THE MANY AND THE ONE

1. I distinguished above, if rather sketchily, between devolution from the alpha heavens to the alpha earth and evolution from the omega earth to the omega heavens, and it seems to me that such a contention, amounting to our old dichotomy between the Cosmos and Nature on the one hand, that of female objectivity, and Man and the Cyborg, or Civilization and God on the other hand, that of male subjectivity, lends itself to notions if not of the Few and the Many, then arguably of the One and the Many, since the former distinction would appear to have a specifically human correlation, as for instance between a privileged elite and an underprivileged or exploited generality, whereas the latter distinction seems to be wider in scope, even to the extent of embracing the as yet theoretical entirety of devolutionary and evolutionary possibilities.

2. However, even with a distinction between the Few and the Many, we have to allow that such a concept is not static but subject to flux, so that privilege does not necessarily or invariably attach to the one category and want of privilege, or exploitation, to the other. Each category can be privileged or underprivileged according to environmental or social circumstances, and we may well find instances, such as war, in which the generality is more in time/space, if with regard to the diabolism of space-time devolution, than in mass/volume.

3. In worldly contexts, however, it is usually the case that the generality will be in mass/volume, whether with regard to the femininity of volume-mass devolution or, alternatively, the masculinity of mass-volume evolution, and that such a generality may well, in the democratic nature of things worldly, constitute a privileged class in terms of the prevailing standards of the day.

4. When we come, on the other hand, to distinctions between the One and the Many, it is a different matter, for this is not simply how society is arranged in social or opportunistic terms, but rather a more elementally-conditioned reality, or series of realities, that would seem to proceed on a devolutionary basis from the Many to the One, as from the fiery Cosmos to watery Nature, alpha heavens to alpha earth, and thence, in contradistinction to this, on an evolutionary basis from the Many to the One, as from vegetative nurtures, or civilizations, to the airy Universe, or universal omnipresence of air, omega earths to the omega heaven.

5. Therefore from the alpha heavens to the alpha earth, as from fiery pluralism to watery monism, and from the omega earths to the omega heaven, as from vegetative pluralism to airy monism - a devolutionary/evolutionary duality between female objectivity on the one hand and male subjectivity on the other, the competitive pluralism of fiery crime leading to the co-operative monism of watery punishment, as from the objective Many to the objective One, and the collectivistic pluralism of vegetative sin leading to the individualistic monism of airy grace, as from the subjective Many to the subjective One, call it the Omega Point or Heaven or God or 'Kingdom Come', or what you will.

6. Contrary therefore to the 'Big Bang' concept of the origins of the Universe or, rather, Cosmos (which, in conjunction with words like 'universe', seems to me all too indicative of a tendency, especially prominent among female-dominated peoples, or matriarchies, to divinize the diabolic), we should rather allow for a pluralistic explanation of the Cosmos, both initially and subsequently, and perceive in the development from polytheism to monotheism a corollary of the 'fall' from the Cosmos to Nature, as from the metachemical Many to the chemical One, stellar pluralism to oceanic monism, with the latter inevitably pulling rank on the former as the earth began to supplant the heavens in the overall hierarchy of things, and the punishment of crime came to take feminine precedence over the criminal punishments or punishing criminality of the diabolic.

7. But the myth of the Adamic revolt against the taboo of the forbidden 'tree of knowledge' in the 'Garden of Eden' would suggest that, whatever the motive, a split from the chemical Oneness of watery Nature was in the offing, and thenceforward a pluralistic alternative to that Oneness signalled, in some worldly sense, a new fall, as from watery monism to vegetative pluralism, from a context dominated, in somatic vein, by finite ugliness, or weakness, to one that would increasingly become associated with the development of knowledge and, hence, the search for truth, and thus of an evolutionary alternative, in male subjectivity, to the devolutionary punishments of objective Nature.

8. Such an earthly fall from watery monism into vegetative pluralism we can characterize as sinful, though the preconditions of sin in airy grace would already have been in place, given the precedence of soma by psyche on the male, or subjective, side of life and the inevitability of graceful redemption for those who repented of their sins and sought an accommodation with God, meaning ultimately the airy context of sensible metaphysics, but more usually embracing, in Western civilization, the vegetative context of sensible physics in its psychic mode, and therefore what I would call Man-the-Wise-Father.

9. For if the vegetative pluralism of Man is sinful and a fall not only from the airy monism of God but, in worldly terms, from the punishing watery monism of Woman, as of objective Nature, then the struggle for civilization and knowledge in the face of natural and weak conventions or traditions can only be an uphill one, constantly thwarted by reactionary currents that strive to drag Man back and down towards the earthly dominion of watery monism from which, in post-Adamic vegetativeness, he had revolted in the interests of knowledge and self-discovery.

10. The evolutionary endeavour is beset with devolutionary constraints and oppositions which it must vanquish if it is to prevail and make the world safe for civilization and the triumph, through knowledge, of Man, who yet continues to exist, by and large, in a sinful shortfall from the grace of true Godliness, no matter how much his opposition to the punishing monism of traditional Woman may have been shored up by such manly grace as, through Christianity, he could muster in the teeth of his own pluralistic shortcomings.

11. But Woman is no longer quite the monistic threat to his earthly pluralism as was formerly the case, but is herself being pulled over the earthly dividing line, as it were, between monistic tradition, exemplified by maternal duty, and pluralistic modernity, exemplified by career, so that, pseudo-cosmic exceptions to the general rule notwithstanding, she increasingly acts like Man in his pluralistic defiance, through civilization, of monistic traditions.

12. The male side of life is gradually gaining the upper hand, it would appear, over its female adversary, traditionally given to the objective monism of watery weakness, and what could be called the polydeism of masculine knowledge, as of Man, standing defiantly aloof, as it must, from both polytheistic and monotheistic traditions, would seem ready to rise towards the monodeism, as it were, of God, as of the Cyborg, and the supersession of vegetative pluralism by airy monism, of the subjective Many by the subjective One, the Omega Point and goal of all evolutionary striving, in which the universal replaces or, at any rate, upstages the personal, as psychic freedom comes to an absolutist consummation.

13. For psychic freedom is what evolution is all about, freedom for the male from being tyrannized over, contrary to his gender interests, by female criteria owing more, in the objective precedence of psyche by soma, to somatic freedom and the correlative enslavement of psyche to the corporeal dominion of both will and spirit, power and glory, to the lasting detriment of 'mind', which is to say, of free ego and free soul, knowledge and joy, form and contentment, ethereally independent of somatic dominion.

14. The time has at last come, with the progress of free thought to Messianic extents, for male-oriented mankind to rise up, democratically and rationalistically, from the subjective Many to the subjective One, Man to the Cyborg, physical collectivism to metaphysical individualism, ego to soul, and thus return to the heavenly heights from which their female counterparts objectively fell as from the objective Many to the objective One, the Cosmos to Nature, metachemical competitiveness to chemical co-operativeness, will to spirit.

15. The evolutionary struggle would now seem to be entering its most crucial and critical stage, a stage which will determine whether grace ultimately prevails over sin and godliness over manliness, or whether, in all-too-humanistic fashion, Man will continue to remain the measure of all things and all things accordingly bow to his physical limitations, as to vegetative pluralism and the reign of democracy, of worldly sinfulness still beset by the twin evils of punishment and crime, natural and cosmic objectivity, if arguably to a lesser naturalistic and/or more transmutably artificial extent than in the more corporeal past.

16. Only the reign of airy monism can restore life to the eternal heights, albeit to a universal grace which will be as far removed from the cosmic criminality of polytheistic pluralism as is possible for any evolutionary reality - the omega point of Eternal Life as opposed to the alpha points of Eternal Death, psychic absolutism as opposed to somatic absolutism, most wavicles/least particles as opposed to most particles/least wavicles, God or, rather, Heaven as opposed to Hell or, rather, the Devil.

17. For the alpha-most reality is characterized by corporeal absolutism, which is of the Devil, whereas the omega-most reality is characterized by ethereal absolutism, which is of Heaven, and between the somatic freedom of the former and the psychic freedom of the latter, between infinite weakness and infinite happiness, ugliness and joy, there is absolutely nothing in common.

18. Verily, what began in the corporeal Many must end in the ethereal One, having passed through and beyond both the corporeal One and the ethereal Many. In between materialism and transcendentalism, realism and humanism run their diurnal course, but the redemption of Man is set on course for Eternity, and only Social Transcendentalism can lead free psyche beyond the finite limitations of physics to the infinity of metaphysics, wherein the saved self of the metaphysically Elect will find its joyful redemption in the beingful supremacy of the One, Heaven-the-Holy-Soul, for all eternity, and even those who, for class or gender reasons, are less than metaphysical will find a new lease of life or death in the lower tiers of the triadic Beyond.

19. For the triadic Beyond lies beyond the World as the guarantor of deliverance from crimes or sins to the punishments or graces of 'Kingdom Come', should the People opt, in some paradoxical future election, for religious sovereignty and thus for that which would deliver them from the reign of Man to the reign of God, whose 'Kingdom' is not of this world but otherworldly in its ethereal dedication to the One.