A VERTICAL INTEGRITY

Philip Brennan had been standing for over an hour in the company of most of the other guests to a conference of senior Social Transcendentalists, held in the main office of the party's Dublin headquarters, and was beginning to tire a little on his feet, though not without a quiet satisfaction that he had so far avoided the ignominy (as it was fast becoming known to those in the know) of taking a seat in one of the few available upright chairs. Usually that ignominy was reserved for females and youths, who were regarded as less qualified than men to spend long periods of time in a vertical position. Had the Leader not himself declined to sit down in order, no doubt, to set an example to his followers? For, assuredly, most of them were aware, by now, of his views on sitting, which he regarded as a bourgeois habit unworthy of proletarian emulation; though he was hardly a bona fide proletarian himself! However, his views on sitting, as on lying and standing, were representative of Social Transcendentalism, which sought and adhered to the truth about everything, in the interests of evolutionary progress towards a more absolute society.

For sitting was relative, a kind of compromise between lying and standing, in which one part of the body, namely the thighs, was horizontal whilst another part, namely the trunk and head, was vertical, this in turn significant of a compromise between the feminine and the masculine, the mundane and the transcendent. For in case anyone had any doubts on the matter, the horizontal and the feminine were aligned, and sharply contrasted with the vertical and the masculine, which was how they would always remain.

But not for men, for a society dedicated, more specifically, to revolutionary change in the name of masculine progress! If the ancients, with particular reference to the pagan Greeks and Romans, spent more time lying or, rather, reclining than sitting or standing, that was because they were essentially feminine in character, a people stemming from nature, like animals, who also spend the greater part of their time - indeed almost all of it - in a horizontal position. Not having attained to a dualistic compromise, the ancients were content to spend most of their time, days as well as nights, lolling about in pursuit of carnal indulgence. When not dozing or sleeping, they had been wolfing fruit, swilling wine, and philandering, not to say fornicating. They had even read scrolls and listened to music in a reclining posture, as often as not dozing off in the process. So much for the ancients!

Fortunately, however, man went on to make some progress during the succeeding centuries and, with the rise of bourgeois consciousness, became less a reclining animal than a sitting one - indeed, became properly human. No longer absolutely feminine, and thus horizontal in his lifestyle, man developed a dualistic compromise between the feminine and the masculine, a compromise reflecting his religious progress towards the transcendent, which necessarily acquired the form of a partly transcendental inclination, as germane to Christianity, that anthropomorphic allegiance between Hell and Heaven, the centrifugal alpha and the centripetal omega. So now man, properly so-considered, was between the horizontal and the vertical as he sat in his chair, one part of him seemingly stemming from the natural and another part of him seemingly aspiring towards the supernatural. Of course, this development had passed through a number of stages, from chairs with slanting backs to chairs the backs of which were almost straight and, in some of the more up-to-date examples, totally so. And, then, the amount of time men had spent in their variously-constituted chairs varied with the individual's social standing and the epoch in question, the European grand bourgeoisie, nominally aristocratic, spending much less time seated than their bureaucratic successors of more recent date. However, this wasn't because they spent more time standing, but, as the Leader was only too keen to remind us, because they remained enslaved, in varying degrees, to pagan precedent - the early grand-bourgeoisie most especially so! There were still too many things which could be better done reclining than sitting, and we need not doubt that the people in question had no qualms about thus doing them. So much for the medievalists!

When we come to the moderns, as the Leader (having briefly drawn our attention to the bourgeoisie ... with their dualistic compromise reflecting a lifestyle more balanced between horizontal and vertical) referred to petty-bourgeois man, we arrive at a procedure the converse of that favoured by the medievalists, with their grand-bourgeois integrity. We note a gradual loosening of the connection between men and chairs. For even though the backs of modern chairs are usually vertical, there is still a concession to the horizontal with the seat, and this concession, though in many instances tempered by diagonally-slanting seats, is precisely what, consciously or unconsciously, petty-bourgeois man happens to be in rebellion against, if only relatively so and, hence, on a rather intermittent basis. His extreme relativity favours the vertical, so he inclines to spend more time standing than sitting, whereas his class predecessor, the bourgeois, spent as much time sitting as both reclining and standing - indeed, probably spent more time sitting, since that would have accorded with a uniquely bourgeois compromise. Of course, one can divide the petty bourgeoisie into early and late stages, thereby inferring two distinct classes, and contend that if the late-stage petty-bourgeoisie preferred to spend more time standing than sitting, then their immediate class predecessors probably preferred to spend as much time as possible sitting with a straight back in the straightest possible type of chair. Moreover, one could argue that the grand bourgeoisie ...

No, rather than dwell on them, one would do better to bear in mind the Leader's contention that proletarian man, that successor to the moderns, should be prepared if not to completely avoid sitting, during the barbarous phase of his society's evolution, then to completely avoid doing so during the subsequent civilized phase, when all truck with the relative, and hence the horizontal, would be strictly taboo, man having become so masculine by then as to be indisposed to any degree of compromise with the feminine, society having become absolutely post-dualistic and thus exclusively orientated towards the attainment of a supernatural goal. Such was the absolute fate in store for proletarians in the civilized phase of their transcendental society, as championed by Social Transcendentalism in general but by the Leader in particular. In the meantime chairs, although not strictly taboo, would remain discredited objects, things to which one could succumb in the event of physical tiredness, albeit not without a degree of shame! Gone were the days when chairs could be complacently accepted and utilized on an intermittent basis. The Leader had ensured that much!

Well, Philip was still feeling tired and exposed, in consequence, to the temptation to slump into one of the nearby upright chairs which stood against the wall to his right. These chairs assumed the appearance of ignominious traps at such times, and one of them had already claimed a victim in the form of a young female whose apparent nonchalance suggested the probability that she was less well-informed than most as to the moral nature of her behaviour! However, whilst a young female of around twenty would have reasons of her own for sitting down, Philip knew that, if he wanted to remain a candidate for promotion in the Leader's eyes, he would do better to gently shift his weight from one leg to the other, as though marking time.... This, to all appearances, was exactly what one or two other comrades were already doing!

Meanwhile the Leader had taken centre stage, so to speak, in order to address his followers about an innovation which he hoped to introduce into meditation centres in due course. Clearing his throat with guttural relish, he thus proceeded: "As you all know, the practice of meditation has traditionally been carried-on while sitting cross-legged on the floor. Orientals have long maintained this practice and, since the introduction of meditation-centred religion to the West, most petty-bourgeois devotees of transcendentalism have likewise been content to sit on the floor or, alternatively, on a bed or a chair. Now while this mundane habit may be appropriate to Buddhism and other such traditional oriental religions, reflecting the devotee's continuing allegiance to the Ground, that oriental equivalent of the Creator, Social Transcendentalism couldn't possibly endorse it, since we are dealing here not with a continuation of tradition but with a total departure from it, as relevant to an absolutely post-atomic integrity. Therefore we cannot meditate while sitting on the floor, because such a mundane posture would connote with Buddhist relativity, and we are beyond any such dualism. Neither can we meditate while sitting on a chair, which, besides bringing us into contact with the floor, would impose a degree of horizontality upon that part of the body resting on its seat, just as the legs of those who sit cross-legged on the floor are far from being in a vertical position. No, and neither can we meditate while standing on our feet, since, besides tiring us, such a posture would keep us anchored to the floor and detract, moreover, from our commitment to meditation. So what should we do? I'll tell you what! We must meditate suspended in a vertical position a few feet above the ground, as though levitating, and thus free of mundane allegiance. This is the only acceptable posture for a Social Transcendentalist, and it will reflect an absolutely free-electron status symptomatic of post-atomic civilization. So, clearly, we must design meditation centres in such a way that people can be hoisted free of the floor when they're due to meditate, a procedure requiring the installation of special chest-to-crotch harnesses suspended from some scaffold-like apparatus under the roof of the building which can be raised or lowered by remote control, according to the demands of the occasion. Thus instead of squatting on the floor, like primitives, those who practise meditation in our meditation centres will be suspended from aloft in comfortable body harnesses that will enable them both to forget about their body weight and to assume a more transcendent posture - one relevant to the exclusive verticality of a proletarian civilization, beyond all dualistic compromises."

Ah, how the phrase 'to forget about their body weight' appealed to Philip Brennan at that moment, now that he had been standing on his feet for over an hour-and-a-half! He was certainly unable to forget about his own, or to completely detach his mind from the tempting proximity of those few straight-backed chairs to his right, which made him slightly envious of the seated young woman whose morals appeared to be less rigorously applied than his own. If only such harnesses as the Leader had spoken of were to be found in his office! But, of course, meditation and ideological meetings were two entirely different things. Perhaps, however, a day would eventually dawn when some scaffold-like apparatus would be installed even for the latter, indeed for any meetings between people, so that instead of standing on tired feet or succumbing to a chair - that bourgeois anachronism - one would automatically step into a body harness and be hoisted aloft, to conduct one's tête-à-tête, or whatever, in a comfortably vertical position, a truly-civilized posture. Well, there was at any rate a degree of comfort in the thought, and Philip Brennan needed all the comfort he could get, now that the meeting was over and the Leader had left the office, presumably to slump into a chair himself. It was at least a relief for Philip Brennan to know that he was not the only one in need of a seat at this moment!