CYCLE TEN

    

1.   When we distinguish between natural freedom and psychic freedom, the one as a female ideal in sensuality and the other as a male ideal in sensibility, we are in effect distinguishing between the freedom to be one's not-self and the freedom, by contrast, to be one's self - the former in relation, primarily, to doing and giving, those metachemical and chemical realities par excellence, and the latter in relation to taking and being, those physical and metaphysical realities par excellence, so that, on the one hand, the power and glory of will and spirit and, on the other hand, the form and content(ment) of ego and soul are the principal issues at stake.

 

2.   Therefore we are distinguishing between an objective/subjective dichotomy in which either Nature triumphs over Psyche or, in the subjective case, Psyche triumphs over Nature, and instead of the emphasis being on beauty and/or strength, as with Nature, it is placed, by contrast, on knowledge and/or truth, and civilized and cultural forms of sensibility accordingly emerge in response to a male hegemony in either or both contexts.

 

3.   Of course, one can officially uphold civilized knowledge, as the West has traditionally done, and still find oneself unofficially if not, in relation to the Old Testament, officially subscribing to or having to compromise with either or both the cultural and civilized forms of beauty and strength, since gender cuts both ways and an unequivocal endorsement of the one at the total expense of the other would be difficult if not impossible to imagine, particularly in view of the fact that life remains torn, to varying extents, not only between female and male interests, but also between Nature and Civilization, with rural and urban distinctions accordingly co-existing, neither of which are invariably pure.

 

4.   Therefore both the freedom to be one's not-self and the freedom to be one's self, or true to one's self, continue to compete with one another in the general round of life, irrespective of individual predilections or social pressures, and, quite apart from gender factors, each individual is torn, in varying degrees, between the two options, between the natural freedom of loyalty to one's not-self in sensuality and the psychic freedom of loyalty to one's self in sensibility, even though, in practice, females tend more readily to identify with the former and males with the latter, given the immutability - exceptions to the rule notwithstanding - of gender.

 

5.   For life is a frictional compromise between females and males, and neither gender can expect to have things entirely all its own way, even when and if things would suggest that, at a given point in time for a particular type of society, Nature has the better of Psyche or Psyche, by contrast, the better of Nature.

 

6.   In view of the primary status of the metachemical and chemical Elements compared to the secondary status, in subjectivity, of the physical and metaphysical Elements, it could be said that it is more natural for Nature to have the better of Psyche, and for females to accordingly dominate males in contexts largely governed by sensuality. 

 

7.   But even with the fact that, in elemental terms, males are arguably secondary to females, it nevertheless has to be admitted that with the development of Civilization to a point where it not only rivals Nature but effectively begins to outstrip Her, as in fact much urban reality does, such a contention can by no means be taken for granted, since the enhancement of sensibility that follows from the greater interiorization of life through urbanization means that Psyche can regularly have the better of Nature, and not merely on phenomenal and relative terms, as happened in the Christian and largely suburban (town) past, but also - and more importantly - on noumenal and absolute terms, as applicable to the growth of towns into cities and of cities to a point where the official and institutional endorsement of cultural truth as the religious parallel to a sensible environmental absolutism becomes not merely probable but virtually inevitable, in view of the vast environmental disparity obtaining vis-à-vis the types of rural environments which, in the past, were more conducive to the acceptance of cultural beauty, and thus to a variety of religions built around a concept of God owing more to Creation than to recreation or even ultimate being, and never more so than in relation to a sort of rural absolutism the environmental antithesis to the sorts of urban absolutism the modern world is increasingly advancing towards and, in some cases, already extensively and intensively committed to, complements of commercial and residential centro-complexification.

 

8.   Obviously one cannot condone a situation which, rooted in Old Testament Creatorism and/or Creationism, and in the delusory paradox, moreover, of a First Mover as God, effectively continues to officially prevail as an important - if not, for some people, the most important - manifestation of religion quite as though the city, and the modern city most especially, did not exist and/or was adequately catered for by that degree and type of religious sensibility owing more, in contrast to the sensual primitivity of the above, to towns and suburban environments than to what has since superseded them as the contexts in which the majority, even the great majority, of people now live and work. 

 

9.   Even if a lot - perhaps a majority - of city people are effectively atheist with regard to a Creator God having metachemical associations with a cosmic and/or universal First Mover, as indeed they have every right to be in view of the environmental contexts in which they exist, we cannot pretend that such atheism is an end-in-itself and leave the matter there, as though religion were a closed issue or of no relevance to urban people.  It is and should be relevant, but on vastly different terms from how it was conceived in the past, at a time when cities, as we understand them, scarcely existed, and people were much more the playthings of Nature, even to the extent of natural freedom and psychic determinism prevailing to a near absolutist extent, as must have been the case for such primitive and frankly dark and evil concepts of God to have arisen in the first place.

 

10.  A Creator Who was genuinely godly or divine, and thus metaphysical, would be responsible for no more than either the ears in sensuality or the lungs in sensibility, but even then one is alluding to two quite separate Creators, one appertaining to a metaphysical aspect of sensual cosmos, like the Sun, and the other to its sensible counterpart, like the planet Saturn, neither of which would have any bearing, as cosmic prototypes or blueprints for a more universal or organic reality, on the eyes or the heart, which owe rather more, I contend, to metachemical blueprints or prototypes of the sort that more readily connote, in their stellar and/or Venusian parallels, with cosmic First Movers in sensuality and sensibility respectively, and thus with what this writer/thinker most emphatically regards as diabolic entities, whether or not such entities are hyped as godly, as indeed would seem to have been the case.

 

11.  Even the notion that Man is fashioned in the image of God makes little sense when one understands that our compositeness as human beings owes as much to diabolic, feminine, and masculine factors, or cosmic preconditions of such, as ever it does to divine ones, and that when the totality of factors have been taken into account one still has to allow for a distinction between sensuality and sensibility, since, as I pointed out earlier, sensibility comes to pass at the expense of sensuality and one can no more expect sensuality to hand sensibility to one on a plate than conceive of only one order of Creator being responsible for both sensual and sensible metaphysical attributes, even without the totality of those elemental alternatives that owe nothing whatsoever to a divine progenitor!

 

12.  Frankly, primitive religion, religious fundamentalism and/or materialism (certainly in relation to the inorganic primacy of cosmic negativity) is the height of absurdity and childishness, and the sooner we admit that we have grown up sufficiently far, in our city-conditioned sensible alternatives to a simply rural sensuality, not to wish to be dominated by or beholden to such absurdities and falsehoods, the sooner will the greater proportion of humanity be delivered from the natural-freedom-over-psychic-determinism of cultural beauty to the psychic-freedom-over-natural-determinism of cultural truth, and know and experience that joy which happens when the light of enlightenment comes flooding-in, to deliver both the ego and the soul from the crippling delusions of a Nature-bound past.

 

13.  Let there be more light, but let it be the light of cultural truth shining down from above on a humanity truly liberated from the darkness of ignorance and superstition as they walk towards the sensible pluralism of 'Kingdom Come', as outlined in this and previous texts, and opt, through religious sovereignty, for deliverance from the criminality of those natural freedoms that, in the mentally-cramping punishments of their psychic determinisms, would otherwise continue to preclude the utmost psychic freedom - and moral liberation - from ever coming to pass, to the detriment of all that is ultimately wise and holy, whether in sin or, more importantly, grace. 

       

                             

LONDON 2001 (Revised 2012)

 

Preview FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM eBook