CYCLE 95

1. FULL RANGE OF SALUTING. Although saluting is mainly political, I take the view that science, economics, and religion are also susceptible to modes of saluting which, in some way, reflect their respective natures. In fact, it should be possible to logically establish, over and above the aforementioned eightfold distinctions, a mode of saluting for each subdivision of any given spectrum, be it alpha or omega, phenomenal or noumenal, negative or positive. Thus we should have thirty-two different salutes, four to each ideological spectrum, with due consideration given to the distinction between the elemental extremes and the molecular intermediaries, as well as to the particle/wavicle dichotomy between, for example, science and religion in relation to the elemental, and politics and economics in relation to the molecular.

2. ELEMENTAL AND MOLECULAR MODES OF SALUTING. How, you may wonder, does one go about distinguishing the elemental from the molecular with regard to saluting? Simply, I maintain, by distinguishing between a hand and/or fist held at right-angles to the self and the same held parallel with the self. In other words, between that which, held at right-angles to the self, is more extreme than that which, extended or clenched parallel to the self, is comparatively middle-ground, and hence molecular.

3. CONSERVATIVE AND RADICAL SALUTING. However, much as we can distinguish the elemental from the molecular, or vice versa, on the above basis, we cannot know whether with regard to politics and science on the one hand, or to economics and religion on the other ... unless we make a further distinction concerning this very point. For it seems to me that while most saluting is indeed political, it is such precisely because it makes use of the right hand and/or fist in what is for a majority of people the most natural and forceful manner. In other words, saluting with the right hand and/or fist is an expression of political power, the power to crush, if necessary, those who stand in the way of one's particular allegiance, and we may believe that if the parallel placement of the right hand and/or fist to the self in whatever context is political, then its placement at right angles to the self ... is scientific, both of which are comparatively conservative vis-à-vis their economic and religious alternatives, and this irrespective of the ideological standing of the overall context.

4. LEFT-HANDED SALUTING. Now if politics and science are signified by the use, one way or another, of the right hand and/or fist, then it should logically follow that the use of the left hand and/or fist will signify adherence to economics and religion, depending whether the salute is molecular or elemental, which is to say, parallel to the self or at right angles with it. For the left hand and/or fist would seem to be the most appropriate choice for that which, like economics and religion, is radical, since it goes against the natural grain in a way and to an extent that is the opposite of conservative. One cannot be more radical, whether absolutely or relatively, than to be into the left hand and/or fist with regard to economics and religion.