THUS SPEAKS THE SOCIAL TRANSCENDENTALIST

Five speeches to his friends followed by five speeches to his enemies

"Love, my friends, is a Protestant ideal relative to Christ. Have Catholics ever been Christians? Traditionally, I don't think so; though these days there are apparently quite a few of them who put Christ before everyone else, including the Blessed Virgin, and are consequently akin to Protestants in Catholic disguise, heretics posing as adherents to the main, or absolute, part of the theocratic spectrum. I know this isn't simply a failing of the common people. But a catholic Protestant is not the true Catholic allegiance which, now as before, continues to be the Blessed Virgin, that second deity in the evolution of religion from pagan Creator propitiation to an aspiration towards the Holy Spirit via the Catholic, Protestant (Christ), Communist (Antichrist), and Centrist (Second Coming) 'deities' respectively.

"Yes, my friends, Roman Catholicism, corresponding, in its prime, to an early-stage grand-bourgeois age, put the relativistic absolutism of the Holy Virgin above pagan absolutism and paid due homage to her as an intercessor between mankind and the Father. Catholicism was always essentially a religion centred in refined sensation, as with incense, holy water, the mass, et cetera. Stoicism, or the endurance of pain, had preceded it in absolute pagan times, and Christian love, or positive emotionality, was to follow it, with the development of Protestant civilization.

"Stoicism pertained to the autocratic spectrum of the God-Kings, but refined sensation, conceived as morally preferable to crude sensation, i.e. hedonistic sin, pertained to the inception of the theocratic spectrum in a grand-bourgeois age. The subsequent subdivision of that spectrum, relative to the Protestant heresy, ushered in the religion of love, with Christ as the religious cynosure. This was not only an impersonal love of one's fellow man in humanism, but a personal love for another person as well - the emotional love of the sexes sanctified through marriage. If the former kind of love is wise for a time, then the latter must fall somewhat short of wisdom, corresponding, as it does, to a fool's paradise. Wisdom and folly are but two sides of a relative coin."

"There are those, my friends, who claim that Hitler was the Antichrist; that the deity which follows on behind the Christian one must be the Antichrist, and, to be sure, there is some truth in that idea. But Hitler didn't follow on behind Christ for the simple reason that Fascism, to speak in general terms, appertained to the main part of the theocratic spectrum as the enemy of everything democratic rather than to an extension of the heretical subdivision of it from the religion of love, in Protestantism, to the religion of hate, in Communism - this latter germane to people's democracy.

"No, Marx was the closest approximation to the Antichrist (even closer than Engels), while Lenin was his 'Pauline' disciple, the founder, in effect, of a communist 'church' or, rather, antichurch, viz. the totalitarian state. Communism is but the logical outcome of the Protestant heresy, the antithesis to Christian love for all men in the hatred of one category of men, namely the proletariat, for another, namely the bourgeoisie. It would be illogical to think of the Antichrist as pertaining to the true part of the theocratic spectrum, as did Hitler, who, by contrast, signified an antithetical equivalent to the Blessed Virgin, a kind of crude approximation to the Second Coming, necessarily subordinate to the main deity of the age, namely the Antichrist (whose Soviet followers were chiefly responsible for defeating Nazism), and therefore not entitled to consideration in any evolutionary list of principal deities from pagan beginnings in the Primal Creator (Father) to transcendental endings in the Ultimate Creation (the Holy Ghost).

"So, my friends, we can dismiss Hitler as a secondary god, a failed god, whose eventual eclipse was inevitable, given the heretical status of the age. He may have been the antithetical equivalent to the Blessed Virgin - Fascism as much post-Protestant as Catholicism was pre-Protestant - but the subdivision of the theocratic spectrum remained dominant over truly theocratic interests in the guise of Soviet Communism, that legacy of Marx.

"So any list of principal deities would have to proceed thus: The Father, the Blessed Virgin, Christ, the Antichrist (Marx), and, in due course, the Second Coming, as signifying, in the name of Social Transcendentalism, a return of theological primacy to the true part of the theocratic spectrum in the wake of the heretical Antichrist."

"If Protestantism was a religion of love, then Fascism, contemporary with the religion of hate (Communism), must be accorded a bias for refined feelings, the antithetical equivalent to refined sensation. In a word, happiness!

"Yes, the happiness of the German people was of cardinal importance to Hitler, even if it had to be obtained through force of arms. There was much positive feeling at the annual party rallies in Nuremberg. Almost everywhere Hitler went, there were smiles on the faces of the German people. Even post-war Communism was keen to indulge its citizens in the primary ideal of the age and, when not true to itself (through hatred of the bourgeoisie), be true to the main part of the theocratic spectrum in a kind of quasi-fascist worship of happiness.

"There is something about the tail-end of the democratic spectrum which intimates of the contemporary (fascist) part of the theocratic one. In an extreme relativistic age, necessarily late-stage petty-bourgeois in character, overlappings and hybrid interbreedings are less the exception than the rule. Does not a military dictatorship often appear fascist or even communist?

"Be that as it may, the extension of the true part of the theocratic spectrum beyond Fascism and its positive feelings can only lead to a more absolute religious ideal, the antithesis to stoicism ... in awareness, the pure awareness of meditation as germane to Social Transcendentalism/Super-transcendentalism (synthetically-induced visionary experience/hypermeditation), the brainchild of the true approximation to the Second Coming, the Messiah long awaited by both Jews and Gentiles alike ... as embodiment and intimation of the Holy Ghost - the ultimate deity of undifferentiated pure spirit at the culmination to evolution.

"So in a sense this successor to the Antichrist is the real antithetical equivalent to the Virgin Mary, the penultimate deity in the evolution of deities from the Father to the Holy Ghost. Between the two absolute extremes, that of pure sensuality and pure spirituality, come the two relative absolutes, both celibate in constitution. And between these come the two relativities of the heretical subdivision of the theocratic spectrum, viz. the moderately relative Christ and the radically relative Marx, Protestantism and Communism, bourgeois democracy and proletarian democracy, liberalism and socialism - from religion and politics to economics, the three forever intertwined throughout a relative age."

"Not so in the coming absolute age, when sovereignty would be vested in the Leader and the ownership or, rather, trusteeship of the means of production pass to the Centre, of which the Leader is sovereign. There politics and economics will be absorbed into the Leader, who will bear these 'sins of the world' in his sovereignty, much as Atlas bore the world on his shoulders in the pagan mythology of the ancient Greeks, and Christ did the same for the ensuing Christians.

"There theocracy alone will prevail, the relativity of politics and economics becoming a thing of the past, like the democratic and autocratic spectra to which they correspond, economics preceding politics no less than the God-Kings preceded people's representatives, religion succeeding politics no less than the people's representatives succeeded kings, everything passing from matter to spirit, from doing to being. The Truth alone triumphant, as mankind is set on course for the post-human millennium. Aesthetics and ethics having faded away or been killed off. The Leader beyond good and evil, not motivated by ethical considerations, like a democratic politician, but solely by service to the Truth, considering 'good' that which furthers and consolidates the Truth.

"Yes, my friends, I am beyond good and evil, and I rejoice in my freedom, the freedom of the Free Spirit! 'The Good' are not admirable to me, they are the obverse side of a dualistic coin, striving to combat and counter evil. They're part-and-parcel of a relative compromise, the existence of the one presupposing that of the other, 'the Good' continuing to exist so long as there is evil, 'the Right' so long as there is 'the Left', private enterprise so long as there is state socialism.

"But I, who represent the Truth, am beyond good and evil, and my followers would live in a society where there was no compromise between these two adversaries of the ethical spectrum, where evil had been stamped out for all time and 'the Good' ceased to be necessary, there being no good for them to do in a society where 'the Evil' no longer held sway because no longer able to do evil. Ah, such an absolute society would be free for the Truth, saved from good and evil by the Truth!"

"Like the Blessed Virgin, the True World Messiah, loosely corresponding to a Second Coming, pertains to the true, or absolute, part of the theocratic spectrum. In being the antithetical equivalent of the Blessed Virgin, he, too, is virginal, celibate, pure - a relative absolutism. Even the crude approximation to this deity, as signified by Hitler, was in some degree virginal or, at any rate, less carnal than the average German.

"Yes, my friends, he was no great womanizer, being too shy as a youth and too preoccupied with saving the German people from their enemies as a man ... to have much time or inclination for women. As Leader, he took Eva Braun for mistress, being in theory her lover but in practice somewhat neglectful of her. He only married her after Germany was lost and his position as Leader no longer tenable. Their marriage was, as you'll know, but a brief affair, soon to be interrupted, so legend has it, by mutual suicide. It was an act of charity on Hitler's part to marry this simple girl at the end.

"Well, my friends, marriage would be quite inappropriate for the more credible manifestation of the Second Coming, so you needn't expect him to get married at any time, even if he were subsequently to take a woman or female companion for domestic help, which is not impossible though, given his celibate past and absolutist integrity, by no means guaranteed! Rather, he must maintain his celibacy in conformity with his status as embodiment and intimation of the Holy Ghost. After all, he pertains to the main part of the theocratic spectrum, unlike the Antichrist, Marx, whose status on the heretical subdivision of that same spectrum wasn't entirely incompatible with lecherous proclivities!

"There is no intimation of the Holy Ghost in endomorphic Marx, simply an extension of Protestant love into communist hate, the hatred of the proletariat for the bourgeoisie, the division of the ethical spectrum into warring factions more sharply polarized than ever before, the former striving for an ultimate victory over the latter, but without the guidance of the Truth, without which no ultimate victory can be achieved, Communism being but an extension of the ethical antagonism of the middle spectrum to a polarized antithesis between private capitalism and state socialism, in which the great world Illusion of Marxism seeks to overcome Ethics. So not, my friends, 'the Good' against 'the Evil', as in a liberal democracy, but 'the Illusory' against both 'the Good' and 'the Evil' in the name of the Great Illusion of World Communism, that heretical ideology of the Antichrist!"

"Know then, my enemies, that the Truth alone will ultimately be victorious! There can be no question of Illusion triumphing over Truth. The way to the post-human millennium leads through Social Transcendentalism, that historical successor to Fascism and antithesis to autocratic royalism - the age of leaders superseding that of people's representatives, even those who, in communist states, represent the people dictatorially. Dictatorial representatives correspond to the Illusion, not an absolute antithesis to Truth, to the theocratic leader, but falling just short of it, a near miss or relative antithesis.

"You will have noticed, my enemies, how fashionable it has become, in this post-Hitlerian age, to speak of people's representatives as 'leaders', how even bourgeois prime ministers are regarded, if superficially, as 'leaders'. The age, even now, isn't wholly sympathetic towards mere representatives. The Zeitgeist increasingly points towards the coming of leaders, the 'Caesars' in Spengler's paradoxical prophecy, who lead the People from above, scorning identification with democratic criteria, knowing themselves to be above and beyond the scope of prime ministers and presidents.

"What use had Hitler for the Chancellorship or the Presidency? He absorbed both offices into himself and transcended then in the guise of Führer, the Sovereign Leader of a fascist state. As Nietzsche to the Kaiser, so Spengler to the Führer. Away with petty democrats! The age calls forth theocracy!"

"Even the Americans, despite their democratic traditions, have an inkling of the Truth, an interpretation, necessarily bogus, of the Second Coming ... in the guise of Superman, whether on film or in comic books. This Superman, owing little or nothing to Nietzsche, arrives on earth as a boy from a distant galaxy, like a Christ from 'On High', and is found and raised by latter-day equivalents of Mary and Joseph. They discover, in due course, that their adopted child has superhuman powers, and he learns from the spirit of his true father - another New Testament parallel - that he must use these exceptional powers for good, not to alter the destiny of the world but to combat evil wherever it may arise.

"So, my enemies, this bogus Second Coming is implicated in the ethical spectrum and is only marginally wiser, despite his extraordinary powers, than the good right-wingers who, in liberal societies, are accustomed, after their fashion, to combating political evil in the form of the left-wing opposition. He stands no more chance of overcoming evil, in any absolute sense, than they do, and is all the more bogus from a genuinely Messianic point-of-view, since it is precisely the American way of life, with its liberal institutions and capitalist freedoms, that he wishes to protect. He's not 'the True' but 'the Good', and if 'the Evil' are among his chief enemies, they certainly aren't the only ones! He would oppose 'the Illusory' as well, assuming there were any Communists at large in the land of his adoption.

"Fortunately for America there aren't, since Americans like the good life too much. They have given the world Superman, but he exists only in the imagination. Real-life supermen would be somewhat different from him, both in their post-humanist manifestation (as superhuman men) and, most especially, in their post-human manifestation (as human brains artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts). Real-life supermen oppose real-life submen wherever they may be found. No, my enemies, not simply as criminals - though undoubtedly some of them will be such - but more specifically as tribalists, living as subnationals in a supra-national society. Hitler was, in his paradoxical way, such a superman, and the closer approximation to the Second Coming should be another!"

"Could Social Transcendentalists be statesmen, in any real political sense? No, my enemies, Social Transcendentalists should never be defined in terms applicable to the democratic spectrum. Rather, they're theocratic Centrists, for whom the meditation centre takes precedence over any parliamentary assembly. Indeed, there wouldn't be a parliamentary assembly, since parliaments appertain to democracy as places where people's representatives congregate to do the people's business.

"If theocratic Centrists were to congregate anywhere, it wouldn't be in a parliament building but in a special Centre, a kind of arch-cathedral equivalent in which they would discuss what needed to be discussed in relation to Social Transcendentalist progress, and where they would listen to the Leader haranguing them on the domestic and global situation, ideological ambitions and obligations, or the finer points of Centrist logic. They would face the Leader in a kind of semi-circular arrangement, followers in the presence of the ideological cynosure, somewhat along the lines of Mussolini's Grand Council, the Leader and his chief disciples - members of the ruling elite.

"Naturally there would also be regional Centres, where the generality of theocratic Centrists in any one area could congregate to discuss local affairs and carry on the business of what would formerly have been called Local Government. Most if not all Centrists should, in addition, have an individual meditation centre for purposes of religious instruction and enlightenment of the masses, their role there akin to that of a priest in a church, being effectively the successors to priests.

"Unlike in a relative society, however, these theocratic Centrists would not function separately from politicians, since there would be no politics as generally understood within a democratic context. With the supersession of democracy, legislative and administrative authority should pass exclusively to the theocratic spectrum, as signified by the Centre. Just as in Catholic Ireland the Church has a powerful influence on politics ... as pertaining to the soft-line republican state, so, my enemies, the Centre would lead in a Social Transcendentalist Ireland. What we see now is but an intimation of a more absolute situation still to arise."

"Of course, I know that you, my enemies, will try to prevent Social Transcendentalism from coming to pass in Ireland, deeming it undemocratic and a serious threat to your vested interests. As I've said before, the theocratic nature of Social Transcendentalism puts it above and beyond the democratic pale, since democracy is about electing representatives, whereas the Leader of the Movement in question represents only the Holy Spirit and could not be elected on a strictly democratic ticket, even if the majority population of the Irish Republic were to vote for him.

"But just consider, my enemies, how dissatisfied he would feel if, in being democratically elected, he was duly obliged, along with his chief enemies, to take a seat in parliament, in the dáil, and play the democratic game, co-existing with political parties on the basis of democratic representation, obliged to face the prospect of future general elections and a permanent or intermittent representative status!

"No, that kind of situation he could never tolerate! So if he were to be elected democratically - and there is no other way that he would want to assume political responsibility - it would have to be on the prior understanding, backed and sanctioned by the Church, that he intended to abolish the parliamentary system and set up a Social Transcendentalist administration - admittedly a most unorthodox and paradoxical basis for being elected, but not altogether inconceivable in a country where 'God and the Church come first' and a majority of people could therefore probably be depended upon to use democracy in order to vote for a new and ultimate theocracy, even granted hard-line democratic opposition to theocratic absolutism.

"Yet he knows that even if he were elected in such a paradoxical fashion, there would still be parliamentary opposition to his intentions to abolish the democratic constitution, so that, one way or another, friction would probably break out between those on his side - the true and theocratic Irishmen - and those on the other side - that of the state, democracy, capitalism, private property, petty-bourgeois internationalism. There is no way that my enemies, a sizeable minority of the population of Eire, would willingly allow me a free hand in revolutionizing the country."

"So, my enemies, I take up the responsibility of the Last Judgement and I say: if struggle there must be, then we shall struggle to the end, using the opportunity any such reactionary revolt against majority interests may give us to remove your influence from the land, in order that our people may go forward to a Social Transcendentalist salvation ... free from all alien influences, free to be true to their selves, to develop an absolutely theocratic Ireland. We would rejoice in the opportunity any such struggle would give us to purge you from our midst!

"Eventually, my enemies, there would be few if any enemies left on the island, and the Irish people would be free from oppression for all time, free to develop their theocratic potential to its utmost, as they grew into the True World Religion ... of Social Transcendentalism/Super-transcendentalism and paid regular visits to its meditation centres, the future successors to churches.

"But, of course, the Irish Social Transcendental Centre, as Ireland would then be called, would have more to do, initially, than solely to cultivate the spiritual potential of the Irish people. It would be dedicated to expanding Centrist influence abroad and helping those who recognize the ideology of the True World Messiah to overcome their enemies, who are also his enemies. They, too, must be subjected to Last Judgement criteria, in order that the Truth may prevail and his 'Kingdom' come to pass throughout the world.

"Ah, hear this well, my enemies: we Social Transcendentalists have truly global objectives! We are no petty-bourgeois internationalists, still less bourgeois nationalists, but proletarian supra-nationalists for whom the existence of nation states is but a passing phase of political evolution, one especially pertinent to the democratic spectrum. We of the theocratic spectrum know where evolution is tending and, rest assured, we shall know how to further it as well!"

Thus speaks the Social Transcendentalist.

LONDON 1984 (Revised 2011)

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