ALE AND STOUT

Anyone familiar with my philosophy will know that I distinguish the southwest from the southeast points of the intercardinal axial compass on the basis of an equivocal female hegemony in chemistry over an ‘upended’ male position of antiphysics-cum-pseudo-physics (which from now on, for simplicity’s sake, we shall simply refer to as pseudo-physics) from an equivocal male hegemony in physics over an ‘upended’ female position of antichemistry-cum-pseudo-chemistry (which shall likewise be simplified to pseudo-chemistry), thus in effect distinguishing water over pseudo-earth (or pseudo-vegetation) from earth (or vegetation) over pseudo-water or, in vulgar parlance, ‘piss’ over pseudo-‘shit’ from ‘shit’ over pseudo-‘piss’, the former pairing akin, in sartorial terms, to a flounced skirt over flared pants and the latter akin to tapering pants over a straight skirt, as though in a distinction, generally speaking, between sensuality and sensibility or, more correctly, sensuality and pseudo-sensibility on the one hand, and sensibility and pseudo-sensuality on the other, the centrifugal and the centripetal, a context governed by objectivity in female vein and one governed, in male vein, by subjectivity.

So what does all this have to do with ale and stout beers? Let me answer that query in the following way. Taking our gender and sartorial parallels from the above, we should be able to argue, with some justification and overlooking for the moment populist notions that would tend to intuitively confirm this, that bottles parallel skirts and, by contrast, cans parallel pants (or jeans), since bottles tend to be transparent (and water-affirming) whereas cans are somewhat opaque (and earthy), a distinction, after all, between female and male criteria.

Therefore we should be able to distinguish bottles over cans on the one hand, that of the southwest point of the intercardinal axial compass, from cans over bottles on the other hand, that of the southeast point of the said compass, as though in a distinction, once again, between flounced skirts and flared pants vis-à-vis tapering pants and straight skirts, leaving anything else to the likelihood of a kind of liberal or androgynous indeterminacy somewhere in between the phenomenal antitheses.

But what is it, you may wonder, that leads one to infer a flared or a tapering parallel, say, to the respective types of bottles and cans? Not necessarily the shape of the bottle or can, or even of the top or widget. What seems to satisfy this requirement is less the medium in which beer is stored than the nature of the beer itself, i.e. whether it lends itself to a watery (‘piss’) or to an earthy (‘shit’) correlation, which, so far as I am concerned, is precisely the distinction between light ale and/or lager and stout and/or brown ale, to simplify the options.

In other words, chemistry over pseudo-physics = bottled light ale over canned lager, whereas physics over pseudo-chemistry = canned stout over bottled light ale, the former pairing exemplifying the overall influence of female criteria and the latter ... that of males, as, I would argue, would the axial distinction between lager and stout.

Therefore a female-dominated distinction between, for instance, bottled light ale and canned lager has to be distinguished from a male-dominated distinction between canned stout and bottled brown ale, the former pairing susceptible to identification with flared phenomenal (relative as opposed, like say dresses, to absolute) clothing and the latter to what tapers as though from the hegemony not of water (‘piss’) but of earthiness (‘shit’).

Now what is particularly interesting about this finding, if I may so put it, is that traditionally the southwest point of the intercardinal axial compass, in which volume is volumetrically hegemonic over the massedness, so to speak, of pseudo-mass, would be identifiable, in overall axial terms, with church-hegemonic (catholic) criteria, whereas the southeast point of the said compass, in which mass is massively hegemonic over the voluminousness, so to speak, pseudo-volume, would be identifiable, in overall axial terms, with state-hegemonic (puritan or protestant) criteria, which is also, as far as these lower-order points of the axes in question are concerned, to make a distinction between Gaelic football and Association football, since the traditional noumenal, or upper-order, poles to these points tend to encompass hurling in the catholic case and rugby in the protestant one, where the religious correlations would be rather more Roman Catholic with, certainly in Eire, an Old English rather than mass Gaelic connotation and, in England and Britain generally, Anglican rather than Puritan.

Be that as it may, the British Isles has long been a rather paradoxical place, where people tend to be at cross-purposes with themselves in so many contexts, not least in terms of beer-drinking habits, which has seen people of Irish Catholic descent traditionally favouring stout (the beer, we have argued, of the parliamentary/puritan southeast point of the intercardinal axial compass) and people of English Protestant, if not puritan, descent favouring ale, not least in its light ale or lager-like manifestation, which, as I have argued, is relative to the catholic southwest point of the said compass and not at all to anything dominated, in physical fashion, by male criteria.

So not only is it paradoxical but extremely ironic that so many Catholic Irish should identify their beer-drinking habits with an English-derived beer, originating it has been said in London’s Covent Garden, while many of their English and even British counterparts favour light ale or lager, as if it connoted with something puritan and male!

I think I have shown, with correlations based in a degree of logic, that this is simply not the case, and I could also add to the misery of these 'where ignorance is bliss' people by pointing out that, in overall elemental terms, rock 'n' roll connotes with the catholic, or lapsed catholic, southwest point of the intercardinal axial compass while classical, not least in a strings-oriented symphonic mode, connotes with the protestant if not puritan southeast, and therefore with all that is axially contrary, on phenomenal (lower order) terms to female hegemonic criteria.

Put simply, the southwest is about spirit and pseudo-ego, while the southeast is about ego and pseudo-spirit. This is precisely the distinction between chemistry and pseudo-physics on the one hand, and physics and pseudo-chemistry on the other, our flounced skirt and flared pants pairing vis-à-vis their sensible counterparts in tapering pants and straight skirts. So light ale is the beer of ‘piss’-drenched singing rock 'n' rollers and stout, by axial contrast, the beer of ‘shit’-tight scroll-reading orchestral bow-scrapers.

Perhaps we should leave a more detailed examination of the distinctions between light ale and lager on the one hand and stout and brown ale on the other to another time, before things become too complicated!