Relative
Perversion
CARMEL: You give one
the impression, Graham, that you don't much care for women, that
women somehow annoy you.
GRAHAM: Well, to be
perfectly honest with you, I have long recognized in women a vicious streak and
predisposition to sensual indulgence that, as a spiritual man, I tend to despise. I don't greatly admire beauty these days, and
find the attention or, rather, importance which women ascribe to appearances
somewhat contemptible. For instance,
they are more disposed than men to taking umbrage at some defect in one's
clothes or footwear when one passes them on the street. I agree with Schopenhauer that they value
appearances too highly, partly, I suspect, because their understanding of
spiritual values is so little developed in comparison with the more
sophisticated men. You, I concede, are
an exception to the general rule. For
not many women are as liberated, liberated, above all, from themselves!
CARMEL: What it really
comes down to, with you, is that the only women you really like or admire are
the liberated ones, the feminists, whom you have at various times called
traitors to their sex.
GRAHAM: Yes, I
agree! I prefer women who, in their
capacity as quasi-Supermen, are working against women ... to those who are all
for upholding traditional values and behaving - dare I say it? - all too poignantly like women! My impression is that the sooner the sexual
dichotomy in life is overcome, the better life on this planet will be. For such a dichotomy is by no means an ideal
thing, contrary to bourgeois prejudices and superficial appearances to the
contrary! No more ideal, in fact, than
the so-called balance between freedom and social justice that certain
ideologues are fond of citing to justify the opposition between Tory capitalism
and Liberal socialism. Such deluded
souls imagine that this opposition signifies the best of all political worlds.
GRAHAM:
Admittedly. But not for ever, contrary
to what they would have us believe! And the same of course applies to the
opposition or, rather, dichotomy between the sexes, which, frankly, is a
wretched thing and source of centuries-old misery, not the least aspect of
which may involve unrequited love! No, I
do not admire women. I look forward to
the day when they will be overcome and only quasi-Supermen exist, in harmonious
conjunction with Supermen-proper in a context of post-atomic sexuality. Such a day isn't all that far off; for even
in the bourgeois/proletarian West there exists a
growing tendency towards post-atomic criteria in sexual, not to mention, social
matters. You would object to being
discriminated against as a woman, and, willy-nilly, for the very sound
reason that, to all intents and purposes, you are now a quasi-Superman.
CARMEL: Yet not, on
that account, the complete equal of a genuine Superman, I presume?
GRAHAM: Objectively
considered, no! Though it would of
course depend on the Superman in question and the context to which one was
referring. It is possible for me to
consider a highly intelligent woman like yourself superior to any number of
comparatively stupid men. That is a
relative distinction, I'll admit, but not one I find obnoxious.
GRAHAM: No. But, then, absolute distinctions between men
and women, no matter how anachronistic these days, cannot permit of any
equality, which is one of the reasons why I prefer to ignore them. It suffices me that you are a lesser equal
rather than a different and, hence, quite unequal creature. For long centuries women were regarded as
inferior to men, not as social equals.
Yet the marital tradition presupposes the enslavement of a
bound-electron equivalent, viz. a husband, to a proton equivalent, viz. a wife,
who sustains an atomic integrity in which she figures as the husband's
so-called 'better half'.
CARMEL: In theory, yes.
Though in practice it is usually the husband who dictates matters - at
any rate, since the days when marriage became patriarchal in character. You, however, prefer to regard me as a
'lesser whole', since there is no marital bond between us.
GRAHAM: Indeed! And that is the way of things on the post-atomic
level. Our relationship is in effect
quasi-homosexual, since a liberated woman and a married woman are, to all
intents and purposes, two quite different creatures - the difference being
between a quasi-electron equivalent and a proton equivalent. Well, as you know, I don't mind the former,
but I despise the latter! I shall never
allow myself to get maritally involved with a woman
and thereby run the risk of becoming her bread-winning slave in an atomic
relationship. I intend to remain free, and
to share my freedom with a lesser equal - namely you.
GRAHAM: And so it will become again, if ever you get any ideas of
marriage into your devious head!
CARMEL: As a liberated female, I could hardly do that! Marriage and children are equally
objectionable to me.
GRAHAM: Well, they
can't be so for everyone, least of all where children are concerned, else the
human race would quickly die out.
Children aren't necessarily incompatible with free sexual relationships,
though they may tie the woman down a bit.
Sooner or later some artificial and communal way of producing and
raising children will have to be introduced, in order to rid liberated females
of the responsibility. There is no
eternal justification for producing and raising children on a family basis. Neither, for that matter, is there any
eternal justification for people remaining together throughout their
lives. If we are truly liberated, we
should be able to change partners fairly frequently, since there will be no
strong emotional ties binding us together, like prisoners of each other's
souls. Some men are so liberated that
they don't even bother to form temporary relationships with women in the flesh,
but rely on artificial or pornographic stimuli alone. As you know, I was once similarly disposed
and thus, in a sense, freer than now.
GRAHAM: Perversion is a
relative term, a value-judgement reflecting an individual's point of view as he
stands in relation to nature. What
less-evolved people regard as perverse, someone like me sees as a more
civilized type of sexual behaviour, a mode of sexual sublimation in which sex
is elevated from the body to the mind, from the concrete realm of the flesh to
the abstract realm of voyeuristic contemplation, as in various kinds of
pornography. James Joyce once said that
madness, or what is sometimes taken for such by less-evolved people, can in
fact turn out to be a higher form of sanity.
Certainly there are contexts in which this is true, as when a man is given
to sexual sublimation because, in response to a combination of factors,
environmental as well as personal, he becomes too spiritual to be content with
merely natural or palpable modes of sex.
Perhaps, in certain cases, schizophrenia is a higher form of sanity, as
when the intelligence draws away from the senses in anticipation of and
response to an evolutionary drive tending towards the complete severance of
intellect from sensuality at some future point in time, namely the Superbeing Millennium, when the new-brain collectivizations of the truly classless, stateless, free
society of Superbeings ... will be hypermeditating towards transcendence and, hence, the
attainment of pure spirit to the heavenly Beyond in the most absolute context
conceivable? The split between
sensuality, i.e. emotions, and intelligence, i.e. awareness, which we witnessed
in the twentieth century ... seems to me but a crude foreshadowing, a
rudimentary intimation, of that ultimate split between the old brain and the
new brain which evolutionary progress will require on the threshold of the Superbeing Millennium - the second stage of post-human
development.
GRAHAM: Precisely! But radical and long-sighted as that
perspective may be, it should at least suffice, in the short term, to underline
or expose the crass short-sightedness and conservatism of people who now
imagine that pornographic indulgence is a kind of sexual aberration not to be
countenanced by right-living individuals!
To my mind, however, the use of pornography reflects this emerging
cleavage between intellect and sensuality by transferring sexual stimuli from
the senses to the intellect, and thereby endorsing the sovereignty, from an
evolutionary viewpoint, of the spirit over the flesh. It is clearly a manifestation of evolutionary
progress in terms of sex.
CARMEL: Which is why, I
take it, that you cling to pornographic erotica in spite of occasional - dare I
say it? - relapses into concrete sexuality, compliments of
myself.
GRAHAM: To be
sure. Though you will have to admit that
such 'relapses', as you tactfully put it, aren't always conventional but
reflect a more liberated approach to sex which, as I see the problem, in some
measure redeems them. Of course, a
person who based his morality solely on naturalistic criteria, as all too many
persons still do, would accuse me of perversion. But, really, how can human beings evolve
towards spiritual transcendence without having perverted or, more correctly,
subverted their natural instincts along the way? Is not the overcoming of nature an integral
part of our evolution towards the supernatural - the negative and indirect
side, as it were, of our evolutionary strivings? You smile, but you know I am right, and that
is why, in spite of occasional misgivings, you are fundamentally a liberated
female, a quasi-Superman rather than a slave to nature, like a woman.
GRAHAM: Such
compliments as you pay me are but the reverse side of the compliments I pay you
when circumstances compel me to verify your claim to the status of a liberated
female, as they do from time to time.