ON CLOTHES

1. The dress is autocratic, by which I mean that it conforms to a centrifugal absolutism in its one-piece cylindrical shape. Whether we are referring to very long dresses, germane to an aristocratic age, or to contemporary minidresses, necessarily petty-bourgeois in character, we are dealing with an autocratic mode of clothing.

2. By contrast, democratic clothing is always dualistic, or relative. It affirms an atomic compromise between the feminine and the masculine, skirts and trousers. And this compromise is further indicated in the relativity of skirts to blouses and/or jackets on the one hand, and of trousers to shirts and/or jackets on the other hand, so that each of the sexes reflects a dualistic integrity, the one to a large extent the converse of the other.

3. Coming to a theocratic mode of clothing, a mode the antithesis of the dress, we enter the realm of the post-dualistic, where a centripetal absolutism prevails in the form of a one-piece phallic shape or design. I am of course alluding to boiler suits, which are a rudimentary manifestation of a more synthetic and absolute trend still to arise, a kind of proletarian precursor to the one-piece zippersuit of the future, doubtless the only kind of clothing permissible in a truly theocratic society, where an aspiration towards the absolutism of the Holy Spirit would be the religious/moral norm.

4. If boiler suits, usually in denim, are socialistic, then these synthetic zippersuits will be centrist, or relative to a Social Transcendentalist integrity. No-one will dress like a democrat, in a two-piece suit or, worse still, like an autocrat, in a dress. Only the closed-society absolutism of a one-piece zippersuit will prevail!

5. Since I have elsewhere distinguished between kingdom and state on the one hand, and between church and centre on the other, as reflecting an evolutionary progression from the subatomic to the supra-atomic via the atomic (church/state) compromise, I shall refer the above-listed modes of clothing to their respective politico-religious parallels, thus equating dresses with the Kingdom, skirts with the State, trousers with the Church, and one-piece zippersuits with the Centre, a progression from the subatomic absolute to the supra-atomic absolute via an atomic compromise in bourgeois relativity. Thus like the Church, two-piece suits testify to a bound-electron equivalent, one-piece zippersuits testifying, like the Centre, to a free-electron equivalent. Dresses and skirts, like kingdom and state, are proton and neutron equivalents respectively.

6. Whereas the button-up collared shirt is relative, divisible into two halves, as it were, and further divisible between masculine buttons and feminine button-holes, the T-shirt is absolute, all-of-a-piece, and thus purely masculine in character. Besides making dressing easier, it conforms to the extreme relativistic criteria of a late petty-bourgeois/early proletarian age, being the sartorial complement to jeans (cords or denims). In conjunction with this other masculine attire, it reflects a socialistic and unisexual integrity, and this whether or not the wearer is consciously socialist and/or unisexual. It accords with colour films, colour photography, and rock music, as appertaining to the tail-end of the middle, or democratic, spectrum of political evolution.

7. One should distinguish between the upgrading of an old-style form of bourgeois, relative clothing, whether masculine or feminine, and the new-style relative clothing more absolutist in construction. Thus one should distinguish between, say, a cord or denim trouser suit, the jacket of which overlaps the legs in traditional bourgeois fashion, and a cord or denim trouser suit with a short, waist-length jacket. In the former case, a conventional relativity between masculine trousers and feminine jacket; in the latter case an absolutist relativity between masculine trousers (jeans) and jacket. Whereas the one finds its political analogue in a P.R. liberal democracy, the other should be equated with a radical, or socialist, democracy. Whereas the one is aligned with the heterosexual, the other provokes a homosexual analogue. Thus the absolutist relativity of contemporary jean suits, in which no feminine overlapping of the leg occurs, is on a cultural level with the theocratic democracy of Communism and the masculine relativity of homosexuality. If appearances were invariably aligned with essences, one would have no hesitation in regarding a person who dressed in the above-mentioned manner as either a communist or a homosexual, or both. Certainly his mode of dressing corresponds to an extreme petty-bourgeois integrity.

8. Now consider the man who wears a boiler suit or, better still, a one-piece zippersuit that zips up the front and gives him the appearance of a pilot or even of an astronaut. Such a man would be dressed in an absolutist manner, the antithesis to a woman in a dress, and so approximate to proletarian criteria of sartorial appearances. The political or, rather, religious analogue evoked here would be Social Transcendentalism, while the sexual analogue would be pornography, particularly of a radical nature, and the man concerned might well be a pornographer and/or transcendentalist of one type or another. Such a man would almost certainly despise those who dressed in a relative manner, considering them bourgeois or, in the case of the more extreme relativities, petty bourgeois. Whether or not he knew anything about political/sexual analogies, his appearance would correspond to a radical theocracy, theirs, by contrast, to either liberal or social democracy, thereby existing on an inferior evolutionary level.

9. Where women are concerned, the upgrading of bourgeois, knee-length skirts takes the form of the mini, with or without a jacket, thereby retaining a relatively feminine appearance. Recourse to jeans or jean suits would place the woman on an equal communist/homosexual footing with a man so attired, and thus bring her into line with contemporary petty-bourgeois criteria. We need not doubt, however, that proletarian females will eventually gravitate from contemporary sartorial relativities to a one-piece zipper absolutism along the lines of the aforementioned zippersuit.

10. In countries with a church/state dichotomy, conforming to their atomic status, it usually transpires that one side prevails over the other in accordance with the ethical/ideological bias of the people concerned. Thus in Britain, the State prevails over the Church, whereas in Ireland the converse is generally the case. And as though to symbolize this, not to say reinforce the respective distinctions, Britain retains allegiance to the Monarchy, Ireland to the Papacy. On the one hand, an autocratic democracy; on the other hand, an autocratic theocracy. To conceive of the Church being stronger than the State in monarchic Britain is as impossible as to conceive of the converse situation in papal Ireland.

11. During the atomic stage of evolution, each people retains a distinct, nay, an antithetical bias, and one that will remain such should post-atomic absolutism replace atomic relativity in the not-too-distant future, if in radically dissimilar ways, so that a new distinction arises between, on the one hand, the theocratic centre in Ireland and, on the other hand, the bureaucratic pseudo-state in Britain, the former as hostile to democrats as the latter to autocrats.

12. An Englishman, especially when middle class, easily adopts a utilitarian attitude to the weather on a hot summer's day; he wears the bare minimum, perhaps no more than sandals and shorts. Religious or moral considerations don't occur to him, since he is largely devoid of them. His attitude is crassly philistine! By contrast, an Irishman is more likely to keep his clothes on, irrespective of the heat: socks, shoes, trousers, and shirt being the minimum requirement. To the typical pragmatic Englishman, he may appear foolish, but that is only from a utilitarian point-of-view. For the Irishman will know or, at any rate, sense that there is also a moral dimension which is more important - namely, that clothing is worn not just to keep warm but to cover the flesh, to hide the body, and this applies no less on a hot day than on a cold or a wet one. Hence his attitude, unlike the Englishman's, is largely conditioned by religious considerations. It is profoundly moral!

13. If clothing were worn merely to keep one warm, then there would be little or no point in people in the Middle East, Iran, or North Africa wearing any. But, as a rule, they are buttoned- and/or wrapped-up from head to toe, especially in the case of women. Partly of course this protects them from the sun, but it is also an aspect of Islamic law, of a moral-world-order imposed by religion. Generally speaking, theocratic peoples, wherever they may be, respect this moral dimension, whereas democratic peoples are only too willing to discard or, more correctly, shun it, since they respect merely the utilitarian dimension, which they mistakenly suppose, in their short-sighted materialism, to be the only one. Instead of shunning or ignoring the sun, they rush to greet it, like so many heathens, obsessed by the prospect of sunbathing. No wonder such people remain loyal to the ideals of an open society! A passive form of sun-worship confirms their pagan bias - the opposite of a truly religions orientation.

14. The above example of the way in which an Englishman can misunderstand and, consequently, belittle an Irishman is but one of countless examples that could be given. Clearly, so long as the Irish remain under British rule and/or influence, they will never be evaluated according to their true worth, but be expected to behave in a British manner.... Which, because they won't or can't, leads to additional friction and belittlement in a vicious circle of prejudice and misunderstanding! Salvation for the Irish is intrinsically linked with freedom from the British, freedom from the democratic, and will only come when Ireland is elevated to a radically theocratic status in an island purged of British, and hence democratic, influence.

15. There can be no compromise between theocracy and democracy in the future! The age demands an absolutist choice: either radical theocracy in the form of Social Transcendentalism, or radical democracy in the form of Socialist Republicanism. There can be no question of Ireland's adopting the latter!

16. If Britain was the hub or cynosure of a world empire, then Ireland, elevated in the aforementioned manner, should become the hub or, at the very least, root-motivator of a world centre, an ideological grouping of radically theocratic peoples that will stretch - in the short term - across those parts of the globe, including North Africa and South America, not destined for Socialism but entitled to work for Social Transcendentalism and, by implication, the eventual defeat of democracy in the world at large. What Britain was on materialistic terms, Ireland should become on spiritualistic terms; and on the most absolute spiritualistic terms at that, not, as traditionally, on the level of Catholic missionary work, but with regard to what I have called the True World Religion, with its supra-national integrity.

17. If an autocratic hairstyle is long, then a theocratic hairstyle is short. If an autocratic hairstyle hangs down, then a theocratic hairstyle sticks up. Because they are alike absolutist, both hairstyles will be without a parting.

18. Not so the democratic hairstyles in between these two extremes, by which I mean the medium-length hairstyles that, in the liberal case, favour a parting in the centre of the head and, in the radical case, favour a peripheral parting. The traditional liberal hairstyle naturally favours a relativity, consonant with dualistic criteria, but does so in a way bespeaking a balance between the feminine and the masculine, which is to say, between each side of a central parting. By contrast, the radical hairstyle, whilst affirming a relativity, does so on terms which assert the superiority of the masculine side of the parting so that, instead of a feminine/masculine balance, one finds a masculine bias, and this in response to radical and/or homosexual criteria. So we may affirm an evolution of hairstyles that passes from autocratic beginnings to theocratic endings via a democratic compromise, in which medium-length parted hair is the norm.

19. Where the democratic compromise stage is concerned, a distinction will, of course, exist between feminine and masculine hairstyles, whether in terms of a continuing autocratic bias in the former or of its democratic modification in relation to the latter, as described above. A woman's hair will generally be longer than a man's in a liberal society, whereas a society stressing sexual equality, and thus invoking a masculine bias compatible with homosexual criteria, will encourage women to wear their hair shorter, perhaps as short, or medium-length, as a man's, with the attendant concession of a more or less peripheral parting.

20. A more comprehensive outline of the evolution of hairstyles should bear in mind that the progression from one absolute to another takes place by degrees, so that a peripheral parting which favours the feminine will precede a central parting, just as a peripheral parting favouring the masculine will succeed it. Thus one could speak of a grand-bourgeois/petty-bourgeois antithesis (either side of a bourgeois relativity) in which the peripheral parting will be on opposite sides of the head. Thus whereas the grand-bourgeois parting favoured the right-hand side of the head, corresponding to the old brain/subconscious mind, the contemporary petty-bourgeois parting favours its left-hand side, the side proximate to the new brain/superconscious mind. The first parting attests to a feminine imbalance, the second to a masculine one. In between, the central parting through which, in accordance with bourgeois relativity, the two sides of the head are in approximate balance, as between state and church, lesbianism and homosexuality. However, such a balance no longer holds sway to any appreciable extent; for most people - women included - are partial to the left-hand side peripheral parting, and thus to a bias towards the Church or, at any rate, towards theocracy, while remaining, in their relativity, essentially democratic. Only in a radically theocratic society would an absolutist hairstyle be systematically encouraged and, as already remarked, it would be short and vertical, constituting an exclusive masculinity, a proletarian antithesis to absolutist femininity in the unparted long hair of the autocratic aristocrats of pagan antiquity.