DOING IT ALONE

"The instinctive mind and the rational mind don't evolve apace," he said, standing close beside her in the back garden they shared as fellow-tenants of a small suburban lodging house - he a self-styled philosopher, she a student of philosophy who had recently moved in. "The one is static because natural, while the other is evolutionary because intimating of the supernatural. I can despise fine weather with my rational mind, having reasoned over a period of time that cold, grey, wet weather is more conducive to a cultivation of the spiritual life than its converse ... in hot, bright, dry weather. And yet, I can still find myself thinking, with my instinctive mind, how pleasant it is when the weather is warm and dry. We speak - do we not? - of a 'fine day' when the weather is like that.... Which is, after all, a perfectly natural response and assessment. Yet, for that very reason, an obstacle to the spiritual life, which demands, on the contrary, the most artificial attitude to the world, and thus, in effect, a contempt for 'fine days'. Only when we cultivate the artificial to any significant extent do we have a springboard, as it were, from which to launch a significant aspiration towards the supernatural, which, to a limited extent, we carry within ourselves in the awareness mind of the superconscious."

"Whereas the instinctive life is largely connected with the feeling mind of the subconscious, is it?" she responded on a deductive note.

"To be sure," he confirmed. "And when our feelings are uppermost, it is this mind which conditions the formation of naturalistic thoughts, making us respond to warm weather in a positive way. How difficult, on the other hand, to endorse a Nietzschean 'transvaluation of all values' with regard to such weather, so that instead of responding to it with our instinctive minds, we impose our rational minds upon it and regard what would otherwise appear a 'fine day' as an obstacle to the spiritual life, because the sun corresponds to the Diabolic Alpha and is thus an incentive for sensual indulgence. Wherever the pagan, diabolical root is intact, as it must be prior to the inception of a transcendental civilization, people are entitled to give precedence to naturalistic criteria in their response to warm weather, and thus speak of a 'fine day', much as they speak, wherever bourgeois civilization obtains, of upper/middle/lower class distinctions based not on artificial but on naturalistic criteria, with the aristocracy at the top in consequence of their closer proximity to nature and effective identification with the galactic-world-order, that is to say, the infernal rule of stars over planets at the roots of cosmic reality."

"Is it likely, then, that people would be encouraged not to regard warm weather as making for a 'fine day' in the transcendental civilization?" she asked him, slightly puzzled.

"Very much so," he replied, nodding, "since such a civilization, free of the diabolical root, would reflect a complete transvaluation inimical to naturalistic criteria. Everything would be evaluated according to strictly artificial criteria, as applicable to an advanced civilization - in point of fact, the ultimate civilization. The rational mind would take precedence over the instinctive one to such an extent ... that the latter would all but be eclipsed by reason. Even if one did respond to warm weather in a positive way, one would be more inclined to keep that fact to oneself than share it with others in a public concession to diabolic criteria. Reason would caution public restraint in this, as in so many other matters impinging upon the spiritual life. Just as people progressed from making love, or having sex, in the open to confining it to their dwellings ... with the transformation from pagan to Christian values, so they would progress from openly referring to warm weather as 'fine' ... to keeping any such instinctive thoughts or responses to themselves."

"With the possibility of ostracism or prosecution for failing to do so, am I right in assuming?" she asked, smiling faintly.

"Yes, just as they risk prosecution, under bourgeois law, for making love in the open," he solemnly replied, slightly to her surprise. "While making love has not been outlawed, it has at least been discredited to the extent of only being permissible within private bounds."

"Then what of pornographic films?" she asked.

"A different matter," he assured her, "since the public viewing of a sex film has little to do with the public indulgence of sex. Indeed, it constitutes an antithetical equivalent to the pagan orgy, a transcendental mode of sexual indulgence whereby passive, as opposed to active, acquiescence in sex is the norm, an acquiescence of the head rather than the body, of the spirit rather than the soul - an awareness sex as opposed to a sensual sex, contemplated and not aggravated. Yet, much as this spiritual communion signifies a vast moral improvement on the pagan orgy, even the public enjoyment of pornographic films is slowly becoming less morally acceptable to the ongoing evolutionary dictates of the age, and is accordingly losing ground to the private enjoyment of pornographic films through video."

"Thus video-viewing signifies further moral progress to the extent that it presupposes the private rather than the public enjoyment of pornography?" she concluded in a touchingly ambivalent tone-of-voice.

"To be sure," he confidently confirmed. "And not least of all as regards violence and horror, which are likewise viewed rather than literally indulged-in by their video patrons, so that the acquiescence in violence and horror, no less than in sex, is sublimated, passive, and predominantly a matter of awareness rather than brute sensation; though a degree of the latter undoubtedly accrues to the voyeuristic experience, confirming the allegiance of bourgeois/proletarian civilization to the pagan, diabolical root. For such a civilization is not absolute but of an extreme relative constitution, a relativity favouring the transcendent, and hence the sublimated, as effected by these artificial media, the passive indulgence of which establishes an antithetical equivalent to the brute, pagan, literal indulgence of public sex, violence, horror, war, et cetera, as germane to naturalistic criteria. However, while bourgeois/proletarian civilization may not be absolutist on the highest level, it is biased in favour of such an absolutism, and the gradual expansion of sublimated evil into the private domain bespeaks, it seems to me, a furtherance of this bias."

"Though not a furtherance, seemingly, that's likely to lead to a total prohibition with regard to the viewing of violence, sex, et cetera, in public." she surmised.

"No, I don't think we can expect that degree of transcendentalism from bourgeois/proletarian civilization," he agreed. "Being relative, it won't completely outlaw the public viewing of sex and violence in sublimated evil. Such a day is only likely to arise with the development of an absolute civilization some decades hence, which doesn't mean to say that public viewing per se will be proscribed; for it may transpire that certain types of film, say of a religious or a scientific significance, will be considered appropriate for public viewing. Yet I dare say that if private video-viewing survives beyond the bourgeois/proletarian era, it will be the sole context within which the sublimated indulgence of sex, violence, horror, and the like will be tolerated."

"Is there any guarantee it will survive into an absolute age?" she asked, puzzled anew.

"No, but there'll be quite a number of people in possession of video recorders and recordings made at an earlier date who may choose not to part with them," he replied, smiling faintly. "Probably a new type of video, relevant to the absolute criteria of a transcendental age, will be manufactured to replace the more violent, sexist, and generally relative types of video. For as the transcendental civilization gets properly under way, all forms of relative sex will be frowned upon by the authorities, and this should extend to the pornographic as well as to the more conventional modes of sexuality. Many videos that were acceptable within the confines of bourgeois/proletarian civilization would prove irrelevant to an absolute one. Possibly they would be withdrawn from stock, and their sale or appreciation rendered untenable."

"Presumably while newer, more relevant ones, together with computerized erotica, would be acceptable as an aspect of absolute sexuality," she conjectured.

"I dare say so," he said. "In particular for male supermen to contemplate in private, while female supermen found equivalent satisfaction in vibrators of one type or another, which, for them, would establish an antithetical equivalent to natural copulation, as, incidentally, would the use of so-called 'sex dolls' by their genuinely masculine counterparts."

"You mean to say there would be no natural sexual activity?" she sceptically exclaimed.

"I do," he affirmed. "Since natural sex, besides invoking a concession to nature, would entail relativity, and that could hardly be compatible with an absolute age, irrespective of whether the relativity in question were heterosexual or homosexual. For I dare say that even homosexuals would be encouraged to progress, in the course of time, to unisexual pornography rather than remain victims of the flesh, since sexual sublimation would be the order of the day.... As regards propagation, that would be a matter for the State to regulate, as the introduction of artificial insemination on a compulsory basis would preclude the necessity for sexual relativity and enable female supermen to lead sex lives independently of male supermen, to their mutual moral benefit."

"Does this imply that women and men or, rather, female supermen and their male counterparts won't sleep together in the transcendental civilization?" she asked, somewhat nervously.

"It does indeed!" he replied. "For sleeping together would entail a concession to relativity, and expose the people concerned to the possibility of sexist deviation. Rather, every Superman, whether female or male, will have a single bed in a room of their own, where the indignity of sleep can be kept, as with sex, to oneself. This would be in complete contrast to the group or communal sleeping of pagans, and would signify a moral improvement on the à-deux sleeping of Christian or bourgeois dualists, as germane to relative civilization. In the interests of consistency where sensual obligations were concerned, people would probably cease to eat in public, i.e. in cafés or restaurants, but do such eating as was necessary in private, thereby keeping the degrading spectacle, from a transcendental standpoint, of sensual indulgence in this matter off the streets. Is it not a fact that many people now do most of their eating in private anyway, having first visited a food store or take-away restaurant?"

"Yes, so it would seem," she answered, blushing faintly. "And it's also a fact that many people now sleep alone and indulge in personal sex of one sort or another."

He smiled gently but made no comment, and she realized that their discussion had reached a climax beyond which he was unable or unwilling to proceed.