CYCLE THIRTY-SIX
1. Civilization can both devolve from and revert
to barbarism, just as culture can evolve from and revert to nature.
2. It would be no less difficult to imagine
civilization without some form of barbarism than ... culture without some form
of nature.
3. Barbarism is more absolutist than civilization,
just as culture is more absolutist than nature.
4. The Devil is no less a symbol for barbarism
... than God a symbol for culture, man a symbol for civilization, and woman a
symbol for nature.
5. The extreme right-wing status of hellish
barbarism contrasts, on an absolute basis, with the extreme left-wing status of
heavenly culture, while the right-wing status of purgatorial civilization
contrasts, on a relative basis, with the left-wing status of mundane nature.
6. The religious
barbarism of fundamentalism is affiliated to the scientific barbarism of
naturalism, as are the economic barbarism of communism and the political
barbarism of authoritarianism.
7. The scientific
culture of idealism is affiliated to the religious culture of transcendentalism,
as are the economic culture of corporatism and the political culture of
totalitarianism.
8. The political
civilization of parliamentarianism is affiliated to the economic civilization of
capitalism, as are the scientific civilization of materialism and the religious
civilization of nonconformism.
9. The economic nature
of socialism is affiliated to the political nature of republicanism, as are the
scientific nature of realism and the religious nature of humanism.
10. To contrast the extreme right-wing status of noumenal objectivity, which is of the Devil, with the
extreme left-wing status of noumenal subjectivity,
which is of God - the former barbarous and the latter cultural.
11. Likewise to contrast the right-wing status of
phenomenal objectivity, which is of man, with the left-wing status of
phenomenal subjectivity, which is of woman - the former civilized and the
latter natural.
12. Barbarism makes war not on civilization but on
culture, its noumenal antithesis, while civilization
makes war not on barbarism but on nature, its phenomenal antithesis.
13. The objective alone makes war on the
subjective, whether in terms of noumenal absolutism
or of phenomenal relativity.
14. Objectivity is the lion that must 'lie down'
with the lamb (of subjectivity), and thus become a lamb itself, if there is to
be any peace, whether mundane (and phenomenal) or divine (and noumenal).
15. So long as barbarism
exists, there can be no peace for culture; so long as civilization exists,
there can be no peace for nature.
16. Nature can only be saved to culture
(relatively speaking) when it is no longer being made war upon by civilization.
17. Barbarism can only be
vanquished when the great majority of people want culture, and thus God.
18. Nature will only be free from being made war
upon by civilization when civilization accepts nature and effectively becomes
one with it or, spurning that, is eclipsed by barbarism, and thus negated.
19. Just as there are pockets of communal culture
within a barbarous society, so there will be pockets of concentrated barbarism
within a cultural one.
20. Just as there are pockets of recreational
nature within a civilized society, so there will be pockets of residential civilization
within a natural one.
