some considerable period of time now.
In fact, it would be difficult to conceive of anything ever being more
definitive as far as the holding together of disparate material drawn from all
points of the intercardinal axial compass is
concerned. Everything has its place, and
can be known and judged accordingly.
OPUS
126
THEOSOPHICAL ILLUMINATIONS: With this volume of
‘aphoristic essays’ derived, like the two volumes of OPUS POSTSCRIPTUM, from my
blog site at spweblog.com, I have returned to a more
systematic approach to philosophizing which definitely advances the ideological
philosophy of Social Transcendentalism and/or Social Theocracy a rung or two
further up the ladder of metaphysical ascent, not least in respect of its sense
of being theosophically superior to anything purely
or merely philosophical (not that the majority of works in ‘Journeys to the
Centre of Truth’’ ever were!).
OPUS
127
BEYOND TRUTH AND ILLUSION: Also derived from the
above blogsite, where they were originally volume two
of ‘aphoristic essays’, this volume of metaphysical philosophy, or theosophy-proper,
brings my quest for metaphysical perfection to a close, as it enlarges on
and/or corrects some of the material contained in the above title, as well as
adds some fresh ideas and new perspectives, deriving from our by-now standard intercardinal
axial template, to what has already been achieved. The title is largely self-explanatory but is
also intended to stand as a contrast to my first-ever volume of philosophy,
BETWEEN TRUTH AND ILLUSION. Nevertheless
that particular volume of philosophical writings, which in contrast to the
material here could be described as being largely comprised of aphoristic
essays, was to set the stage for everything that has followed, and I can safely
claim to have finally reached my life’s goal with BEYOND TRUTH AND ILLUSION and
to have climbed to the top rung of my ladder of philosophical-theosophical
Social Theocratic ascent, the final journey to the centre of truth.
OPUS
128
LITERATURE AND THE INTERCARDINAL AXIAL COMPASS: This
is yet a further collection of revised and reformatted weblogs
taken from a variety of sites where I had written material of a philosophical
nature that actually post-dates, by several months, the previous collection
listed above. Therefore one would have
to regard this as containing material which in most instances either goes
beyond what was achieved before or adds new subjects or, at any rate, a fresh
or revised approach to a variety of subjects which may not have been dealt with
in quiet such a systematic or well-nigh definitive manner previously. Another thing that most definitely
distinguishes this project from the above is that I was far more methodically
aphoristic in my approach to the reformatting of material that, in weblog form, was virtually essayistic and therefore unworthy,
as far as I am concerned, of a properly metaphysical connotation – something,
incidentally, that also applies to the italic-writerly
presentation of ‘the word’ which, as here, leaves the printerly
norms of weblogging far behind and thus stands as a
further justification for my having reformatted previously published material
in a way that would be commensurate with the best of my writings and with all
that I, as a self-taught metaphysical philosopher, morally and intellectually
stand for.
OPUS
129
THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE
WORLDS: Unlike the above title and several of those preceding it, this is not a
revised and reformatted compilation of philosophical weblogs
but, on the contrary, an actual e-book written into a notebook and then
transcribed to computer, so that it is the first – and probably last – of its
kind since at least JANUS – A SUMMING UP, and does more summing up, as well as
extending and completing, my philosophy than even the aforementioned text, with
its allusion to Koestler’s book of a similar
name. In this case, the ‘best of all possible worlds’ is decidedly
metaphysical and pseudo-metachemical and therefore
germane to what I would call ‘Kingdom Come’, even if an appreciation of this
requires an understanding of everything else, whether contrary to or beneath
it, in order that one may be left in no doubt about the desirability, from a
metaphysical standpoint, of such a perfect world. We have dreamed of it
for centuries, if not millennia, but it is only now that the possibility of
actually turning the dream into reality can be seriously undertaken in the sure
knowledge of what is required and of why its requirement is so important, both
morally and socially. With THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS I can
confidently say that I have reached the culmination point of my oeuvre and
achieved my philosophical goal in what is arguably the best of all (my)
possible texts!
OPUS
130
THE QUEST FOR TRUTH: Subtitled 'And the Meaning of Life', this project derives from a series of weblogs I originally published at Helium.com under the alias 'johalin', and subsequently revised and reformatted in the interests of both escroll (as here) and ebook publication, the latter of course signifying a 'printerly' descent from an 'italic-writerly' metaphysical norm. That said, this collection of revised weblogs both ante-dates and post-dates material contained in the above title, 'The Best of All Possible Worlds', since some of it was written earlier in 2008, although the majority of its contents, or effective aphorisms, were actually written in 2009, with material that seems to extend beyond previous texts or simply, as so often in the past, to correct or modify existing material, sometimes filling in one or two blanks. All the titles of this project were taken from available options at Helium.com, but I think I am probably unique in saying that I would approach them from what I had already written locally, on my PC, and simply uploaded to the blog host once I had found what appeared to be a suitable title. None of the titles, however, are what I would have chosen myself, which is one of the ways in which this project differs from all of my earlier compilations of revised and reformatted weblogs. Yet these aphorisms were also 'farmed out' to other blog sites, where I was free to choose a title, and usually the results were more reflective of the contents - never particularly easy to peg down to one heading - than is arguably the case here, with this final such collection. Nevertheless, the contents are, for the most part, philososphically cognet and incontrovertibly true, which is to say, logically sustainable. Everything finally adds up, as it should do if one is to rest assured of one's reputation, no matter how self-appointed, as 'philosopher king'.
OPUS
131 THE CENTRE OF TRUTH: If anything sounds like a definitive title it is this one, which is the last in a series of reformatted and revised weblogs, in this case of material hosted by Anoox.com under the alias yaholin, and now available in both escroll and ebook formats for the sake of enhanced appreciation. Certainly I have managed to wrap up my philosophy in this 2009 package, and anyone who really desires enlightenment on the subjects of God, Heaven, Truth, etc., should have no difficulty in finding confirmation here of my long and difficult journey to Truth or, more to the point, the 'Centre of Truth', which is its vindication and ultimate resolution.
Copyright
© 1973-2009 John O'Loughlin