THE
FUTURE ABSOLUTE
A transcendental
civilization won't punish offenders against it, but will endeavour to correct
them. The bourgeois/proletarian
civilization of the contemporary West is certainly interested in correcting
offenders, especially in its more progressive manifestations, that is to say,
in countries whose relativity is inherently more extreme, like
A transcendental civilization, to repeat myself, won't uphold
punishment, and consequently there will be no death penalty. Neither will there be life-imprisonment
sentences, nor long-term prison sentences which
virtually amount to the same thing.
Indeed, there won't be any imprisonment at all, because no prisons. Instead there will be correction centres,
whether psychiatric or otherwise, and an offender's detention in such centres
will last for as long as it takes to correct him, and no longer! Should he prove recalcitrant or well-nigh
impossible to correct, then detention may have to be indefinite - that being
the exception to the general rule.
There are some crimes, however, that are less a product of
mental derangement or misguided belief than of cold-blooded calculation, and
murder and rape may be among them. It
occasionally happens that a murder is committed in consequence of tragic
circumstances, whether developing over a period of time or resulting from a
sudden flare-up of tension or, indeed, quite by accident, without the
assailant's intending to kill anyone. In
a transcendental civilization, assuming murder was occasionally still
committed, careful consideration would have to be given to the circumstances of
the murder, so that the exact nature of the act was accounted for and the
disposition or character of the murderer simultaneously taken into account, the
better to determine whether extenuating circumstances should be upheld. For, taken together, all these factors would
determine whether the accused required one type of correction or another or,
indeed, whether in fact he required any correction at all, it being necessary
merely to detain him until a reasonable verdict could be reached.
Of course, I don't wish to imply that certain kinds of murder
should go without censure. Detention
could mean anything from 1-5 years, depending on the criminal
circumstances. One thing I am certain
of, however, is that no-one, whatever the circumstances surrounding the act,
would be sentenced to life-imprisonment in a transcendental civilization. I would like to envisage five years as being
the maximum term of detention, with the possibility of a longer period should
such an act, or something similar, be committed by the same person again,
following release. Most people should
certainly be released from detention within a few months or, at worst, years of
their confinement. Possibly no-one would
think of committing murder in a society where all men were treated equally and
no-one had any reason to be envious of anyone else - everyone living on
approximately the same post-atomic plane.
We may suppose that, as society evolves towards a post-human epoch from
a transcendental base, all or most forms of contemporary crime will
disappear. Its causes, including alcohol
addiction, drug abuse, sexual rivalry, poverty, racial inequality, poor
housing, inadequate education, envy, greed, etc., will have been
eradicated. When there are no longer
barbarians in existence because the society or, rather, civilization in
question is absolute rather than relative, there will be little or no barbarous
behaviour. A civilized proletariat would
have no cause or excuse to indulge in crime.
The wonder of it is that, in a society where the majority are still
effectively barbarous, there isn't more crime than already exists. Certainly this may be said of most Western
societies!
If punishment would be incompatible with a transcendental civilization,
could the same be said of euthanasia - the painless putting to death of the
incurably ill, insane, or seriously injured?
In a relativistic society there are various arguments on this matter, a
fact which accords with its relativity.
In an absolutist society, however, there could be no doubt whatsoever as
to the validity of euthanasia for certain specific cases. And the motivation, the chief moral
justification, for sanctioning it would be to put an end to pain which, while
tolerated and even admired by some people in a relativistic society, would
amount to a kind of sacrilege in one exclusively orientated towards the
post-Human Millennium ... in a post-atomic integrity. While the diabolic pagan root is intact,
while, in other words, deference is paid to the proton-proton reactions of
stellar/solar energy through some theological abstraction (the Father, the
Creator, etc.), stoicism of one degree or another will be upheld by the more
traditional or conservative elements in relativistic civilization. Once this root has been transcended, however,
no argument for the endurance of pain could be justified, and consequently
euthanasia would be officially endorsed for application to all extreme cases of
incurable pain. The very sight of pain
in a transcendental civilization would be an offence against the spirit, a
reminder of the centuries-old tyranny of the soul against which proletarian
humanity had rebelled before becoming civilized. Certainly there is no spiritual profit to be
gleaned from constant and deep suffering!
A Christian who revels in pain will be brought closer to the crucified
Christ, His transcendent salvation, however, receding into the psychological
distance. Such dualism will find no
sanction in the future! He who stems
from the Father will have been superseded by he who points
man towards the Holy Spirit - the man destined to fulfil the role of a Second
Coming. Such a man can have no truck
with pain!
There are, of course, other things with which a civilization
founded on the teachings of this man would have no truck, including the
maintenance of standing armies and the perpetration of war. It is doubtful that symphony orchestras or
other acoustic ensembles would be maintained, and we may surmise that all types
of acoustic music would cease to be appreciated - the same, I dare say,
applying to all types of naturalistic art, or art employing canvas and oils,
not to mention all types of narrative literature, from novels and plays to
poems and short stories, especially in relation to books, whether hardback or softback. A
transcendental civilization wouldn't uphold any form of traditionalism or
conservationism, like a relativistic one, but would be exclusively concerned
with what was relevant to itself. And
that could only mean what was absolutely on the post-dualistic level. Whatever pertained to tradition, no matter
how important it was once considered to be, would have been destroyed and/or
consigned to the rubbish heap of open-society history. To a civilized proletarian the past would be
something to ignore, so concerned would he be with living in the present in the
interests, needless to say, of subsequent evolutionary progress. He would not be concerned with a cultural
heritage - no more, for that matter, than were his barbarous predecessors who,
when they weren't militantly Marxist-Leninist in an overly state-socialist
context, existed as cultural outsiders within relativistic civilization - the
bourgeois/proletarian civilization of the contemporary capitalist/socialist West.
