RELATIVE DISTINCTIONS

 

There were two men and a woman in the room, one of the men, whom we shall call the first, older than the other, but the woman younger than he who shall be called the second.  "The Christians may acknowledge Heaven," the first man said, "but they do so sideways on, as it were, and facing back towards Hell.  Their sense of hierarchy is retrograde, stemming from the Alpha Absolute and assigning the most importance to that which is closest, on earth, to the Father - namely a monarch.  Hence their sense of class hierarchy ... with proletarians at the bottom and aristocrats at the top.  Being upper class corresponds to a closer approximation to the Alpha Absolute."

     "This is particularly true of the British," said the second man, who was only a year younger than the first.  "Even though the bourgeoisie are, to all practical purposes, in charge of society, the aristocracy are still regarded as socially superior.  Which paradoxical fact accords with the bourgeois' almost boundless capacity for hypocrisy!  To believe one thing in theory, but to do another in practice!"

     The first man nodded spontaneous affirmation and remarked: "Precisely because, being British, they correspond, even in this predominantly post-atomic age, to the most atomic of societies - the epitome, as it were, of bourgeois civilization.  Wherever and whenever life is relative, particularly when the relativity is moderate, hypocrisy will be the order of the day, an inevitable consequence, one might say, of its dualism.  The only reason why life is paradoxical is that it owes this fact to the inherent relativity of human existence, a relativity never more conspicuously prominent than when human evolution attains to a bourgeois, Christian stage of balance between the two biased extremes, viz. the pagan and the transcendental, and does so, moreover, without its practitioners being in the least aware of the situation.  They may be Christians, but they won't have a clue about what it would mean to be transcendental, not even envisaging any such eventuality.  They take their dualism, their balance, for the norm, one might even say for granted, even going so far as to elevate it, in their bourgeois imaginations, to the status of an ideal - indeed, the ideal, sacrosanct for all time!  'The balance is correct, and anyone who attempts to defy it will be guilty of hubris, and may suffer the nemesis of divine retribution in consequence!'  Thus reasons the bourgeois, that arch-hypocrite, ironist, and victim of worldly paradox."

     The woman, who had hitherto kept silent, now said: "Whereas a post-dualistic society presumably knows better, and is accordingly dedicated to the higher ideal of aspiring towards the Divine Omega from a transcendental standpoint."

     "That's right," the first man said.  "And we may be sure that it will be the least hypocritical, ironical, and paradoxical of societies, because the most absolute.  It will signify a complete transvaluation of values, even to the extent of designating what, in relative civilization, was woman as a female superman - the post-sexist lesser equal of male, or genuine, supermen.  Thus there will be no feminine/masculine dichotomy; only a distinction between greater and lesser degrees of superhumanity.  For that will accord with a sexual absolutism no less imperative, in a transcendental civilization, than all the other absolutes, including the political, religious, scientific, artistic, and social, as applying to proletarian humanity.  One couldn't possibly tolerate absolute class distinctions in a transcendental age.  Only the relative distinctions between leaders and led, bureaucrats and proletariat, would be applicable."

     The second man nodded eager agreement, before saying: "The proletariat being, despite the questionable justification of that term these days, the class orientated towards the Divine Omega, the ultimate human class, antithetical, in every respect, to the peasantry.  Peasants and proletarians are opposites, just like aristocrats and bureaucrats.  The two extremes cannot mix."

     "Certainly not in an absolute age," the first man rejoined, "though there have been attempts to mix them, to varying extents, wherever relativity has held sway, with, by and large, disastrous consequences!  But a peasant cannot be transformed into a proletarian, any more than an aristocrat, in the strictly traditional sense of that term, can be transformed into a bureaucrat.  They pertain to completely different environments, not to say epochs."

     "Probably it would be mistaken to attempt to impose city criteria upon the rural areas," the woman opined, briefly casting deferential glances at both men.  "One can't treat peasants as if they were proletarians in disguise.  That which stems from the Diabolic Alpha cannot be expected to aspire towards the Divine Omega."

     "True enough!" the second man agreed.  "So peasants, or their nearest modern equivalents, should be utilized for what they're worth to the economy, and then left to get on with their work in the fields.  Some of them will gravitate to the city, and some will be proletarianized in the course of time, as industry and urbanization increasingly encroach upon the country and suck farm labourers into a largely artificial lifestyle, transforming them, or their offspring, into proletarians.  The rest, born farmhands and country-dwellers, must be left to their largely naturalistic lifestyles and utilized in the name of agricultural and dairy produce.  Since agriculture is becoming increasingly mechanized, it should be possible to regard such country-dwellers as agricultural proletarians, this entailing a relative distinction between pseudo-proletarian country-dwellers and genuinely proletarian city-dwellers, or industrial workers."

     The woman smiled smoothly.  "Like the distinction between female supermen and male supermen," she remarked.  "One evidently designed to overcome sexual discrimination!"

     "To be sure," the first man said.  "And designed, in this case, to gloss over the dichotomy between rural- and urban-dwellers, bringing both classes under a common designation, its being understood, in any case, that there exists a significant distinction between the modern mechanized farm-worker and the traditional peasant."

     "Rather like the distinction that exists between the industrial worker and the traditional artisan," said the second man, eager to follow-up one parallel with another.  "While to some extent the two may co-exist in a relative civilization, albeit towards the tail-end of it, there could be no possibility of their simultaneous existence in an absolute civilization, since artisans would have been entirely superseded by industrial proletarians, just as peasants would likewise have been entirely superseded by agricultural proletarians - the lesser brothers, as it were, of their urban-dwelling counterparts."

     The first man smiled delighted confirmation and said: "Yes, artisans, no less than peasants, would be a thing of the past, which they're not, incidentally, wherever relativity prevails.  And the same of course applies to aristocrats, who continue to exist in such countries as Britain and Holland.  So just as industrial proletarians are the antithetical equivalent of artisans, and agricultural proletarians ... the antithetical equivalent of peasants, so bureaucrats are antithetically equivalent to aristocrats, and, as such, eligible, wherever transcendental values predominate, for absolute status."

     "Indeed, and whereas artisans and peasants alike served the interests of the aristocracy," the second man affirmed, "the bureaucracy is designed to serve the interests of both agricultural and industrial proletariats, this corresponding to a transvaluation of values whereby the roles of service are reversed ... from a majority serving an aristocratic minority to a minority serving a proletarian majority who, paradoxically, become the new favoured class."

     "Particularly in their urban and industrial guise," the woman said, smiling, "since they evidently correspond to a greater degree of superhumanity vis-à-vis the agricultural proletariat."

     The second man coughed ironically and said: "That may be so, but all proletarians have to be treated pretty much alike.  Just as female supermen will be treated pretty much like their male counterparts.  Certainly not as women, at any rate, since that would entail a concession to bourgeois relativity, and any such concession, equivalent to a sexist regression, would be incompatible with the absolute criteria of a transcendental civilization.  And no less incompatible with the treatment of agricultural proletarians as if they were peasants."

     "Here, here!" responded the first man, who had an ear for logical consistency.  "It would be no less absurd of the bureaucracy to regard agricultural proletarians as peasants ... than for the industrial proletariat to regard bureaucrats as aristocrats, and thus as tyrants or rulers rather than servants.  Bureaucrats are, in a sense, secular saints, who selflessly serve the people's material interests.  They don't enter the proletarian 'promised land' of the spirit themselves, but remain outside it, dedicated to the betterment of the new favoured class."

     The woman coughed gently, in response to this statement, and remarked: "Woe betide the new favoured class if they resist their betterment by rebelling against the bureaucrats!  For the bureaucratic servants of today can no more permit reactionary or regressive tendencies among the proletariat ... than the aristocratic rulers of earlier times could permit revolutionary or progressive tendencies among the peasantry.  That also corresponds to a transvaluation of values, does it not?"

     "More like an antithetical equivalent," the first man said, before succumbing to a reflective silence which the second man made no attempt to disturb, since he was the one who least approved of intellectual noise.