Op. 46
ELEMENTAL SPECTRA
Supernotational Philosophy
Copyright © 1988-2009 John O'Loughlin
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CONTENTS
Aphs. 1-285
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1. Idealistic sadness/falsity on the negative divine
pole, and joy/truth on the positive divine pole. Naturalistic hate/ugliness on the negative
diabolic pole, and love/beauty on the positive diabolic pole. Materialistic humility/weakness on the
negative worldly-alpha pole, and pride/strength on the positive worldly-omega
pole. Realistic evil/pain on the
negative alpha-worldly pole, and good/pleasure on the positive omega-worldly
pole. Negative down and positive up, but
negative and positive in both naturalistic and artificial manifestations of each
spectrum, with the noumenon preceding the phenomenon in the one case, but the
superphenomenon preceding the supernoumenon in the other case - qualities and
quantities, superquantities and superqualities.
2. From the Cartesian mind/brain dichotomy to a
brain absolutism via a mind-brain symbiosis - the declining path of Western
civilization from bourgeois dualism to proletarian monism via a petty-bourgeois
dualistic monism. Or, alternatively,
from relativity to absolutism via a relativistic absolutism. In contrast to the theocratic civilization
beyond, with its superbrain absolutism a precondition, via a brain-mind
relativistic absolutism, of supermind absolutism - the supermind of the Holy
Spirit.
3. Transcendental Socialist being-doing in
space-time. Social Transcendentalist
doing-being in time-space. Space-time is
equivalent to supertime; time-space to superspace.
4. Transcendental Socialist light-heat in
mind-brain. Social Transcendentalist
heat-light in brain-mind. Mind-brain is
equivalent to superbrain; brain-mind to supermind. Supermindful God and superbrainy Devil beyond
the bodily/superbodily world.
5. Particle-suggesting status of records on
account of their round, materialistic construction; wavicle-suggesting status
of tapes on account of their elongated, idealistic construction. Devil and God?
6. Possibility, indeed probability, of
conventional tapes as a Social-Democratic ideological equivalent in relation to
Democratic Socialist long-playing albums, with microtapes a Social
Transcendentalist equivalent in relation to Transcendental Socialist compact
discs. In both of these latter cases, a
reduction in scale commensurate with theocratic centro-complexification.
7. Earth - air - fire - water: those time-honoured
basic elements which, in relation to my philosophy, can be listed as follows:
idealistic air, naturalistic fire, materialistic water, and realistic earth,
with air and earth forming one pair of opposites, fire and water another - the
former moral and amoral, both of the latter immoral. Hence, evaluating each element within a
naturalistic framework, we may speak of divine air, diabolic fire,
worldly-alpha water, and alpha-worldly earth, reserving, in each case, the
possibility of a negative/positive option, as between negative air (wind) and
positive air (oxygen); negative fire (raging flames) and positive fire (gentle
flames); negative water (storm) and positive water (calm); negative earth
(landslide, earthquake) and positive earth (soil). Moreover, I should like to draw attention to
the connection between air and light, fire and heat, water and coldness, and
earth and darkness, so that we can speak of an air/light vis-à-vis
earth/darkness polarity on the one hand and of a fire/heat vis-à-vis water/coldness
polarity on the other hand. Clearly,
just as light and darkness are antithetical, so, by a like token, are heat and
coldness. They are also adversaries
locked-in to an age-old combat, with victory - as a rule temporary - going to
the side with the highest ratio of whichever quantity/quality complement -
whether air/light over earth/darkness or vice versa, and fire/heat over
water/coldness or vice versa. Whether
fire turns water to steam or water quenches fire will obviously depend upon the
ratio of the one to the other, since these immoral polarities are, above all,
the active adversaries, in contrast to the relatively more passive adversaries
of air and earth, light and darkness, which passively oppose each other in
their respective moral and amoral integrities.
8. In regard to artificial energy, however, the
production of electricity may be regarded as paralleling our
earth-water-fire-air distinctions according to whether it is produced via coal
(conventional electricity), water (hydro-electricity), atomic fission (nuclear
electricity), or air (turbo-electricity), with realistic, materialistic,
naturalistic, and idealistic implications respectively. Thus the production of electricity through
coal corresponds to worldly amorality; the production of electricity through
water corresponds to worldly immorality; the production of electricity through
atomic fission corresponds to diabolic immorality; and, finally, the production
of electricity through air or gas corresponds to divine morality. Consequently a realistic country like
9. As to the connection between air and light,
which is not at first so apparent as the one between fire and heat, we have the
experience of daylight to draw upon, since such light is only perceptible
because of the air it travels through, which has the effect of 'highlighting'
it. For without the atmosphere
surrounding the earth, sunlight would no more be perceptible here than it is in
interstellar space or, for that matter, on the surface of the moon, where the
sun is just another star shining in the distance. It is because of this intimate connection
between air and light that traditional meditation techniques like those
associated with the Tao te Ching have stressed the importance of preliminary
deep-breathing exercises; for an increased intake of oxygen into the blood will
lead to an increase of consciousness, or spiritual light, in the mind, which is
the raison d'être of meditation.
On the other hand, such latter-day forms of meditation as eschew
preliminary breathing exercises are simply indicative of spiritual decadence,
being, in effect, wordless prayer rather than a dynamic meditational
commitment, and may therefore be regarded as symptomatic of a Beckettian void,
a Sartrean neant, a Schopenhaurian will-less passivity
which finds its artistic parallel in much abstract art of the twentieth
century.... Not that I am here implying that the West should adopt Taoism at
the expense of Christianity or its decadent successor; for that would be a vain
attempt to reverse time and seek to accommodate itself to oriental
tradition. But I am convinced that when
meditation is resurrected on a properly transcendentalist basis in the future,
it will be far more dynamic than passive, if on artificial rather than
naturalistic terms, as relative to the use of industrially-produced oxygen,
breathing masks, etc.
10. To distinguish between smiling with lips
closed as positive Divine and smiling with lips parted as positive Diabolic,
i.e. as Christic and Antichristic equivalents, by dint of the wavicle
connotation of closed lips and the particle connotation of parted lips or, more
specifically, the teeth which are exposed in consequence of a slightly open
mouth, each tooth, whether upper or lower, implying a particle status. Thus an electron-wavicle equivalent in the
former case and an electron-particle equivalent in the latter one. Divine and diabolic because of the head
nature, or confinement to the face, of smiling, which, unlike laughing, doesn't
involve the body. But if smiling is
divisible in this way, then so is its opposite - namely, the condition of being
'down in the mouth', which is usually termed scowling, whether gloomily or
angrily, depending on whether the lips are closed or parted, making a wavicle
impression or creating a particle impression (through exposed teeth). In the one case a negative divine status
commensurate with a proton-wavicle equivalent, in the other case a negative
diabolic status commensurate with a proton-particle equivalent. Fatheristic and Satanic equivalents vis-à-vis
the Christic and Antichristic equivalents discussed above.
11. With the world, however, the body is more
involved and therefore worldly equivalents are less mental than bodily in
character, whether in terms of crying or laughing. For crying is to laughing what scowling is to
smiling - the alpha-stemming antithesis of an omega-oriented norm, a minus in
contrast to a plus. Whether we then
divide crying and laughing into materialistic and realistic alternatives, as
between, say, loud crying and/or laughing on the one hand, and quiet crying
and/or laughing on the other hand (with correspondingly disparate physical
pressures on one or another part of the body, viz. neck or lungs, ribs or
stomach), the fact nevertheless remains that crying corresponds to an
alpha-stemming worldly equivalent and laughing to an omega-oriented one, in
contrast to both scowling and smiling, whether diabolic or divine. Thus whereas these latter alternatives are
inherently elitist, or the prerogative of 'heads', crying and laughing are
inherently populist, and therefore more characteristic of 'bodies', or the mass
man, with alpha and omega implications.
Indeed, it could be argued that women are more partial to crying than
men, since of a comparatively alpha-stemming disposition. However that may be, neither worldly
equivalent will be found, as a rule, among men of intellectual or spiritual
distinction (Christ Himself is reputed never to have laughed), since, as
'heads', they relate more to either God or the Devil rather than to the world,
which is generally beneath their pale. A
laughing saint would be as incongruous as a smiling 'man of the world'
(sinner), whether or not the latter parted his lips.
12. To conclude: let us therefore distinguish
between: a) idealistic scowling and/or smiling (lips closed); b) naturalistic
scowling and/or smiling (lips parted); c) materialistic crying and/or laughing
(loud/heavy); d) realistic crying and/or laughing (soft/light); with the first
and fourth moral and amoral respectively, but the second and third immoral, as
in the sense that we formerly distinguished between divine morality, both
negative (alpha stemming) and positive (omega orientated); diabolic immorality,
both negative and positive; worldly-alpha and worldly-omega immorality;
alpha-worldly and omega-worldly amorality.
Although some men are fairly balanced between one or another of these
three basic extremes, it cannot be said of all men; for evolutionary pressures
are increasingly making for an omega-oriented one-sidedness, in which either
laughing or smiling, depending on the type of man, is the preponderating norm -
a norm which attests to an electron bias.
13. The Camusian contention that man is in the
world but not of it can hardly be said to apply to the great majority of men
who, particularly in the democratic West, conform to a bodily and, hence,
worldly disposition. Rather, it has
especial applicability, give and take the inevitable relativity of human
experience, to those men who may be described as predominantly either diabolic
or divine, and who are accordingly less 'bodies' than 'heads'. With the intellectual and spiritual elites,
it can certainly be said that, although they have their existence in the world,
they are above and beyond it in their essential selves, be those selves
diabolic or divine, and thus more conscious than the average man of not being of the
world. Indeed, it is this consciousness
which, according to Camus, makes for the feeling of absurdity, and, to be sure,
it often transpires that a man of God, or mind-biased 'head', will feel the
absurdity of God in the world by dint of the world's indifference if not
downright opposition to what he represents.
Outsiders are rarely or never 'men of the (bodily) people' but, rather,
talented idealists for whom the worldly realism of average humanity is more a
fact to be regretted than rejoiced in!
Now what applies to outsiders in relation to average people, or
insiders, also in some degree applies to outsiders in relation to themselves,
since the Divine and the Diabolic seldom if ever agree - except, that is, in
regard to their mutual antipathy towards the world. However, if it can scarcely be said of men in
general that, in relation to outsiders, they are in the world
but not of it, we must nevertheless concede that, in
relation to women, most men are less of the world
than in it. For it would appear
that, traditionally, the majority of women are both in the world
and of it, and act accordingly, striving both to serve and to mollify the
male sex. It is for this reason that
they are usually shielded from that sense of absurdity which can descend on men
when they become conscious, particularly to an existential degree, of the
disparity between their physical presence in the world and their spiritual and/or
soulful aspirations beyond it.
14. Despite possible appearances to the contrary,
a 'head' can never be a 'cunt' or a 'prick', to cite popular lingo; for such
denigratory proletarian epithets have reference to bodies - indeed, are
projections of a bodily, or mass, type onto others who are perceived, rightly
or wrongly, as meriting one or other of these strong terms of abuse. Whatever a 'head' may think of them (and I
for one strongly repudiate their use) such terms focus attention upon the
sexual organs and accordingly posit a worldly, or bodily, disposition in the
person so abused. Broadly, one may
distinguish 'cunts' from 'pricks' on the basis of an autocratic/democratic
division, with those on the one side falling into a feminine category and those
on the other side falling into a masculine one, though both categories are
inherently worldly and therefore irrelevant, so I contend, to the
diabolic/divine distinctions which tower above the world, whether on an alpha
or an omega basis. Yet subdivisions of
these worldly categories do, however, exist, and are to be heard among those
bodily proletarians especially partial to their use, who may well regard them
as constituting a more accurate description of the person under fire, so to
speak - be he a 'cunt' or a 'prick'.
Thus, in the one case, a distinction between 'sodd*** cunts' and
'fuck*** cunts', whilst in the other case a distinction between 'fuck***
pricks' and 'sodd*** pricks'. Hence, in
effect, an overall distinction between materialism and realism, with 'sodd***
cunts' and 'sodd*** pricks' at antithetical materialistic points, but 'fuck***
cunts' and 'fuck*** pricks' at antithetical realistic points in a spectrum
stretching from 'sodd*** cunts' to 'sodd*** pricks', that is to say, from
'cunts' who sodomize to 'pricks' who sodomize, with the less extreme and more
heterosexual 'cunts' who fornicate or practise coitus and 'pricks' who do
likewise coming in-between.
15. And yet, while the great majority of people
who use or reap such unpleasant expressions are undoubtedly bodily, there is
scope, in a sense, for their extension beyond the world to the diabolic,
whether on an alpha or an omega basis, so that a naturalistic equivalent may be
inferred which, though less abusive than either of the worldly terms by dint of
its inherent sexlessness, would suggest, contrary to my initial contention, the
possibility of diabolic 'heads' being subject to denigratory abuse either as
'frigg*** cunts' or 'frigg*** pricks', depending on the perceived class or ideological
status of the 'head' in question.
However that may be (and I have to confess to never having heard use of
either term in all my long experience of proletarian terms of abuse), there can
be no doubt that such expressions will be far less relevant to 'heads' than to
'bodies' by dint of their inherently sexual nature. To suppose, in the light of the above
possibility, that an absolutist use of either term, viz. 'cunt' or 'prick', as
in 'that cunt' or 'this prick', entails a denigration of divine 'heads', i.e.
minds rather than brains, would be both illogical and absurd; for a divine
'head' is even less of a body than a diabolic one and, especially with regard
to omega-oriented divinity, should be above reproach. In sum, such terms, whether or not used in
conjunction with sexually active references, are only really relevant in and to
the world. It is for this reason that a
divine society, based on Social Transcendentalist criteria, would discourage
and eliminate, so far as was humanly possible, all reference to 'cunts' or
'pricks' among the People. Indeed, it is
questionable whether such terms would be in regular use in that kind of
society; for we cannot ignore the racial and social factors which contribute
towards their regular employment and accordingly render them especially
prevalent in countries like Great Britain, which is both autocratic and
democratic. Even the
16. Further to the above I find, on reflection,
that one must theoretically allow for the possibility of a denigration of
divine 'heads' from a worldly and/or diabolic (more likely) point of view, and
on the basis of a 'snogg*** cunt/snogg*** prick' dichotomy, such as will
logically flesh out, so to speak, our previous contentions on both
alpha-stemming and omega-oriented levels, thus completing the full gamut of
denigratory possibilities from idealism to realism or, alternatively, from
realism to idealism, depending on whether we take an alpha-stemming
(devolutionary) or an omega-oriented (evolutionary) point of view. Thus: idealistic 'snogg*** cunts' and/or
'snogg*** pricks'; naturalistic 'frigg*** cunts' and/or 'frigg*** pricks';
materialistic 'sodd*** cunts' and/or 'sodd*** pricks'; realistic 'fuck***
cunts' and/or 'fuck*** pricks' - all of which denigratory phrases can be
diagrammatically accounted for as follows:-
ALPHA OMEGA
1. idealistic 'snogg*** cunts' 8.
superidealistic 'snogg*** pricks'
2. naturalistic
'frigg*** cunts' 7. supernaturalistic 'frigg*** pricks'
3.
materialistic 'sodd*** cunts' 6. supermaterialistic 'sodd*** pricks'
4. realistic
'fuck*** cunts' 5. super-realistic 'fuck*** pricks'
with a
progression or, rather, devolutionary regression from (1) to (4) on the one
hand, and an evolutionary progression from (5) to (8) on the other hand.
17. Of snobs, nobs, yobs, and slobs in relation to
idealism, naturalism, materialism, and realism - in that order.
18. A novelette should be more than just a short
novel; it should be as distinct from a novel as a cigarette from a cigar or a
two-seater car from a four-seater one.
In other words, a novelette is a different genre than a novel, more
petty bourgeois than bourgeois, and there is no reason why anyone who writes
novelettes should also want to write novels.
Nor is there any valid argument against such a person being called a
'novelettist'.
19. In regard to the parallel cited above between
novelettes and two-seater cars, I can see no reason why such cars should not be
called 'carettes', thereby standing to cars as cigarettes to cigars or, as I
have contended, novelettes to novels.
20. Better to be alienated from others than
alienated from the self.
21. Zoos will doubtless increasingly become a kind
of Noah's Ark for the survival and protection of certain animals long after
animals in general cease to exist in the wild, and largely because there will
be no wild in the world of the future in which such animals could
exist. Thus the zoo, considered as an
institution, will keep a minimum number of each species in existence as a kind
of zoological record of species traditionally found in the world - much as a
museum keeps a minimum number of objects of historical importance as a
curatorial record of their antiquity.
From being a place where wild animals are kept in captivity for the
benefit of public curiosity, the zoo will become the only place where animals
can still be found, thereby transferring the reality of animal existence from
the wilds to civilization, from the outside to the inside, from freedom to
captivity, from the private domain to the public domain. One could speak of the zoo that is the last
refuge of animals as a superzoo, though eventually even that will cease to
exist, as evolution also leaves man behind in its quest for the absolute.
22. Although I regard the institution of marriage
as inherently incompatible with the Social Transcendentalist 'Kingdom of
Heaven' to come, since indicative of an alpha-stemming period of time, I would
regard it as a revolutionary transformation for the better within the marriage
ceremony if instead of the groom placing a wedding ring on the ring finger of
his bride, the bride pinned a wedding badge on the chest, e.g. lapel, of the
groom, in response to a sexual transvaluation whereby the woman had to prove
her willingness for the man, rather than vice versa. Thus instead of: 'Do you take this woman to
be your lawful wedded wife?' we would have something to the effect of: 'Do you
take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?' followed by the pinning of a
small, curvilinear badge on the man's chest.
For it seems to me that men have deferred to women long enough and that,
particularly within the context of civil marriage, women ought henceforth,
during the remaining duration of the marital custom, to defer to men. After all, placing a ring on the fourth
finger of a bride entails a concession, on the man's part, to alpha-stemming
'cuntesque' criteria (the ring being of vaginal and centrifugal connotation in
contrast to the phallic and centripetal connotation of a badge) which few
enlightened 'men of the people' would surely wish to make? It amounts to an atomic compromise between
man and woman which, the more evolved the man, can only prove
unacceptable. In fact, the truly
enlightened, free-electron man or, rather, superman ... will scorn marriage
anyway, deeming it too bourgeois. He
would find both the placing and wearing of rings unacceptable - the mark of a
'cunt'. He looks forward to an age when
only curvilinear badges will obtain, and not necessarily in connection with
marriage either!
23. Possibility of distinguishing between:
journals and/or periodicals, serious newspapers, tabloids, and magazines on the
basis of a spectrum that stretches from realism to idealism via materialism and
naturalism. Hence realistic journals,
materialistic newspapers, naturalistic tabloids, and idealistic magazines, with
(broadly) worldly amoral, worldly immoral, diabolic immoral, and divine moral
implications - depending, to a greater or lesser extent, on the type of
journal, newspaper, tabloid, or magazine in question.
24. From ladders to lifts via stairs - a kind of
trinitarian progression from the Father to the Holy Spirit via the Son; though,
given the fact that ladders, stairs, and lifts come in different shapes and
sizes, not to mention materials, we should further distinguish between divine,
diabolic, and worldly parallels in each case, with tripartite options
respectively.
25. The fact that the assertion of a successive
Trinity was adjudged heretical in one age does not automatically render it so
in another. To speak of three
divinities, one succeeding another on an evolutionary basis, may be judged
heretical in a naturalistic alpha-stemming age, when the Father, as the nearest
Western equivalent of the alpha absolute, will have more theological importance
than the Holy Spirit, and when Christ, as the true focal-point of Christianity,
will be regarded as signifying the 'Three-in-One'. But it would be a poor sort of Churchman who
regarded it as heretical in an age which is sufficiently evolved to have an
omega orientation, in which only the Holy Spirit will count for anything in the
divine reckoning, and then only on the basis that it resides in the Second
Coming and can be transferred to the People ... should they democratically
elect to opt for it at the expense of their worldly, i.e. political, judicial,
and economic, sovereignties which, thereafter, would pass to the Second Coming
who, through his political Centre, took such 'sins of the World' upon his
shoulders, as it were, in a spirit of Christ-like sacrifice ... in order that
the People could go free of them and be all the more credibly saved in
consequence. Yes, I do believe in a
successive Trinity, with the Father (alpha) leading to the Son (Christ) and the
Son in turn leading to the Holy Spirit (omega), which will be the ultimate
divinity, a divinity emerging via the People and the post-human life forms
engineered out of them or, rather, their cyborg successors ... as positive pure
spirit, the wavicle electron-electron attractions which should contrast
absolutely with the wavicle proton-proton reactions of the central star of the
Galaxy from which, in my view, the theological postulate of the Creator was
consciously or unconsciously extrapolated.
To some extent it could be claimed that the Father is an autocrat's
divinity, the Holy Spirit a theocrat's divinity, and Christ a democratic
compromise, appropriate to the world, coming in-between. Certainly, I never speak in the name of the
Father, like Christ, but always from an omega standpoint, symptomatic of the
Holy Spirit. And I claim transcendent
sovereignty for myself on the basis not only of my supertruth, commensurate
with messianic revelations concerning the human and post-human path to Heaven,
but also of my virginal celibacy - a no-less important factor in establishing
and maintaining a messianic credibility!
Should the People desire such sovereignty for themselves or, rather,
their selves, they will have to vote accordingly, when the Social Transcendentalist
option is put before them. Only thus can
they become Holy Spirit and enter the '
26. Consequently, all men must come to me if they
wish to be saved; for I am the Superway, the Supertruth, and the Superlife, and
no man can enter the (Social Transcendentalist) 'Kingdom of Heaven' unless he
votes for such a kingdom, and a majority of the votes so cast permit of its
establishment - an establishment whereby political, judicial, and economic
sovereignty would be transferred to the Saviour in return for the ultimate
sovereignty - the religious sovereignty of the Holy Ghost. Only such peoples as the Second Coming has
chosen would be entitled to this ultimate sovereignty, should they so decide. The true, or Catholic, Irish people of the
27. It could be said of Christ that he took the
external 'sins of the world' upon his shoulders at the Crucifixion, whereas it
would seem to be the destiny of the Second Coming (who is not literally Christ)
to take the internal 'sins of the world' upon his shoulders, once he assumes
dictatorial power in the name of the saved People. An historical distinction between a proton
outer and an electron inner - alpha and omega orders of 'worldly sin'. Death and life.
28. Devolution of divinities, or the concept of
God, from the Creator to Christ via the Blessed Virgin, and evolution of
divinities, or the concept of God, from Christ to the Holy Spirit via the
Second Coming. In contemporary terms it
could be said that 'God' has reached the evolutionary level of the Second
Coming, and that the Second Coming will accordingly signify God in the world
until such time as the People collectively become Holy Spirit, when God will
attain, albeit crudely, to its ultimate manifestation prior to eventual
transcendence, that is to say, when the concept of God will depart from both
the Creator and Christ and become focused on the 'Third Person' of the Blessed
Trinity. Such a People's God, or God of
the People, will gradually develop in and beyond the People, i.e. through the
succeeding post-human life forms (superbeings and supra-beings) engineered out
of them or, rather, the (transitional) cyborgs ... by qualified technicians,
towards a definitive realization in positive transcendent spirit - pure and
blissful, the unified culmination of all evolution.
29. To a certain extent the State is always an
oppressor of the People, since the State levies taxes (unlike the Church which,
through its divine mission, seeks to alleviate the sufferings of the People by
bringing them closer to Christ). In the
age-old struggle between the State and the Church, which is equivalent to the
Dark and the Light, the latter is destined to triumph, though not before the
Centre has come to pass and all remaining State responsibility been dovetailed
into the Centre, which will reshape and redefine such responsibility in
accordance with its overriding religious essence, thereby subordinating it to
an inferior place in the overall hierarchy of Centrist priorities. In Ireland the struggle, traditionally,
between State and Church has been particularly acute by dint of the former being
an instrument of British imperialism and the latter being, in its true
manifestation, the representative and chief consolation of the indigenous
people. Thus the struggle between the
Dark and the Light has taken on, until comparatively recent times, a
British/Irish division which, while largely extinct in the South, still obtains
in the North (British
30. Being and doing translated into play and work,
with devolutionary and evolutionary implications: alpha divine
playing-against-self, alpha diabolic working-against-self, worldly alpha
working-against-others, alpha worldly playing-against-others; omega worldly
playing-for-others, worldly omega working-for-others, omega diabolic
working-for-self, omega divine playing-for-self. As a rule, it will be found that divine and
diabolic modes of play and work are psychical, in contrast to the physical
nature of worldly modes of play and work.
Therefore we may further qualify our basic devolutionary/evolutionary
distinctions as follows:-
DEVOLUTION EVOLUTION
1. alpha-divine psychical
playing-against-self 8.
divine-omega psychical playing-for-self
2.
alpha-diabolic psychical working-against-self 7.
diabolic-omega psychical working-for-self
3. worldly-alpha physical
working-against-others 6.
worldly-omega physical working-for-others
4. alpha-worldly physical
playing-against-others 5.
omega-worldly physical playing-for-others
with (1)
and (8) idealistic, (2) and (7) naturalistic, (3) and (6) materialistic, and
(4) and (5) realistic - always bearing in mind our devolutionary and
evolutionary distinctions, which render each antithetical equivalent somewhat
mutually exclusive. Thus the more a man
plays for himself, the less he will play against himself; the more a man works
for himself, the less he will work against himself; and so on. It also follows that the more a man plays for
himself, the less he will be disposed to work for himself, and vice versa,
although no man is ever exclusively any one thing, neither with regard to the
Divine and/or the Diabolic nor with regard to each of the worldly options,
whether alpha or omega. We are
composites with a specific bias one way or another, even when we most
approximate, say, to an omega orientation as opposed to an alpha-stemming
one. To be predominantly divine or
diabolic or worldly is nothing exceptional in a world where absolutes are goals
rather than established facts. But to be
divine, diabolic, or worldly in equal measure would be as impossible as to be
only divine or diabolic or worldly. It
would be equivalent to being an idealist, a naturalist, a materialist, and a
realist all rolled into one, and thus nothing at all. For equal attributes would simply cancel one
another out, making for an abstract void which, theoretically speaking, would
be morally nothing where the absolute was everything - assuming its eventual
realization in the omega Divine. No, a
man is, for example, an idealist only by dint of being predominantly
idealistic. And what applies to the
divine attribute applies no less to the diabolic one and to each of the worldly
attributes as well. A balance between
all four would be practically as well as morally impossible. Life is a struggle between the divine, the
diabolic, and the worldly, not a rapprochement between
incommensurables. On the alpha-stemming
(proton) side of the atom, a devolutionary struggle between different negative
orders of playing and working. On the
omega-aspiring (electron) side of the atom, an evolutionary struggle between
different positive orders of playing and working. Atomic overlappings will of course occur in
the world. But as life draws closer, in
evolutionary terms, to the omega absolute, so playing and working can only
become correspondingly more absolutist in character and, no less importantly,
psychical as opposed to physical.
Eventually even psychical work will be eclipsed and accordingly left
behind by psychical play, which, as I conceive it, is commensurate with
spiritual self-realization.
31. There are, it seems to me, four grades of
superman - namely, particle-biased atomic electron, wavicle-biased atomic
electron, electron particle, and electron wavicle, which, translated into
concrete terms, would be equivalent to: a) muscular supermen; b) fleshy
supermen; c) brainy supermen; and d) spiritual supermen. Or, more simply, supermen of the muscles, the
flesh, the new brain, and the superconscious mind, with muscle and flesh supermen
polar opposites in the world, but new-brain and superconscious supermen polar
opposites appertaining to the Devil/God dichotomy beyond it. Thus whereas muscular and fleshy supermen are
inherently bodily, brainy and spiritual supermen are of the omega-oriented head
- the former more characteristic of the Nordic and, in particular, American
West, the latter ... of the Slavic and Third World East. For there is indeed an ascending hierarchy of
supermen from First to Third World via Second World status, which parallels our
basic tripartite distinctions between world, Devil, and God, or, alternatively,
body, brain, and mind. Not that the
West, for example, is devoid of brain- and mind-biased supermen - any more than
the East is without muscular or fleshy supermen. It is just that the former will generally be
more characteristic of the diabolic and divine parts of the globe, whereas the
latter will typify its inherently worldly parts, which include the greater part
of the Germanic West - that predominantly Caucasian civilization
traditionally. For in our tripartite
geographical and economic divisions of the globe into First, Second and Third
Worlds, we find, broadly speaking, caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid racial distinctions
- distinctions which, no matter how generalized, are not without some relevance
in the formation and overall existence of body-brain-mind options. In the twentieth century the most
representative categories of supermen were of the muscular and fleshy types,
which largely pertained to the West, whereas the brain type had a fringe
standing (in relation to the truly contemporary) in the Communist East and has
yet to come fully into his own - a fact which applies even more to the mind
type of superman who, particularly in the Third World, is more a potentiality
than an actuality at present. His time
has also still to come. Indeed, speaking
of supermen, or those who are class-consciously 'turned on' at one or another
points of an electron-biased orientation, we can grade then from 1-4 in terms
of realism, materialism, naturalism, and idealism, with the fleshy bias, i.e.
good-looks, womanizing disposition, etc., being symptomatic of realism; the
muscular bias being symptomatic of materialism; the new-brain bias (with its
rational implications) being symptomatic of naturalism; and, finally, the
superconscious bias (with its transcendental implications) being symptomatic of
idealism - all biases existing, needless to say, on 'super' levels of their
respective spectra.
32. There is no single relation between mind and
brain, since people are not classifiable on an identical basis. Take, for example, the age-old dichotomy
between art and science. Artists are
clearly a different category of human beings from scientists - a category that,
when true to itself, is predominantly of the mind rather than of the
brain. The artist is one for whom mind,
and hence subjective imagination, is uppermost, whereas the scientist is one
for whom the brain, and hence objective inquiry, is uppermost. It is a wavicle/particle dichotomy, and
although the artist has a brain, we can safely believe that it is subordinate
to his mind and thus acts in the service of imagination - in contrast to the
scientist, for whom, as already noted, the brain predominates, and thus subordinates
mind to its objective inquiry.
33. To expand this dichotomy: one could argue that
the artist's brain is an aside to his mind, or wavicle bias, whereas the
scientist's mind is an aside to his brain, or particle bias. The artist's head - at any rate when judged
in a traditional imaginative light - is a kind of extrapolation from the
central star of the Galaxy, which in its wavicle purism corresponds to the
Creator, whereas the scientist's head - again judged in alpha-stemming terms -
is a kind of extrapolation from the sun, which, in its particle crudeness,
corresponds to the Devil. The former is
predominantly and inherently light ... with a heat aside; the latter
predominantly and inherently heat ... with a light aside, so that while mind,
corresponding to light, is the essence of the one, brain, corresponding to
heat, will be the essence of the other.
Therefore an artist is akin to God in the world, a scientist akin to the
Devil there - two completely separate, independent beings whose ratio of mind
to brain or vice versa is indicative, in its dichotomous nature, of two
essentially antithetical destinies. Any
attempt to judge them according to identical criteria, as though there was a
single mind-brain relationship, can only lead to error.
34. Now what applies to 'heads', of both this and
other descriptions, also applies, if to a lesser extent, to 'bodies', where
different ratios of nominal mind to brain or, conversely, of nominal brain to
mind can be found, depending on the type of worldly person in question, be he
of a particle or a wavicle bias, disposed to fact or disposed, on the contrary,
to fantasy ... in accordance with whether he is regarded as being, in a manner
of speaking, largely extrapolated from the earth's crust or, alternatively,
from its core - in greater or lesser degrees.
The brain-biased 'body', who may well be bony or nervous or muscular,
tends to look-in, as it were, at fact, scientific or otherwise, from the
outside, i.e. as an interested spectator, whereas the mind-biased 'body', who
may well be hot-blooded or vascular or fleshy, tends to look-in at fantasy, be
it fictional or otherwise, from an interested spectator's, and hence passive,
point of view. Neither of them will be
actively intellectual or imaginative, as a rule. Now what applies to alpha-stemming 'bodies'
applies no less to omega-oriented ones, who will be rather more democratic than
autocratic, whether on muscular or fleshy terms. A similar particle/wavicle dichotomy cuts
across the bodily working class, with (muscular) blue-collar workers broadly in
the particle category and (fleshy) white-collar workers broadly in the wavicle
one. 'Heads' of an omega-oriented
disposition, whether of the new brain or the superconscious mind, will of
course reflect a similar particle/wavicle dichotomy, with Super-antichristic
and Superchristic implications, depending on whether we are considering artists
or scientists, religious leaders or economists, Communists or
Transcendentalists, etc., etc. In the
electron-particle case, a superbrainy integrity; in the electron-wavicle case,
a supermindful integrity - the ratio of brain to mind, or vice versa, depending
on the type of omega-oriented 'head' in question. The supreme artist, or Second Coming, is
effectively a manifestation of Holy Spirit in the world, being the farthermost
imaginative stretch of a spectrum tending from the Father through Christ to
himself or, put in psychological terms, from the subconscious to the
superconscious via intermediate consciousness.
35. One of the things which our quartet of 'isms'
... from realism to idealism via materialism and naturalism ... tends to
highlight, from an omega-oriented standpoint, is the narrow and rather limited
value of dialectical materialism in explaining the historical process. For were history nothing more than a series
of materialist frictions within a materialistic context, such a view as is
expressed by dialectical materialism would be largely if not totally valid. But given the fact that, besides materialism,
history also embraces realism, naturalism, and idealism, both in terms of
devolution and evolution, it stands to reason that the materialist
interpretation of history is only very partially valid, having a validity whose
partiality mainly pertains to a materialistic phase of history, with particular
reference to the anarcho-syndicalist struggles of the particle-biased
blue-collar proletariat within the confrontational framework of a dialectic the
envisaged outcome of which is the demolition of bourgeois capitalist power and
the correlative achievement of a workers' republic. Thus we can see that, as an expression of the
workers' struggle, dialectical materialism is an inherently Western phenomenon;
for the dialectic, being relative, is essentially worldly, and where
materialism prevails over realism, as it often does in the more advanced
Western countries, then the dialectical struggle between workers and
capitalists will take a materialistic form, i.e. have as its objective the
total eradication of capitalist exploitation in the interests of a socialist
absolutism which transcends liberal relativity.
Let there be no doubt here: dialectical materialism is but one
expression of the historical process, an expression largely confined to the
West, or First World, in its materialistic (late) phase, which co-exists, as a
rule, with dialectical realism, or the parliamentary struggle between the Left
and the Right conceived as an end-in-itself, rather than a means to a
proletarian end. Thus where dialectical
realism and, hence, liberalism (in the broad sense of that term) is inherently
relative, dialectical materialism strives towards the complete dethronement of
the bourgeoisie in the name of worker management, ownership, and overall
control of the means of production. Where dialectical realism is syndicalist, it
is anarcho-syndicalist. Where
dialectical realism is centralist, it is decentralist. Where dialectical realism is amoral, it is
immoral. And, changing to a sexual
metaphor, one could argue that where dialectical realism is heterosexual and/or
bisexual, it is homosexual. The
proletariat are regarded, in the schema of dialectical materialism, as agents
of their own socialist salvation, rather than simply as tools or bargaining
counters in the hands of union representatives.
Anarcho-syndicalism is far more worker orientated than union
orientated. It is essentially a
grassroots phenomenon.
36. However, if the dialectical process, whether
realist or materialist, is inherently worldly, and thus largely Western, there
can be no question that above and beyond the world in the, as it were, diabolic
and divine parts of the globe, no such interpretation or mode of historical
change will strictly apply; for where the Second and Third Worlds are
concerned, we are not dealing with worldly relativity, as germane to the body,
but with diabolic and/or divine absolutism, as germane to the head in each of
its omega-oriented manifestations.
Therefore we are concerned not with dialectical realism or materialism
but, on the contrary, with what I shall describe as post-dialectical naturalism
in the one case, that of the diabolic, and post-dialectical idealism in the
other, that of the divine. Thus the
(former)
37. However that may be, both post-dialectical
naturalism and post-dialectical idealism are no-less valid explanations of
history and modes of historical change for the 'head' peoples to whom they
especially apply than ... dialectical realism and dialectical materialism for
the 'bodily', or Germanic, peoples of the contemporary West. To imagine that dialectical materialism is
the sole or even chief vehicle of historical change, as does Sartre in his Critique of
Dialectical Reason, is simply to leave the head out of account. Now if that is respectable among so-called
progressive thinkers in the democratic West, it can only be frowned upon in the
theocratic East, where Leninist and/or Maoist criteria tend to take precedence
over Marxism. The time is fast
approaching when even the West will find the dialectical explanation of history
unconvincing on any but a very partial basis.
For if post-dialectical trends are to prevail in the world at large,
both dialectical realism and its rather more intransigent counterpart will have
to be consigned to the rubbish heap of history, there to rot in sordid
isolation from the ongoing process of world-historical change.
38. In relation to the physical States of
bourgeois and/or republican democracies, the (former) Soviet State was
metaphysical, which is to say, one primarily constituted on the basis of the
People rather than, as in Western contexts, the basis of either the government,
as in Britain, or states collectively envisaged as part of some vast
inter-state nation, such as the United States of America. In fact, taking parliamentary democracy
first, we may characterize the governmental State as realist, the inter-state
State as materialist, and the People's State as naturalist, with worldly
amoral, worldly immoral, and diabolically immoral distinctions respectively,
given that the governmental State exists, in effect, as a sovereign individual,
i.e. parliament, whereas both the inter-state State and the People's State are
inherently collectivistic. Indeed, if we
seek alpha-stemming correlations for each of these omega-oriented, or
evolutionary modes of the State, we find (working from the top down) that the
People's State has its antithetical parallel in a diabolic autocracy with one
sovereign ruler; the inter-state State has its antithetical parallel in the
city states and/or early nation states of a worldly alpha autocracy, or
tyranny; and, finally, the governmental State has its antithetical parallel in
the aristocratic oligarchies of ensuing democratic autocracies, of which the
House of Lords affords us the best existing example, since it co-exists with
the House of Commons in a Janus-like State which is both autocratic and democratic
at the same time - autocratic as regards the Lords, but democratic with regard
to the Commons. Now whereas
alpha-stemming antiquity affords us plentiful examples of political separatism
and isolationism, omega-oriented modernity has, by contrast, a more cohesive and
unified face - at any rate, as regards the constitutions of the different kinds
of States, whether or not they overlap with the traditional forms of the State
or, indeed, with one another. For no
State is ever entirely one thing, the People's State not excepted, since it has
a physical as well as a metaphysical dimension, the former expressed in the
various republics of the union. And yet,
if the People's State is predominantly metaphysical, it is not on that account
spiritual. For we should distinguish
between the metaphysical and the spiritual as between People's democracies and
the envisaged People's theocracies which I equate with the coming Centre. Thus whereas the diabolic, or new-brain level
of the State is metaphysical as opposed to physical, like the worldly or bodily
levels of the State (whether governmental or inter-state), the Centre will be
predominantly spiritual to the extent that it equates with a divine, or
superconscious, order of society above and beyond all statism - diabolic as well
as worldly. For the Centre is not
another form of the State but, on the contrary, a manifestation of the '
39. Strictly speaking, the State is any mode of
political organization within certain broadly accepted geographical boundaries. It is not a country or land mass, since
Ireland is a country with, at the time of writing, two States, one republican
and the other a part of the United Kingdom, and land, at any rate, ice masses
like the North Pole and Antarctica have never been States, since no-one has
seen fit to live on them and set up some form of political administration. Thus the State and the geographical
boundaries of a country are not necessarily synonymous, although as a rule we do
find State and country overlapping, as it were, in mutual identification. Certainly, there cannot be a State if there
is not a country, or a densely populated area of land traditionally inhabited
by peoples of neighbouring or kindred tribes.
Peoples make countries, and countries make States. Before the white man came, the Australasian
continent was not a country, still less a State or collection of States, but
simply a sparsely inhabited land of no national determination. The white colonists created
40. Although I admire Arthur Koestler as a writer,
I find his desire for a reconciliation, on the basis of a chemically-induced
balance, between the old brain and the new brain, the former conceived by
Koestler as predominantly emotional and the latter as predominantly
intellectual, is less a solution to the alleged problem of man's 'divided
house', to use his phrase, than a retreat from transcendental progress towards
a balanced dualism reminiscent of Harry Haller's redemption in The
Steppenwolf, that Jekyll and Hyde novel by Hermann Hesse, in which the
warring divisions between 'beast' and 'god' in its split-personality
protagonist are finally overcome through a conversion process which results in
Haller's accepting his human wholeness.
Something analogous to that is essentially what Koestler wants to see
come about, though, in fairness to him, he regards the emotional old brain
(cerebellum) as traditionally and inherently more powerful than the
intellectual new brain (cerebrum), and therefore as something that has to be
controlled, if necessary via chemical means, in the interests of a psychic
balance. However, such a balanced
solution to the alleged imbalance which Koestler perceives in (amongst other
publications) Janus - A Summing Up as the root cause of man's historical
and social dilemma ... is no less bourgeois than Harry Haller's conversion to
dualistic integration in The Steppenwolf, since it leaves humanity where
we find it today - torn between old and new brains, beast and god.
41. No, a perpetual relativity is hardly the
solution to man's dualistic predicament!
Evolutionary progress demands a higher solution, and if in the course of
such progress man is overcome (to use a Nietzschean turn-of-phrase), then the
resulting life forms engineered out of him will be less disposed to relativity
and correspondingly more disposed to aspirations towards a projected divine
culmination of evolution in the ultimate absolutism - the absolutism, I need
scarcely add, of the Holy Spirit.
Certainly a new-brain collectivization would have no such dualistic
divisions (or imbalances) as man, and while brain collectivizations may have to
precede new-brain ones, we need not doubt that even they would be
capable of a greater degree of integrated spirituality and omega orientation
than man, and so stand closer, in evolutionary terms, to that new-brain
absolutism which must come if evolution is to transcend a perpetual humanism
... such that could only appeal to a worldly and, in effect, bourgeois
mentality. Besides, quite apart from
moral and spiritual motivations (which are always uppermost in any idealistic
mind), there is the population factor to consider, a factor to which Koestler
draws more than passing attention in The Ghost in the Machine, and
obviously in the spirit of someone deeply fearful of the consequences, both
demographically and socially, of unchecked population growth. Yet, even with the inevitability of wars for
some time to come, it is highly probable that the immense population increases
which the twentieth century spawned will continue to rise at an ever-increasing
rate, thereby making it virtually inevitable that, sooner or later, man will be
obliged to transcend his species and become post-human, achieve, through
artificial mutation engineered by various qualified technicians, the status of
artificially-supported and no-less artificially-sustained brain
collectivizations, which will have the distinct advantage of being able to
'house' far more lives in a given environment, or in the dwindling space
available on this planet, than could reasonably be 'housed' in the human
context, where bodies and bodily needs necessarily take up and require more
space. Not only would the standard of
life be considerably improved, i.e. rendered more consistently spiritual,
through brains being artificially supported and sustained in collectivized
contexts but, no less significantly, such contexts would be the only way in
which the vastly greater populations of the future could
reasonably be accommodated, with ever-increasing degrees of
centro-complexification ... as when new-brain collectivizations supersede, via
artificial mutation, brain collectivizations, and a life form antithetical, in
evolutionary terms, to trees rather than, as with the preceding stage, to apes
on trees ... ultimately comes to pass, a life form which I have elsewhere
termed a Supra-being (to distinguish it from the preceding Superbeings, or
brain collectivizations). Such an
ultimate life form would take-up even less room than the penultimate one and,
in any case, would find its proper environment in space centres where, at a
relatively safe remove from the earth's gravity, the hypermeditative process
which should lead to transcendence, and thus to the attainment of
electron-electron attractions, would receive the maximum environmental encouragement. However, if Supra-beings are too far into the
future to be worth seriously contemplating at present, the same, I believe,
cannot be said of Superbeings, or brain collectivizations, which, in their
hypertripping capacity, would logically follow-on from the cyborg stage of
evolution here on earth, and in numbers greatly in excess of the current human
population of the globe.
42. As to the cyborg stage of evolution, which I equate
with a transition coming in-between transcendental man and the first of the
post-human life forms, I would not want to give too exclusively an impression
of robot-like beings who strut about the earth like knights in shining armour,
since any such eventuality could prove more violent and competitive, in its
unfolding, than that to which we are accustomed in terms of human life,
particularly if the said robotic cyborgs felt they were invincible and
ultrapowerful, scarcely accountable to governmental and/or social control! Heaven forbid that anything remotely
resembling the sci-fi productions of star-wars type scenarios involving
clashing metallic 'men' should ever materialize in reality! My hope is that if extensive transplantations
or transmutations of human organs eventually lead to men becoming more
artificial than natural, the men in question will be more disposed to peace and
social integration than to war and gangsterism, being, to all intents and
purposes, an improvement upon Les hommes moyen naturels/sensuels. Perhaps the term 'cyborg', with its robotic
connotations, is too strong, or should be confined to only a comparatively
small minority of future 'men' - like, for example, the police, who may well
become the most artificial category of persons or, at any rate, have recourse
to a kind or level of cyborg transmutation denied to the masses in general,
with, maybe, metallic rather than plastic parts (inner or outer) for purposes
of social expedience. But of course the
police, or superpolice (as they might well have become by then), would be
accountable to the leadership, and therefore pledged to behave in a manner
guaranteed to uphold the peace, whether or not this sometimes resulted in a
certain degree of intimidatory or corrective discipline.
43. Whatever the form it actually takes, it does
seem that a transitional stage from late man to the first of the post-human
life forms will have to be evolved through, and I dare say that life in that
period will be more artificial for the great majority of people than
natural. After all, man was not made in
a day but, if we adopt a non-mythical approach to his origins, gradually
emerged from the ape, or a certain species of ape. Now what applies to the emergence of man must
surely apply to the emergence, in due course, of the Superbeing, that
antithesis, as I conceive it, to the ape, and first of our envisaged two
manifestations of post-human life - the other of course being the
supra-beingful new-brain collectivizations which, in their greater uniformity
and increased centro-complexification, would be as far beyond or posterior to
man, in evolutionary terms, as trees were before or anterior to him, bearing in
mind that trees preceded apes in the overall evolution or, as I prefer to
regard it, devolution of life on earth ... from the starry cosmos. Ah, it is with the ultimate post-human life
form that the dawn of a new cosmos will be in sight - a supercosmos, as it
were, of the omega heavens converging and expanding in electron-electron
attractions.
44. To distinguish between negative individualism,
whether divine or worldly, which is alpha stemming, and positive individualism,
whether divine or worldly, which is omega orientated, in regard to both
negative spiritual and negative physical self-transcendence on the one hand,
and to both positive spiritual and positive physical self-transcendence on the
other hand. Likewise to distinguish
between negative collectivism, whether diabolic or worldly, which is alpha stemming,
and positive collectivism, whether diabolic or worldly, which is omega
orientated, in regard to both negative soulful and negative physical
self-assertion on the one hand, and to both positive soulful and positive
physical self-assertion on the other hand.
Taking negative individualism and negative collectivism first, we are
distinguishing between proton-wavicle self-transcendence, proton-particle
self-assertion, atomic-proton self-assertion, and proton-atomic
self-transcendence, with alpha divine, alpha diabolic, worldly alpha, and alpha
worldly overtones. By contrast, positive
individualism and positive collectivism may be described, starting from the
bottom up, in terms of electron-atomic self-transcendence, atomic-electron
self-assertion, electron-particle self-assertion, and electron-wavicle
self-transcendence, with omega worldly, worldly omega, omega diabolic, and
omega divine overtones respectively.
45. Competition and co-operation are terms we can
exchange for negative and positive, with alpha-stemming modes of individualism
and collectivism competitive, but omega-oriented modes of individualism and
collectivism co-operative. In the one
case, competitive either vis-à-vis oneself or others, and, in the other case,
co-operative either vis-à-vis oneself or others, bearing in mind that the
'self' differs between spiritual and physical according to whether we are
referring to the divine or to the middle worldly, that 'others' differ between
physical and soulful according to whether we are referring to the extreme
worldly or to the diabolic, at whichever poles of their respective
spectra. The divine is always wavicle
centred, the diabolic particle centred, whether on a subatomic or a
supra-atomic basis, whereas the worldly options are biased towards particles or
wavicles within an atomic framework.
Individualism is accordingly a wavicle integrity, noumenal in the case
of the divine, whether alpha or omega, phenomenal in the case of the middle
worldly antithesis, whereas collectivism is a particle integrity, noumenal in
the case of the diabolic, whether alpha or omega, phenomenal in the case of the
extreme worldly antithesis, i.e. worldly alpha and omega. You can only have collectivism between
particles, which come together in groups while yet retaining their basic unit
differentials. A wave, or wavicle, is an
individual entity, not a collection of separate parts.
46. Concerning the distinction we have drawn
between alpha-stemming competitive and omega-oriented co-operative antitheses,
we find ourselves with the paradoxical integrities, for example, of competitive
self-transcendence in the cases of the alpha divine and alpha worldly options,
but co-operative self-assertion in the cases of the worldly omega and omega
diabolic options. This is because
competition is inherently reactive, and the proton aspect of the atom is
nothing if not reactive, whereas co-operation is inherently attractive, as are
electrons within the electron aspect of the atom. Just as proton-proton reactions precede
worldly atomicity, so electron-electron attractions succeed it. Hence we should distinguish between
competitive self-transcendence and co-operative self-transcendence on both
spiritual (divine) and physical (worldly) levels, with an analogous distinction
between competitive self-assertion and co-operative self-assertion on both
soulful (diabolic) and physical (worldly) levels. War is basically competitive self-assertion
within the collective context, whereas sport, by contrast, is predominantly
co-operative self-assertion (team work, mutual respect, shared skills, etc.)
within the collective context. Sex is
basically competitive self-transcendence within the individual context, whereas
dance is predominantly co-operative self-transcendence within the individual
context. Both pairs of antitheses are
inherently worldly, if on different terms - the first pair materialistic, and
hence extreme worldly, but the second pair realistic, and hence middle
worldly. Of course, competitive elements
enter into the co-operative integrities and vice versa; for just as war has a
co-operative side - at any rate, between members of the same army - so sport
has a competitive one, now more, now less, according to the contextual
circumstances. (The average football match contains more passes than tackles, a
fact which testifies to its predominantly co-operative essence.) Likewise, sex and dance are partly
interchangeable so far as the basic ratios of competition to co-operation are
concerned, though, as a rule, there will be more competition in sex than in
dance and, conversely, more co-operation in dance than in sex, always bearing
in mind our fundamental distinction between the reactive and the attractive,
negativity and positivity, which corresponds to the terms under discussion.
47. Now what applies to the worldly dichotomies
applies just as much to the diabolic and divine dichotomies above, where
self-transcendence and self-assertion are both competitive and co-operative,
depending on the level and type of divine or diabolic equations, whether alpha
or omega. The equation of competitive,
or negative, self-transcendence with the Father would be no less valid than the
equation of co-operative, or positive, self-transcendence with the Holy
Spirit. Taking the subconscious and the
superconscious as our psychic parallels to the divine poles, we may
characterize dreaming as a manifestation of competitive self-transcendence ...
in contrast to, say, LSD tripping as a manifestation of co-operative
self-transcendence. Similarly, the
equation of competitive self-assertion with Satan would be no less valid than
the equation of co-operative self-assertion with the Antichrist. And if we extrapolate old-brain and new-brain
options as parallels to the diabolic poles, we may characterize old-brain activity,
whether emotional or wilful, as a manifestation of competitive self-assertion
... in contrast to new-brain activity, whether intellectual or wilful, as a
manifestation of co-operative self-assertion.
Both are of course soulful rather than spiritual, which is to say heat
rather than light.
48. However, it would be wrong to suppose, in too
Koestlerian a fashion, that the old brain is entirely emotional and the new
brain entirely intellectual; for in point of fact emotions stretch from the one
to the other, as of course does the intellect.
It is rather that old-brain emotions will generally be more negative,
and therefore aggressive, than those of the new brain ... on account of the
greater preponderance of protons over electrons in that brain, whereas
new-brain emotions will generally be more positive, or integrative, on account
of the preponderating electron bias in the overall atomicity of the new brain,
a brain which stands in a kind of atomically antithetical relationship to the
old one - the lower, or alpha-stemming, brain.
Thus whereas old-brain emotions are likely to be competitive, new-brain
emotions will be co-operative, even though equally self-assertive. Taking awareness, emotions, and intellect as
the three major factors or experiences of the psyche, we should ascribe a
wavicle status to awareness, a particle status to emotions, and a kind of
atomic status to intellect, which comes somewhere in between - almost as a
cross, or compromise, between awareness and emotion. Yet we must not forget that just as emotions
and intellect stretch from the old brain to the new brain, so does awareness,
since we can distinguish between subconscious alpha-stemming awareness, as in
dreams, and superconscious omega-oriented awareness, as in meditation. Whether the awareness in question be truly
divine or a by-product of the diabolic ... will depend on the type of brain any
given person has. For we have already
established that not all brains are equal, and that while some are akin to
extrapolations from the central star of the Galaxy, others seem to have been
predominantly extrapolated from the sun, being to all intents and purposes more
emotional than mindful or, which amounts
to the same thing, more heat than light.
An omega transvaluation within the framework of evolutionary progress
does not alter the relativity of this basic polarity; for divine and diabolic
spectra are just as distinct on a superconscious/new-brain basis as on a
subconscious/old-brain one. Spirit and
soul remain parallel despite relative fusings or overlappings, the 'mind'
person and the 'brain' person are not interchangeable but two opposite types -
artist and scientist, divine and diabolic, wavicle and particle, whether
negatively or positively, competitively or co-operatively, biased towards
protons or towards electrons.
49. And yet, if Koestler is wrong to divide the
old and new brains too glibly between emotion and intellect, it could be
claimed that my own division between divine mind and diabolic brain is less
than wholly right. Since we have agreed
that awareness and emotions are the twin poles of the head conceived on a sort
of vertical rather than horizontal basis, and that intellect comes somewhere in
between, it seems somehow better to distinguish between mindful and emotional
people on a divine/diabolic basis, and to conceive of intellectual, or brainy,
people as worldly or, at any rate, an amalgam of the two. I say this because my long familiarity with
Koestler's fascinating tripartite distinctions between humour, science, and art
has suddenly thrust itself upon me, making me freshly conscious of a parallel
between humour and emotions, science and intellect, and art and awareness, with
electron-particle, atomic-electron, and electron-wavicle overtones - at least
in relation to an omega orientation (seeing that alpha-stemming 'humour' would
be rather black and possibly more aligned with a scowl-producing phenomenon
than with one inducing smiles!).
50. Koestler distinguishes in a variety of books,
not least The Act of Creation, between what he calls the 'Haha!'
reaction, the 'Aha!' reaction, and the 'Ah ...' reaction, alleging connections
with humour, science, and art respectively.
Now if we examine these reactions in the light of my own atomic
parallels, we shall find that the 'Haha!' reaction, being absolutist and
particle suggesting, connotes with an electron-particle absolutism; the 'Aha!'
reaction, being relative and therefore atomic suggesting, connotes with an
atomic-electron relativity; and the 'Ah ...' reaction, being absolutist and
wavicle suggesting, connotes with an electron-wavicle absolutism. Thus instead of having a horizontal
progression, as in Koestler, from 'Haha!' to 'Ah ...' via 'Aha!', the latter of
which is manifestly a combination of the other two, we would have a vertical
arrangement with 'Ah ...' at the top, 'Aha!' in the middle, and 'Haha!' at the
bottom - the 'Ah ...' reaction co-operatively self-transcending, the 'Aha!'
reaction both self-transcending and self-assertive on co-operative terms, and,
finally, the 'Haha!' reaction co-operatively self-assertive. Thus whereas the 'Ah ...' reaction would
pertain to the superconscious region of the psyche as the awareness aspect of
the new brain and be inherently subjective, the 'Haha!' reaction would correspond,
by contrast, to the emotional aspect of the new brain and be inherently
objective. The 'Aha!' reaction, on the
other hand, would correspond to the intellectual aspect of the new brain and be
both subjective and objective in possibly equal measure.
51. Taking cosmic parallels to the above, one
could argue that awareness is an extrapolation from the central star of the
Galaxy, emotion an extrapolation from the sun, and intellect an extrapolation
from the moon, since, like intellect, the moon is rather more atomic than
absolute on either a wavicle or a particle basis. But, of course, direct extrapolations would
only have effect with regard to the subconscious, that is to say with regard to
negative awareness, emotion, and intellect respectively, since positive
awareness, emotion, and intellect are predominantly factors of the
superconscious, situated, as it is, within the new brain, a brain far less
alpha stemming, on whichever level, than the old one which, as Koestler rightly
maintains, considerably precedes it in chronological time. Unlike him, however, I would argue that the
old brain is a manifestation of organic devolution from central star, sun, and
moon, whereas only the new brain is truly evolutionary, having potentials for
positive awareness, emotion, and intellect which stretch way beyond the worldly
plane towards a reality, or series of realities, at once superdivine,
superdiabolic, and superpurgatorial (if we may be permitted to equate purgatory
with a cross between Heaven and Hell, i.e. as a sort of superlunar compromise
between superstellar and supersolar intimations). However that may be, it is to positive
self-transcending awareness that I attach the greater importance, since only
that is truly divine. The other aspects
of the omega-oriented psyche will have to be transcended in the course of time;
for better than both the 'Haha!' and the 'Aha!' is the 'Ah ...' of blessed
enlightenment.
52. Self-transcendence has its true pole not in
self-assertion, as Koestler contends, but in self-consciousness, which is an
atomic, or egocentric, psychic experience standing to self-transcendence as the
phenomenal to the noumenal - at any rate on an alpha-stemming basis of, as it
were, negative self-transcendence (dreams) to negative self-consciousness
(embarrassment). For antithetical to the
alpha-stemming duality is the omega-oriented dualism of positive
self-consciousness (pride) and positive self-transcendence (LSD trips), with
superphenomenal and supernoumenal implications respectively, each of which
exists on a wavicle basis. Thus while
self-transcendence represents the alpha and omega divine poles,
self-consciousness signifies a kind of worldly divine antithesis to each pole -
an egocentric middle-ground standing in-between subconscious and superconscious
awareness extremes. Likewise,
antithetical in such a way to negative self-assertion is negative self-denial
(mortification of the flesh), which stands to the former in a phenomenal
light. But if the noumenal precedes the
phenomenal, then the superphenomenal precedes the supernoumenal, and we find
positive self-denial (fasting, celibacy) antithetical to positive
self-assertion - a duality no less particle-centred than its alpha-stemming
counterpart. While self-assertion
represents the alpha and omega diabolic poles, self-denial stands, in both its
negative and positive manifestations, as a kind of worldly diabolic antithesis
to each pole - an egocentric middle-ground in between subconscious and
superconscious emotional extremes. Thus
where we are in effect speaking, with regard to the divine spectrum, of
Fatheristic and Christic distinctions on an alpha-stemming basis, but of
Superchristic and Superfatheristic distinctions on an omega-oriented one, the
diabolic spectrum affords us parallel distinctions between the Satanic and the
Antichristic on an alpha-stemming basis, with, in the omega-oriented case,
Super-antichristic and Supersatanic implications. Proton wavicles - atomic wavicles (negative
and positive) - electron wavicles ... in the one case; proton particles -
atomic particles (negative and positive) - electron particles ... in the other
case. Light and heat, whether negative
or positive.
53. Consequently, we may conclude by saying that
whereas self-transcendence and self-assertion are parallel poles of parallel
spectra, i.e. divine and diabolic, self-consciousness is the antithetical pole
to the former and self-denial the antithetical pole to the latter, and this
whether we are treating of an alpha-stemming or an omega-oriented duality. Self-transcendence and self-assertion are
simply the outermost poles of truly divine and diabolic equivalents. Indeed, just as Koestler distinguishes
between 'Ah ...' - 'Aha!' - and 'Haha!' reactions, which are all positive, so,
for the sake of a more comprehensive perspective, we should admit of their
negative antitheses, which can be defined in terms of 'Oh ...' - 'Oho!' - and
'Ohoh!', the first self-transcending, the third self-assertive, and the second
an intellectual cross between each of the others. In fact, we would have, in these old-brain
experiences, the nearest thing to direct extrapolations from the central star
of the Galaxy (the alpha divine), the moon (the alpha purgatorial), and the sun
(the alpha diabolic), given their spiritual, intellectual, and emotional
distinctions. Probably myth, the occult,
and tragedy would be the most approximate disciplinary parallels to the art -
science - humour (comedy) trinity advanced by Koestler in connection with the
omega-oriented 'Ah ...' - 'Aha!' - 'Haha!' reactions, the negative self-transcending
tendency of the 'Oh ...' reaction, so to speak, being associated with myth, the
negative self-transcending/self-assertive compromise of the 'Oho!' reaction
being associated with the occult (a sort of primitive science), and the
negative self-assertive tendency of the 'Ohoh!' reaction being associated with
tragedy and, hence, tears. Competitive
where the Koestlerian trinity is co-operative, this alpha-stemming trinity
would be the negative aspect of a Janus-faced entity which, in the totality of its
psychic dimensions, stretches from the old brain to the new one. Doubtless, the more balanced the psyche
between subconscious and superconscious, whether consciously, intellectually,
or emotionally, the greater the likelihood that neither negative nor positive
self-transcending and self-assertive tendencies will apply, but only a
humanistic dualism in between self-consciousness and self-denial, with but a
comparatively weak peripheral response either side, depending on the type of
worldly person in question. For whereas
divinely-biased people are largely self-transcending and diabolically-biased
people largely self-assertive, worldly people, coming in-between, are either
self-conscious or self-denying, as befitting the phenomenal middle-ground in
between noumenal extremes. In the one
case a worldly divine analogue and, in the other case, a worldly diabolic
analogue, whether negative or positive, phenomenal or superphenomenal.
54. It seems indisputable to me that grammatical
contractions of the order of 'I'm' for 'I am', 'don't' for 'do not', and 'he'd'
for 'he had' or even 'he would' are requisite, whenever possible, to paperback
writing, since a paperback is an absolute form of book (no sharp distinction
between cover and pages, both being made from paper) which calls for a
correspondingly absolutist, or superphenomenal, writerly technique. Not so a hardback, where we have a relativity
between the hard cover and the paper pages which smacks of bourgeois phenomenalism
and calls for an equally relativistic writerly technique, as with 'I am', 'do
not', 'he had', etc., used virtually without fail. To write for hardback publication in a
superphenomenal, or contracted, manner would seem as illogical and incongruous
to me as ... to write in a phenomenal, or relativistic, manner for
paperbacks. The one format is
essentially bourgeois, the other proletarian, and the method of writing should
reflect this class distinction if anomalous, paradoxical productions are not to
occur - as, sadly, all too frequently happens!
Even works that were originally written in a relativistic fashion for
hardback publication should, where feasible, be rewritten or, at any rate,
reprinted in an absolutist manner, in the event of subsequent paperback
publication. As a rule, the relativistic
technique is left as originally written, and the result is the paradoxical
phenomenon of a petty-bourgeois paperback, or perhaps I should say softback,
which is neither fish nor fowl, but effectively a wolf in sheep's clothing.
55. One of the things which most distinguishes the
truly modern, omega-oriented philosophical book (if philosophy is really the
word) from traditional, alpha-stemming works of philosophy is the absence or
reduction of apparent divisions - divisions between volumes, books, parts, and
chapters. Indeed, the more alpha
stemming the work of philosophy, the more likely it is to be divided into a
number of subsidiary books and/or parts, which testifies, it seems to me, to
the divisive, competitive, and superficial nature of life in an autocratic age
or society, a nature which to some extent extends into a democratic age or
society, although rather more on the basis of parts and chapters than of
volumes and books. Certainly, I have always
eschewed, in my own writings, the kinds of apparent divisions which are so
ubiquitous in traditional philosophy, even up to and including Sartre, whose Critique of
Dialectical Reason, originally intended to extend over two volumes, embraces
book, part, and chapter divisions in the manner of the most hidebound
autocrats, not excepting Schopenhauer himself, whose The World as Will and
Representation comes in two volumes with four books in each! Nor should we overlook the fact that the
Bible is also guilty of alpha-stemming divisions, being in effect two volumes,
each of which comprises a number of books divided into chapters, the chapters
in turn divisible into verses, so that there is a four-way division along
patently autocratic lines. Frankly, no such
divisions could be countenanced in an omega-oriented age or society, where only
the most evolved type of 'book', one largely if not entirely indivisible as to
chapters, parts, books, etc., would do justice to and adequately reflect the
transcendental aspirations of the People towards divine unity. My own foremost writings, which are rather
more theosophical than philosophical, aim at just such a literary
indivisibility - the indivisibility of supernotational centro-complexification
within a strictly omega-oriented, or essential, framework. The other, more traditional works - usually
published in book form - should be consigned to the rubbish heap of
alpha-stemming antiquity, where they can return to dust.
56. Emotion and awareness are to the psyche what
intellect is to the brain: namely its essence.
Now we have already argued that the psyche stretches from subconscious
origins to a superconscious culmination, or high-point, and that emotions and
awareness accrue in the main negatively to the subconscious but positively to
the superconscious, making for alpha-stemming and omega-oriented
distinctions. The emotional psyche,
whether subconscious, superconscious, or a combination of both, should be
termed the soul ... to distinguish it from the conscious psyche which, at both
subconscious and superconscious extremes as well as in the strictly conscious
middle-ground, we may call the spirit.
Soul and spirit can be either negative or positive, according to whether
we are concerned with the subconscious or the superconscious or, indeed, with a
cross between the two ... when we have a dualistic soul and spirit
respectively: half-negative and half-positive.
On the other hand, intellect, which we have just contended to be the
essence of the brain, is neither soulful nor spiritual but, for want of a better
term, wilful, i.e. full of will, since it does not arise of its own volition,
so to speak, but has to be created and maintained through conscious effort, in
accordance with the essentially phenomenal nature of the intellect - a sort of
cross between wavicles and particles, awareness and emotions, meanings and
words, which corresponds to brain atomicity, whether we are alluding to the
negative intellectuality of the old brain or to the positive intellectuality of
the new one or, indeed, to a compromise between the two brains. For unlike the soulful psyche, which on its
negative side may be regarded as in some sense an extrapolation from the sun,
i.e. a proton-particle absolutism, and equally unlike the spiritual psyche,
which on its negative side may be regarded as in some sense an extrapolation
from the central star of the Galaxy, i.e. a proton-wavicle absolutism, the
negative intellect, like the old brain of which it is the essence, can be
regarded as in some sense an extrapolation from the moon, with,
correspondingly, an atomic-proton integrity which is rather more materialistic
than either idealistic (as in the case of awareness) or naturalistic (as in the
case of emotions). Such intellectual
materialism renders the intellect comparatively mundane in relation to both the
soul and the spirit, and for this reason it is more fitting to equate it with
purgatory than with either Heaven or Hell - a kind of negative purgatory in
relation to the old brain, though a rather more positive purgatory in relation
to the new one. Now since the intellect
is inherently purgatorial, it is not surprising that it stands closer to the
worldly nature of the physical body by dint of being used more often than not -
certainly by the great majority of people - in the body's service.
57. Thus Schopenhauer was fundamentally correct to
regard the brain as an offshoot of the body to the extent that we are concerned
with the use of intellect, whether negatively or positively, in its service
rather than as a quasi-transcendent noumenal reality which, like the psyche in
both its emotional and conscious manifestations, exists independently of the
body on divine and diabolic terms - indeed, as extrapolations from much older
cosmic sources than the earth or even the moon.
Where Schopenhauer was at fault - and this may well owe something to his
Germanic antecedents - was by including the psyche in his definition of brain,
so that both emotion and awareness, of whichever kinds, are implicitly denied
extraterrestrial origin and relegated, willy-nilly, to the mundane status of
world-serving intellect, with its lunar overtones. Granted that a worldly people will perceive
the brain and, by implication, the psyche in this material light, we cannot
exonerate even so untypical an intellect as Schopenhauer's from accusations of
an unduly worldly emphasis in his explanation of the brain's origin and
justification. Certainly the blossom and
fruit on trees susceptible to such growths would not confirm the alleged
utilitarian origins of the brain or, rather, its psychic concomitants, since
blossom and fruit are to the tree what the head is to the body - entities
derived, in all their essentials, from earlier and, therefore, cosmic
sources. Should one prefer, as seems to
me quite reasonable, to extrapolate subconscious awareness from blossom and
subconscious emotion from fruit or, at any rate, the fruit on fruit-bearing
trees, there could be no obstacle to one's extrapolating subconscious intellect
from nuts on nut-bearing trees, since nuts stand to fruit in a comparatively
materialistic light, a light which may well owe its origin more to the moon
than to the sun, given the materialistic nature of the former (as already
discussed) in relation to the comparatively naturalistic, and therefore
inherently more diabolic, nature of the latter.
Thus whereas blossom and fruit would accord with a kind of organic
blueprint, in nature, for the subconscious psyche, having divine and diabolic
overtones by dint of the wavicle-suggesting status of the one and the particle-suggesting
status of the other, nuts on nut-bearing trees could be regarded in terms of a
kind of organic blueprint, in nature, for the brain, with particular reference
to the old brain, of which negative intellect is the lunar essence. I concede that this is highly speculative,
yet it has to be admitted that, like the brain, nuts are rather more atomic
than either fruit, with its particle (seed) essence, or blossom, with its
wavicle (petal) essence - both of which suggest psychic correlations.
58. Now just as some trees are rather more
blossom- than fruit-orientated, some rather more fruit- than
blossom-orientated, and others rather more nut-orientated than either blossom-
or fruit-orientated, so people differ in terms of their predominating psychic
or intellectual dispositions, many being neither particularly psychic nor
intellectual but inherently bodily, like those trees which are bereft of or
comparatively scarce in blossom, fruit and/or nuts, and may accordingly be
regarded as being predominantly worldly.
However that may be, it would seem that the psyche is less a function of
the brain than a subatomic substratum ranging through it (both old and new)
from alpha to omega, which co-exists with it on both wavicle and particle
terms, self-sufficient and inherently independent of the intellect as such
which, whether alpha stemming or omega orientated, is the brain's true
function, and one, moreover, having intimate connections with the body - just
as, to revert to our cosmic parallel, the moon has intimate connections with
the earth, whereas both the sun and the central star of the Galaxy,
corresponding to subconscious emotion and awareness respectively, are somewhat
less intimate, if not altogether aloof.
59. Consequently, we must free the psyche from the
brain, or from too close an association with the brain, and more in terms of
the superconscious than the subconscious which, in any case, is anterior rather
than posterior to it. But by freeing the
psyche from the brain I do not intend to suggest that it should be more widely
identified with the physical body, as has happened in the (Germanic) West in
recent decades; for while that is undoubtedly a step beyond worldly
identifications of psyche and brain, it is more symptomatic of superworldly
materialism than of either superdiabolic naturalism (positive emotions) or
superdivine idealism (positive awareness), and thereby reduces the psyche to
the flesh/muscle body instead of elevating or, rather, expanding it towards
wavicle and particle alternatives of the superconscious head, as pertinent to
God/Devil noumenal absolutisms beyond both the bodily world and, no less
importantly, the purgatorial intellect.
Where the democratic and largely Germanic peoples of the West are
concerned, the post-worldly identification of psyche with the flesh/muscle body
is only to be expected, and is symptomatic, it seems to me, of a socialistic
equivalent indicative, in large measure, of Western decadence. By contrast, the identification of psyche
with the soulful, or emotional, superconscious is communistic and comparatively
Slavic, as befitting an electron-particle absolutism. Such a positive diabolic identification can
only be opposed and superseded by the positive divine identification of psyche
with the spiritual, or awareness, superconscious, which in my estimation is
transcendent, as appropriate to an electron-wavicle absolutism. It is this highest manifestation of the omega
psyche, commensurate with positive light rather than positive heat, that must
eventually prevail in the world, bringing humanity to the Holy Spirit ... as
the omega '
60. Whilst on the subject of light and heat
distinctions, we should remember that whereas in the everyday world of
artificial energy like electric light and electric fire, light is the essence
of the one and heat the essence of the other, the heat which accrues to light,
as its aside, is apparent, as is the light which accrues, as an aside, to
heat. Thus there is a sharp distinction
between light-heat in the case of electric light and heat-light in the case of
electric fire, both of which are subsidiary to the overall, or essential,
manifestation of each mode of artificial energy. Broadly speaking, electric light, with its
apparent heat, corresponds to the spiritual superconscious, or an
electron-wavicle equivalent, whereas electric fire, with its apparent light,
corresponds to the soulful superconscious, or an electron-particle equivalent, conscious
and emotional parallels in artificial light and heat which point up the moral
distinction I was making earlier between spirit and soul, or Heaven and
Hell. So long as emotion, or heat,
remains the principal factor, there can be only a subsidiary awareness, or
light. Conversely, so long as awareness,
or light, remains the principal factor, there can be only a subsidiary
emotional level, or heat. Spirit and
soul are no more identical or interchangeable than electric lights and electric
fires or, for that matter, jazz and rock, scooters and motorbikes, Fascism and
Communism, Heaven and Hell. Positive
emotion is no less germane to an omega hell than positive awareness to an omega
heaven. Superconscious love (positive
heat) and superconscious truth (positive light), with aesthetic (heat-light)
and joyful (light-heat) asides respectively.
For as beauty is the light of love, so joy is the heat of truth. Love and truth are no less incommensurate
than beauty and joy. Either one pursues
beauty through love or, alternatively, one pursues joy through truth. For love and truth are the principal options
at stake.
61. Strictly speaking, art is to awareness what
music is to emotion - the creative means whereby each spectrum of the psyche
may be articulated and granted a phenomenal mould. Art is no less the eye of the spiritual
psyche than music the ear of the soulful psyche, whereas literature is the
voice of the intellectual brain - at any rate, on its highest levels. Thus, broadly speaking, literature stands
between art and music as the art form of the intellect, being conveyed neither
in images nor sounds but solely through words, or verbal symbols, and thereby
assuming a comparatively atomic status in between wavicle and particle
extremes. Indeed, taking each of the
arts in turn, we may categorically maintain that art, corresponding to
awareness, is the highest, with music, corresponding to emotion, next, and
literature, corresponding to intellect, third - a third which places it in a
position analogous to the moon vis-à-vis solar and stellar precedents.
62. Yet just as the moon is closer to the earth
than are either the sun or the central star of the Galaxy, so literature, the
art form of the brain, is closer to architecture than either art or music are,
the reason being that architecture is inherently a bodily art form and
therefore more mundane than lunar or solar.
It is precisely because architecture is bodily in character that
literature stands closest of all the arts to it, given the connection (already
touched upon) between the brain and the body, as between the moon and the
earth. Rare indeed is the novel which
doesn't have reference to some architectural context or other, be it in city,
town, or village. But there is no reason
why literature should be too deeply concerned with music or art - unless, of
course, we are dealing with those rather hybrid novels which, whether
philosophic or poetic, seek to accommodate truth or love, joy or beauty. Naturally, philosophy and poetry would be
more suited to such purposes than either philosophical or poetical literature,
though both are still tied to the intellect to the extent that they are
conceived in verbal form and aim, rather more exclusively, at wavicle and
particle extremes, whether negatively (and alpha stemming) or positively (and
omega orientated). Now although
literature is not specifically worldly, still less divine or diabolic, it has a
greater affiliation, in its intellectual essence, with the world than with
either God or the Devil, and may accordingly be described as comparatively
purgatorial - a purgatorial middle-ground in between heavenly awareness and
hellish emotion, whether negative or positive, which is nothing less than
intellectual.
63. Thus when true to itself - though it has to be
admitted that the arts are almost infinitely adaptable - art will be
idealistically spiritual, music naturalistically emotional, literature
materialistically intellectual, and architecture realistically physical - with
all due variations and gradations, depending on the type of art, music,
literature, or architecture in question, whether alpha stemming or omega
orientated, negative or positive, natural or artificial. The highest form of each art or, rather,
superart, viz. light art, electric music, avant-garde literature,
transcendental architecture, will be most representative of the arts in an
omega-oriented age or society, though the highest art of all, viz. light art,
will best represent the omega aspirations of a transcendental civilization
towards spiritual perfection in the omega absolute. A divinely-biased society can only encourage
such art at the expense not merely of traditional art, viz. drawing, painting,
sculpture, ceramics, mosaics, and stained glass, the latter three of which are
more closely alpha stemming, but even to some extent at the expense of each of
the other arts, in whichever guise, as well.
For in a divinely-biased society it is positive awareness, rather than
positive emotions or intellect or even physicality, which counts for most and
which should accordingly be given special emphasis. Soul, intellect, and the body should
progressively count for less, eventually counting for little or nothing at
all. For they are obstacles to the light
of the spirit as it expands on free-electron terms towards the maximum
realization of truth - a truth that will incorporate its own joy, a light with
its own heat, beyond even the highest art which man, in his thirst for
salvation, can achieve.
64. Hence, to sum up diagrammatically, one can distinguish
the naturalistic alpha-stemming arts from the transcendental
(supernaturalistic) omega-oriented ones as follows:-
ALPHA OMEGA
1. art (idealism) 8. superart
(superidealism)
2. music (naturalism) 7. supermusic (supernaturalism)
3. literature
(materialism) 6.
superliterature (supermaterialism)
4. architecture (realism) 5. super-architecture
(super-realism)
with (1)
and (8) having spiritual implications, the former negative and the latter positive,
proton and electron wavicles respectively; (2) and (7) having soulful
implications, both negative and positive, proton and electron particles; (3)
and (6) having intellectual implications, again negative and positive, atomic
proton and atomic electron; and (4) and (5) having physical implications,
likewise negative and positive, proton atomic and electron atomic respectively.
65. Of course, what can be said of the arts in
general can, to a certain extent, just as easily be said of each art form in particular,
since divisions along the fourfold lines outlined above are also to be found in
each of them taken separately, which would suggest a relatively divine,
diabolic, purgatorial, or worldly status, commensurate with idealism,
naturalism, materialism, and realism, subordinate to the absolute status of the
art form in question. Thus art, for
example, can be divided into drawing, painting, and sculpture, with a
relatively divine and/or diabolic status accruing to drawing (inherently
idealistic if graphic but naturalistic if emotional); a relatively purgatorial
status accruing to painting (inherently materialistic if three-dimensional);
and a relatively worldly status accruing to sculpture (inherently realistic if
representational), bearing in mind our correlative distinctions between
awareness, emotion, intellect, and the physical body. Likewise, music can be divided into singing,
instrumental, and dancing, with singing divisible between divine and diabolic
options (inherently idealistic if centred in awareness but naturalistic if
overly emotional); instrumentals having purgatorial implications (inherently
materialistic both on account of their intellectual and instrumental
dimensions); and dancing assuming a worldly significance (inherently realistic
on account of its physical nature).
Similarly, literature will be divisible into poetry, whether divine or
diabolic (inherently idealistic if awareness centred but naturalistic if
emotional); novels, which assume a purgatorial status (inherently materialistic
because intellectual); and theatre, which can be described as worldly
(inherently realistic on account of the bodily nature of acting - with
characters in the flesh of worldly time).
Finally, what applies to the third art form applies just as much to the
fourth, namely architecture, which is likewise divisible into religious,
monumental, and civic manifestations, the religious itself divisible along
divine/diabolic lines, as in the cases of poetry, singing, and drawing, whether
in terms of cultural or ethnic priorities (inherently idealistic if governed by
spiritual considerations but naturalistic if ruled by the passions); the
monumental assuming a purgatorial status (inherently materialistic if motivated
by gratification of the intellectual will); and the civic reflecting a worldly
status (inherently realistic by dint of its utilitarian purpose in the service
of everyday bodily living).
66. Thus just as each art form has an overall, or
general, status vis-à-vis its rivals, so one can impute a specific, or
particular, status to the branches of any given art form considered
independently, which will be subordinate to the general status of the art form
as a whole. Therefore art will remain
idealistic in relation to music on a general basis, whereas sculpture will be
realistic in relation to painting, painting materialistic in relation to
drawing, drawing naturalistic and/or idealistic in relation to painting or
sculpture, and so on ... with other possible permutations within the relatively
bourgeois framework I have just described.
For light art is, in a manner of speaking, the drawing of a
transcendental age or society, photography its painting, and holography its
sculpture, with all due ideological distinctions between the various types, or
branches, of superart - as, naturally, of supermusic (rock, jazz, and pop
distinctions), superliterature (with avant-garde poetry, film, and
television-play distinctions), and super-architecture (with tower, block, and
estate distinctions). For to limit
ourselves just to drawing, painting, and sculpture would be to take a
too-narrowly atomic view - one omitting both alpha and omega extremes. Now while such a view is doubtless compatible
with art per se (as opposed to, say, superart), it can never do proper justice
to the whole truth, which necessarily aims at the widest and most comprehensive
perspective. Even the possibility of
subart, as appropriate to an alpha-stemming age or society, has to be allowed
for, and if divisions along the lines of stained glass, mosaics, and ceramics
approximate to the mind - brain - body distinctions we have already drawn, then
it should be apparent that the omega-oriented antitheses of such divisions will
not be drawing, painting, or sculpture, but light art, photography, and
holography, with light art antithetical to stained glass, photography
antithetical to mosaics, and holography antithetical to ceramics, so that a
tripartite arrangement roughly commensurate with the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost can be posited, which will read as follows:-
1. stained
glass drawing light art
2. mosaics painting photography
3. ceramics sculpture holography
with those
in the first column alpha stemming, those in the second column atomic, and those
in the third column omega orientated - the top trio divisible between divine
and diabolic options, depending upon whether awareness or emotion is the
principal factor in any given work; the middle trio having purgatorial
implications on the basis of a comparatively intellectual persuasion; and the
bottom trio being worldly to the extent that we have a correlation neither with
the psyche nor the brain, but with the body considered in terms of a dimension
of physicality.
67. Doubtless what applies to art, regarded in
this comprehensive manner, must also in some degree apply to music, literature,
and architecture, since if we can distinguish between alpha, atomic, and omega
options with regard to art, there is no reason why each of the other arts should
not also be subject to such tripartite distinctions, making for pagan,
Christian, and transcendental divisions which accord with the full-gamut, so to
speak, of devolutionary and evolutionary possibilities. Consequently primitive music, divisible into
vocal, instrumental, and dance categories, will have its omega antithesis in
contemporary electric music like rock, jazz, and pop, rather than in the classical types of music
which, to a greater or lesser extent, are dependent on orchestral ensembles and
thereby reflect an atomic middle-ground in between pre- and post-atomic
extremes, particularly in regard to the use of acoustic means and their
relation to music scores on the one hand and to conductors on the other. Therefore electric music or, rather, supermusic
will parallel the superart we have just discussed, with, so I contend, an
especially close parallel between rock and light art, jazz and photography, and
pop and holography, given the idealistic and/or naturalistic character of rock,
depending on whether it is keyboards based and 'soft' or guitar based and
'hard'; the materialistic character of jazz, particularly modern jazz, which is
essentially an intellectual rather than either a spiritual or an emotional form
of supermusic; and the realistic character of pop which, like holography, is
fundamentally bodily, or physical, and thus dance orientated - a mode of
supermusic less purgatorial than worldly, and so standing in an ideologically
inferior relationship to both jazz and rock, which, when true to their
respective forms, are of the new brain and superconscious respectively. For whereas jazz is predominantly if not
exclusively instrumental and therefore intellectual, rock, being largely a
vocal supermusic, is either spiritual or soulful, of the awareness
superconscious or of the emotional superconscious, depending on whether it is
'soft' or 'hard', wavicle centred or particle centred - in a word, divine or
diabolic. Thus rock is essentially the
ultimate music, having both Transcendental and Communist implications which
transcend both Ecological jazz and Socialist pop, whether the latter be 'soft'
or 'hard', rhythm 'n' blues or rock 'n' roll.
Spirit and soul are alike best served through vocals, while the intellect
is granted musical articulation through instrumentality, and the body through
dance. 'Heads' will inevitably prefer
rock or jazz to pop, which is the mode of supermusic most designed to cater for
'bodies', i.e. the broad proletarian masses.
In this respect, it parallels holography and television plays on the
corresponding bodily levels of superart and superliterature respectively, while
civic and, in particular, domestic architecture of a rectilinear design will be
its super-architectural parallel - one more intrinsically bodily than either of
the others, given the overall worldly nature of architecture vis-à-vis both
literature and art, not to mention music or, in this context, supermusic.
68. Consequently, distinctions between the
'conventional' and 'super' are crucial to an understanding of the differences
between bourgeois and proletarian arts - the former atomic and the latter
post-atomic and/or free-electron. A
transcendental society ('alternative' within the framework of bourgeois
civilization) is a society of superart, supermusic, superliterature, and
super-architecture, all of which are inherently different from and
ideologically superior to the conventional, or bourgeois, modes of art, music,
literature, and architecture. But if
they are superior to the atomic arts, they are antithetical to the pre-atomic
and/or bound-proton arts which stand to them as alpha to omega, whether the
alpha be divine, diabolic, purgatorial, or worldly in general or in particular
terms, depending on the kind of 'subart' in question. However, that is not a subject I particularly
wish to enlarge upon, since my own orientation is towards the omega, with
especial reference to the most idealistic modes of each superart, viz. slender
neon light art, soft pitch-oriented rock, ordered abstract poetry, and centripetal
architecture of a suitably curvilinear design.
69. Idealism, naturalism, materialism, and
realism: the four ideological options which correspond to air, fire, water, and
earth, taking the four principal elements in order of merit, rather than in the
conventional sequence of earth-air-fire-water.
Now supposing that air idealism, fire naturalism, water materialism, and
earth realism are correlated with methods of taking drugs, from sniffing
(snorting) to smoking, and from drinking and/or injecting to eating and/or
swallowing, then we would have to categorize sniffing as an idealistic approach
to drug consumption, smoking as a naturalistic approach, drinking and/or
injecting as a materialistic approach, and, finally, eating and/or swallowing
as a realistic approach, with correspondingly divine, diabolic, purgatorial,
and worldly implications, depending on the kind of drug in question, be it
alpha stemming or omega orientated or, indeed, an atomic compromise lying
somewhere in between the two extremes. Thus
we could contend that sniffing corresponds to air, smoking to fire, drinking
and/or injecting to water, and eating and/or swallowing to earth, since these
are the principal methods of drug consumption, and such methods would seem to
correspond to our basic fourfold elemental divisions - divisions which, as I
have elsewhere argued, can be approximately correlated with moral evaluations
of the kind listed above, i.e. divine, diabolic, etc. What is particularly apparent about these
methodological distinctions is that both the idealistic and naturalistic
categories, viz. sniffing and smoking, are absolute, whereas both the
materialistic and realistic categories, corresponding to purgatorial and to
worldly evaluations, are relative, as in regard to drinking and/or injecting on
the one hand, and to eating and/or swallowing on the other hand. For are not the divine and the diabolic
likewise absolute in relation to the purgatorial and the worldly, as elsewhere
described with regard to wavicle mind (spirit) and particle mind (soul)
vis-à-vis the brain (intellect) and the physical body (will), or,
alternatively, with regard to the central star of the Galaxy and the sun
vis-à-vis the moon and the earth, both of which are inherently atomic and
therefore relative.
70. However, if materialism and realism are
relative in relation to naturalism and idealism, they are alike divisible along
parallel spectra into tripartite options corresponding to pagan, Christian, and
transcendental distinctions, with alpha-stemming, atomic, and omega-oriented
implications ... as before. In other
words, we should be able to distinguish horizontally as well as vertically
between drugs and their method of consumption, thereby arriving at a more comprehensive
perspective which stretches from naturalistic origins to an artificial, or
synthetic, culmination on each of our elemental spectra, with drugs of an
atomic nature situated in between. Here,
as an example of what I mean, is a table listing the main categories of drugs
in this way, beginning with idealistic sniffing and proceeding via naturalistic
smoking and materialistic drinking and/or injecting to realistic eating and/or
swallowing:-
1. opium incense/snuff cocaine
2. cannabis tobacco hashish
3. morphine alcohol
heroin
4. magic mushrooms confectionery LSD
with those
in the first column alpha stemming, those in the second column atomic, and
those in the third column omega orientated.
Of course, both needles for injecting drugs and capsules and/or tablets
for swallowing them are comparatively recent inventions, scarcely entitled to
an alpha-stemming status, but inherently contemporary methods of drug
consumption. Therefore whilst it is
obvious that heroin will be injected rather than drunk like alcohol, we must
assume a drinking mode of drug consumption for the alpha category of liquid
drugs, whether in terms of strong spirits or some vegetable extract like sake,
to which morphine may or may not have been added. Similarly, whilst it is obvious that LSD will
be swallowed rather than eaten, we must assume that magic mushrooms are chewed
before being swallowed, as in the case of chocolate liqueurs which, strange
though it may seem, adequately fill a middle-ground worldly position in between
alpha and omega worldly, or realistic, extremes. Of course, I do not wish to imply that
because LSD can come in capsule or tablet form it is inherently worldly,
corresponding to earth as opposed to air, fire, or water, since that would
surely invalidate my long-standing theories concerning LSD as an idealistic
drug suitable for a transcendental society.
I simply wish to point out the correlation that exists, as I see it,
between tablet swallowing and earth, both of which can be regarded as solids in
relation to air, fire, water, and their respective correlations in sniffing,
smoking, and injecting. However, the
mode of drug consumption must have some bearing on the nature of the drug being
consumed, which could indicate that perhaps LSD is not as biased towards the
divine as I have hitherto believed but, rather, is comparatively superworldly
on account of its solid presentation in either capsule or tablet form?
71. Since every philosopher will have some kind of
view of himself in relation both to the philosophical tradition and to
contemporary philosophy, not to mention in relation to himself as a
philosopher, I should like to put forward my own view which, no matter how
seemingly presumptuous or conceited it may at first appear for a self-taught
thinker (particularly to those so-called professional philosophers who are
really 'professors of philosophy'), strikes me as being highly credible. To begin with, I should like to establish my
credentials as an idealist rather than a realist or materialist or naturalist,
since it should be clear to my readers by now that I have always pursued and
advocated the most idealistic course at the expense of what I perceive to be
lesser courses - courses corresponding to the worldly or the purgatorial or the
diabolic, as the case may be.
72. Thus my own idealistic bias obliges me to
regard my work in a divine light and to set myself at the apex of an
evolutionary hierarchy of contemporary philosophy which stretches from Bertrand
Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to Arthur Koestler, having as its alpha-stemming
antithesis a devolutionary hierarchy comprised of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates,
and Plutarch - in that order. Hence, if
I may resort to my customary diagrammatic mode of distinguishing between
alpha-stemming devolutionary and omega-oriented evolutionary levels of the
mainstream ideological positions, we will find this distinction conceived on
the basis of a fourfold division between the four greatest philosophers of
classical antiquity and the four, including myself, whom I regard as the
greatest of the moderns, which will read as follows:-
1. Plato 8. O'Loughlin
2. Aristotle 7. Koestler
3. Socrates 6. Sartre
4. Plutarch 5. Russell
with Plato
and myself significant of antithetical forms of idealism, Aristotle and
Koestler significant of antithetical forms of naturalism, Socrates and Sartre
significant of antithetical forms of materialism, and Plutarch and Russell
significant of antithetical forms of realism.
Certainly, Plato was the greatest of the ancients, since by far the most
idealistic, whereas Aristotle, Socrates, and Plutarch signify a philosophical
descent, irrespective of historical chronology, from naturalism to realism via
materialism. Conversely, Bertrand
Russell, being a modern philosopher of strongly liberal persuasion, may be
regarded as the leading representative of philosophical realism who,
ideologically speaking, stands at the base of a hierarchy stretching via Sartre
and Koestler, the former materialistic and the latter naturalistic, towards an
idealistic summit of which my own Social Transcendentalism may be regarded as
the ideological apex. For where Sartre
is socialistic and Koestler communistic (in spite of his disillusionments), I
am transcendentalist, in the idealistic and specifically theocratic sense to
which I normally apply that term, and thus stand at the furthest possible
ideological remove from Russell, which is to say, as Irish air/light from
British earth/darkness. To me, Russell
is the principal philosophical voice of the omega world, Sartre the principal
philosophical voice of the omega purgatory, Koestler the principal
philosophical voice of the Omega Hell, and I the principal philosophical voice
of the Omega Heaven - the Heaven horizontally antithetical to Plato's, with its
abstract Ideas. Furthermore, whereas
idealism is identifiable with religion and naturalism with science, materialism
is identifiable with economics and realism with politics. Certainly, Sartre was more disposed to
economics than to science, in contrast to Koestler, whose biological bias or,
rather, bias towards biology confirms a naturalistic status, albeit one
antithetical, in so many regards, to Aristotle's. Then, too, Sartre was a rather ugly little
man, as - if Nietzsche is to be trusted - was Socrates, his alpha antithesis.
73. Speaking of Nietzsche, it is only fair to add
that if modern German philosophers are to be categorized in the fourfold manner
outlined above, then Nietzsche should take the idealistic position above
Schopenhauer who, with his scientific bent, is more naturalistic, while Marx
should be placed in the materialistic category and Hegel in the realistic one,
so that, working upwards, Hegel would parallel Russell, as much for political
as for historical reasons, Marx would parallel Sartre, Schopenhauer would
parallel Koestler, and, finally, Nietzsche would parallel myself, as below.
8. Nietzsche (idealism)
7. Schopenhauer (naturalism)
6. Marx (materialism)
5. Hegel (realism)
However, I firmly believe that these
nineteenth-century Germans are a poor second to the ensuing philosophers of the
twentieth and (in my case) twenty-first century, and consequently do not
deserve to be given pride of philosophical place in any comparison,
antithetical or otherwise, with classical antiquity.
74. Speaking of distinctions between philosophical
realism, materialism, naturalism, and idealism, which broadly correspond to
political, economic, scientific, and religious persuasions, each of which can
be further correlated with a given moral spectrum, be it worldly, purgatorial,
diabolic, or divine, it should be possible for us to equate realism with the
will, materialism with the intellect, naturalism with the soul, and idealism
with the spirit, so that, taking each of our most representative modern philosophers
in turn, we can equate Bertrand Russell with the triumph, though Liberalism, of
bodily will; Jean-Paul Sartre with the triumph, through Socialism, of new-brain
intellect; Arthur Koestler with the triumph, through Communism, of
superconscious soul; and myself with the triumph, through Transcendentalism, of
superconscious spirit. For omega will is
of the liberal body, omega intellect of the socialistic brain, omega soul of
the communistic superconscious, and omega spirit of the transcendental superconscious
- will worldly, intellect purgatorial, soul diabolic, and spirit divine, as
befitting the respective natures of Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, and
Transcendentalism as they ascend from realism to idealism via materialism and
naturalism, in conjunction with an omega-oriented politics, economics, science,
and religion. Hence, with regard to the
aforementioned German philosophers, Hegel represents will, Marx intellect,
Schopenhauer soul, and Nietzsche spirit - Hegel and Nietzsche as far apart as earth
and air, with Marx and Schopenhauer equivalent, in philosophical terms, to
water and fire or, what amounts to the same, economics and science, those
contiguous disciplines flanked by politics and religion. For if politics is the lowest discipline, since
correlative with the world, then religion is very definitely the highest,
having to do with man's self-transcending quest for the heavenly Beyond. In between come purgatorial economics and
diabolic science with their intellectual and soulful correspondences - the
former materialistic and the latter naturalistic, water and fire trapped
between earth and air extremes.
Certainly, Russell and I are just as far apart as Hegel and Nietzsche,
the philosophical nadir and apex of nineteenth-century German philosophy.
75. As regards twentieth-century German
philosophy, Spengler, Hussurl, Jaspers, and Heidegger would probably suffice as
the most representative philosophers with which to posit (see below)
8. Heidegger (idealism)
7. Jaspers (naturalism)
6. Hussurl (materialism)
5. Spengler (realism)
a similar
quartet of ascending 'isms', whether or not one considers them superior - as
noumenal vis-à-vis
phenomenal
- to their nineteenth-century predecessors.
Certainly, I regard them as inferior to the quartet beginning with
Russell and culminating in myself!
76. We have already established an order of rank
in the arts, with art at the top, music second, literature third, and
architecture at the bottom, and to this was added an order, or probable order,
of drugs based on their mode of consumption, which placed sniffed drugs at the
top, smoked drugs in second place, drunk and/or injected drugs in third place,
and eaten and/or swallowed drugs in fourth, with, so I contended, air - fire -
water - earth correlations. Such being
the case, it should follow that there will be a connection between art and
sniffed drugs, music and smoked drugs, literature and drunk and/or injected
drugs, and, finally, architecture and eaten and/or swallowed drugs, bearing in
mind our distinctions between three stages of each art form, viz. 'sub',
'middle ground', and 'super', and the corresponding stage of any correlative
drug, be it alpha stemming, atomic, or omega orientated. Therefore whilst a strictly
middle-ground/atomic correlation between art and snuff may be assumed,
superart, viz. light art, would suggest the likelihood of cocaine or some such
omega-oriented drug being used in the interests of greater appreciation, since
drugs and art, on whichever evolutionary plane and of whichever kind, normally
go hand-in-glove, so to speak. Now
doubtless while most people would admit to a connection between literature and
alcohol, particularly where novelists are concerned, the more radical connection
between heroin and film would also have to be accounted for, if one is to do
adequate justice to the contention that film is a mode of superliterature and
heroin a mode of superdrug, both of which correspond to the omega pole of the
third, or water, spectrum in each context, whether of the arts or drugs, and
should accordingly prove correlative.
77. Obviously, a bourgeois middle-ground society
will be more indulgent of a literature/alcohol correspondence than of a
film/heroin one, because literature and alcohol have long been partners in
crime - as, for that matter, have tobacco and music, with particular reference
to classical music; although the rather more omega-oriented connection between
supermusic, viz. rock, and hashish would hardly come as a shock to most people,
whether or not they had anything to do with either. For hashish is the superdrug most suitable,
by dint of its correlative diabolic (smoking) essence, for use with supermusic,
itself a diabolic art in relation to divine superart, purgatorial
superliterature, and worldly super-architecture, the latter of which would
probably be best served by LSD, given its architectonic properties, as in the
case of visions of an architectural order.
78. Now, obviously, strict correlations between
any given art form and the drug most paralleling it will be more the practical
exception, I shall argue, than the rule, given the vast amounts of ignorance
and muddle-headedness which usually obtain in life. But I do believe such correlations are
possible, and that even when any given art form is subdivided - as in the case,
say, of superart being subdivided into light art, photography, and holography -
the same drug or, in this instance, superdrug would be most applicable, the
only difference being its mode of consumption, which should level, where
possible, with the subdivision in question.
Hence if cocaine, the superdrug correlative with superart, is most
applicable snorted where light art is concerned, it would be more applicable
injected in relation to photography, and swallowed, presumably in capsule form,
in relation to holography, the reason being that while light art and snorted
cocaine correspond to idealistic modes of superart and superdrug respectively
(although the naturalistic possibility of smoking cocaine in relation to light
art of a less idealistic and possibly more sculptural type has also to be
allowed for), photography and injected cocaine would correspond to their
materialistic modes, and holography and swallowed cocaine to their realistic
modes respectively, given the correlation between transcendental light
art/snorted cocaine and air, sculptural light art/smoked cocaine and fire,
photography/injected cocaine and water, and holography/swallowed cocaine and
earth - the four principal elements, which correspond to idealism, naturalism,
materialism, and realism (in that order).
79. Obviously, what goes for superart and its
equivalent drug would also go, in like manner, for supermusic, superliterature,
super-architecture, and their correlative superdrugs, not to mention for conventional,
or bourgeois, art, music, literature, architecture, and their
correlative drugs, like snuff, tobacco, alcohol, and confectionery, as well as
for alpha-stemming subart, submusic, subliterature, and subarchitecture and the
(sub)drugs most correlative with them, like opium, cannabis, morphine, and
magic mushrooms. Interestingly, I have
placed cannabis and hashish in an alpha/omega antithetical relationship because
of the naturalistic constitution ('grass') of cannabis in contrast to the
artificial, or synthetic, constitution ('shit') of hashish - a distinction
which could also be said to apply to tea in relation to coffee, given the more
naturalistic constitution (leaves) of tea which suggests - at any rate to this
writer - an alpha-stemming status commensurate with cannabis, opium, morphine,
etc., albeit of a much less potent order.
80. Of course, I am not here advocating the use of
drugs with the arts, merely pointing out the connection which I believe to
exist between them, granted the intrinsically religious nature of drugs and
their mind-altering properties - properties which art, as the 'handmaiden of
religion', has long been aware of and had no scruples in confirming. Indeed, it would be scant exaggeration to say
that drugs are inseparable from religion, and that without them there would be
no religion in the higher, mystical sense - as, in fact, is the case where
moralizing, worldly Protestantism is concerned, which, as every Catholic will
know, is as far removed from true religion as the body from the mind. In fact, it is largely because of its
Germanic, bodily nature that Protestantism forbade the use of incense in
church, since incense is something one sniffs, and a sniffing idealism would
hardly be compatible with bodily realism, which, wherever possible, contrives
to leave the head out of account and to concentrate, in a manner of speaking,
on its own puritanical replacements.
But, of course, Puritanism is the religion of a bodily people, and
should that people become decadent ... promiscuity takes its place - a
promiscuity which is the secular, or tails, side of a coin with Puritanism as
its religious head. Doubtless
drunkenness is the secular fall of a head people who, in their decadence, are
no longer capable of that temperance which the Church would have expected of
them during the heyday, so to speak, of Catholic civilization, and on the
perfectly plausible grounds that alcoholic self-indulgence is a thing less
spiritual than worldly or, at any rate, purgatorial. Hence something to avoid. For while some drugs increase consciousness,
others, like alcohol, decrease it, and no true spirituality can be pursued on
the basis of diminished consciousness!
The test of a drug's validity is whether, in conjunction with art, it
makes for an expansion of consciousness.
Only drugs with an idealistic, synthetic bias will be found to pass this
test as a rule, since most drugs - as the term suggests - have the effect of
reducing consciousness, and accordingly fly in the face of spiritual evolution.
81. But whether or not a drug is used in
conjunction with a particular art form, religion is more than either and must
ultimately transcend both art and drugs as the spirit expands, of its own
inherent volition, towards Eternity. The
ultimate religion must be as far above drugs as worldly religion was beneath
them, even if, during its initial phase, recourse to certain appropriate drugs
will be had ... as much to break the hold of traditional drugs, like alcohol
and tobacco, as to assist in the development of a transcendent
consciousness. Certainly, drugs will be
around for some time to come, and it would be highly unreasonable, not to say
unrealistic, of one to suppose that mankind could do without them in the meantime,
especially when conditions are harsh and no alternative means of escape or,
rather, escapism can be found. Yet drugs
are more than just pain-killers or means of escapism; they can also, as we have
argued, expand consciousness and thereby improve the quality of life for those
who habitually use them. It would
certainly be an improvement on today's state-of-affairs if the only drugs being
used in this respect were of the artificial, or omega-oriented, variety, and
preferably only the safest and most transcendental ones at that! For as long as ambiguity and
muddle-headedness prevail, alpha-stemming, worldly, and omega-oriented
alternatives will continue to jostle for supremacy in a world which is neither
fish nor fowl but more like a crazy animal driven everywhichway by the
conflicting currents of open-society chaos.
Such an unstable animal is both sick and dangerous, like the society of
which it is a part.
82. Accordingly, let there be judgement against
both alpha and worldly drugs, and then may each type of omega-oriented society
keep to the drug most appropriate to itself, whether realistic, materialistic,
naturalistic, or idealistic, until such time as, one by one, the lower
orientations are eclipsed by the higher ones and, finally, even the ultimate
omega-oriented society, idealistic to the core, transcends its principal drug
in the name of pure spirituality, beyond even the highest mode of superart to
which the highest mode of superdrug can relate.
83. Having already emphasized the connection
between religion and art, it behoves me to add that similar connections exist -
and have long existed - between science and music, economics and literature,
and politics and architecture. For we
have established that the arts form a hierarchy which stretches from
architecture at the bottom to art at the top, and to this was added a similar
hierarchy stretching from politics and economics to science and religion,
whether on the analogous basis of realism, materialism, naturalism, and
idealism, or of the world, purgatory, Hell, and Heaven, or, indeed, of earth,
water, fire, and air - in that ascending order.
Consequently, when one takes this hierarchy into account, one finds that
politics and architecture are in parallel positions, as are economics and
literature, science and music, and religion and art, thereby confirming the
hypothesis of a connection between each pair, however we would like to
interpret such a connection.
84. I shall not attempt to be unduly methodical
here but, clearly, the connection between politics and architecture must be attributable
to the down-to-earth nature of each or, at any rate, to worldly politics and
architecture. On the other hand, the
connection between literature and economics is less straightforward, although
each discipline has a certain volatility which contrasts with the stability and
even stolidity of the realistic pair, thereby suggesting a bias rather more
fluid than solid. As to science and
music, both of which correspond to fiery naturalism, the heat factor has to be
taken into account, a factor which, corresponding to experiment in the one case
and to emotion in the other, paves the way for the conquest of nature, whether
organic or human. Above heat, however,
comes light, and it is their idealistic commitment to spiritual light which
distinguishes religion and art from each of the lesser pairs, even when, as is
often the case, mutual overlappings of content and discipline occur.
85. Thus darkness-coldness-heat-light is a
parallel hierarchical quartet (in this case noumenal) corresponding to earth-water-fire-air,
and their more complex disciplinary offshoots.
As much distance between religion and politics as between art and
architecture or, for that matter, air/light and earth/darkness, and whereas the
former is true, the latter is good (at any rate, on the omega plane). Similarly, as much distance - albeit lesser
in relation to the above-mentioned pair - between science and economics as
between music and literature or, for that matter, fire/heat and water/coldness,
and whereas the former is beautiful, the latter is strong. For strength is no less above goodness than
beauty is beneath truth (just as weakness is no less above evil than ugliness
is beneath falsity), and while goodness and strength form an omega earth/water
pair corresponding to the world and purgatory, truth and beauty form an omega
air/fire pair corresponding to Heaven and Hell.
Darkness and coldness on the one hand, heat and light on the other -
darkness and light (pleasure and joy) no less antithetical than coldness and
heat (pride and love).
86. However, just as we may distinguish between
quantities as primary and qualities as secondary, with earth-water-fire-air in
the primary category and darkness-coldness-heat-light in the secondary
category, so a like-distinction can be drawn between quantitative disciplines
like politics, economics, science, and religion (in ascending order), and
qualitative disciplines like history, mathematics, philosophy, and art, with
the former quartet equivalent to primary elemental quantities and the latter
quartet to their secondary qualities, and so much so that politics and history,
economics and mathematics, science and philosophy, and religion and art should
appear no less complementary to each other than earth and darkness, water and
coldness, fire and heat, and air and light, bearing in mind their analogous
standings. For is not history a
consequence of politics, no less than darkness a consequence of earth? And is not mathematics a consequence of
economics, no less than coldness a consequence of water? And is not philosophy a consequence of
science, no less than heat a consequence of fire? And is not art a consequence of religion, no
less than light a consequence of air?
87. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that each
of the qualitative disciplines is not only a consequence of the corresponding
quantitative one, but its logical complement, as inextricably bound to it as
the tails side of a coin to the head side of which it forms the (noumenal)
obverse. Now where the head side of a
coin is formal and the tails side informal, so we find that the quantitative,
or primary, disciplines noted above are formal in relation to the qualitative,
or secondary, disciplines which complement them so informally in the overall
expression of their unfolding. Politics
is formal, whereas history is informal.
Economics is formal, whereas mathematics is informal. Science is formal, whereas philosophy is
informal. Likewise, religion is formal,
whereas art is informal. Is this not
equivalent to saying that whereas those on the one side are phenomenal, those
on the other side are noumenal - essence as opposed to appearance?
88. I believe it is, and for this reason we cannot
categorically assert that the phenomenal always precedes, or is a precondition
of, the noumenal; for I have previously argued, in collaboration with
Schopenhauer, that the noumenal precedes the phenomenal on the natural plane,
and therefore must concede that where the contrary obtains, we are dealing not
with the natural but with the artificial or, what amounts to the same, with an
omega orientation rather than with an alpha-stemming one. Thus where the latter is concerned it may
well be truer to say (as I have elsewhere maintained) that politics precedes,
or is a precondition of, history. But where
alpha-stemming naturalistic politics and history are concerned, we would have
to contend that history is a precondition of politics or, put as before, that
politics is a consequence of history, not vice versa. Just as, in returning to the corresponding
element, it would have to be agreed that darkness is a precondition of earth on
the alpha-stemming plane, which is equivalent to saying earth is a consequence
of darkness, whether or not that noumenal quality derives from the gradual
cooling of the earth's molten core.
Similarly water would be a consequence of coldness (the Ice Age) no less
than economics a consequence of mathematics (Babylonian calculus). Fire would be a consequence of heat (hot
gases, friction) no less than science a consequence of philosophy (ancient
Greek). Finally, air would be a
consequence of light (which causes oxygen-producing plants to grow) no less
than religion a consequence of art (cave drawings, carved stone). For on the alpha-stemming naturalistic part
of any given spectrum, be it worldly, purgatorial, diabolic, or divine, the
noumenal precedes the phenomenal, and if light is noumenal in relation to air,
then light precedes air, just as art precedes religion - the former noumenally
informal and the latter phenomenally formal.
Such it is on the divine spectrum, and such it must be on the diabolic
spectrum of heat/fire and philosophy/science; the purgatorial spectrum of
coldness/water and mathematics/economics; and the worldly spectrum of
darkness/earth and history/politics.
Only with the artificial or omega-oriented part of each spectrum will
this not apply, and simply because, in complementing Schopenhauer on an
antithetical basis, I have consistently argued that the superphenomenal
precedes the supernoumenal as its quantitative precondition.
89. Hence art or, more specifically, superart is
as much a consequence of super-religion (transcendentalism) as superlight is a
consequence of superair (meditation techniques involving deep breathing). Now what applies to the divine option applies
no less to each of the other options, where superscience precedes
superphilosophy, super-economics precedes supermathematics, and superpolitics
precedes superhistory, at both negative and positive poles of their respective
artificial or omega-oriented spectra. I
shall not overtax the reader's patience by adding the artificial elemental
equivalents, but he can rest assured that the same principle obtains, and with
as much justification on the negative pole, for example, of electric light as
on the positive pole of spiritual superlight.
90. Before there can be superlight there must be
superair, which is equivalent to saying that before self-contemplation of
superconscious mind can be properly achieved through a dynamic meditation
technique, there must firstly be a period of intense breathing exercises (in
the future using artificially-produced oxygen) which increase the amount of
oxygen in the blood and thereby 'stoke up' the fires of spiritual
illumination. No pure air, no pure
light! Similarly before there can be
superart, there must first of all be a super-religious sense which underlies it
and provides the thematic motive for its unfolding. Behind Mondrian's art - which is only
relatively 'super' in view of its painterly nature - there was theosophy. Doubtless, behind most light art there will
be some mode of transcendentalism which is both a guide to and an inspiration
for the subsequent superartistic unfolding.
True art is not created in a void but reflects a religious stance. It is the superphenomenal preceding the
supernoumenal - superair preceding superlight.
91. Tory rugby union, Liberal rugby league, Labour
football league. Rugby union is a
gentleman's rugby, on the whole less physically competitive than rugby league,
which stands, it seems to me, between naturalistic rugby union and
materialistic football league as a sort of realistic middle-ground sport. Gaelic (so-called) football would be
superidealistic and therefore comparatively nazi - at any rate, when played
indoors. For it is more likely that the
outdoor variety is less superidealistic than supernaturalistic and, hence,
republican.
92. Race war - sex war - class war: three stages
of generalized social warfare with, so I contend, alpha, worldly, and omega
implications respectively. Thus race war
and class war are antithetical, the former preceding worldly sex war and the
latter succeeding it. We live in an age
of class war, even though both sex and, alas, race wars are still extant.
93. Modern music, by which I mean supermusic, has
tended, as a rule, to favour an instrumental combination of bass, drums,
guitar, and keyboards, a basic quartet which corresponds to our fourfold
elemental divisions between earth, water, fire, and air - in that order. For the bass is fundamentally a realistic
(bodily) instrument corresponding in its phenomenal manifestation to earth and
in its noumenal or musical manifestation to darkness; drums are fundamentally
materialistic (intellectual) instruments corresponding in their phenomenal
manifestation to water and in their noumenal manifestation to coldness; the
guitar is essentially a naturalistic (soulful) instrument corresponding in its
phenomenal manifestation to fire and in its noumenal manifestation to heat;
keyboards, especially synthesizers, are essentially idealistic (spiritual)
instruments corresponding in their phenomenal manifestation to air and in their
noumenal manifestation to light. Thus a
hierarchy may be said to exist which stretches from the bass to keyboards, as
from earth to air, with drums and guitars situated in-between: the former
equivalent to water and the latter to fire.
Consequently just as air and earth are diametrically antithetical, like
light and darkness, so are keyboards and bass.
Now just as fire and water form a closer, more contiguous diametrical
antithesis, like heat and coldness, so a similar antithesis may be inferred to
exist between guitars and drums. In the
one case all the difference, musically speaking, between Heaven and the
world. In the other case the less
radical difference, again musically speaking, between Hell and purgatory. For keyboards are no less divine in relation
to the worldly bass than guitars are diabolic in relation to the purgatorial drums. It is the difference between idealism and
realism on the one hand, but between naturalism and materialism on the other,
with all the same moral implications.
94. Similar fourfold distinctions should be drawn
between arpeggio chording, whether on guitars or keyboards, and rhythmic
chording; for whereas the former is realistic on account of its relative and
individualized nature, the latter is materialistic on account of its relative
and collectivized nature. Yet both are
lower than, and thus musically inferior to, the absolute collectivized nature
of scalic single-note playing, which is naturalistic, and the absolute
individualized nature of sustained single-note playing, which is
idealistic. For these techniques
correspond to the world and purgatory vis-à-vis Hell and Heaven or, what amounts
to the same, darkness and coldness vis-à-vis heat and light. Thus whereas finger-picked arpeggio chords on
guitar are realistically mundane, sustained single notes on guitar would be
idealistically divine. And whereas
strummed chords on guitar are materialistically purgatorial, single-note scales
('runs') on guitar would be naturalistically diabolic. For the different modes of playing correspond
to the moral concomitants of our four basic elements, viz. earth-water-fire-air,
with earth and air forming the major diametrical antithesis, as between realism
and idealism, but water and fire forming the minor diametrical antithesis, as
between materialism and naturalism. A
relative wavicle equivalent vis-à-vis an absolute wavicle equivalent on the one
hand, and a relative particle equivalent vis-à-vis an absolute particle
equivalent on the other hand.
95. Of course, each of our four principal
instruments, viz. bass, drums, guitar, and keyboards, is capable of being
played in any of the aforementioned ways and often is, too. But I should like to put forward the
contention that each instrument will be played in the way most appropriate to
itself when there is an exact correlation between its phenomenal status in the
omega-oriented hierarchy described above and the noumenal sound which is drawn
from it, i.e. when both instrument and technique are fully co-ordinated. Now because I perceive the bass as realist,
and therefore at the foot of the instrumental hierarchy, it seems to me that
finger-picking arpeggio chording will be the most relevant technique, given its
realistic status vis-à-vis block chording.
Similarly, for drums it would appear that block chording or, at any
rate, the simultaneous striking of two or more drums (including bass drums and
symbols) in order to achieve a regular beat is the most relevant drum
technique, given the comparatively materialistic standing of both drums and
block chording in relation to their respective hierarchies. Likewise, fast single-note playing would seem
to be the technique most relevant to the electric guitar, since both are
comparatively naturalistic, whereas sustained single-note playing is the
technique I would most associate with 'conventional' keyboard and, in
particular, synthesizer playing, to the extent that both instrument and
technique are identifiable with idealism, which, in contrast to naturalism and
materialism (though not to realism) strives to achieve a wavicle equivalent,
and on an absolute individualized basis.
Fast-note scalic playing would seem, by contrast, to indicate a particle
equivalent on account of the rapid succession of notes which form an absolute
collectivity commensurate with naturalism and, hence, the diabolic, soul, hell,
etc. On the other hand, the simultaneous
striking of several notes in block chording would be comparatively
materialistic, and thereby indicative of a relative collectivity commensurate
with the purgatorial, as pertinent to an intellectual persuasion. Certainly all these instruments are usually
played in a variety of ways, whether above or below the most appropriate
technique, but that detracts nothing from the theory propounded here, which
posits an optimum correspondence between instrument and technique, irregardless
of whether or not such a correspondence is to everyone's taste.
96. Undoubtedly the synthesizer is gradually
displacing and eclipsing instruments like the bass, drums, and guitars, in
consequence of which I would argue that realistic, materialistic, and
naturalistic techniques, corresponding to the instruments in question, are in
some degree redeemed through absorption into the overall synthesizer system,
thereby becoming less genuinely worldly, purgatorial, or diabolic, as the case
may be. Probably absorption is a prelude
to and precondition of subsequent transmutation, leading, eventually, to the
complete eclipse of subidealistic techniques.
97. Whilst on the subject of supermusic, I of
course acknowledge that other instruments, such as violins, saxophones, flutes,
etc., are often used in conjunction with or as alternatives to one or other of
the lead instruments already described, and that the voice is no mean
contributor to musical idealism or naturalism, either. Probably the electric violin is the stringed instrument
most suited to the idealistic role by dint of its wavicle-sustain properties,
which of course depend upon bowing, whereas the saxophone is the wind or, at
any rate, brass instrument most suited to the naturalistic role by dint of its
facility for fast-note, particle-biased playing. Thus the violin (not to mention flute) can be
regarded as an alternative to electric keyboards, and the saxophone (not to
mention viola) as an alternative to electric guitars, ideologically inferior as
any acoustic instrument will be in relation to electric ones. Yet all instrumental combinations are
possible in an open society; it is only in a closed one that such 'freedoms'
would be eclipsed.
98. I should like to put forward the theory that while
theocrats, aristocrats, plutocrats, and autocrats are alpha-stemming grades of ruling
elite, democrats, bureaucrats, technocrats, and meritocrats are
omega-oriented grades of leading elite, with religious, scientific,
economic, and political distinctions - distinctions which correspond, as
elsewhere maintained, to the four principal elements. Thus to explain my theory with the aid of a
diagram, we shall find the following alpha/omega divisions:-
ALPHA OMEGA
1. theocrats (religion) 8. meritocrats
(religion)
2. aristocrats (science) 7. technocrats
(science)
3. plutocrats (economics) 6. bureaucrats
(economics)
4. autocrats (politics) 5. democrats
(politics)
with, so I contend, a relatively antithetical
standing between theocrats and meritocrats, aristocrats and technocrats,
plutocrats and bureaucrats, and autocrats and democrats, but a diametrically
antithetical standing, firstly in major terms, between theocrats and autocrats
on the one hand and democrats and meritocrats on the other, and, secondly in
minor terms, between aristocrats and plutocrats on the one hand and bureaucrats
and technocrats on the other - the former corresponding to an air/earth
antithesis and the latter to a fire/water antithesis. For we need not doubt that theocrats and
autocrats signify as radical a diametrical antithesis on the alpha-stemming
side as ... democrats and meritocrats on the omega-oriented side - all the
difference, in fact, between religion and politics; whereas aristocrats and
plutocrats signify a less-radical diametrical antithesis equivalent to the
distinction between science and economics, an antithesis no less minor on the
omega side where, as we have seen, it takes the form of bureaucrats and
technocrats. By contrast, the antithesis
horizontally established between meritocrats and theocrats, technocrats and
aristocrats, etc., has to do with opposite poles of the same spectrum in each
case, thereby indicating a series of antithetical equivalents, as between meritocrats
and theocrats (the Holy Spirit and the Father) or technocrats and aristocrats
(Antichrist and Satan).
99. Consequently we have an alpha and an omega
divine status on the religious spectrum, an alpha and an omega diabolic status
on the science spectrum, an alpha and an omega purgatorial status on the
economic spectrum, and, finally, an alpha and an omega worldly status on the
political spectrum, with antithetical equivalents established between
bureaucrats and plutocrats (the Second Coming and the Virgin Mary) in the one
case, and democrats and autocrats (Protestant Christ and Catholic Christ) in
the other case. Admittedly, it may seem
odd to distinguish between autocrats and aristocrats, since most people have
been conditioned to regard aristocrats as cutting across occupational
boundaries rather than as a class, or category, no less distinct from autocrats
than, in my view, technocrats from democrats, and thereby limited, in their
occupational status, to a specific elemental category - in this instance, that
of traditional science. Yet many aristocrats are, and have been, men of science
(as opposed to men of religion, economics, or politics), and I would argue that
they are as distinct an elemental category as, say, theocrats or plutocrats - a
thing which applies just as much, albeit on antithetical terms, to technocrats
in relation to meritocrats above and to bureaucrats below. Doubtless most people would accept without
demur the distinction between autocrats and democrats, since it corresponds to
opposite poles of the political spectrum, and the world, particularly in its
British manifestation (where it takes the form of a division between the House
of Lords and the House of Commons), has far more experience of such an
antithesis than of the higher, more radical antitheses which accrue to the
economic, scientific, and religious spectra above, the omega poles of which are
either comparatively recent developments, as in the cases of bureaucrats and
technocrats, or have yet to come properly to pass - something which undoubtedly
applies to any meritocratic religious leadership which, much the way that
bureaucracy and technocracy have supplanted plutocracy and aristocracy in the
communist East, would not co-exist with alpha-stemming theocracy but strive to
completely supplant it as the sole embodiment of religious idealism. For, unlike an atomic society, a
free-electron society will endeavour to realize an omega exclusiveness in which
only meritocrats, technocrats, and bureaucrats exist, since such a society is
commensurate with a proletarian absolutism above and beyond bourgeois
relativity.
100. Politicians are always talking about personal
responsibility (individual self-assertion), and while this may be a formula for
worldly success - of which Britain has always been a keen friend - it is as far
removed from divine wisdom as earth from air or darkness from light, the reason
being that, unlike worldly folly, divine wisdom has reference to transpersonal
absorption (self-transcendence) in spiritual unity - a procedure which the
Catholic Irish have always shown more aptitude for - albeit on a tangential
basis - than the Protestant British.
However, in between the extremes of worldly folly and divine wisdom we
find impersonal responsibility (corporate self-assertion) on the one hand, and
impersonal absorption (collective self-transcendence) on the other hand, and
while the former is purgatorial, the latter is diabolic - water and fire,
stupidity and cleverness, as germane to an American/Russian dichotomy. For if the British are fundamentally foolish
and the Irish essentially wise, then the Americans are fundamentally stupid and
the Russians essentially clever, since stupidity and cleverness form a
water/fire diametrical antithesis in between the earth/air antithesis of folly
and wisdom. It is the difference between
cold and heat, rather than darkness and light.
101. The positive wisdom of truth/joy; the positive
cleverness of beauty/love; the positive stupidity of strength/pride; the
positive folly of goodness/pleasure.
Conversely, we can speak of the negative wisdom of sorrow/falsity; the
negative cleverness of hate/ugliness; the negative stupidity of
humiliation/weakness; the negative folly of pain/evil. Consequently we have a distinction between
alpha and omega manifestations of idealism, naturalism, materialism, and
realism.
102. Private enterprise inevitably leads to the
perpetuation of divisions between rich and poor, since those who are capable of
or disposed to amassing private wealth through the success of their enterprise
will continue to do so. Fundamentally,
it makes no difference whether or not they are taxed more stringently since,
even after higher taxation, they remain rich in relation to those whom they
exploit, and accordingly a worldly society remains in place. Only on either the Transcendental Socialist
basis of State ownership or on the Social Transcendentalist basis (as
propounded by me) of Centre trusteeship ... can such worldly divisions be
transcended. For public ownership and/or
trusteeship permits of a more even distribution of wealth (from the centre) and
can therefore maintain an absolute society which is neither rich nor poor but
either Communist or Transcendentalist, depending on the emphasis of that
distribution, i.e. whether social and bureaucratic, as in the case of State
ownership, or religious and meritocratic, as should transpire in the case of
Centre trusteeship. Such post-worldly
absolute societies would be 'beyond good and evil' in the worldly sense of
relative class divisions between the poor and the rich, being, by contrast,
either beautiful or true.
103. Just as mineral formations precede plant life
in the overall evolution or, rather, devolution of life (from the alpha
absolute) on this planet, so we should allow for the possibility of a life form
or stage of life antithetical to minerals, which would precede transcendence
and, hence, the attainment of electron-electron attractions to the
transcendental Beyond. Such a stage of
life would emerge, I contend, from supra-being new-brain collectivizations as
the final phase of their development, a phase in all probability pending
transcendence, or the possibility thereof, when Supra-beings would assume an
intensely luminous appearance in consequence of sustained hypermeditation,
becoming what we may term Ultrabeings.
This luminosity, indicative of spiritual expansion, would suggest an
antithetical equivalent to the luminous quality or capacity of certain mineral
deposits, such as diamonds, and it would be in the interests of those
responsible, as technicians, leaders, etc., for the servicing of these
new-brain collectivizations to have them boosted into space within the context
of space centres, in order to avoid the potentially disastrous consequences of
radioactive contamination both during and following the transcendental process.
104. Thus to extend my previous theories, one should
allow for three stages of post-human life, with Ultrabeings constituting the
third - a life form effectively antithetical to mineral deposits. With three stages of cosmic devolution ...
from the central star of any particular galaxy to planets via stars in general
(including the sun), it seems only logical to allow for three stages of natural
devolution ... from minerals to animals via plants. Likewise, we should have three stages of
supernatural evolution, beginning with Superbeings (brain collectivizations)
and progressing via Supra-beings to Ultrabeings, as well as three succeeding stages
of supercosmic evolution, beginning with planetary spiritual globes and
progressing via galactic spiritual globes to a grand culmination in the
universal spiritual globe, viz. the Omega Point. Hence six stages of devolution beneath man
and six stages of evolution beyond him, with human life itself divisible into
three basic stages, viz. pagan, Christian, and transcendental, each of which is
subdivisible into two phases, beginning, in paganism, with stoicism and
hedonism, continuing, in Christianity, with Catholicism and Protestantism, and
culminating, in transcendentalism, with contemplation (of artificially-induced
visionary experience) and meditation.
Perhaps the fact that Christ had twelve apostles is not without some
metaphysical significance in light of these theories?
105. Liberal cinema film; Socialist television film;
Communist video film; Transcendentalist trip.
Four ascending stages of artificial visionary experience, corresponding
to realism, materialism, naturalism, and idealism?
106. It seems to me that the threefold division of
meals which generally obtains in the West, viz. breakfast, dinner, and tea,
corresponds to the Holy Trinity, with breakfast correlating with the Father,
dinner with the Son, and tea (or supper) with the Holy Spirit, so that the
average open-society type of person will be equally disposed to all three
meals, the hard-line Christian type of person be more disposed to dinner, while
those whose religious bias is for one or other of the extremes will tend to
place greater store by the corresponding meal, be it breakfast or tea. I, myself, have consistently eschewed
breakfast for many years, have eaten only a comparatively small dinner, but
never failed to have both tea and supper, which, given my bias for the Holy
Spirit, may not be without some ideological significance. Indeed, I have known people who eat only one
meal a day ... in the evening, and such people were more transcendental than
Christian. By contrast, an aunt of mine
with a distinctly alpha-stemming disposition regards breakfast as the most
important meal of the day, which only goes to prove that there is probably more
to our eating habits than at first meets the eye! A person who eschewed breakfast on
ideological grounds would be more enlightened, it seems to me, than one who
insisted on its importance. It would be
a closed-society attitude commensurate with an antithesis to the Father, which
is to say God as Creator.
107. Hands out of pockets and by one's side when
walking along the pavement is an alpha-stemming autocratic parallel. Hands in trouser or jean pockets when out
walking is a worldly democratic parallel.
Hands in short zipper-jacket pockets when out walking is an omega-oriented
theocratic parallel. A man can be judged
according to where his hands are when walking along the pavement. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost options. A child can be trained accordingly.
108. The countryside is an autocratic environment par
excellence. Everywhere one sees the
horizontally centrifugal tendency of nature, which sharply contrasts with the
urban tendency towards the vertically centripetal. It is only too inevitable that bungalow-type
dwellings will be found in abundance in rural or provincial areas. For such dwellings betray, in their
horizontal structures, a centrifugal orientation which accords with country
life - at any rate, as far as nature in the raw is concerned. Bungalows and cottages (their historical
precursors) are not only the lowest types of dwellings physically; they are the
lowest types ideologically - inferior to both two-storey houses and
multi-storey flats. It is as though one
proceeds from the autocratic countryside to the theocratic city via the
democratic town; for with environmental distinctions of this kind come
corresponding ideological distinctions, even when such distinctions are not
consciously registered or publicly proclaimed.
No-one who is at home in the big city, with its towering buildings,
could possibly be complacent about or happy in the country. They are antithetical worlds, incommensurable
and irreconcilable. Alpha and omega of
earthly life.
109. I believe shoulder bags can be ideologically
distinguished, one from another, according to whether they are rectilinear,
curvilinear, or a sort of amalgam of the two, and it is my view that whereas
the rectilinear variety are Socialist and the curvilinear variety
Transcendentalist, the variety which suggests an amalgamation of the two are
Communist, since a combination of both democratic (rectilinear) and theocratic
(curvilinear) elements, as befitting a naturalistic equivalent. As to duffel bags, which are curvilinear but
open at the top, we have, it seems to me, a Nazi parallel, since their
idealism, unlike that of curvilinear shoulder bags, is rather more centrifugal
than centripetal, and thus somewhat neo-alpha in character.
110. Just as we have distinguished between
Socialist, Communist, and Transcendentalist types of shoulder bag on the basis
of rectilinear and curvilinear designs, so similar tripartite distinctions can be
drawn in regard to T-shirts as Socialist, muscle shirts as Communist, and vests
as Transcendentalist, with an ascending ideological importance as we proceed
from the rectilinear to the curvilinear via a sort of cross between the two. Strictly speaking, a conventional T-shirt
should only be worn by those whose ideological persuasion is Socialist (in the
bodily democratic sense), whereas a muscle shirt, which in its sleeveless
design is closer to a vest, should only be worn by those of Communist persuasion
(in the soulfully theocratic sense), and a string vest by Transcendentalists
(or people whose ideological persuasion is theocratic in the ultimate spiritual
sense). A strict correlation between
each of these People's shirts and/or vests and the equivalent type of shoulder
bag should also be established; for ideological togetherness is perfection,
whether your perfection is bodily, soulful, or spiritual.
111. Centrifugal and centripetal: extrovert and
introvert; selfless and selfish. Since
we are distinguishing between alpha-stemming and omega-oriented tendencies, it
should be possible to maintain that whereas the alpha-stemming person will
display centrifugal tendencies, including extroversion and selflessness, his
omega-oriented counterpart, by contrast, will display centripetal tendencies,
including introversion and selfishness.
Indeed, whereas the former will be fundamentally autocratic, the latter
will be essentially theocratic and therefore quite antithetical, in every
respect, to the alpha-stemming person.
Of course, there are people - perhaps in Western societies the great
majority - who are more balanced between alpha and omega, autocracy and
theocracy, than lopsided either way, and they would accordingly be democratic,
which is to say, neither particularly centrifugal nor centripetal, but an
approximately equal combination of each.
Such people are also a more-or-less balanced combination of extroversion
and introversion, selflessness and selfishness.
For extroversion and selflessness are, of course, centrifugal
tendencies, whereas introversion and selfishness are alike centripetal. The former pair are aligned with the proton
component of the atom, the latter pair with its electron component, and while
there is nothing unusual, least of all in a worldly society, about dualistic
combinations in an atomic framework, it should not be forgotten that extremes
are also possible, both before and after the strictly atomic middle-ground, of
which extroversion and selflessness are expressions of the former, but
introversion and selfishness expressions of the latter. Paradoxical though it may seem, a selfish
person, i.e. one who is regarded as being predominantly selfish, rather than
either predominantly selfless or balanced between the two poles, is likely to
be more evolved than an ordinarily half-selfish/half-selfless person, given the
correlation between selfishness and the centripetal.
112. However, there are degrees and kinds of
selfishness, corresponding to the four spectra I have described elsewhere, and
while selfishness on a realistic, or bodily, basis may (understandably) appear
low to a person accustomed to a more elevated kind of selflessness - say,
adherence, through autocratic idealism, to some primitive Godhead, it
nevertheless has to be said that even 'low' selfishness is preferable to 'low'
selflessness, such as would be expressed by bodily adherence to autocratic
realism. For the omega aspect of things
is always preferable, from an evolutionary standpoint, to their alpha aspect -
at any rate, in regard to antitheses which accrue to the same spectrum. Inevitably, selflessness of an idealistic
order will be eclipsed, following the Resurrection (through Social
Transcendentalism), by idealistic selfishness ... in Holy Spirit, and it is
very doubtful that people or peoples who wallow in realistic selfishness would
ever be qualified to embrace the idealistic variety, through meditation, in due
course. The fact is that, ethnically
speaking, progression along a given spectrum is more the general norm within
stable societies than a stepwise ascent or descent between disparate and, in
the main, irreconcilable spectra.
113. Since life embraces both devolution and
evolution, we should speak of devolution from the One to the Many in regard to
alpha-stemming antiquity, but of evolution from the Many to the One in regard
to omega-oriented futurity (modernity would be an understatement). Indeed, just as we find a devolutionary
regression from autocratic theocracy to democratic autocracy via theocratic autocracy
and autocratic autocracy, so there is (and must increasingly be) an
evolutionary progression from autocratic democracy to democratic theocracy via
democratic democracy and theocratic democracy, and in both cases the divine
apex is One and the worldly nadir Many.
Theocracy is concerned with the One, whether that be the Father, the
Holy Spirit, or even Christ, whereas democracy and, to a lesser extent,
autocracy is a reflection of the Many.
Democratic autocracies and autocratic democracies are phenomena of the
Many. But whereas the former is the
nadir of alpha-stemming devolution, the latter is the inception of
omega-oriented evolution, which should lead, via democratic democracies and
theocratic democracies, to the apex of theocratic unity in the democratic
theocracy of the Social Transcendentalist Centre, as far removed from the
Oneness of autocratic theocracy as it is possible for any theocratic Oneness to
be. Alpha and omega - beginning and end
of the One. Therefore to distinguish
between a convergence from the Many to the One, as from the democratic
superworld to the theocratic superheaven (via intermediate stages of
ideological evolution), and a divergence from the One to the Many, as from the
theocratic Creator (central star of the Galaxy) to the autocratic world (via
intermediate stages of ideological devolution).
114. It is not being selfish that is wrong but how
you are selfish, i.e. whether on a bodily or a spiritual plane or on some
intermediate intellectual or soulful one.
Similarly, selflessness is not necessarily right or moral just because
it is selfless. There are bodily and
intellectual types of selflessness which, judged from a soulful or a spiritual
standpoint, are less than wholly desirable.
Yet, regarded objectively, being spiritually selfless (through worship)
is inferior to being spiritually selfish (through self-realization) - that is
to say, inferior to the extent that it signifies an alpha-stemming idealism in
contrast to the more evolved, and infinitely more desirable, omega-oriented
idealism of the Holy Spirit. Just as the
spiritually selfless stand on a higher level than the soulfully selfless, so
the spiritually selfish stand on a higher level than the soulfully selfish, and
the soulfully selfish on a higher level than the intellectually selfish, who in
turn stand above the bodily selfish. For
just as body (will) is inferior to brain (intellect), so soul (emotion) is
inferior to spirit (consciousness), the former pair appertaining to the world
and to purgatory, the latter pair appertaining to Hell and to Heaven, whether
on an alpha or an omega basis, with regard to protons or to electrons,
negativity or positivity. As I have
elsewhere argued, there is a cosmic precedent for each spectrum, with which
such religious terms may be identified - at any rate, in relation to
alpha-stemming Heaven, Hell, purgatory, and world. For the omega-oriented positive parallels are
rather more evolved than devolved, and for that reason I have usually attached
the prefix 'super' to each of them, beginning with superworld and progressing,
via superpurgatory and Superhell, to Superheaven - the ultimate selfishness of
transcendental self-realization.
115. I sometimes wonder whether distinctions between
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost don't simply boil down, in common
Christian usage, to parallel distinctions between the male sexual organ, the
heart, and the conscious mind, so that the Father is really quite different
from and inferior to the Creator-God (Jehovah) extrapolated from the central
star of the Galaxy, since merely extrapolated from the penis. As to the Virgin Mary, whose name (like the
Father's) speaks for itself, a parallel with the female sexual organ can
obviously be inferred, since the emphasis is on her virginity. Thus an ascension from the Father/Virgin Mary
to the Holy Ghost via Christ, which is to say, from the sex organs, male and
female, to the conscious mind via the heart - pagan, Christian, and
transcendental distinctions, both concurrently and successively. But if the Father is different from and less
radically theocratic than, say, Jehovah (conceived as Creator-God in the true
cosmic sense of that term), then the Holy Ghost must likewise be different from
and less radically theocratic than, say, the Omega Point ... of transcendent
futurity. In other words, Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost would have to be seen in a purely Western and, in particular,
Germanic light, which must needs fall short, at each pole, of true theocratic absolutism,
not just in the strictly Christian middle-ground of the Son, where 'God'
assumes a quintessentially worldly status flanked - dare I say it? - by
subworldly and superworldly 'gods'.
116. Undoubtedly the hardness, or desired hardness,
of men (particularly in the West) derives from the phallic roots of life in the
erection, whereas the softness, or desired softness, of women no-less
undoubtedly derives from the vaginal roots of life in sexual submission. Thus as a penis must be hard in order to penetrate
a vagina, so, correlatively, men should be hard and women soft - at any rate,
while sexual commerce is a societal norm.
For we are heading towards an age and civilization when hardness will be
no less inapplicable to men than softness to women, and largely because, in
transcending traditional sexual customs, men and women will blend into a
post-sexist superhuman identity wherein distinctions of 'hard' and 'soft' would
be equally irrelevant because equally false.
The future superperson will be neither hard nor soft but either
soft-hard (males) or hard-soft (females), and the lion will accordingly have
lain down with the lamb in a transcendent synthesis.
117. It seems to me that whereas paperback
publications approximate, when original, to a Socialist equivalent or
ideological parallel, the joint publication of paperbacks and tapes in plastic
cases suggests a Communist equivalent, whereas independent tape publications
approximate to a Transcendentalist equivalent by dint of their curvilinear
standing in relation to (rectilinear) books.
Thus whereas paperbacks, being rectilinear, parallel conventional
T-shirts, it would seem that tapes, being curvilinear, parallel vests, the
coming together into joint formats of tapes and paperbacks paralleling muscle
shirts, with, as in previous instances, socialist, communist, and
transcendentalist distinctions.
118. Unlike a bottle of beer, a can of beer is
rather akin to a frameless work of art, whereas a can of cola is more akin to a
poster or even to a photograph, both of which are no less beyond the pale of
oil paintings than cola is beyond the pale of alcoholic drinks. Which is another way of saying that whereas
frameless paintings and canned alcohol are petty-bourgeois norms, posters
and/or photos and cola are alike proletarian norms.
119. Heavenly spirit from the awareness subconscious
to the awareness superconscious. Hellish
soul from the emotional subconscious to the emotional superconscious. Purgatorial intellect from the old brain to
the new brain. Worldly will from the
blood/bone body to the flesh/muscle body.
Thus spirit, soul, intellect, and will are not only separate, they are
eternally co-existent in man, though not always to the same extent or with
equal force or on identical terms, since, in relation to the latter point, we
must distinguish between alpha and omega, negative and positive, with regard to
both the age and the type of individual.
Yet whether alpha-stemming negativity or omega-oriented positivity is
uppermost in any given individual, all men are fourfold composites of spirit,
soul, intellect, and will, and so they must remain until man is transcended in
the Superbeing and a wholly post-human life form comes to pass. Just as the highest men are those in whom
spirit is uppermost, so the lowest are those in whom will predominates. The soulful and the intellectual types come
in-between, like Hell and purgatory vis-à-vis Heaven on the one hand and the
world on the other hand.
120i. Whether your Heaven be alpha or omega, you are
one for whom a wavicle bias preponderates over both particle and atomic biases.
ii. Whether
your Hell be alpha or omega, you are one for whom a particle bias preponderates
over both wavicle and atomic biases.
iii. Whether
your purgatory be alpha or omega, you are one for whom an absolute atomic bias
preponderates over both wavicle and particle biases.
iv. Whether
your world be alpha or omega, you are one for whom a relative atomic bias
preponderates over both wavicle and particle biases.
121i. Thus the proton-wavicle bias of Alpha Heaven,
but the electron-wavicle bias of Omega Heaven.
ii. Thus
the proton-particle bias of Alpha Hell, but the electron-particle bias of Omega
Hell.
iii. Thus
the atomic-proton bias of alpha purgatory, but the atomic-electron bias of
omega purgatory.
iv. Thus
the proton-atomic bias of alpha world, but the electron-atomic bias of omega
world.
122i. The essence of negative spirit is sadness,
whereas the essence of positive spirit is joy.
ii. The
essence of negative soul is hatred, whereas the essence of positive soul is
love.
iii. The
essence of negative intellect is humiliation, whereas the essence of positive
intellect is pride.
iv. The
essence of negative will is pain, whereas the essence of positive will is
pleasure.
123i. The appearance of negative spirit is illusion,
whereas the appearance of positive spirit is truth.
ii. The
appearance of negative soul is ugliness, whereas the appearance of positive
soul is beauty.
iii. The
appearance of negative intellect is weakness, whereas the appearance of
positive intellect is strength.
iv. The
appearance of negative will is evil, whereas the appearance of positive will is
goodness.
124. One could argue that where the 'apparent' corresponds to the
phenomenal, the 'essential' corresponds to the noumenal.
125. With the alpha of things, the noumenal precedes
the phenomenal, whereas with the omega, by contrast, the phenomenal precedes
the noumenal. The phenomenal corresponds
to an atomic middle-ground in between subatomic (noumenal) and supra-atomic
(noumenal) extremes. Hence Christ is a
phenomenal divinity (atomic man) in between the noumenal Creator (wavicle
proton-proton reactions) and the noumenal ultimate Creation (wavicle
electron-electron attractions); a relativity (of the 'Three in One') in between
two absolutes.
126. Only the absolute is strictly divine, though
the omega absolute will be more truly divine than the alpha absolute because a
divinity of bliss as opposed to a divinity of great sorrow - all the
difference, in effect, between the envisaged supra-atomic electron-electron
attractions of the ultimate absolute and the subatomic proton-proton reactions
of the primary absolute, which corresponds to the central star of the Galaxy (a
wavicle star in contrast to the particle stars which revolve around it), as,
indeed, to the central stars of galaxies in general.
127i. Truth is apparent, like air or, rather, the
sky, but the essential realization of truth leads to joy, which is a
corresponding light. No joy without
truth, since the one is a precondition of the other and they form two sides of
the same coin - the coin of Omega Heaven.
ii. Beauty
is apparent, like fire, but the essential realization of beauty leads to love,
which is a corresponding heat. No love
without beauty, since the one is a precondition of the other and they form two
sides of the same coin - the coin of Omega Hell.
iii. Strength
is apparent, like water, but the essential realization of strength leads to
pride, which is a corresponding coldness.
No pride without strength, since the one is a precondition of the other
and they form two sides of the same coin - the coin of omega purgatory.
iv. Goodness
is apparent, like earth, but the essential realization of goodness leads to
pleasure, which is a corresponding darkness.
No pleasure without goodness, since the one is a precondition of the
other and they form two sides of the same coin - the coin of omega world.
128. Since goodness, strength, beauty, and truth
signify an ascending order of (phenomenal) ideals effectively germane to four
different omega-oriented civilizations, so pleasure, pride, love, and joy
likewise signify an ascending order of (noumenal) ideals germane to their aforementioned
counterparts.
129i. The lowest or worldly omega-oriented
civilization (realist) will place a moral emphasis on goodness and its reward -
pleasure.
ii. The
second lowest or purgatorial omega-oriented civilization (materialist) will
place a moral emphasis on strength and its reward - pride.
iii. The
second highest or hellish omega-oriented civilization (naturalist) will place a
moral emphasis on beauty and its reward - love.
iv. The
highest or heavenly omega-oriented civilization (idealist) will place a moral
emphasis on truth and its reward - joy.
130. Since man is a composite of all four moral
spectra, so likewise is each civilization, except that, like individual men,
they will have a particular bias for one or another of the moral alternatives. Strictly speaking, only the highest
civilization is or can be truly moral.
For, judged from the standpoint of truth and joy, both beauty and love
are comparatively immoral, as are strength and pride, while goodness and
pleasure are amoral, since neither hellish nor purgatorial but worldly, and
hence relative. Returning to elemental
distinctions on these omega (positive) levels, we find that truth and joy
correspond to an electron-wavicle absolute, beauty and love to an
electron-particle absolute, strength and pride to an atomic-electron
'absolute', and, finally, goodness and pleasure to an electron-atomic
relativity.
131i. Air/light, fire/heat, water/coldness, and
earth/darkness. Thus in relation to the
elements and their (noumenal) concomitants, truth is akin to air and joy to
light, beauty is akin to fire and love to heat, strength is akin to water and
pride to coldness, goodness is akin to earth and pleasure to darkness.
ii. Just
as air and earth form a phenomenal antithesis, with light and darkness their
respective noumenal concomitants, so truth and goodness form a phenomenal
antithesis, with joy and pleasure their respective noumenal concomitants.
iii. Now
just as fire and water form a phenomenal antithesis, with heat and coldness
their respective noumenal concomitants, so beauty and strength form a
phenomenal antithesis, with love and pride their respective noumenal
concomitants.
iv. Air/light
idealism standing above fire/heat naturalism; fire/heat naturalism standing
above water/coldness materialism; water/coldness materialism standing above
goodness/pleasure realism. Heaven - Hell
- purgatory - world ... at the omega poles of their respective spectra.
132i. The omega-oriented writer who goes to life
(will) for his inspiration is a realist, and corresponds to the earth/darkness,
goodness/pleasure worldly spectrum.
ii. The
omega-oriented writer who goes to books (intellect) for his inspiration is a
materialist, and corresponds to the water/coldness, strength/pride purgatorial
spectrum.
iii. The
omega-oriented writer who goes to emotions (soul) for his inspiration is a
naturalist, and corresponds to the fire/heat, beauty/love diabolic spectrum.
iv. The
omega-oriented writer who goes to awareness (spirit) for his inspiration is an
idealist, and corresponds to the air/light, truth/joy divine spectrum.
133. Of course, no writer is ever entirely one
thing, but all writers can be evaluated according to a bias for one or another
of the above spectra. And such spectra
indicate a hierarchy of writers, beginning, at the bottom, with realism, and
proceeding, via materialism and naturalism, to an idealistic peak. Strictly speaking, it is from this idealistic
peak of Truth-seeking spirit that all first-rate writing stems. By comparison to the idealistic writer, the
naturalistic writer is second-rate, the materialistic writer third-rate, and
the realistic writer fourth-rate. And
what applies to the omega pole of each spectrum applies no less to its alpha
antithesis, where negative quantities and qualities obtain, as well as to any
middle-ground (bourgeois) cross between the antithetical poles. In my opinion, the omega-oriented idealistic
(truth/joy) writer is as superior, from a truly divine standpoint, to the
alpha-stemming idealistic (illusion/sadness) writer as ... the Holy Spirit to
the Creator. And what applies to the
divine spectrum applies just as much to each of the lesser spectra, where alpha/omega
distinctions can also be found.
134i. Where evil, and hence pain, is the alpha
worldly norm, goodness, and hence pleasure, is the omega worldly norm.
ii. Where
weakness, and hence humiliation, is the alpha purgatorial norm, strength, and
hence pride, is the omega purgatorial norm.
iii. Where
ugliness, and hence hatred, is the alpha diabolic norm, beauty, and hence love,
is the omega diabolic norm.
iv. Where
illusion, and hence sadness, is the alpha divine norm, truth, and hence joy, is
the omega divine norm.
135. Will - intellect - soul - spirit; body - brain
- emotional mind - conscious mind; world - purgatory - Hell - Heaven, on both
alpha and omega terms. Earth - water -
fire - air; darkness - coldness - heat - light; world - purgatory - Hell -
Heaven, on both alpha and omega terms.
136. Just as air and earth form a major diametrical
antithesis in relation to fire and water, which I have elsewhere described as
minor, so wisdom and folly form such an antithesis, with cleverness and
stupidity taking the minor position in between.
Wisdom and folly are not antithetical in the manner of illusion and
truth, which is to say, as poles of the same spectrum; for there is negative
wisdom and positive wisdom, the former pertaining to illusion and the latter to
its polar antithesis, truth. Likewise,
there is negative folly and positive folly, and while the former pertains to
evil, with particular reference to pain, the latter pertains to goodness and
its (noumenal) concomitance, pleasure.
Thus whereas the divine spectrum of illusion-to-truth has to do with
wisdom, both negative and positive, the worldly spectrum of evil-to-good has to
do with folly, both negative and positive.
Consequently we may speak of the negative (painful) folly of evil, but
the positive (pleasurable) folly of good; the negative (sad) wisdom of
illusion, but the positive (joyful) wisdom of truth.
137. Similarly, in regard to the minor antithesis
between fire and water, or Hell and purgatory, we shall find that cleverness
and stupidity are the relevant terms of reference, with negative cleverness
accruing to ugliness (the negative diabolic pole) and positive cleverness
accruing to beauty (the positive diabolic pole); with negative stupidity
accruing to weakness (the negative purgatorial pole) and positive stupidity
accruing to strength (the positive purgatorial pole), so that cleverness and
stupidity are no less diametrical, in their less radical way, than wisdom and
folly. Therefore we can speak of the
negative (humble) stupidity of weakness, but the positive (proud) stupidity of
strength; the negative (hateful) cleverness of ugliness, but the positive
(loving) cleverness of beauty. One could
even say, at the risk of seeming unduly metaphorical, that whereas earth is
foolish (dark) and air wise (light), fire is clever (hot) and water stupid
(cold). But we have to distinguish
between negative and positive earth, air, water, and fire, bearing in mind the
alpha/omega distinctions between the natural and the artificial, the old and
the new, theocratic/autocratic and democratic/theocratic, which removes us from
the metaphorical to the historical plane.
138. Hence the negative folly of alpha realism
(democratic autocracy) in contrast to the positive folly of omega realism
(autocratic democracy); the negative stupidity of alpha materialism (autocratic
autocracy) in contrast to the positive stupidity of omega materialism
(democratic democracy); the negative cleverness of alpha naturalism (theocratic
autocracy) in contrast to the positive cleverness of omega naturalism (theocratic
democracy); the negative wisdom of alpha idealism (autocratic theocracy) in
contract to the positive wisdom of omega idealism (democratic theocracy).
139i. From the painfully foolish (the evil) to the
pleasurably foolish (the good).
ii. From
the humbly stupid (the weak) to the proudly stupid (the strong).
iii. From
the hatefully clever (the ugly) to the lovingly clever (the beautiful).
iv. From
the sadly wise (the false) to the joyfully wise (the true).
140. Alpha and omega positions in an ascending hierarchy
of elemental spectra, viz. realism (earth), materialism (water), naturalism
(fire), idealism (air).
141. Broadly speaking, the fulcrum of British
society is along the realistic axis of a painfully foolish (Lords
autocratic)/pleasurably foolish (Commons democratic) divide. The fulcrum of American society is along the
materialistic axis of a humbly stupid (Quakerish)/proudly stupid (Republican)
divide. The fulcrum of Russian society
is along the naturalistic axis of a hatefully clever (Czarist autocratic)/lovingly
clever (Socialist bureaucratic) divide.
The fulcrum of Irish society is - or, as far as the omega option
applies, hopefully will be - along the idealistic axis of a sadly wise (Roman
Catholic)/joyfully wise (Social Transcendentalist) divide. For each kind of society, be it realist,
materialist, naturalist, or idealist, must have a representative axis if it is
to retain a specific cultural and/or ideological integrity and not become a
mishmash of conflicting and mutually destructive elements - a situation which,
judged from an historical point of view, may be for the better or worse,
depending on the type of society in question.
142. In relations between the sexes, it is
traditionally the male who loves the more passionately and the female who, by
contrast, derives the greater pleasure from sex. This is because, as a rule, men are more of
the head than of the body, whereas women are more of the body than of the head,
and the sexes accordingly relate to each other in terms of a kind of diabolic/worldly
divide, which is nothing less than the love/pleasure distinctions described
above. In relation to propagation,
copulation is a comparatively centripetal activity, by which I mean that the
penis is inserted into the vagina, where it functions on an inward-tending
basis towards its goal of orgasmic discharge into the womb. It is the male who inserts himself into the
female while, with pregnancy, the female must be delivered of her baby, which
accordingly slides out of her in due centrifugal fashion. Thus whereas the one sex puts something in,
the other gives something out, and this is relative to the atomic natures of
the respective sexes - men generally of an electron bias and therefore
centripetal, women generally of a proton bias and therefore centrifugal. A man is in luck when he has a woman
sexually, whereas a woman is in luck not when she is being sexually had by a
man but, on the contrary, when she gives her baby to the world - at any rate,
this is how it has traditionally been between the sexes and, in a majority of
cases, continues so to be to this day.
Men take but women give, the former being omega orientated and the
latter alpha stemming; centripetal and centrifugal, after the manner of electrons
and protons in feminine and masculine distinctions. In fact, what I have just said explains why,
as Schopenhauer well-remarked, the average woman would die of shame from being
caught in the act of being made love to by another man, whereas she will carry
her pregnancy with pride - the pride of prospective motherhood. For as Schopenhauer also remarked, copulation
is a man's business, propagation a woman's - centripetal and centrifugal, male
and female respectively.
143. Reading stands to writing as thought to speech
- indeed, as a kind of artificial thought vis-à-vis a kind of artificial
speech, and if thought and speech are noumenal, and therefore relatively alpha
stemming, then reading and writing are comparatively phenomenal, and thus of an
omega-oriented status - at any rate, as relative to a worldly, or Christian,
integrity. For the phenomenal is still
to a degree naturalistic, not wholly artificial, and therefore more the omega
pole of a naturalistic spectrum than of an artificial one, which, by contrast,
must begin in superphenomenal artificiality and progress towards a
supernoumenal culmination in due course.
Thus if thinking and reading are alpha and omega of an essential
naturalistic spectrum, the nature of which is internal, and hence of a wavicle
bias, but speaking and writing are alpha and omega of an apparent naturalistic
spectrum, the nature of which is external, and hence of a particle bias, it
should follow that whereas thinking and speaking are noumenal, reading and
writing are phenomenal - the former pair largely preceding the latter in
historical time.
144. Yet if, as I teach, the superphenomenal
precedes the supernoumenal in the ensuing historical period of artificial
spectra, then we must begin with an artificial type of reading in the one case
and with an artificial type of writing in the other, thereafter progressing
from each of the superphenomenal poles to supernoumenal poles of, on the one
hand, an artificial type of thinking and, on the other hand, an artificial type
of speaking, both of which will stand to the former as superomega to
superalpha. Clearly, artificial writing
and reading will pertain to typewriters, printing presses, etc., and to printed
material (as opposed to hand-written material), including books, magazines,
newspapers, etc., whereas artificial thinking and speaking will pertain to
computers, especially to those which can be programmed to compute both
internally, as 'thinking machines', and externally, as 'speaking machines' -
the former a precondition of the latter (just as we must first be able to think
before we can speak). Indeed, artificial
writing, via typewriters, printing presses, etc., is as much a precondition of
artificial reading, or the reading of artificial print, as natural writing is a
precondition of natural reading, or the reading of hand-written material like
letters; for the apparent (writing) precedes the essential (reading) when we
are dealing with the phenomenal, whereas the essential (thought) precedes the
apparent (speech) when we are dealing with the noumenal, and what applies to
the naturalistic spectra (both wavicle and particle) applies no less to the
artificial spectra which follow, so to speak, in historical time. Thus before there can be superphenomenal
reading (of books, magazines, etc.), there must firstly be superphenomenal
writing (through typewriters, printing presses, etc.); and before there can be
supernoumenal speaking (through an artificial voice), there must firstly be
supernoumenal thinking (by computation) - the apparent preceding the essential
in the one case but succeeding it in the other, the former a 'rise' and the
latter a 'fall'.
145. Yet, within the same spectrum, we see a
progression from essential to essential or apparent to apparent, as the case may
be, since reading and thinking, whether natural or artificial, are alike
essential, whereas writing and speaking, whether natural or artificial, are
alike apparent - the former pair having a wavicle bias and the latter pair a
particle bias. However, we are not
dealing with two completely separate spectra here, so much as with two sides or
aspects of the same spectrum, that being intellectual and therefore of a
materialistic atomic integrity, whether in regard to alpha-stemming intellect
(atomic-proton materialism) or, conversely, in regard to omega-oriented
intellect (atomic-electron materialism), the one naturalistic and the other
artificial, as relative to an old-brain/new-brain distinction. We are dealing here with a sort of
purgatorial rather than hellish or heavenly spectrum, and that is why neither
emotions nor visions are the experiences at stake, but solely words and the way
they are handled, combined, analysed, etc.
As discussed elsewhere, visions are of the spiritual spectrum, which is
idealistic, whether we are referring to natural or to artificial visionary
experience, whilst emotions are of the soulful spectrum, which is naturalistic
(in the ideological rather than historical sense), whether we are referring to
alpha-stemming natural emotions or to omega-oriented artificial (civilized)
emotions. That is why neither television
nor radio is applicable to the intellectual spectrum under discussion, since
its omega unfolding is a computer, and whether that computer thinks or speaks
will determine which side of the spectrum in question is being utilized, and
for what purposes.
146. Obviously, essential intellect (thought) is
closer to spiritual idealism (visions) than would be the apparent intellect
(speech). But it is nevertheless quite
distinct from such idealism, as is apparent intellect from the soulful
naturalism (emotion) which flanks it below, irrespective of overlappings in
practice between each of the three spectra.
Since, in artificial omega terms, radio is the medium par
excellence of emotions and television, by contrast, the medium par
excellence of awareness, this means that the medium par excellence of
artificial intelligence, namely the computer, will be closer to radio when apparent
(speaking) but to television when essential (thinking); for radio, despite
appearances to the contrary, is an inherently soulful medium, especially suited
to music, and therefore one which is of a particle bias, whether for good or
bad, positively or negatively; whereas television, despite appearances to the
contrary, is an inherently spiritual medium, especially suited to art, and
therefore one which is of a wavicle bias, whether for good or bad, positively
or negatively. Emotional and visionary media
flanking, on a particle/wavicle basis, the intellectual medium of computers -
just as Hell and Heaven may be said to flank purgatory.
147. Philosophical awareness, poetical emotion,
fictional description, and theatrical
action, with spiritual, soulful, intellectual, and wilful distinctions
respectively, corresponding to idealism (air), naturalism (fire), materialism
(water), and realism (earth), or, as one could alternatively put it, to Heaven,
Hell, purgatory, and the world. Thus
from philosophy at the top, which is par excellence a discipline of
the mind, to drama at the bottom, which is inherently a discipline of the will,
we have a descending hierarchy of disciplines which should, if properly
pursued, differ from one another as much as, say, the elements, with air
corresponding to philosophy, which is nothing less than the pursuit of joy
through truth; fire corresponding to poetry, which is nothing more than the
pursuit of love through beauty; water corresponding to fiction, which is
nothing more than the pursuit of pride through strength (generally measured in
terms of the length of any given novel); and earth corresponding to drama,
which is nothing less than the pursuit of pleasure through goodness or, rather,
the good act.... Unless, however, we are primarily concerned with negative and
hence alpha-stemming philosophy, poetry, fiction, and drama, in which case the
pursuit of illusion through sadness; the pursuit of ugliness through hate; the
pursuit of weakness through humiliation; and last and least the pursuit
of evil through pain. This is perhaps
the main distinction between the ancients and the moderns (allowing for
exceptions), bearing in mind that whereas the phenomenal precedes the noumenal
within an omega orientation, it is the noumenal which precedes the phenomenal
within an alpha orientation, whether on naturalistic or artificial terms.
148. It is not altogether surprising that the
English regard Shakespeare as their finest writer; for, as a realistic people,
it is only to be expected that they should hold a mere playwright in such high
regard. Yet theatre, being naturalistic
in terms of its recourse to actual physical presences on stage, is more
autocratic than democratic, a bodily realism which contrasts, rather like the
Lords vis-à-vis the Commons, with the more sublimated and artificial realism of
television plays - the democratic realism par excellence of an
omega-oriented worldliness, of which Dennis Potter is perhaps the best-known
and most widely-acclaimed exponent, a sort of democratic Shakespeare and yet,
for all his considerable dramatic ability, still no more, when considered in
relation to literature, poetry, and philosophy (in that ascending order), than
a fourth-rate writer, like Shakespeare.
Certainly I would regard Bacon as his writerly peer - by no less than
three rates!
149. Concerning philosophy, it should be noted that
while the alpha-stemming naturalistic philosophers like Socrates, Plato, etc.,
were more likely to be found lecturing in the open air or (later) in a lecture
theatre, their latter-day artificial counterparts will prefer, as a rule, to be
found lecturing in a television studio on the benefits of a more evolved
philosophy, such as may well portend a genuine omega orientation.
150. Hitherto I have broadly spoken of
alpha-stemming (naturalistic) and omega-oriented (artificial) distinctions
between those - be they philosophers, poets, novelists, or playwrights - at
opposite poles of their respective spectra.
But, from a more correct standpoint, the fact nevertheless remains that
the naturalistic and artificial parts or divisions of each spectrum are both
alpha stemming and omega orientated, which is to say, negative and
positive. Thus there is the strongly
alpha-stemming (Fatheristic) negativity of sadness (noumenal) in relation to
falsity (phenomenal) within the naturalistic part of the divine (idealistic)
spectrum, in contrast to the comparatively omega-oriented (Christic) positivity
of truth (phenomenal) in relation to joy (noumenal) also within the naturalistic
part of the same spectrum. Similarly,
with the artificial part of the divine spectrum, the supersadness
(supernoumenal) preceding superfalsity (superphenomenal) is, in its negativity,
comparatively alpha stemming or, more correctly, superalpha stemming, in
relation to the strongly omega-oriented (Superchristic) positivity of
supertruth (superphenomenal) as a precondition of superjoy
(supernoumenal). For the negative
(noumenal-to-phenomenal) correlations are always alpha stemming in relation to
the positive (phenomenal-to-noumenal) correlations of omega-oriented
attributes, whether we are alluding to those on the heavenly, hellish,
purgatorial, or worldly spectra, as corresponding to idealism, naturalism, materialism, and
realism at both 'naturalistic' and 'artificial' poles. Thus an alpha-omega naturalism superseded by
a superalpha-superomega artificiality or, as one could alternatively term it,
supernaturalism.
151. I did, I believe, make this point before, but
it is a tricky one and well worth illustrating by examples of what I call
omega-in-the-alpha on the one hand and alpha-in-the-omega on the other, i.e.
positivity in the naturalistic part of any given spectrum and negativity in its
artificial part - the former largely centrifugal and the latter mainly
centripetal. Now the illustration I have
in mind pertains to umbrellas on the one hand and to hooded zippers on the
other - two modes of protection against rain which co-exist as alpha and omega
in both naturalistic and artificial contexts, by which I mean within each part
of their particular spectrum, be it idealistic, naturalistic, or materialistic,
depending on the type of brolly or hooded zipper in question. However that may be, a full-length brolly
will be strongly alpha stemming because inherently centrifugal, whereas a
knee-length or even a thigh-length hooded zipper will be comparatively omega
orientated, since centripetal, albeit of a length which, in its evident
femininity, precludes a truly masculine implication and therefore suggests
omega-in-the-alpha, which is nothing less than a kind of Christian
middle-ground vis-à-vis the alpha absolute ... as pertaining to a naturalistic
omega orientation. Contrasted to which,
we shall discover the alternatives, on the one hand, of a collapsible umbrella,
complete with phallic-like sheath (suggestive of a masculine compromise), and,
on the other hand, of a short or waist-length hooded zipper, which is closer to
a genuine omega or, rather, superomega orientation on account of its highly
masculine connotations, and which thereby contrasts not only with hooded
zippers of a partly feminine character (knee/thigh-length establishing a
skirt-like centrifugal compromise), but with the collapsible umbrella - that
alpha-in-the-omega which is nothing more than a kind of superalpha equivalent
commensurate with the negative pole, or part, of the artificial spectrum to
which (depending on the type) it belongs, the supernegative pole to
superpositive waist-length hooded zippers.
152. Thus from long brollies and hooded zippers
within the largely centrifugal alpha-stemming naturalistic part of any given
spectrum ... to the short brollies (collapsibles) and hooded zippers within the
largely centripetal omega-oriented artificial part of any given spectrum - the
contrast, on the one hand, between omega-(long hooded zippers)in-the-alpha
(long umbrellas) and, on the other hand, alpha-(collapsibles)in-the-omega
(short hooded zippers). A small
positivity within a large negativity in the one case, and a small negativity
within a large positivity in the other, of which dozens of comparable examples
could be given, including towns within the country and parks within the
city. For there is as exact a
correlation between, say, thigh-length hooded zippers and country towns as
between collapsibles and city parks. The
thigh-length hooded zipper is, strictly speaking, a phenomenon-noumenon of
country towns, just as the collapsible umbrella is a noumenon-phenomenon of
city parks or, if that seems overly rigid, is aligned with the park vis-à-vis
the (hooded) city - as, for that matter, are miniskirts.
153. Since alpha proceeds from noumenal to
phenomenal and omega, by contrast, from phenomenal to noumenal, we can speak,
as I have just done, of hooded zippers as phenomenal-noumenal in contrast to
umbrellas as noumenal-phenomenal, reading the former from the bottom up, which
is to say from body to hood, and the latter from the top down, which is to say
from umbrella hood to body stem, including the handle. The alpha noumenal is centrifugal whereas the
omega noumenal is centripetal.
Appearance and essence, protons and electrons, negative and positive.
154. Since alpha and omega are polar opposites
within any given spectrum, in both naturalistic (overall alpha-stemming) and
artificial (overall omega-oriented) manifestations thereof, it follows that
drama will be tragic when appertaining, in negativity, to the alpha pole of the
realistic spectrum, but comic when appertaining, in positivity, to its omega
pole, and this whether we are considering the traditional, naturalistic
manifestation of this spectrum or its more contemporary and, hence, artificial
counterpart - in short, whether we are referring to autocratic realism or to
democratic realism, the former tending to materialize on stage and the latter
on film, though particularly within the context of television drama. For films are not invariably dramatic, or
written on an original and quasi-theatrical basis, but are more often, these
days, adaptations from novels, in consequence of which they can be regarded as
appertaining to the artificial manifestations of a fictional, or materialistic,
spectrum, on both negative and positive terms, which is to say as alpha and
omega of artificial materialism. And
even original film scripts usually tend to the narrative rather than to the
dramatic and are therefore as distinct from plays as novels, the best of them
being art films, or films recognized for their narrative and/or aesthetic
worth. Really, it is television plays
which are the dramatic counterpart of stage plays; for plays and films are two
quite distinct visual media, the one realistic and the other materialistic,
which, on balance, is equivalent to a kind of British/American dichotomy - the
former worldly and the latter purgatorial.
Will and intellect, body and brain, making for dramatic and narrative
distinctions.
155. How much is ethnically conditioned and how much
sheer rebellion, I don't pretend to know; but I have always avoided either
writing or reading plays, which I now perceive as a quintessentially English
art-form, and, instead, have concentrated most of my creative energies on
philosophy - the discipline at the furthest possible remove from drama, like
air from earth or Heaven from the world.
Conversely, it has not escaped my attention that Irish dramatists are
usually Anglo-Irish, particularly the world-famous ones like Sheridan, Wilde,
Shaw, Yeats, Beckett, Synge, who may well have felt as disposed to rebel,
consciously or unconsciously, against Irish theology and philosophy as I have
rebelled against British drama, scorning Shakespeare like the plague. The consequences either way are that the
Irish in England become more idealistic than they might otherwise have been,
while the English in Ireland become, as Anglo-Irish, more realistic than might
otherwise have been the case, as the two peoples react against each other and
become more adamantly themselves than before.
It was my destiny to bring philosophy to an all-time idealistic peak - a
fact all the more remarkable for having taken place in
156. It makes a lot of difference whether one's
starting point is Socialism or Transcendentalism; for if Socialism is the
thesis and Transcendentalism the antithesis, as was the case with Lenin, then the
synthetic result is Transcendental Socialism, whereas if Transcendentalism is
the thesis and Socialism the antithesis, as is the case with me, then the
synthetic result is Social Transcendentalism, which stands to Transcendental
Socialism as God to the Devil or, what amounts to the same, light to heat.
157. A recently-acquired insight that waist-length
hooded zippers the hood of which zips into the neck are of a wavicle bias, in
contrast to the particle bias suggested by waist-length hooded zippers with a
free-standing hood. Thus a Social
Transcendentalist/Transcendental Socialist distinction, with unhooded zippers,
whether leather or cloth, having an inferior because bodily status commensurate
with Socialism and Liberalism. Only
hoods, it seems, truly confirm a 'head' status, whether Communist or
Transcendentalist. However, it also has
to be admitted that crash helmets worn in conjunction with leather jackets, as
in the context of motorcycle riding, confer a kind of 'head' status which may
well be more socialist (and therefore intellectual) than communist (and
soulful) or transcendentalist (and spiritual), by dint of the materialistic as
opposed to naturalistic or idealistic construction of crash helmets, which are
metallic.
158. There doubtless exists a strong connection
between matriarchies and polytheistic societies on the one hand, and between
patriarchies and monotheistic societies on the other, given that the former are
centrifugal, and hence feminine, whereas the latter are centripetal, and hence
masculine. Consequently it is virtually
inconceivable that a patriarchy could be polytheistic or a matriarchy
monotheistic, bearing in mind the contradictory nature of the two contexts. The ancient Hebrews were certainly once polytheistic
and matriarchal, but became, under Mosaic guidance, monotheistic and
patriarchal, thereby abandoning paganism for Judaism, with its Jehovah God,
prototype of the Christian Father. Thus
they achieved civilization on an alpha-oriented basis. For the centrifugal is always comparatively
barbarous in relation to the centripetal - the barbarism of cosmic and/or
natural polytheism.
159. Frankly, it is my belief that modern pluralist
societies, with their democratic relativity, are the secular equivalents of the
ancient polytheistic societies, since where formerly there were many gods,
there are now many parties and, as often as not, such pluralism brings a sort
of democratic matriarchy in its train - witness the Thatcher phenomenon in
Britain, not to mention the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest
reigning British monarch since Queen Victoria - which somehow ties-in with the
generally centrifugal nature of pluralist societies.
160. Contrasted to which, we may posit as the modern
secular equivalent of traditional monotheistic societies those countries which
have adopted one-party government, especially within the socialist context, and
whose mode of society is consequently rather more patriarchal - as befitting a
centripetal orientation, the intrinsic masculine nature of which will logically
preclude undue political interference from and leadership by women. Here, in contrast to pluralist societies, it
is the totalitarian ones which reflect the greater degree of civilization, in
that they have achieved a degree of centro-complexification commensurate with a
more highly-evolved state of political affairs, the modern equivalent, as I
say, to the coming of monotheism to the ancient world. Indeed, it could well transpire that, in
relation to this totalitarian absolutism, it is the pluralist societies which
are comparatively barbarous - the barbarism of liberal democracy, with its
matriarchal naturalism. Could it be, I
wonder, that what Moses was to the ancient Hebrews, Lenin is to the modern
Russians? For he, more than any other,
eclipsed the darkness of pluralism by the light or, rather, heat of Bolshevik
communism, thereby creating the world's first totalitarian State, a State which
may well have been - certainly up until the collapse of the Soviet Union - to
the modern world what Israelite monotheism was to the ancient one - a beacon of
civilization flaming in the darkness of democratic pluralism. Democratic 'Judaism' as opposed to democratic
'paganism'.
161. Yet while, to return to the ancient world,
Israelite monotheism signified a more advanced state-of-affairs than pagan
polytheism, it was not, like Christianity, an omega-oriented phenomenon so much
as a more exclusive alpha orientation - focusing on the 'One God', regarded as
the true God, rather than embracing numerous gods. Or, what approximately amounts to the same
thing, focusing on one star (effectively the central star of the Galaxy),
rather than embracing numerous stars throughout the Galaxy, not to mention the
Universe as a whole. There is no
question of Jehovah and Christ being equivalent, since Jehovah is a Creator
divinity, is God conceived as Creator, whereas Christ is a Saviour divinity, or
God conceived in human terms Who offers mankind salvation (from the world) if
only they follow His example and cultivate the 'Kingdom of Heaven' within
the self. Jehovah, like the Father, is a
divinity to be worshipped and placated, whereas Christ is essentially a
divinity to be followed and therefore emulated.
Jehovah is alpha, but Christ omega.
Consequently, Israelite monotheism, with its focus on one Creator, viz.
Jehovah, was a very different and in some sense inferior proposition to the
later Christian monotheism which primarily focused on Christ, while reserving a
lesser, more traditional focus for the Father - that Christian equivalent, so
to speak, of Jehovah. Israelite
monotheism was therefore more closely linked to pagan polytheism than ever
Christian monotheism could be. Or
whereas, put another way, Israelite monotheism signified a rebellion against
pagan polytheism which, nevertheless, maintained an alpha-oriented divine
focus, Christian monotheism was more a rebellion, through Christ, against Old
Testament monotheism in the name of a new monotheism - the omega-oriented
monotheism of the New Testament, which cannot but contrast with the
alpha-oriented monotheism of Israelite tradition.
162. In just such a fashion, it is my firm belief
that whereas Communism embodies, in its totalitarian centrality, a rebellion
against democratic pluralism (the 'polytheism' of the modern world),
Transcendentalism signifies a rebellion against Communism in the name of a
truly omega-oriented ideology which will be the future equivalent of
Christianity, or of what Christianity was to the ancient world - namely, an
altogether new order of monotheism. Thus
it is as a new and superior order of totalitarianism that Transcendentalism
should be seen - one less democratic than theocratic in essence and therefore
as distinct from Communism as (was) Christianity from Judaism, or the New
Testament from the Old Testament. It is
this theocratic totalitarianism which is truly civilized; for it rises above
democratic sovereignty in the name of an ultimate sovereignty, a sovereignty of
the People as Holy Spirit, or ultimate Godhead, through the establishment,
under Messianic auspices, of the 'Kingdom of Heaven' on earth (Social
Transcendentalist Centre) in an unequivocally omega-oriented integrity. Such a theocratic totalitarianism transcends
democratic totalitarianism as Heaven transcends Hell, since it is the light of
lights rather than the heat of heats, and long after the latter has burnt
itself out it will shine-on in the world and eventually transcend it, becoming,
in due process of convergence, the omega absolute. Transcendental Socialism may be a beautiful
world religion or no religion at all, but Social Transcendentalism will be the
true world religion, of which all other, earlier religions are but faint
shadows.
163. Not for the first time in my work, I should
like to point up the parallel with Spengler, that great philosopher of history,
which the above theories call to mind.
For just as he distinguished between four succeeding periods of time in
terms of a) 'Historyless Chaos'; b) 'Culture'; c) 'Civilization'; and d)
'Second Religiousness', so the distinctions I have just drawn between
polytheism and monotheism on the one hand and pluralism and totalitarianism on
the other fit nicely into the Spenglerian categories, with polytheism
symptomatic of 'Historyless Chaos'; monotheism symptomatic of 'Culture';
pluralism symptomatic of 'Civilization' (in reality a kind of modern or second
barbarism); and, finally, totalitarianism symptomatic of 'Second Religiousness'
(particularly when it is of an unequivocally theocratic nature). Similarly, these four distinct periods of
time could be defined - and already have been by me - in terms of a)
materialism; b) naturalism; c) realism; and d) idealism, with 'Historyless
Chaos' thereby further defined in terms of polytheistic materialism; 'Culture'
in terms of monotheistic naturalism; 'Civilization' in terms of pluralistic
realism; and 'Second Religiousness' in terms of totalitarian idealism - a slow
and painful ascent from the centrifugal depths of alpha-stemming paganism to
the centripetal heights of omega-oriented transcendentalism via the worldly
middle-grounds of centripetal Christianity ('Culture') and centrifugal
Liberalism ('Civilization'), with feminine and masculine distinctions between
the centrifugal and the centripetal, as, in effect, with regard to Temple and
Church on the one hand, and to State and (with the Second Coming) Centre on the
other, bearing in mind our alpha/omega polarity. Yes, the liberal State is a sort of superfeminine
entity, a second centrifugal reality which, in its inherent pluralism,
signifies an historical fall from the centripetal masculinity of the Church,
particularly the one true Church ... of Roman Catholic Christianity. But just as the Church rose above both the
pagan and Judaic temples of theocratic precedent, so the Centre will rise above
both the pluralist and totalitarian states of democratic precedent, in order to
establish, among the 'chosen peoples', the supertheocratic culmination of human
evolution, which is nothing less than the omega 'Kingdom of Heaven' -
antithetical in every respect to the alpha ones.
164. Just as Christian monotheism would not have
been possible without a Judaic monotheistic precedent, so Centrist
totalitarianism would be impossible to conceive of without a Communist
totalitarian precedent. For Marx (or
Lenin) stands to me as Moses to Christ, and while, from an omega standpoint,
Communism is as inferior to Transcendentalism as Judaism to Christianity,
nevertheless the one is a precondition of the other, since without a
centripetal revolt against centrifugal precedent, whether polytheistic or
pluralistic, there can be no true omega orientation thereafter and,
consequently, no essential transcendentalism to contrast with the apparent
transcendentalism which precedes it.
Without Judaism, no Christianity.
Likewise, without Communism - the modern equivalent par
excellence of Judaism - there can be no Transcendentalism in the Social
Transcendentalist sense, as advocated by me, and therefore nothing approximating
to a Second Coming and True World Religion.
165. Yet if Communism, like Judaism before it, is
not truly or essentially omega orientated, it is nevertheless far from being
alpha stemming in the pluralistic tradition, even though, again like Judaism,
it makes use of the given - namely the State - and transmutes it in a
centripetal and, hence, totalitarian way.
For taking the given and transmuting it, through selection, towards a
transcendental, omega-oriented objective is a necessary historical precondition
of subsequent ideological progress, even if, in the paradoxical nature of what
has been transmuted, it can never be genuinely transcendental, but must always
remain tied to its alpha-stemming, fundamentalist roots. Thus, in the final analysis, Communism, no
less than Judaism before it, remains an end-in-itself, incapable of subsequent
transmutation into the Centre, which, by contrast, stands in opposition to the
concept and reality of the State in the interests of spiritual liberation.
166. Hence, just as Judaism and Christianity
remained separate ... as two independent religious entities, the one apparently
centripetal (Jehovah) and the other essentially centripetal (Christ), so, in
the future, Transcendental Socialism and Social Transcendentalism will remain separate ... as two independent
ideological entities, the former apparently centripetal - for even the
centralized totalitarian State is still a State and therefore something that
has been extrapolated from a given precedent - and the latter essentially so,
since primarily concerned with a spiritual convergence to the omega goal of
evolution, without which there could be no withering of the State (through the
Centre) and therefore no true 'Kingdom of Heaven', but only a perpetual State,
after the Communist example. For the
totalitarian Centre differs as much from the totalitarian State of Communist
precedent as the monotheistic Church from the monotheistic Temple of Judaic
precedent, being a wavicle (essential) fulfilment of a particle (apparent) precondition
- in the one case artificial and in the other case natural, as pertaining to
parallel points in historical time.
167. Thus, taking the natural options first and then
proceeding to the artificial (or supernatural) options, we find that there is a
sort of overall historical progression, on the one hand, from the polytheistic
Temple to the monotheistic Church via the monotheistic Temple, followed by a
further progression, on the other hand, from the pluralist State to the
totalitarian Centre via the totalitarian State.
Again, to revert to Spengler's fourfold divisions of historical
unfolding, which effectively alternate between becoming and being, we should be
justified in drawing a direct parallel between pagan polytheism and
'Historyless Chaos', Judaic monotheism and 'Culture' or, rather, pseudo-Culture
(for the monotheism in question is not genuinely omega orientated), Christian
monotheism and 'Culture', Liberal pluralism and 'Civilization', Communist
totalitarianism and 'Second Religiousness' or, rather, pseudo-Second
Religiousness (for the totalitarianism in question is not genuinely omega
orientated), and, finally, Centrist totalitarianism and 'Second Religiousness',
with pagan polytheism corresponding to a materialistic period of historical time,
Judaic monotheism corresponding to a materialistic-naturalistic period of such
time, Christian monotheism corresponding to a naturalistic period, Liberal
pluralism to a realistic period, Communist totalitarianism to a
realistic-idealistic period, and, finally, Centrist totalitarianism to an
idealistic period - the ultimate period of historical time prior to the
post-Human Millennium and, thus, man's final overcoming. Needless to say, we have not yet attained to
the idealistic period of time commensurate with the birth of a genuine Second
Religiousness. Nevertheless we are
tending towards it and should be able to date it, in the future, from the
coming of Social Transcendentalism, with the correlative democratic
establishment of the Centre - a fate reserved, in my estimation, for certain
chosen countries that, hopefully, will lead the historical way in this regard.
168. Turning from the general to the particular, and
thus from a sequential progression of materialist to idealist via naturalist
and realist stages of historical time, in the above context, to an hierarchical
order of elemental spectra with, from an artificial omega-oriented standpoint,
realism at the bottom, idealism at the top, and materialism and naturalism in
between (as in the context of
ideological distinctions more recently explored in my work), it seems to me
that a kind of alpha/omega distinction can be drawn between, for example, the
political parties or ideologies of the Right on the one hand, and those of the
Left on the other, with the former inherently centrifugal and the latter
inherently centripetal, as follows:-
Idealistic Alpha Air Idealistic
Omega
Fascism Heaven Transcendentalism
Naturalistic Alpha Fire Naturalistic
Omega
Anarchism Hell Communism
Materialistic Alpha Water Materialistic
Omega
Nazism Purgatory Socialism
Realistic Alpha Earth Realistic
Omega
Conservatism World Liberalism
with a kind
of negative/positive polarity between Conservatism and Liberalism (including
Liberal Democracy) on the realistic spectrum, between Nazism and Socialism on
the materialistic spectrum, between Anarchism and Communism on the naturalistic
spectrum, and between Fascism (in the Latin sense) and Transcendentalism on the
idealistic spectrum, which, as I understand it, signifies an ideological zenith
between right- and left-wing options - in short, a divine spectrum with
Superfatheristic tendencies
(fundamentalist) at the alpha pole and Superchristic tendencies (transcendentalist)
at the omega pole, each of which rather contrast with the Supersatanic
(anarchist) and Super-antichristic (communist) polarities of the diabolic
spectrum immediately beneath, the one centrifugal and the other centripetal -
Stateless chaos and State centrality, in accordance with antithetical forms of
naturalistic ideology.
169. Consequently, one could speak of Fascism as
right-wing idealism, but of Transcendentalism as left-wing idealism; of
Anarchism as right-wing naturalism (although these days it is more usually the
Greens who, in their environmental conservatism and conservancy, slot into such
a right-wing position), but of Communism as left-wing naturalism; of Nazism as
right-wing materialism, but of Socialism (especially in the more militant
sense) as left-wing materialism; and of Conservatism as right-wing realism, but
of Liberalism (whether Liberal Democratic or Democratic Socialist) as left-wing
realism. Inevitably a sort of
ideological tug-of-war or even state-of-war will normally exist between the
respective polarities which, as one ascends away from worldly relativity
towards the various supraworldly absolutes, becomes increasingly exclusive and,
hence, totalitarian. For there can no
more be a true co-existence between Nazism and Socialism on the materialistic
spectrum than ... between the more obviously totalitarian ideologies above,
even though, in most Western societies, fringe rivalries of the above-mentioned
kinds will continue to exist outside the official rivalry (in dialectical
realism) of the parliamentary pale and, needless to say, overlapping with a
variety of other contending parties or movements in a sort of
centrifugal/centripetal dichotomy.
170. In my view, there can be no doubt that victory
ultimately goes to the omega of things, particularly in the communist and
(hopefully) transcendentalist contexts, but even then the shadow of anarchist
or fascist reaction will continue to linger long after the Left have
institutionalized their triumph and established the ultimate totalitarian
societies. For alpha cannot be entirely
vanquished while man is still human and not yet divine - even in the self
where, most bitter irony of all, its various political manifestations lie in
wait to ambush or sabotage every omega-oriented resolve. Even when no insititutionalized opposition is
apparent, there is a Nazi in the breast of every Socialist, an Anarchist in the
breast of every Communist, and a Fascist in the breast of every
Transcendentalist, like a dark alter ego, or shadow-self,
waiting to dethrone light from its precarious human perch. Indeed, it is precisely in totalitarian
societies that such a shadow-self is most insidious and must accordingly be all
the more carefully guarded against, if the ideological purity of those
societies is to be maintained. For the
enemy you can't see is more dangerous than the one you can!
171. It may not have escaped the reader's attention,
during the course of his life, that whereas, in proletarian circles, some
English-speaking countries, like Britain and Australia, regularly have recourse
to words like 'mate' and 'bloke', others, like America and Canada, prefer words
like 'man' and 'guy', which are roughly equivalent - the former as a term of
address and the latter as a mode of description, as in 'that bloke' or 'this
guy'. My own interpretation of why, for
instance, Americans prefer 'man' to 'mate' ... is that 'man' is more masculine
than 'mate' (which suggests a feminine or partly feminine derivation) and
therefore has both greater appeal and more applicability to a country which,
unlike Britain, prides itself on being macho.
Hence the unequivocal 'man', in preference to the rather ambiguous
'mate'. As regards 'guy' and 'bloke', it
is doubtful that any such gender-based distinction exists here, although I
can't help feeling that 'guy' is much the more positive term, underlining the
American optimism with respect to a
man's masculine or turned-on credibility. A 'bloke', on the other hand, is almost
someone to be pitied; for he has to be weighed not only against dubious gender
but, more concretely, the oppressive realities of life in a constitutional
monarchy.
172. It ought to be noted that whereas Fascist-style
saluting with open hand suggests a centrifugal bias, the closed-fist saluting
of, for example, black-power and Communist-type Movements suggests, by
contrasts, a centripetal bias, which is nothing less than a feminine/masculine
distinction in accordance with their respective alpha-stemming and
omega-oriented integrities. Thus whereas
Fascism will favour, in its alpha-stemming integrity, the open-hand raised arm
salute, Social Transcendentalist Centrism should favour a closed-fist raised
arm salute, in conformity with its omega-oriented integrity ... as the most
centripetal of all masculine ideologies.
173. The Social Transcendentalist flag should be of
centripetal design, with what I have customarily rather colloquially described
as the Holy-Y emblem contiguously surrounded by, say, a black circular band,
reminiscent of the CND design (which strikes me as a kind of upside-down
approach to the right sort of emblem).
Whether the Social Transcendentalist flag will then have a specific
colour surround, say purple, outside this band or regional colour variations,
depending on the Centre in question, remains to be seen; although a black band,
if applicable, would tend to preclude any additional surrounding colour and
thereby maintain an overall impression of colourless light ... upon which, or
in which, the 'Holy-Y' would have its emblematic place. Whatever the case, there can be no question
of a centrifugal impression being created; for that is alpha stemming and
whatever is alpha is antithetical to omega, whether in terms of the nazi
swastika or the British Union Jack which, with its vertical, horizontal, and diagonal
stripes, strikes me as constituting a centrifugal design appropriate to an
inherently alpha-stemming people.
Indeed, I have more than once found myself thinking of the Union Jack as
grossly centrifugal and therefore inherently feminine, the sort of flag that
could only be acceptable in and applicable to a parliamentary democracy with a
constitutional monarchy at its head.
174. The paradoxical thing about Jean-Paul Sartre is
that he is, or appears to be, both a playwright and a philosopher when, in reality,
drama and philosophy are as mutually exclusive as realism and idealism or earth
and air, since pertaining to diametrically antithetical spectra - the one
worldly and the other divine.
Consequently we can have no hesitation in concluding either that Sartre
is not a genuine dramatist or, alternatively, is less than a genuine
philosopher; for it is inconceivable that one can be both, i.e. a wilful
realist on the one hand and a spiritual idealist on the other, since exclusive
extremes tend to cancel one another out.
So what, then, is Sartre?
Certainly not a genuine philosopher, since an enemy of philosophical
idealism and self-proclaimed materialist whose so-called philosophy embraces a
phenomenological existentialism in which action, or the way a person acts,
becomes the yardstick by which to judge him, while providing the actor with an
antidote to the existentialist nightmare of his own contingency! In short, salvation through purposeful
action, especially when political, is the key that unlocks the door of
self-imprisonment and temporarily frees one from the apparent futility of one's
existence. But what is this if
not a dramatist's solution to the problem of existence, a solution which
affirms the will as a way out of the dilemma of human contingency in a
seemingly meaningless universe? To be
sure, while Sartre may be a pseudo-philosopher who has rebelled against
bourgeois idealism in the name of existentialist materialism, he is by no means
a pseudo-dramatist but, if plays like Altona, Nekrassov, and Kean
(all of which I read as a youth) are anything to judge by, a very genuine
dramatist with a flair for dramatic action based on sound if not always
purposeful affirmations of the will, whether in the context of the will to
power, to self-destruction, to romantic self-assertion, or whatever.
175. Hence it is as a genuine dramatist that Sartre
should be regarded; for there can be no doubt about his dramatic credentials,
no matter whether or not we approve of them!
And yet, the pseudo-philosopher is unquestionably more famous than the
genuine dramatist, is really the Sartre one first thinks of in connection with
the age - an age when the genuine philosopher is if not improbable then, at any
rate, implausible in view of the overriding materialism which characterizes it,
to the detriment not only of bourgeois idealism (which had to be debunked
anyway), but to the struggle by post-Marxian idealists like myself to introduce
a new, superior idealism with a view to establishing, on the basis of Social
Transcendentalism, a future 'Kingdom of Heaven' on earth which, as the
post-Human Millennium, will lead mankind out of the materialistic darkness of
'Civilization' (Spengler) into the spiritualistic light of 'Second
Religiousness' - the millennial culmination of which will be an unequivocally
post-human superconscious absolutism orientated towards omega transcendence,
the sort of absolutism which Sartre was unable or unwilling to contemplate, in
view of his obsession with the ego and concomitant relativity of human, though
particularly bourgeois, consciousness.
As a materialist, Sartre is at least two removes from the possibility of
genuine philosophy (which is always idealistic) and thus no more than a
reflection of late twentieth-century materialism in the West, a dialectical
materialist for whom post-dialectical naturalism and/or idealism were alike
beyond his, and by implication the West's, pseudo-philosophical pale - omega
Devil and God outside and above the orbit of worldly and anti-worldly
(purgatorial?) civilization, which is inherently hostile to philosophy - as,
indeed, to anything genuinely divine.
Rest assured, however, that the civilization to come, with its
theosophical superphilosophy, will be no less hostile to anything worldly,
including drama, which will cease to be either written or performed, as the
will is rejected in deference to universal spirituality - the salvation from
the body which is intrinsic to the Social Transcendentalist 'Kingdom of Heaven'
on earth.
176. Having already described Sartre as a genuine
dramatist but a pseudo-philosopher, I should now like to describe his great
contemporary and in many ways intellectual adversary, Albert Camus, as a
pseudo-dramatist but genuine or, at any rate, quasi-genuine philosopher,
insofar as two of his four plays were adaptations from novels and accordingly
more narrative than dramatic, whereas his philosophy, little though there is of
it, tends towards idealism in its almost Burkean revolt against dialectical
materialism, or the political implications thereof. In fact, though coming from a working-class
background, Camus was far more interested in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche than in
Hegel or Marx, and towards the end of his short life he broke with Communism
and gravitated towards the Church without, however, actually embracing
Christianity. He remained to the end a
rebel and outsider, inferior to Sartre as a dramatist but in some ways quite
superior to him as a philosopher. Even
the Notebooks suggest as much, despite their relative brevity. For Camus was more spiritual and lyrical than
intellectual and logical, and thus a sort of philosophical poet in prose. Nevertheless, he must remain less important
than Sartre as a philosopher; for his idealism was essentially conventional and
traditional, whereas Sartre's materialism was highly contemporary and thus, in
the rather paradoxical nature of these things, more relevant to the age. It is the contemporary pseudo-philosopher who
comes off best, in Western eyes, in relation to the quasi-genuine traditional
philosopher.
177. Whereas Lenin was a political transcendentalist
who appropriated Marxian socialism to his transcendentalism and thereby created
Soviet Communism, i.e. Transcendental Socialism, I am essentially a religious
socialist who appropriated Nietzschean transcendentalism to my socialism and
thereby created Social Transcendentalism.
Thus the Transcendental Socialist/Social Transcendentalist distinction
is nothing less than Marxism-Leninism on the one hand and
Nietzsche-Loughlinism, if you will, on the other - two parallel ideological
positions which approach freedom from opposite directions. Certainly, Nietzsche is every bit as
important from a transcendentalist point of view as Marx from a socialist one,
and while my socialism is no more Marxist than Lenin's transcendentalism was
Nietzschean, I realize that without Nietzsche I could no more have arrived at
Social Transcendentalism ... than Lenin could have arrived at Soviet Communism
without Marx.
178. Liberalism-Socialism-Communism-Transcendentalism:
these four ascending ideologies of the Left could also be conceived as, in some
sense, falling into two pairs; namely Democratic Socialism and Socialism on the
one hand, and Democratic Communism (Soviet Communism) and Communism on the
other - taking Socialism as a totalitarian alternative to Democratic Socialism,
and Communism as a transcendental alternative to Democratic Communism, or
Communism with a one-party democratic face.
Thus Democratic Socialism - Socialism - Democratic Communism - Communism,
with the latter alone truly indicative of a society in which, thanks to the
Social Transcendentalist Centre, the State had 'withered' or, at the very
least, was in the process of 'withering'.
179. But what about the ideologies of the Right,
viz. Conservatism-Nazism-Anarchism-Fascism?
Are not Conservatism and Anarchism (or, for that matter, the Greens)
alike democratic, in contrast to the authoritarian or dictatorial nature of
Nazism and Fascism respectively? Thus a
similar sort of pairing can be conceived of as existing on the Right, with
Conservatism leading to Authoritarian Conservatism, i.e. Nazism and/or a
military dictatorship, and Democratic Anarchism leading to Dictatorial
Anarchism, i.e. Fascism. Thus:
Democratic Conservatism - Authoritarian Conservatism - Democratic Anarchism -
Dictatorial Anarchism, which may be regarded as directly paralleling Democratic
Socialism - Totalitarian Socialism - Democratic Communism - Transcendental
Communism, or, as I usually prefer to write it, Liberalism-Socialism-Communism-Transcendentalism.
180. Where the Right rule, the Left lead. For the Right, remember, are centrifugal,
whereas the Left are centripetal. Ruling
is a centrifugal equivalent; leading a centripetal one. It is for this reason that I have
distinguished the authoritarian and dictatorial on the Right from the
totalitarian and transcendental on the Left, since the former terms are
appropriate to centrifugal rule, while the latter ones convey a left-wing
connotation applicable to centripetal leadership. Now if we make a diagram of the
above-mentioned ideological distinctions, as follows:-
ALPHA OMEGA
I. Dictatorial
Anarchism I. Transcendental Communism
N. Democratic
Anarchism N. Democratic Communism
M. Authoritarian
Conservatism M. Totalitarian Socialism
R. Democratic
Conservatism R. Democratic Socialism
we shall
see that Anarchism and Communism, of whatever sort, are polar in relation to
Conservatism and Socialism, again of whatever sort, and that the democratic
alternates with the non-democratic as we proceed from the bottom up or, more
specifically, from realism (R) to idealism (I) via materialism (M) and
naturalism (N). It could almost be said
that Socialism is anarchic in relation to Conservatism, with Communism
conservative in relation to Anarchism, but that would be a somewhat fanciful
or, at best, an oblique suggestion deriving from the antithetical natures of
the polar opposites, which, however, remain fundamentally centrifugal on the
one hand and centripetal on the other, as between negative and positive poles
of a magnet.
181. What I believe these elemental divisions do
indicate, however, is a body/mind distinction, with Conservatism and Socialism
on both realistic and materialistic spectra paralleling the body (including the
brain), but Anarchism and Communism on both naturalistic and idealistic spectra
paralleling the mind (in terms of soulful and spiritual distinctions between
the democratic and non-democratic options).
Moreover, if we take an atomic breakdown of each of the eight
ideological poles, as follows:-
ALPHA OMEGA
N. proton-particle
absolute N. electron-particle absolute
M. atomic-proton
'absolute' M . atomic-electron 'absolute'
R. proton-atomic
relativity R. electron-atomic
relativity
it would
appear that our sense of two halves or divisions in each case is reinforced,
insofar as the lower spectra (R and M) are relatively atomic and therefore
'bodily' (as between will and intellect, whether negative or positive, alpha or
omega), whereas the higher spectra (N and I) are either particle or wavicle
absolutes and therefore 'psychic' (as between soul and spirit, whether negative
or positive, alpha or omega). Thus the
fact that we can speak of proton distinctions on the negative naturalistic and
idealistic poles confirms the fundamental correctness of one ideological term,
viz. Anarchism, for their political manifestations, just as the electron
distinctions on the positive naturalistic and idealistic poles would appear to
justify the singular term Communism for each of these, even though we have
necessarily divided them into democratic and transcendental manifestations, in
accordance with particle and wavicle distinctions. Similarly, the proton-atomic and
atomic-proton distinctions of the negative realistic and materialistic poles
confirm the fundamental correctness of one term, viz. Conservatism, for each of
their political manifestations, as does the electron-atomic and atomic-electron
distinctions of the positive realistic and materialistic poles, where Socialism
transpires to being the appropriate political term for each pole. Consequently a similar atomic structure calls
forth and justifies a similar political description, whether or not we then
divide, as here, that description into, say, democratic and totalitarian.
182. However, now that I have written the above, it
seems to me that an alternative logical structure with regard to the right-wing
positions is possible and may even be nearer the truth than the
Conservative/Anarchist divide to which I have been adhering. Yet, that said, I could not have arrived at
this alternative structure without having initially adhered to the preceding
one, since it is in the nature of these writings (with their evaluations and
re-evaluations) for one thing to lead to or make possible another, irrespective
of how initially frustrating or seemingly contradictory this may at first
appear! Thus it now occurs to me that
while the fundamental division between democratic and authoritarian
Conservatism is highly plausible, the authoritarian position ought rather to be
reserved exclusively for a military dictatorship, which is doubtless more
authoritarian than Nazism, and should therefore be regarded as right-wing
materialism. So having got beyond the
military dictatorship and/or Nazi option formerly suggested for the negative
pole of the materialistic spectrum, we are left with the task of placing Nazism
on a separate spectrum, and are accordingly put in the logical situation of
either affirming a Fascist identity between Nazism and dictatorial anarchism,
i.e. Fascism-proper, or, more plausibly, of reversing our previous contention
concerning the nature of right-wing naturalism, by opting to distinguish
between Nazism as democratic fascism and Fascism-proper as dictatorial fascism,
so that instead of an anarchist divide we have a fascist divide, placing Nazism
in the position hitherto reserved for Democratic Anarchism. And this would be because, unlike Fascism,
Nazism had been voted into power and duly upheld the principle of periodic
referenda and the possibility of regular, four-yearly elections to confirm its
power-base in the People.
183. Hence Nazism seems entitled to the description
of Democratic Fascism, which would stand, at the negative naturalistic pole, in
an antithetical relationship to Democratic Communism, viz. Soviet Communism, in
what can be best described as an alpha-stemming, centrifugal mode of
naturalism, the sworn enemy of everything centripetal and omega
orientated. Thus, quite apart from the
parallel of red flags, it would seem that a sort of Satanic/Antichristic
antithesis may be inferred to exist, or to have existed, between Democratic
Fascism and Democratic Communism, in contrast to the Fatheristic/Holy-Ghostian
antithesis which may be posited as existing (if only in theory at present)
between Dictatorial Fascism and Transcendental Communism, which pertains to
alpha and omega of the idealistic, or divine, spectrum above - one, so I
believe, which will only achieve an omega manifestation with the Second Coming
and correlative true world religion of Social Transcendentalism. For what Mussolini was to the idealistic
alpha, the Second Coming will be to the idealistic omega, and if his will is
done the People will become divine, thereby bringing Transcendental Communism
to pass.
184. Thus we should distinguish between two types of
Conservatism and two types of Fascism (as opposed to anarchism), with the
former antithetical to our Socialist options, and the latter antithetical to
our Communist ones, as follows:-
ALPHA OMEGA
I. Dictatorial Fascism (Fascism proper)
N. Democratic Fascism (Nazism) N. Democratic Communism (Sovietism)
M. Authoritarian Conservatism (militarism) M. Totalitarian
Socialism (militant socialism)
R. Democratic Conservatism (Toryism) R. Democratic Socialism (Labour)
Such
spectra, besides being distinguishable from one another on the above
ideological basis of realism (R), materialism (M), naturalism (N), and idealism
(I), can also, of course, be distinguished from one another on the
fundamentally more elemental basis of (from the bottom up) earth, water, fire,
and air, which should underline the inherent character of each of the four or,
rather, eight ideological positions, corresponding to the world, purgatory,
Hell, and Heaven respectively, with appropriate negative and positive
distinctions between alpha and omega - centrifugal and centripetal antitheses.
185. To distinguish jackets with conventional
fold-over collars from those with straight collars ... on the basis of a
centrifugal/centripetal divide. For is
not a conventional folding collar centrifugal in design and therefore
inherently antithetical to the straight collars which feature on the more
contemporary or advanced types of jacket?
Doubtless this is so, and because we know that the centrifugal is alpha
and the centripetal omega, we are entitled to speak of the former as alpha
stemming and the latter as omega orientated, drawing due political conclusions
accordingly. Jackets, then, will
(depending on their design) connote with one or other of the alternative
political positions, whether right wing and centrifugal or left wing and
centripetal. Interestingly, centrifugal
jackets (as one might term those with fold-over collars, or lapels) are not,
like their opposite numbers, taken-in at cuffs or waist, but retain a
quasi-centrifugal status commensurate with an alpha-stemming integrity. Only with straight-collared jackets does one
find both cuffs and waist taken-in, and this confirms their centripetal
standing as truly omega orientated, and therefore suitable for use by left-wing
people. Hopefully, there will be a lot
more centripetal jackets being worn in the future ... as the Left gains in
ascendancy over the Right and life becomes increasingly omega orientated.
186. Of course, what applies to jackets applies just
as much to shirts, where we can distinguish between conventional V-collared
shirts as centrifugal and T-shirts as centripetal, with correlative alpha-stemming
and omega-oriented implications. That is
why conventional shirts go with open-collared jackets, while T-shirts go with
close-collared jackets - the former bourgeois and the latter proletarian.
187. Recently I have become uncomfortably aware of the
extent to which brass instruments like trumpets, trombones, saxophones, and
even flutes suggest a centrifugal bias by dint of their open-ended designs,
which are arguably more alpha stemming than omega orientated. Even the quite large sound-hole in the belly
of an old acoustic guitar of mine looks uncomfortably centrifugal, although I
incline to the belief that, unlike brass instruments, acoustic guitars are
essentially centripetal, if rather more in terms of omega-in-the-alpha than
genuinely omega, like, for example, the radically centripetal types of electric
guitar. But I have no hesitation in
regarding brass instruments as alpha-in-the-omega, and because of their
high-profile use by jazz musicians I am obliged to regard jazz, particularly
when acoustic, as a sort of modern alpha music, given to strongly centrifugal
tendencies, and in some sense right wing in relation to rock. In fact, regarding jazz in this light
suggests to me a sort of musical parallel with Fascism, since I am convinced
that if jazz and rock are antithetical, the one generally centrifugal (witness
the 'all-over', or sequential drumming) and the other comparatively centripetal
(where the drum beat is simpler and more focused), then we have an alpha/omega
distinction analogous to that between Fascism and Communism.
188. Indeed, can we not divide modern music into
four general categories, as with politics, so that jazz and rock are seen to
tower above the more down-to-earth, or bodily, antithesis between, say, classical
and pop, with the former corresponding to Conservatism and the latter to
Socialism? For if there are four main
political options, each of which can be subdivided, surely it is not fanciful
to speak in terms of four main musical options, allowing for similar
subdivisions in each category ... depending on the type of classical or pop,
jazz or rock in question. Thus classical
would stand to jazz as Conservatism to Fascism on the alpha-stemming
centrifugal side, while pop would stand to rock as Socialism to Communism on
the omega-oriented centripetal side.
There would be two main subdivisions in each case, and doubtless they
would parallel the political subdivisions already touched upon, so that a kind
of democratic/authoritarian distinction could be inferred to exist between,
say, symphonic and concerto compositions in the case of classical, with the
former corresponding to Democratic Conservatism (the Tories) and the latter to
Authoritarian Conservatism (a military dictatorship), given the much greater
emphasis concertos place on one instrument, which towers above the orchestra
like an autocratic dictator.
189. However that may be, a similar subdivision
would have to apply to pop, where we are effectively distinguishing between the
democratic and the totalitarian, and again I strongly suspect that whereas
'democratic' pop would be group orientated and musically moderate, the
'totalitarian' variety would have a solo emphasis, whether within the context
of a group or, alternatively, with regard to a superstar solo artist
performing, in the lead role, in conjunction with other musicians. Certainly, this kind of pop would be
musically more radical and instrumental than the 'democratic' variety, since
(if my theory is valid) paralleling the concerto, or authoritarian, form of
classical.
190. Likewise, we would have to distinguish
'democratic' jazz from 'dictatorial' jazz on the basis of a Fascist divide, as
well as 'democratic' rock from 'transcendental' rock on the basis of a
Communist divide, reserving for those in the 'democratic' categories a more
group-oriented and possibly romantic status, but for those in the
'dictatorial/transcendental' categories a solo-oriented and comparatively
spiritual status, with a correspondingly greater emphasis on instrumental
brilliance. Naturally, a
centrifugal/centripetal contrast would exist between each of the 'fascistic'
and 'communistic' kinds of music, in accordance with the underlying dichotomy
which distinguishes alpha from omega, or vice versa. Judged from an omega standpoint, rock is no
less ideologically and morally superior to jazz, of whatever variety, than pop
to classical in each of its main manifestations. Now if jazz is superior to classical, because
a more evolved and head-biased music, then rock is no less superior to pop, and
for the same reasons. In fact, rock is
the ultimate kind of modern music, just as Communism is the ultimate kind of
modern politics, with transcendental rock just as much the ultimate kind of
rock as Transcendental Communism (or Social Transcendentalism) is the ultimate
kind of Communism.
191. From a rock purist's standpoint, any compromise
with jazz would be both ideologically and morally unacceptable, just as a jazz
purist would prefer not to compromise with rock. Yet there are and have been fusions between
rock and jazz, as also between pop and classical, which suggest a middle-ground
situation. Perhaps this kind of 'fusion
music' is analogous, in ideological terms, to Anarchism or Ecological politics
with regard to the former, but to Liberalism or Social Democracy with regard to
the latter, so that instead of an alpha/omega dichotomy one has a sort of
worldly, or atomic, cross between the two extremes? If so, then we would have no justification in
regarding fusion music, of whatever sort, as reflecting progress over purist
music (except, perhaps, in the cases of jazz and classical), but would have to
acknowledge the musical, not to mention ideological, superiority of the rock or
pop purist, whose omega orientation could only stand in the vanguard of musical
progress, like Socialism and Communism standing, on their respective levels, in
the vanguard of political progress. For
if rock is superior to jazz, as omega to alpha, then it can only be superior to
jazz-rock and to rock-jazz as well.
Similarly, if pop is superior to classical, as omega to alpha, then it
can only be superior to classical pop and to pop classical as well. Translated into political terms, this means
that any cross between Communism and Fascism, be it anarchic or ecological,
will be inferior to Communism (even if superior to Fascism), while any cross
between Conservatism and Socialism, be it liberal or social democratic, will be
inferior to Socialism (even if superior to Conservatism).
192. In an alpha/omega distinction, the alpha, being
centrifugal, will always be both ideologically and morally inferior to the
omega, which is centripetal, and thus any compromise between alpha and omega,
while arguably superior to the alpha alone (as, say, Christ to the Father),
will be inferior to the omega (as, say, Christ to the Holy Ghost). For history tends, willy-nilly, from alpha to
omega, from the centrifugal to the centripetal, and ultimate moral judgements
can only be made on the basis of the latter, never the former, which, by
contrast, is comparatively immoral.
Morality only arises after the alpha has been found out and judged
wanting. It is the omega which is alone
moral, and until the omega of things comes to pass, on whatever elemental
level, no moral judgement vis-à-vis the alpha is possible. Even the in-between, or fusion, reality is
less moral than amoral, and thus an extrapolation from the alpha rather than
its transvaluated antithesis. Thus in
politics, Capitalism is not immoral until Socialism comes to pass as its moral
antithesis and judges it accordingly. In
music, jazz is not immoral until rock comes to pass and, attaining to maturity
in total independence of jazz, points up a centripetal and, hence, moral antithesis
to the centrifugal bias of jazz. Fusion
music, like Liberalism in politics, is merely amoral, since not antithetically
ranged against the alpha but stemming from it in diluted compromise,
untransvaluated and partly acquiescent in the alpha precedent, unable to judge
it immoral and thus morally in the dark compared to the omega.
193. Therefore just as Liberalism is not socialist
but capitalist in a different, less overtly aggressive way than Conservatism,
so pop classical is not popular but classical in a different, less overtly
aggressive or centrifugal way. In fact,
taking pop classical as the realistic middle-ground form of fusion music in
between classical and pop, and Liberalism as the realistic middle-ground form
of democratic politics in between Conservatism and Socialism (at least in their
democratic manifestations), we should be able to establish musical and
political correlations, as we ascend to higher spectra, between classical pop
and Social Democracy in the case of the materialistic middle-ground (in between
solo classical/authoritarian Conservatism and solo pop/totalitarian Socialism),
rock-jazz and Ecology in the case of the naturalistic middle-ground (in between
trad jazz/Democratic Fascism and hard rock/Democratic Communism), and, finally,
jazz-rock and Anarchism in the case of the idealistic middle-ground (in between
modern jazz/Dictatorial Fascism and soft rock/Transcendental Communism),
zigzagging, it would appear, from a right-wing middle-ground bias with pop
classical and Liberalism to a left-wing middle-ground bias with classical pop
and Social Democracy; and from a right-wing middle-ground bias with rock-jazz
and Ecology to a left-wing middle-ground bias with jazz-rock and Anarchism,
bearing in mind the alternations between alpha and omega which, for example, pop
classical (essentially classical and therefore fundamentally conservative) and
classical pop (essentially Pop and therefore socialistic) would seem to
indicate - as, on a higher level, do rock-jazz (essentially jazz and therefore
fundamentally fascistic) and jazz-rock (essentially rock and therefore
communistic).
194. Yet, that said, the middle-ground, or fusion,
positions remain untransvaluated, no matter how left wing the apparent bias,
and thus fundamentally amoral. For
unless one transcends the alpha of things altogether or, at any rate, as far as
is reasonably possible, no true omega orientation is possible and, hence, no
true morality. The middle-ground
positions remain atomic and thus, in a sense, middle class as opposed to either
upper class in the alpha or working class in the omega. Thus whether we are concerned with Anarchism
or jazz-rock, Ecology or rock-jazz, Social Democracy or classical pop, or
Liberalism (latterly Liberal Democracy in England) or pop classical, the result
is amoral in every case, and such an amoral atomicity stands in-between alpha
immorality and omega morality, just as the middle class stand in-between the
upper class and the working class or, as I prefer to put it, the older class
and the newer class - centrifugal and centripetal, appearance and essence.
195. Thus if we are to tabulate our findings for the
benefit of enhanced clarification, we shall have, as before, the four spectra
ranged as follows:-
IMMORAL AMORAL MORAL
I. Dictatorial Fascism Anarchism Transcendental
Communism
N. Democratic Fascism Ecology Democratic
Communism
M. Autocratic Conservatism Social Democracy Totalitarian Socialism
R. Democratic Conservatism Liberalism Democratic Socialism
with, for the musical parallels, the following:-
IMMORAL AMORAL MORAL
I.
Modern Jazz Jazz-Rock Soft Rock
N. Trad Jazz