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SOCIAL TRANSCENDENTALISM -
Means to an End
Multigenre Philosophy
Copyright © 2011 John O'Loughlin
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CONTENTS
PART ONE: ESSAYS
1. A Feudal Prototype
2. Sexual Evolution
3. A Zigzagging Progression
4. From the Barbarous to the Civilized
5. Towards an Absolutely Free-Electron Literature
6. Towards an Absolute Architecture
7. Evolutionary Spectra
8. New Beginnings/Old Endings
9. The Rise of Theocratic Centrism
PART TWO: DIALOGUES
10. Literary Distinctions
11. From Old Brain to Superconscious
12. Developments in the Arts
13. Correlations in Sex and Art
14. Religious Integrities
PART THREE: APHORISMS
15. On Evolution
16. On Civilized Evolution
PART FOUR: MAXIMS/NOTES
17. On Ideological Spectra ...
18. On Antithetical Equivalents ...
19. On Art ...
20. On Sex ...
21. On
22. On Clothes ...
23. On Church and State ...
24. On the Supra-natural ...
25. On Romanticism and Classicism ...
26. On Revolutionary Change ...
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PART ONE: ESSAYS
A FEUDAL PROTOTYPE
It is difficult to see how trees could possibly be popular with Social Transcendentalists, as we may call people with a socially transcendent view of life. For a tree mirrors, on earth, the galactic-world-order of governing star, minor stars, and planets, which is to say, the tyranny of both major and minor stars over planets. With a tree, the trunk is equivalent to the governing star of the Galaxy, the branches are equivalent to the peripheral stars there, and the leaves equivalent to the planets. The leaves serve both the branches and trunk of a tree by drawing moisture, sunlight, etc., into themselves, which is then transferred to the tree-proper. We need not doubt that this procedure mirrors the galactic arrangement further down the ladder of evolution, whereby the planets serve the stars by keeping them in some kind of galactic order and thereby enable individual stars to rule over particular solar systems to their own lasting advantage (given that a fixed star is better off than a shooting one, if for no other reason than it isn't likely to collide with other stars and has a recognizable status in its powerful fixity).
So much for the galactic and natural levels of evolution! Let us now apply this arrangement to human affairs, where it will be found that the pattern of a tree is imitated whenever human society stems from natural dominion, whether absolutely, as in a pagan age, or relatively, as in a Christian one, when a transcendental dimension necessarily dilutes the commitment of that society to naturalistic criteria. In the first instance, we find an absolute monarchy presiding over a feudal system. In the second instance, a constitutional monarchy presiding over a capitalist system. The monarch is equivalent, in a feudal society, to the trunk of a tree, the nobility are equivalent to its branches, and the peasantry equivalent to its leaves. Now in this natural arrangement the latter serve the former, either directly vis-à-vis the nobility or indirectly vis-à-vis the monarch. With the extension of feudalism into a capitalist phase of evolution this arrangement to some extent still applies, except that where formerly the nobles and monarch were the sole rulers being served by the peasantry, the rise of the bourgeoisie ensures that they, too, are served in some measure by ... if not the peasantry then their urban equivalents - the industrial proletariat.
Thus, when all this is taken into account, it is difficult to see how a tree (a plant which served as a blueprint, as it were, for feudal and capitalist societies) could possibly be popular with Socialists, never mind Social Transcendentalists, since they relate to an artificial arrangement of society in which the exploitation of man by man, or peasants by nobles, no longer applies, and the proletariat, that antithetical equivalent of the peasantry, are served by a bureaucracy who, antithetically equivalent to the nobility, take their directives from the reigning president, the antithetical equivalent of the feudal monarch.
Although, contrary to popular notions, a socialist society is not classless (no more than was the feudal society which preceded the compromise epoch of bourgeois capitalism), it is nevertheless one in which the bulk of humanity are served rather than exploited, and cannot bear any resemblance, in consequence, to that society stemming from the naturalistic pattern of the tyranny of trunk and branches over leaves, which we equate with feudalism. The distinction between strong and weak, as between a tree and its leaves or a nobility and its peasants, does not apply to a socialist society, where, by contrast, the only distinction is between a more ideologically-motivated bureaucracy and a less ideologically-motivated proletariat, a fact which calls forth not tyranny but the service of the latter by the former.
Clearly a day will come when trees, no less than monarchs and nobles, are banished from a society tending towards the omega supernatural from an artificial base. We see this process in action wherever the city has come to supplant nature, and it can only become more absolute with the passing of time. Doubtless oxygen will be produced artificially to a much greater extent in the future than at present, thereby enabling man to dispense with trees and spend more time indoors, to the lasting advantage of his spiritual life. An omega-oriented absolute society can only be interiorized, not partial to a dualistic oscillation between internal and external environments, like a relative society. And a socialist society, properly considered, should be anything but relative!
There are, however, two types of what may be called post-atomic societies, and we can define them as relative and absolute respectively. A relatively post-atomic society, such as exists in the United States, will tolerate trees in public places, whereas an absolutely post-atomic society that was also civilized would find trees objectionable, if on none other than ideological grounds, and accordingly seek to curtail their numbers and distribution as much as possible.
By contrast, a pre-atomic society would be more likely to worship or fear trees, as in fact used to be the case wherever pagan criteria prevailed, and this same tendency would have been refined upon, to a point of respect, with the ensuing development of atomic society, where trees were cultivated as much for their perceived natural beauty as for the various utilitarian uses to which they could be put - industrial, social, environmental, or whatever. Such respect, while still applying wherever atomic criteria survives, would become transmuted, with the development of post-atomic society, into tolerance, a tolerance probably attaching far more importance to utilitarian than to aesthetic considerations, though falling short of outright antipathy, such as can only be expected from an absolutely post-atomic society moving towards, if not already in, a Social Transcendentalist and, hence, fully civilized status.
SEXUAL EVOLUTION
Before men and women acquired a distinct social status with the development of atomic civilization - the sexes balancing each other in a relationship sanctified and legalized by marriage - they were submerged in a kind of pre-sexist society which, in effect, rendered them Superwomen and quasi-Superwomen respectively - a pagan society that culminated in the city states of the ancient Greeks and Romans, to name but two representative pagan peoples. In this society the sartorial norm for Superwomen was a long, ankle-length dress or robe, while their inferior counterparts, the quasi-Superwomen, were obliged to wear a short or, more correctly, less lengthy dress or robe, such as accorded with their inferior social status.
The development of Christianity in the West changed all that, though only very gradually, in line with the progress of civilization away from nature towards more artificial attainments, so that, by the seventeenth century, a sexist distinction between women on the one hand, and men on the other ... had emerged to replace the old 'lesbian' pre-atomic unisexual society with one partial to properly heterosexual atomic distinctions. Gradually women came to wear shorter skirts/dresses, and men ... to dress exclusively in trousers, not in stockings partly covered by a skirt-like tunic such as had prevailed throughout the Middle Ages when, though nominally distinct from women, they continued to think and behave more like quasi-Superwomen vis-à-vis Superwomen or, in relatively more evolved terms, as submen vis-à-vis pseudo-Superwomen.
With the twentieth century, however, a trend the converse of the pre-atomic began to develop, in which women increasingly came to dress in still shorter skirts/dresses, indicative of a more modest vaginal status, and even to abandon them altogether for trousers of one description or another, though never or rarely completely so. We may equate this bourgeois/proletarian age with a transition between the atomic and the post-atomic, Christian and transcendental criteria, in which liberated females (subwomen) and free males (pseudo-supermen) tend to be its chief representatives, particularly in the
However, if the twentieth century signified a transition to a post-atomic transcendental age, we need not doubt that the twenty-first century will witness the beginnings of an actual post-atomic civilization, absolute as opposed to relative, and dedicated, in consequence, to transcending all sexist dichotomies. Instead of subwomen and pseudo-Supermen, or liberated females and free males, this transcendental civilization will encourage the emergence of a relative distinction between quasi-Supermen and Supermen, as between what, in earlier works, I have alternatively described as female and male Supermen - the reformed proletarian females and the bona fide proletarian males respectively, each category newly civilized.
Thus, whereas in bourgeois civilization an absolute distinction existed between men and women, in the coming civilization both alike will have been 'overcome' (to use a Nietzschean expression), their evolutionary successors being unisexually superhuman because appertaining to a post-atomic stage of civilization, a stage leading to the ultimate overcoming of human beings in the first phase of the post-Human Millennium, when relatively superhuman Transcendentalists will have been superseded by the absolute Supermen who, as brain collectivizations artificially supported and sustained, will be partial to a contemplation, via synthetic hallucinogens like LSD, of the artificially-induced visions of their new brains - given, in other words, to a kind of quasi-Supernaturalism preceding the ultimate Supernaturalism of the hypermeditating Superbeings who, as new-brain collectivizations, will constitute the ultimate life form on earth ... prior to the elevation of evolving life to total salvation in the post-Millennial Beyond, with the attainment to transcendence, and consequent escape of electrons from the remaining atomicity of individual new-brain collectivizations.
Returning to history, we have, then, the suggestion of two sexual extremes either side of a heterosexual balance - the first, or 'lesbian', extreme signifying a pagan stage of human evolution, when men had not really acquired a separate social identity from women but were equivalent to quasi-Superwomen and/or submen; the second, or 'homosexual', extreme signifying a transcendental stage of human evolution, when women have ceased to retain a separate social identity from men and become quasi-Supermen in a post-sexist society. In between, as already noted, a social balance, submen having in the meantime become men, to drag Superwomen or, rather, pseudo-Superwomen down to an atomic level, as women, beside themselves.
If any of this is true - and there seems to be no reason to assume the contrary - how, one may well wonder, is one to explain 'homosexual' behaviour among the ancients, for instance the Greeks and Romans, who apparently lived in a lesbian age? And how, by a similar token, does one explain the 'lesbian' activity which seems to have developed among women as never before in what appears to be a homosexual if not yet unisexual age? The situation in each case appears to involve a paradox, to constitute an inexplicable enigma, until we look a little closer into each age and come to realize that in pre-atomic civilization men weren't really men but either quasi-Superwomen or submen, and therefore more disposed than later generations of penis-wielders to regard one another in a quasi-feminine light.
Consequently, their seemingly homosexual behaviour acquires a lesbian character which sets it apart from contemporary homosexual behaviour among free men in an incipiently post-atomic society. One might describe it as quasi-lesbian, the converse of latter-day seemingly lesbian behaviour among females which, on account of the increasing masculinization of women and their gradual elevation towards a post-atomic status, we can describe as quasi-homosexual, involving either liberated females or their proletarian counterparts.
Whereas the character of quasi-lesbian activity among quasi-Superwomen in ancient civilization would have been reactive, in accordance with their 'feminine' status in an overwhelmingly proton age, the character of most contemporary quasi-homosexual activity between quasi-Supermen or their near equivalents in contemporary civilization will be attractive, in conformity with their 'masculine' status in an increasingly electron-biased age. Such a paradoxical situation would in each case parallel the genuine lesbian and homosexual behaviour appropriate to each civilization, as well, of course, as co-exist with a degree of heterosexual behaviour more suited, on the whole, to an atomic age than to either of the civilized extremes.
I do not wish to leave the reader with the impression that the future will be literally homosexual in the sense generally understood by that term, as implying sexual contact between only males. Such a concrete sexuality appertains solely to a bourgeois/proletarian stage of post-atomic civilization, is the materialistic alternative to pornographic indulgence, which accords, by contrast, with a spiritual predilection. It is the pseudo-electron side of a relatively post-atomic civilization, an objectively inferior form of sexual indulgence than the free-electron equivalent ... of pornography.
No, the transcendental civilization will not encourage concrete homosexual behaviour between Supermen, or its lesser equivalent in quasi-homosexuality ('lesbianism') ... as affecting quasi-Supermen, the reformed proletarian females. It will encourage, on the contrary, a more absolute type of pornography, a type that, utilizing computers, will be found to stem from the higher type of petty-bourgeois magazine pornography, as involving a focus on the sex organ of the participating models rather than, as with lower types of pornography, a more diffused perspective which inevitably emphasizes female beauty, that bête noir from any truth-oriented absolute standpoint. If such soft-core pornography may be equated with Post-Painterly Abstraction, that quintessentially American form of Abstract Impressionism, then the more vaginally exclusive hard-core pornography can be regarded as being on the evolutionary level of the highest type of light art, necessarily spiritualistic in design and content.
Thus, as spiritualistic light art is destined to be superseded in an absolute civilization by abstract holography, we should have no qualms in contending that relative hard-core pornography will likewise be superseded, in that same civilization, by absolute hard-core pornography, in accordance with the more transcendental criteria of a quintessentially unisexual stage of civilized evolution. In all probability quasi-Supermen would be more inclined to a male-based absolute pornography, their bona fide counterparts to the female variety. Either way, the pornography, or erotica, in question would be beyond both sublimated beauty-mongering, that sexual cynosure of soft-core pornography, and the sexist relativity of relative hard-core pornography. It would be the ultimate pornography, relevant to the final civilization in the historical evolution of man from femininely superhuman beginnings to masculinely superhuman endings via bourgeois humanism.
A ZIGZAGGING PROGRESSION
No less than politics, art has a way of evolving from a barbarous to a civilized phase within any given cultural tradition, whether contemporary American or European, and it does so within the compass of the creative integrity of any given class. Take the early petty-bourgeoisie, those stemming from a bourgeois stage of creative endeavour who yet rebelled against bourgeois precedent to create an anti-art, if by 'art' we mean bourgeois representational painting. They are divisible, as in any relative civilization, into materialistic and spiritualistic camps, those on the one side producing Expressionism, those on the other side ... Impressionism, the first fundamentally Austro-German, the second ... Franco-American. In both cases, one might describe the art produced as non-representational, either applying to a distortion or a mere impression of the representational, whether natural or artificial, though particularly the former. Non-representational art is not abstract; it is the negative, barbarous forerunner of the abstract.
Which brings us to the higher, or civilized, phase in the creative evolution of the early petty-bourgeoisie, with particular reference to Abstract Expressionism on the one hand and to Abstract Impressionism or (as it is more usually called in America) Post-Painterly Abstraction on the other hand, the one materialistic or, rather, pseudo-spiritualistic, the other spiritualistic. By now, both Austria and France have been left behind, their petty-bourgeois successors having blossomed into a civilized phase of creative evolution, America most especially so, thanks to its wealth, power, and geographical isolation from Nazi persecution. Certainly such art as we are now discussing can be described as abstract, since there is not even a negative connection with the representational but, rather, a positive intimation of higher abstract possibilities or trends - what one might term a pro-light art status, to distinguish it from the anti-art (bourgeois representational framed-painting) status of its 'barbarous' forerunner.
So much for the evolution of modern art in its mainstream petty-bourgeois manifestations, as applicable, in the main, to
Which brings us to the distinction between the barbarous and the civilized phases of light art, the former phase paralleling the civilized phase of avant-garde painting, the latter phase overhauling and surpassing it; the first phase symptomatic of a lower type of late petty-bourgeois art, the second phase symptomatic of a higher type - a positive as opposed to a negative type. And just as the non-representational painting of the anti-artists, whether materialistic or spiritualistic, was a revolt against civilized bourgeois painting, so we may contend that the sculptural light art of the anti-modernists (as we may alternatively call the lower type of late petty-bourgeoisie) was in large measure a revolt against civilized petty-bourgeois painting, an expression of the reaction of a new art form against formal precedent, one leading, in due course, to the development of civilized light art, as symptomatic of a higher type of late petty-bourgeois/early proletarian creativity, and suggestive, at least on the spiritualistic side, of a pro-holographic status, since intimating of a purer abstraction than abstract painting - one completely free of material surrounds. Such an art form as abstract light art can only point the way towards the ultimate art, which would be virtually formless.
No such formlessness can accrue, however, to petty-bourgeois art, not even in its highest phase, since petty-bourgeois criteria are forever relative. Just as with avant-garde painting, so with light art (both in its barbarous and civilized manifestations), a distinction exists between the materialistic and the spiritualistic, the abstract expressionist and the abstract impressionist, and we may believe that if the spiritualistic side intimates, in its highest manifestation, of abstract holographic possibilities ahead, then the materialistic side indirectly intimates of a representational holography consonant with its expressive bias, a holography that is indeed furthered within the confines of bourgeois/proletarian civilization, and which may be equated with the barbarous phase of a proletarian class integrity ... co-existing with civilized light art and indicating, in its revolt against that art form's abstraction, an anti-light art status commensurate with a higher spiritual embodiment of representational form. The coming of abstract holography will of course eclipse the barbarous with the civilized, but it may have to wait the dawn of a transcendental civilization to gain in universal momentum.
If, then, the progress of art follows a kind of zigzagging course in the revolt of a lower phase of a superior art form against the higher phase of an inferior art form and does so, moreover, on both materialistic and spiritualistic terms, we need not doubt that this process mirrors distinct class stages within any given relative civilization, the ultimate development being a sort of proletarian revolt within bourgeois/proletarian civilization against civilized late petty-bourgeois art that takes the form of representational holography, an art form which will co-exist with abstract-impressionist light art until such time as bourgeois/proletarian civilization is democratically overthrown and/or reformed.
However, unlike the relative arts, abstract holography, the ultimate and therefore truly civilized proletarian art form, would not co-exist with a barbarous art form or intimate of a superior abstraction to come or be divided into a materialistic and a spiritualistic camp, the one contracting the material while the other seemingly expands the spiritual. Abstract holography would be absolute in every sense, the sole civilized art of a transcendental civilization, complete in itself and yet intimating, more convincingly than any previous art form, of transcendent spirit, of the Divine Omega which lies beyond man as the goal of evolutionary striving.
Whereas relative art, whether avant-garde painting or abstract light art, could be said to intimate of both a higher abstract possibility in the development of art and the Divine Omega on terms relative to its particular class stage of aesthetic evolution, absolute art, being complete in itself as the ultimate manifestation of aesthetic development, would intimate, on the most pure terms, only of the Divine Omega, the ultimate impression of spiritual transcendence. Art, as we have traditionally understood it, would attain to a spiritual climax here, though the process of revolt against a contemporary civilized art would continue, taking the form, with the onset of a post-Human Millennium, of recourse to synthetic hallucinogens like LSD, which would constitute the next, or barbarous, phase in the zigzagging evolution of art and life towards the goal of evolution in ultimate divinity, what one might describe as an anti-hologram 'representational' phase.
Strictly speaking, LSD trips could not be described as an art but, rather, as the successor to art, an antithesis to dreams, which, however, preceded the inception of art in the sculptural monuments of the ancients. Just as dreams are beneath art, a pseudo-phenomenon of the old brain which the subconscious is obliged to witness during sleep, so trips would be above it, a quasi-noumenon of the new brain which the superconscious can contemplate in the interests of expanded consciousness.
This barbarous phase of the post-Human Millennium will be superseded, in due course, by its ultra-civilized phase, a phase during which the new-brain collectivizations of the Superbeings will experience hypermeditation and thus directly cultivate their superconscious rather than, as with the brain collectivizations of the Supermen in the preceding phase, indirectly do so ... through the medium of LSD visions. This direct cultivation of pure spirit will constitute the ultimate spiritual abstraction, an ultra-positive successor to the quasi-positive 'representational' phase of millennial evolution, and such a procedure will inexorably culminate in transcendence, or the attainment of pure spirit to space, in which setting it will converge towards and expand into other such transcendences en route, as it were, to the ultimate spiritual oneness of the Omega Point, the culmination, in de Chardinesque terminology, of all heavenly evolution.
Such a culmination is what the abstract holography of the next civilization will intimate of, but it is not something that the highest art will achieve; for that must be left to what transcends art through the most pure contemplation of the Superbeings in the highest phase of the post-Human Millennium. Even the contemplation of LSD-induced visions will be relative and, therefore, impure in relation to that, a quasi-barbarism leading to the more than civilized - namely the supercivilized self-contemplation of the ultimate life form, pro-transcendental rather than anti-holographic.
FROM THE BARBAROUS TO THE CIVILIZED
If art is not fine it is crude, if not civilized then ... barbarous. In the twentieth century, art continued to exist on both levels, though in a more complex and divergent way than ever before. Moreover, a new type of folk art arose - a militant or politically propagandist form of barbarism called Socialist Realism. It is distinguishable from other types of folk art by being absolute in status and character, existing within (formerly) Marxist-Leninist countries independently of civilized art and on thematic terms which never vary. No other kind of painting could be officially created or admired within the
Within the West, on the other hand, barbarous art was generally relative, co-existent with fine art and comparatively free from ideological fastidiousness - in short, a-political. It was free to adopt varied subject-matter and, within limits endemic to its folksy status, to treat what it had adopted in a variety of ways, both technically and conceptually; though this is only clearly apparent to anyone who takes an evolutionary or comprehensive view of such art, and thus perceives it as passing through a spectrum of ongoing development from Naive-Primitive painting at the lower end, to Pop Art at the upper end via Modern Realism.
For within each type or stage of folk art there is certainly a distinct formal and conceptual bias, which appears stronger at the lower end and in the middle, so to speak, than at the top, where, in response to evolutionary pressures, technique and treatment of more varied subject-matter varies quite dramatically from artist to artist, while still permitting a barbarous integrity to shine through. For, despite its greater freedom than earlier types of modern crude art, Pop Art was still recognizably folksy and bore no resemblance whatsoever to the civilized art with which it was more or less contemporary - namely, light art.
Before Pop Art arose, however, there was another type of art, distinct from civilized petty-bourgeois precedent and co-existent with light art, though not on that account a folk art. This was Op Art, which strove to create an impression of movement and light relative to optical variations induced, in the viewer's mind, by the wavy lines or small circles or tiny dots or whatever of the particular Op work. As a form of abstract art, there could be no question of one's considering such work as a more sophisticated type of folk art since, by definition, folk art is formally and conceptually anachronistic, existing as a law unto itself on a creative level very much beneath the technical and/or conceptual requirements of that civilized art with which, superficially at least, it is contemporary.
No, and neither could this art be described as a higher kind of abstraction, one, say, post-Mondrianesque and therefore bringing art to an all-time abstract climax. For in the European West, abstract art had attained to a climax with Neo-Plasticism, a materialistic development beyond Cubism, just as spiritualistic art had attained to a similar climax with Surrealism, that illusory art beyond (realistic) Symbolism, a climax indicative of a progression from lower/early petty-bourgeois art to higher/early petty-bourgeois art, which had a mainstream counterpart - mainly relative to Germany and America - in the distinctions between Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism on the materialistic side and, by contrast, Impressionism and Post-Painterly Abstraction (Abstract Impressionism) on the spiritualistic side, after which time painterly art was destined to be transcended with the development of light art from lower/relative to higher/absolute levels.
But if this late petty-bourgeois development was mainly relative, once again, to mainstream petty-bourgeois culture within the broadly
bourgeois/proletarian civilization of contemporary America, then the fundamentally bourgeois nations, such as Britain, France, Holland, and Belgium, were less disposed to such a radical break with the past and more disposed, in consequence of their more conservative natures, to create a type of light art employing painterly means, which resulted in the paradoxical phenomenon of Op Art, neither strictly painting nor strictly light art but a sort of chimerical compromise between the two and, if I'm not mistaken, the more civilized abstract successor to sculptural Op or, as it is better known, Kinetic Art. If Op is materialistic in character, a bourgeois equivalent to tubular light art, then its spiritualistic counterpart, equivalent to non-tubular or free light art, must surely be Minimalist Art, which provides the mere outlines of a representational image, and is thus closer in conception to a comic book than to a magazine.
As for sculpture-proper, which is the earliest fine art known to man and one not susceptible, in consequence of its ancient lineage, to extension beyond an early petty-bourgeois age, we are dealing with an art the basis of which is form and the essence of which is tactility. From being representational, sculpture has this century become non-representational (biomorphic) but remains, at least in theory and in spite of its relative formlessness, fundamentally tactile.
On the other hand, sculptural light art, though often having the appearance of a type of modern sculpture, should not be confounded with sculpture, since there can be no tactility with white-hot electric or neon tubes and, as a rule, very little form! As a mainstream lower/late petty-bourgeois development, this relatively civilized art signifies a step beyond abstract painting in the overall evolution of art from sculptural beginnings towards a holographic climax. Consequently there can be no question of its signifying a higher type of sculpture, since no sculpture can extend into a post-painterly epoch, but simply a lower type of light art, one 'sculptural' in appearance, and thus the logical precursor of a totally abstract and 'painterly' kind of light art such as usually employs slender neon tubing in adherence to a higher materialistic integrity.
By contrast, spiritualistic light art has its inception in 'architectural' light art, or the use of spotlights and other such powerful beams of electric light trained on the night sky according to a specific pattern, and became in the course of (post-Nazi) time more refined and absolute, culminating, we may assume, in such indoor laser shows as the Americans in particular have developed. Generally speaking, whilst
To return to painting, it should be evident to the reader by now that any painterly art with a pretence of being civilized can only be anachronistic in an age of late petty-bourgeois/early proletarian art, in which the focus of creative endeavour has switched from abstract painting to light art. Frankly, painterly art is now passé, and those who still indulge in any form of civilized painting, be it non-representational or abstract, are living behind the times in a kind of petty-bourgeois dream world of their own imagination.
Probably artists in the older European countries like
But as the highest criterion of what is truly contemporary can only be derived from the leading Western nations, it follows that those who scorn this or are not in a psychological position to adopt it will continue to work in an obsolescent context, producing art of an inferior quality and status - novels and classical music no less than painting and sculpture. Although such passé work could not be described as folk art, it is certainly less than truly civilized, if by 'civilized' we mean what is in the forefront of creative evolution. Some of it may even be of less value than contemporary folk art, the mention of which brings me back to the distinction between the fine and the crude, where we began this essay.
Since barbarous art must be categorized as an absolutely anachronistic type of art, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to contemporary civilized trends, we shall see that the current production of civilized art which is less than contemporary, like Abstract Expressionism or Abstract Impressionism in relation to light art, can only be regarded as comparatively civilized. Certainly it is civilized compared with any folk art of the present century, including Pop Art. But it is less civilized than those truly contemporary civilized arts which are in the vanguard of creative evolution. We may prefer it to the genuinely barbarous, but if we are on the side of creative progress we will hesitate to regard it with the same respect as we reserve for higher developments. And after light art, what higher development is possible if not representational holography, which I regard, in this context, as a relatively civilized art preceding the attainment of holography to an absolutely civilized status in total abstraction, both of which phases (of holographic evolution) should be relevant to the proletariat within the context of a transcendental civilization, such as I hope will presently arise in Ireland, a country with a long tradition of theocratic allegiance.
If Pop Art is co-existent with light art within the overall context of bourgeois/proletarian civilization, then with the progression to an absolute civilization no such co-existence would be acceptable, the people having become or in the process of becoming civilized, and therefore entitled to the appreciation of a relatively civilized art. In such a society the age-old dichotomy between the fine and the crude will be transcended, leading to an exclusive production of fine art of the highest quality. Whereas relative civilization tolerated barbarism, an absolute civilization would be dedicated to civilizing the People. Only thus will they come into their own as worthy inheritors of the highest cultural legacy - one stemming from contemporary bourgeois/proletarian civilization yet, at the same time, completely transcending it.
TOWARDS AN ABSOLUTELY FREE-ELECTRON LITERATURE
Bourgeois writers, appertaining to an atomic stage of evolution, tend to write in a way that gives as much importance to form as to content, to technique as to theory, whereas petty-bourgeois writers, appertaining to a relatively post-atomic stage of evolution, tend to write in a way that attaches more importance to content than to form, to theory than to technique, which results, as a rule, in a more spontaneous, improvisational kind of literature - one predominantly concerned with what is being said rather than the way in which it is being said.
Instead of being balanced between appearance and essence in a dualistic compromise, these more contemporary writers are lopsided on the side of essence, dedicated to the inner world of truth as opposed to the outer world of fact. Their work partakes of the improvisational character of modern art, not to mention modern jazz, in a bias for spiritual freedom, wrapped-up in the interior world rather than enslaved to external appearances to the extent of, say, a bourgeois. One might argue that they are intimating, consciously or unconsciously, of a future literary goal in total interiorization, a completely abstract literature such as I envisage taking the guise of computerized poetry. For in writing 'on the wing', they are exposed, as bourgeois authors rarely were, to grammatical laxities and eccentricities - a situation which a pedant would necessarily regard with dismay but which, so one imagines, these modernistic authors are really quite proud of, insofar as it attests to a growing freedom from grammatical constraints, a tugging of the electron equivalent (of words) at the proton/neutron leash (of emotions/meanings), with the promise of a complete departure from that leash in due course.
Few are the petty-bourgeois authors who do actually depart from the leash; indeed, strictly speaking, none of them can, since such a degree of abstract absolutism as I envisage being relevant to a free-electron literature would be incompatible with extreme relativistic criteria, even where experimental literature in the guise of a predominantly abstract poetry was concerned! If such a materialistic poetry, chiefly pertaining to mainstream petty-bourgeois civilization, is absolute or very nearly absolute in itself, it is still relative to the extent of being published in separate volumes, traditionally, of poetry rather than in an anthological format. There is something of a quasi-electron equivalent about it, in contrast to the relatively free-electron status of such petty-bourgeois spiritualistic poetry as is usually represented by a predominating concern with the metaphysical, though one still published, as a rule, in separate editions under the name of a given poet, who may or may not acquire a degree of fame in consequence.
By contrast, proletarian anthological poetry transcends the individual in the collective, and thereby signifies a progression from the relative to the absolute, even when, as is generally the case these days, such anthologies tend to contain material of a less than absolute status. So we may regard them as relatively civilized, with a quasi-electron status germane to their comparatively materialistic integrity. They appear as a kind of outsiders' threat to civilized petty-bourgeois precedent, scorned by all but their authors or those who, through working-class intuition or affiliation, naturally gravitate towards new developments.
No matter! A time will come when, with the development of People’s civilization from relative to absolute levels, such quasi-electron poetry is succeeded by the absolutely free-electron and truly civilized poetry of a non-readerly abstraction, which, availing itself of computer discs, should bring literature to a transcendental climax on a par with abstract holography, pure jazz, and hypermeditation, to name but a few compatible modes of free-electron absolutism. We are probably closer to that time now than we realize!
If the late-twentieth century was essentially a late petty- bourgeois/early proletarian epoch, then it was also on that account an epoch of either experimental or metaphysical poetry - in short, a quintessentially poetical age. Chronologically speaking, this poetry, relative in the main to countries like
But if anthological poetry and representational holography are essentially outsiders in the contemporary Western context, this is not to say that they, or some derivative from them, won't become insiders in a society dedicated to the establishment and furtherance of People’s civilization, a Social Transcendentalist society such as I envisage being relevant to Ireland and other such theocratically-biased countries in the near future. There, by contrast, they would become the accepted norm, rendering all types and degrees of petty-bourgeois literature and art anachronistic, and consequently subject to curtailment.
People's civilization cannot be furthered on the basis of half-measures. There must be a wholehearted commitment to cultural progress and a no-less wholehearted opposition to cultural traditions, whether indigenous or foreign. While relative civilization protects and admires past cultural achievements, even when they pertain to an earlier civilization, the absolute civilization of the future must rigorously proscribe and/or remove all cultural achievements irrelevant to itself. Instead of being conservationist, an
Neither fiction-writing nor painting nor classical composing would be encouraged in a Social Transcendental
So, of course, would Socialist Realism and more relative types of folk art, which pertain to a barbarous integrity - the former directed against Western civilization from a state socialist base, the latter existing within Western civilization and testifying to the comparatively uncivilized status of the masses vis-à-vis the bourgeoisie. Barbarisms, whether militant or urbane, external or internal, should no more find encouragement in a Social Transcendental
So an
A poetry that is computerized and on route, as it were, to total abstraction. An omega literature, placing maximum emphasis on content, on the literary truth of free-electron words, freed from proton and/or neutron-biased grammatical constraints and therefore intimating of the omega absolutes, those unified electrons of pure spirit such as should one day stem from the highest of the millennial life forms - the superbeingful new-brain collectivizations of the ultimate classless society. Certainly one would look in vain for concessions to appearance in this absolute literature!
TOWARDS AN ABSOLUTE ARCHITECTURE
It is probable that, with the development of a Social Transcendentalist civilization, all forms of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois architecture would be demolished to make way for the uniquely proletarian forms in due course. Already, since the late-twentieth century, the mould of proletarian architecture has been established, at least in its rudimentary form, and we need not doubt that such a mould - collective and transcendent - will be further developed and/or remodelled in the future, so that apartment blocks will become more the architectural rule than, as at present, the architectural exception.
If we endeavour to categorize domestic architecture according to class-evolutionary stages of development, or to stipulate the appropriate domestic environment for any given class, beginning with the aristocracy, we may arrive at conclusions similar to the following: a large country house and/or castle for the aristocracy; a small country house for the early-stage grand bourgeoisie; a detached suburban house for the late-stage grand bourgeoisie; a semidetached suburban house for the bourgeoisie; a terraced suburban house for the early-stage petty bourgeoisie; an apartment and/or bedsitter in a city tenement for the late-stage petty bourgeoisie; and, finally, a small flat in a city block for the proletariat. Such, rightly or wrongly, is how I estimate approximate class stages of architectural evolution, and in an open society which is advanced in years, having embraced a proletarian stage of architectural development, one finds all earlier modes of architecture still in existence, complete with their specific class owners.
Thus while proletarians ascend by lift to their flats on the ninth or tenth floor of a communal high-rise in the city, aristocrats may still be found climbing the wooden stairs of an ancient country house. While late-stage petty-bourgeois types wake-up each morning in a cramped bedsitter, early-stage grand-bourgeois types go to sleep each night in the spacious bedroom of their quite affluent small country-house. Such is life in a relative civilization, with its open-society distinctions not only between the rich and the poor, but also between the country and the city.
Life in an absolute civilization of transcendental integrity would, one fancies, have to be quite different from that - indeed, so different as to attest to a uniformity of architectural styles and domestic environments. A post-atomic closed society would have no aristocrats in it for a start, and scarcely any bourgeoisie, so that neither rural nor suburban modes of architecture would be encouraged. The emphasis would be on developing proletarian architecture within an urban environment, and this would certainly entail the demolition of suburban and early urban modes of architecture in order to make room for the inevitable spread of late urban architecture as the city expanded, literally engulfing formerly petty-bourgeois and bourgeois environments. So terraced houses no less than semidetached and detached suburban houses would have to make way for the urban blocks destined to supplant them. Eventually a proletarian uniformity of architectural style within a uniform environment would arise, testifying to the lower, or relative, phase of People’s civilization.
How 'relative', you may well wonder? Well, firstly to the extent that there would be numerous blocks of flats in any given area, each block separate from its nearest neighbours. But secondly in terms of a materialistic style encasing a spiritualistic content, a rectangular or square design housing proletarians, those absolutely electron equivalents in relation to the proton- or neutron-biased classes stretching from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie. So the rectangular, then, may be regarded as a materialistic form, a mechanistic design stemming, in some degree, from the Diabolic Alpha, and this no less so in a high-rise block of flats than in a country or suburban house. In early proletarian architecture, a rectangular design is the norm. But this could not be the case in late proletarian architecture, with the higher phase of People’s civilization, since such a phase would be absolutely orientated towards the Divine Omega. Consequently an absolute mode of architecture would have to be developed, a mode curvilinear in design, the circular a comparatively spiritual form intimating of divinity conceived as transcendent spirit, with particular reference to the goal of evolution in the post-Millennial Beyond.
So a curvilinear style of architecture, in complete contrast to the aristocratic inception of architecture in palatial or country-house rectilinear styles. A truly absolute mode of architecture, the proletariat living in more intensive collectivizations in a more extensive communal setting than where the preceding relative mode ... was concerned, one large circular tower comprising the equivalent to a residential sector of a city, a kind of omega city, built in such a way that the maximum number of people can be accommodated there in relative dignity, a central circular space enabling the residents on the inner side to look out onto the space and/or other half of the building some hundreds of yards away, while those on the outer side looked out onto - well, why not another such curvilinear tower a few hundred yards away?
Or, better still, why not the circular tower built in such a way that it spirals out in a series of concentric circles, the residents on the outer side of the central tower looking out onto the inner side of the adjacent tower, while those on the far side of the second arm, as it were, of the spiral would be looking out onto the inner side of its third arm, and so on, through successive spirallings, until the entire population of the area was accommodated in this omega city, replete with shops, cinemas, etc., on the ground floor of each arm of the spiral?
Certainly this second suggestion involves a more absolute approach to architecture, doing away with distinctions between one tower and another in any given locale and establishing, in consequence, a more homogeneous city, not simply an isolated block of flats in the country. We may also speculate that if Meditation Centres were to be built into them, the best possible place would be in the centre, from which spiritual cynosure the domestic arms of the spiral would curve outwards in an ever-expanding arc.
Thus any given city would be complete in itself, on religious no less than on commercial or domestic terms. It should be possible, in addition, for people to get from one arm of the spiral to another without having to venture out-of-doors, simply by following a ground passageway which led from the outermost ring of the city through each of the arms of the spiral to the Meditation Centre at its heart. In this way people would be spared contact with nature and enabled to maintain an intensely-interiorized and highly-civilized lifestyle - in complete contrast to the aristocratic inception of civilized evolution in the country.
Because proletarian civilization should be concerned with the maximum interiorization of life, it follows that not only access to the open country, but natural light must be minimized in order to reduce contact with nature as much as possible. Although proletarian architecture would appear comparatively lightweight and transcendental in construction, employing synthetic materials, its glass-like outer casing should not be translucent but, increasingly in the future, of an opaque constitution in order to preclude the entry of natural light and necessitate recourse to artificial lighting, preferably of a neon, i.e. electron-biased, type.
Likewise instead of air entering the interior of the buildings from without, special air-conditioning filters linked to oxygen containers should be employed in proletarian architecture not simply to reduce or exclude contact with the natural but, more importantly, to condition man towards greater dependence on the artificial, since that is a means to the supernatural, and artificially produced oxygen would induce a clearer consciousness in its recipients than naturally produced oxygen - trees having largely become discredited phenomena, subject to destruction.
So a free humanity aspiring towards omega divinity would necessarily require to be freed from dependence on natural light, which stems from the sun, that component of the Diabolic Alpha, as well as from dependence on natural air, which stems in large measure from trees, those offspring of the Diabolic Alpha and mirrors of the galactic-world-order, serving, in some degree, as the prototype for feudal society. Obviously, anything akin to a feudal arrangement would be taboo in a People’s civilization, and so one can take it as axiomatic that the artificial production of oxygen, no less than of light, will become essential to the psychological and moral well-being of the future proletariat.
As to the curvilinear style of advanced proletarian architecture, one should add that a positive commitment to the Divine Omega presupposes a defiance of the Diabolic Alpha, so that such architecture ought really to taper down slightly at roof level in order to defy gravitational force upwards, while at its lower end a slight tapering upwards in defiance of gravitational force downwards would not be out-of-order. Quite possibly such curvilinear architecture will be built, in any case, on raised inner platforms and/or outer pillars, thereby being elevated above the ground in accordance with transcendental criteria - the overall appearance suggestive of levitation. This is already true of certain advanced petty-bourgeois skyscrapers in
Moreover, it is also possible that, rather than simply living in high-rise blocks of flatlets raised on stilt-like supports, people will eventually live in space in cosmic flatlets, and within an architectural context not all that dissimilar from the one outlined above, replete with permanent recourse - obligatory in space - to artificial lighting and artificially produced oxygen, not to mention artificial heating. Such space cities would certainly constitute a more transcendental context than earth ones, enabling the occupants to cultivate their spiritual potential to a degree impossible to achieve on earth, where there is always so much gravitational force.
Could it be, I wonder, that the post-Human Millennium - a time when human brains are artificially supported and sustained in communal contexts - will be partly set in space in such curvilinear space cities? Why should not the post-Human Millennium, particularly during its higher phase, be set in a context closer to the definitive Beyond (of literal Heaven), where the goal of transcendence (of pure spirit from the superbeingful new-brain collectivizations) may well prove easier to achieve?
Ah, I should not allow my imagination to run away with me like this! But I do not think it can be too far off the mark. Certainly such space cities would not preclude contact with the earth, nor need one suppose that everyone would necessarily have to spend their entire lives in them. They would enable a more advanced life form to conduct its intensely spiritual affairs at a transcendent remove from the earth's gravity, and hence in a context appropriate, one feels, to an exclusively omega-oriented aspiration. If what directly stems from the Diabolic Alpha is rooted to the earth, why shouldn't what may, one day, directly aspire towards the Divine Omega be free from the earth's gravity in an almost heavenly context?
However, all this far-out futuristic speculation does not invalidate the foregoing suggestions concerning proletarian architecture on earth in the coming Social Transcendentalist civilization, and we need not doubt that proletarian earth cities would have to precede space cities, which, in any case, may well prove more applicable to absolutely post-human life forms than to the ultimate stage of man's evolution.
EVOLUTIONARY SPECTRA
There are those who sing the praises of democracy, but they don't realize that, for all its advantages, democracy is essentially a middle-class phenomenon which, like novelistic fiction, canvas painting, and symphonic music, stretches from a late-stage grand-bourgeois age to an early-stage petty-bourgeois one ... as a kind of materialistic hybrid in between autocracy and theocracy, and that, with the emergence of a late-stage petty-bourgeois age, it becomes effectively anachronistic, though subject to extensive modification ... in the interests of an attempt to bring it into line with an age of pseudo-democracy, that form of democracy germane to state socialism, with its so-called People’s democracy.
For people's democracy, despite its proletarian implications, is essentially a late-stage petty-bourgeois phenomenon, existing at the tail-end of a democratic spectrum, beyond the pale of genuine democracy but not, on that account, a chronologically inferior development! On the contrary, simply a more contemporary one, relevant to the second-half of the twentieth century - like colour photography, colour film, and rock music. Pseudo-democracy is, in effect, the antithetical equivalent of Cromwellian dictatorship, a form of political dictatorship posing as democracy, no less the end of the middle spectrum of social affairs than Cromwell's dictatorship was its inception, back in the seventeenth century, when the English bourgeoisie revolted against royalist autocracy. Socialism, by contrast, signifies a revolt against democratic pluralism, with its capitalist base. However, capitalism and socialism are not, contrary to what is commonly supposed, antithetical. Rather, socialism is the antithetical equivalent of feudalism, with capitalism coming in-between.
However, the middle, or democratic, spectrum is flanked by two others, which we may characterize as an autocratic spectrum beneath (if we imagine these spectra of evolutionary development lying parallel to one another in a horizontal course), and a theocratic spectrum above, the former beginning in pagan antiquity under aristocratic auspices, and the latter beginning with an early-stage grand-bourgeois epoch in Western Europe, the one manifesting in authoritarian monarchism, the other in Roman Catholicism. Let us take each spectrum separately.
Beginning with the ancient kingdoms of rural antiquity, authoritarian monarchism (royalism) signified worship of the God-King, the nearest equivalent on earth to the Creator or, as Christians prefer to say, the Father, whose status, at least in theory, was omnipotent, the ultimate tribunal over life and death, the maker or breaker of men. Gradually, as evolution progressed, the powers of the monarch were curbed, and by the seventeenth century Cromwell was able to lead a successful revolt in England against authoritarian monarchism which resulted, albeit briefly, in the dethronement of autocracy and its replacement by a democratic dictatorship.
Since then the powers of the monarchy have been further curbed in all Western societies, with the result that it has become - where still surviving - constitutional, or subject to parliamentary sanction, the reigning monarch little more than a figurehead of state, bereft of independent power, and consequently functioning in a pseudo-autocratic context. We may contend that constitutional monarchy is the norm for those societies which have retained an autocratic spectrum while being centred, as in Britain, on a democratic one, and that pseudo-autocracy is, by and large, a late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century phenomenon, the autocratic spectrum coming to an end with an early-stage petty-bourgeois era, after which time the extension of the first or bottom spectrum will take the form of a military dictatorship, as germane to a late-stage petty-bourgeois era, and thus become quasi-fascist, as in so many Third World countries since World War II.
Of course, where a constitutional monarchy is already deeply entrenched, as in
Can one therefore speak of a military dictatorship as being reactionary from a democratic point of view? Certainly it signifies a reaction, very often, from the middle-spectrum democratic traditions of the imperial power to the bottom spectrum of autocratic tradition, though not on monarchic terms. Rather, military dictatorship is more contemporary than democracy, a development paralleling the tail-end of the middle spectrum in pseudo-democracy, as pertaining to Marxist-Leninist states, both of which relate to late-stage petty-bourgeois criteria.
So, paradoxically, there is more progression than reaction to a military dictatorship in recently-liberated
This brings me to a discussion of the third and highest spectrum, namely the theocratic one, which began on early-stage grand-bourgeois terms in the form of Roman Catholicism and was superseded, in those nations destined for democracy, by Protestantism, that democratic religion, equivalent to drawing in art and to the concerto in music. Unfortunately, due to historical pressures, Roman Catholicism became increasingly autocratic, a religious complement to authoritarian monarchy, and was subject to a revolt by the bourgeoisie, whose Protestant triumph led to the persecution of Catholics and their relegation to second-class citizenship throughout the era of bourgeois hegemony, roughly from a late-stage grand-bourgeois to an early-stage petty-bourgeois age, spanning the 17th-20th centuries.
With the dawn of a late-stage petty-bourgeois era, however, Fascism made its appearance on the top spectrum as the antithetical equivalent of Roman Catholicism, a necessarily anti-democratic ideology with a religious mission, though less one favouring the development of a True World Religion, the successor to all old-world religions, than one partial to Roman Catholicism, if more so in Italy than Germany, while retaining a quasi-religious status for itself as vested in the dictator, who became an approximation, in effect, to God. If Roman Catholicism found its aesthetic equivalent in stained glass, then fascism had light art, that successor to drawing on the penultimate section, as it were, of the top spectrum, the section preceding holography, which would be relevant to the proletariat, and no less so than Social Transcendentalism, the means to the True World Religion, the successor to fascism and ideology, so far as I am concerned, of 'Kingdom Come', necessarily hostile to both royalism and military dictatorship, liberalism and socialism, Protestantism and fascism (considered as a late-stage petty-bourgeois movement), because beyond and above all of these, the principal exponent of truth!
Social Transcendentalism would be beyond antithetical equivalents because extending the top spectrum into an absolute stage of evolution, a stage antithetical, in constitution, to the authoritarian monarchism of the bottom spectrum, before bourgeois relativity intervened in the form of parliamentarianism. Beyond all bourgeois relativity, no less than autocratic absolutism was beneath it, Social Transcendentalism would open out towards the superhuman millennium and, consequently, the eventual supersession of man by his post-human successors, the only way towards definitive salvation, the only way forward. No proletarian humanism, like socialism, but a post-humanist concern with evolutionary progress towards future transformations in advancing life, man being something that, in the Nietzschean dictum, 'should be overcome'.
Humanism pertains to the middle spectrum, not the third, which has little respect for ethics once it reaches that stage, as with Social Transcendentalism, where truth is attained to and systematically endorsed. Only the Protestant part of the top spectrum kow-tows to ethics, as during the hegemony of the age of democratic relativity. Social Transcendentalism, even more than fascism, is 'beyond good and evil', those antithetical attributes of the Christian civilization. Only that is 'good' which furthers truth, and every act must be judged according to this criterion. Only in truth does man aspire towards the Holy Spirit, only in the context of pure awareness.
The ethical good act has nothing to do with divinity, considered in its ultimate sense. Goodness pertains to Christ, the temporal divinity between the two absolutes of alpha and omega, the strong and the true, the Creator and the Ultimate Creation. Neither strength, which pertains to the bottom spectrum, nor goodness, that ethical compromise between the extremes, can have any place in the absolute phase of the top spectrum. Neither a worship of the Father nor an emulation of the Son will prevail in that society dedicated to the realization of truth. Only an aspiration towards the Holy Spirit can have any value there, and only that which brings such an aspiration closer to ultimate realization is 'good'. We have lived long enough in the world of the Strong and the Good. Now we must live for the truth!
NEW BEGINNINGS/OLD ENDINGS
It was shortly after the Second World War that late-stage petty-bourgeois civilization began to get properly under way and a world arose which signified a break with the past, a new beginning, an aspiration, one might say, towards absolute proletarian criteria. For centuries men had lived with paintings, novels, symphonies, wind-up watches, spectacles, carriages, ships, universities, houses, books, acoustic guitars, and numerous other things which it seems fair to associate with a period of history stretching from late-stage grand-bourgeois to early-stage petty-bourgeois times, from approximately the mid-seventeenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, though some of those things of course date from even earlier times.
But then, with the acquirement of new technologies and a desire to revolutionize life in some degree, all that changed, and post-war man, particularly in his late-stage petty-bourgeois manifestation, began to turn against the past and acclimatize himself to the ever-changing present. Of course, the old things - wind-up watches, universities, novels, etc. - continued to exist, both in their historical and more contemporary manifestations. But a growing number of people were preferring the new and thus living within a more civilized context, if by 'civilized' we mean artificial and transcendental.
To be sure, there was still a large number of people going to universities, those traditional institutions of higher education, but there was also a large number, probably more petty-bourgeois/proletarian in character, who went to technical colleges, those late-stage petty-bourgeois successors to universities. Admittedly, there were still a considerable number of people who preferred wind-up watches to digital ones. But, even so, the number of digital wearers seemed to be on the increase. If many people still read novels, there was also a more contemporary body of people who preferred their fiction in a magazine or comic book, and who went to the cinema as often as possible or, alternatively, sat at home and watched a film on television.
The old and the new often overlapped, but there could be no doubt that the new was gaining in importance and influence as time wore on. Even people with old-world habits and allegiances occasionally indulged in some form of contemporary activity or identification, if on a comparatively low-key basis. A detailed investigation of people's lifestyles would probably indicate that most of them were far from consistent in terms of contemporary allegiance and behaviour, largely, one suspects, through ignorance as to the class-status of any given pursuit or identification, and possible ambivalence as to their own class-status in a continuously changing world.
Hence the paradoxical and often amusing chimeras of, say, university students in jeans - those late-stage petty-bourgeois successors to trousers - or, conversely, of technical-college students in trousers - those more traditional kinds of legwear. No-one is ultra-consistent, and I myself occasionally wear cords and a button-up shirt instead of a tee-shirt. Nevertheless a methodology of homogeneous living is possible and could be systematically pursued by anyone intelligent enough to work out both his own class-status and the class-status of the things or habits available to him in the contemporary world, should he decide to harmonize the two in the interests of ideological perfection.
Here, for example, is a list of some old and new things which might be of interest to anyone aspiring towards a more homogeneous lifestyle:-
universities technical colleges
condoms the pill
ships hovercraft
natural sex pornography
novels short stories
plays/theatre films/cinema
books magazines/tapes
paintings posters
cameos photos
spectacles contact lenses
trousers jeans (denims/cords)
shirts tee-shirts
wind-up watches digital watches
houses flats
operas vocal rock
symphonies instrumental rock
concertos modern jazz
ballroom dancing disco dancing
stained glass light art
drawing holography
sculpture kinetics
skirts/dresses slacks/boiler-suits
prayer transcendental meditation
beer/cider cola/soda
writing typing
manual washing-up washing-up machine
hand washing machine washing
outdoor drying spin/heat drying
open fire electric fire
gas cooker electric cooker
drying hair manually hairdryer
feather bed water bed
hand shaving electric/battery shaving
manual toothbrush electric toothbrush
woollen blanket electric blanket
liberal democracy social democracy
Protestantism Marxism
capitalism socialism
dildos vibrators
prostitutes masseuses
girlfriends inflatables
bombs missiles
truncheons plastic bullets
handkerchiefs paper tissues
candles torches
matches lighters
men's bicycles motorbikes
women's bicycles scooters
houses flats
natural conversation telephone conversation
manual games autonomous games
potatoes chips
fish fishcakes/fingers
Catholicism Fascism
monarchs military dictators
This isn't by any means an exhaustive list, but it should indicate the nature of the distinction that exists between traditional bourgeois civilization and contemporary petty-bourgeois/proletarian civilization, the former preceding the Second World War and the latter succeeding it, the two generally overlapping in such open societies as prevail in the West at present, particularly in the more traditional societies of countries like Britain and France, which have a longer history than the more contemporary nations like Germany and the United States, not to mention Italy and Japan.
Indeed, it is in these more contemporary nations that late-stage petty-bourgeois/proletarian civilization is more consistently upheld and most clearly manifest, such aspects of it as apply to the older Western countries often deriving from them. No sooner does one think of America, for instance, than a veritable host of contemporary things and practices leap to mind, including jeans, tee-shirts, cola, cartoons, comic books, films, jazz, and basketball. If
Of course, this civilization is not the ultimate one, and I personally have no doubt that another and better one will shortly emerge in which specifically proletarian criteria will prevail, replacing most of the contemporary things and attitudes which people in the West nowadays take for granted. But, even so, the break with tradition that followed World War II created the basis for any subsequent evolutionary progress, and such progress as has still to be made will derive, in large part, from what currently exists, whether in science or art, religion or politics, society or sex.
Certainly it is difficult to see how the pill, contact lenses, digital watches, hovercraft, and other such contemporary things could be bettered, though profound changes will doubtless occur and, indeed, already are occurring, as in the development of a new kind of pill, more long-term than the old, and the burgeoning plethora of plastic digital watches in succession, seemingly, to the older (and possibly more petty-bourgeois) metallic ones. Probably either a late phase of petty-bourgeois civilization or an early phase of proletarian civilization is already manifest in many of these changes, which herald an age of absolute criteria. Assuming they haven't been entirely eclipsed by computers, magazines may continue to be published in a proletarian civilization, but it is unlikely that they will be crammed full of adverts, as in capitalist societies.
Other aspects of contemporary civilization, like photography and film, jazz and rock, motorbikes and bicycles, kinetics and light sculptures, short stories and posters, will undoubtedly die-out in the course of time, evolutionary progress having rendered them obsolescent, knowledge having placed them within a certain time-span relative to a given class-status and/or kind of civilization, and history having sealed their fate in the process of its inexorable unfolding. Not everything contemporary is necessarily the blueprint for a higher development. Nevertheless a significant proportion of it is, and in some cases that development has already been realized.
THE RISE OF THEOCRATIC CENTRISM
Just as philosophy, fiction, and poetry are three branches of literature corresponding, one could argue, to three parallel spectra; and sculpture, painting, and drawing are three branches of art likewise corresponding to three parallel spectra; and ballet, the symphony, and the concerto are three branches of classical music whose correspondence to three parallel spectra is no less evident, so authoritarianism, parliamentarianism, and totalitarianism are three branches of politics, as different from each other as any of the above-named branches but, nevertheless, related by a common family tie, so to speak, to political evolution. To return to our spectrum analogy, one could speak of authoritarianism as autocratic, parliamentarianism as democratic, and totalitarianism as theocratic, indicative, in their different ways, of a progression from the Father to the Holy Spirit via the Son. Politics and religion are not entirely separate, as might at first appear to be the case, but are really two aspects of the same thing, politics being the practical application of a religious premise, the ordering of human society according to the criteria of religious precedent.
Thus in its first, or royalist, stage of evolution, politics is autocratic, reflecting the 'divine order' of the Creator and His 'fallen angels', establishing on earth an equivalent to the galactic-world-order, in which the monarch functions as the human equivalent of the central star of the Galaxy and thereby rules over both a nobility, corresponding to peripheral stars, and a populace, corresponding to planets, who are enslaved to monarch and nobility alike, owing allegiance to both, though particularly to the feudal baron, lord, or whatever, who directly rules over them and thus holds them within a solar system-like integrity. He comes in-between the peasantry and their monarch, free to rule the former as he thinks fit but owing direct allegiance to the latter, who rules by 'divine right', the personification on earth of the Creator, less truly divine, in any objectively omega-oriented (free-electron) sense, than archdiabolic, a more powerful ruler than the myriads of nobles who only correspond to minor stars, devil equivalents vis-à-vis a demonic populace.
We see this same so-called 'divine order' at work in trees, where a trunk, corresponding to central star/monarch, is served by the branches, corresponding to peripheral stars/nobility, which in turn are served by the leaves, those planet/peasant equivalents which have no option but to slave for their differently-constituted masters, providing them with the nourishment they require to survive. A pedant could argue as to the exact solar/noble status of any given branch in the overall feudal hierarchy of a tree, but we need not go into such trifling details here! Suffice it to say that most of the larger branches would be equivalent to high-ranking nobles such as dukes and princes, most of the smaller ones, or those not immediately stemming from the trunk, equivalent to low-ranking nobles such as viscounts and barons. The eventual grading of nobles along more complex and variegated lines was a development presupposing a higher degree of civilization ... commensurate with a more advanced age, as the monarch moved out of his castle into a palace, and the lesser royals and/or nobility in general moved from their forts, or small castles, into country houses, or small palaces. In a strictly pagan society, this wouldn't have been possible or, indeed, credible. But with the rise of the Christian bourgeoisie and the development of parliamentarianism at the expense of authoritarianism, the status of the feudal classes was irrevocably changed, so their freedom to rule in an autocratic manner was curbed, the monarchy in due course becoming subject to greater constitutional constraint.
The emergence of parliamentarianism as a compromise, in effect, between authoritarianism and totalitarianism, the Father and the Holy Ghost, marked a shift from pseudo-pagan to properly Christian criteria, as democracy, in large measure derived from Protestant teachings as to human equality, supplanted autocracy, and the age of dualism, necessarily hostile to autocratic Roman Catholicism, was ushered in, placing due emphasis on compromise between disparate (in the main) bourgeois interests, and upholding the ethic of self-enrichment through hard work. Indeed, democracy was quintessentially ethical, concerned with the general good, usually interpreted in a commercial or utilitarian way, and thus was committed to human freedom, freedom, above all, from autocratic tyranny in order to pursue the Good rather than remain enslaved, as with feudal societies, to the Strong, whether natural or 'divine'.
Inevitably, democracy gave rise to industry and furthered the growth of urbanization, which, at first, was highly ugly. Centred in the ethics of equality and a faith in the ability of human effort to overcome natural obstacles, it necessarily favoured the artificial, one might even say the transcendental; though the theory and practical implementation of Christian teachings weren't always consonant, the industrious bourgeois rarely averse to putting practice above theory, private enrichment before the general good, and to an extent that the former tended to eclipse the latter, making for a society where the toiling masses, far from sharing in the general wealth, were exploited and oppressed by their industrial masters to a degree not far short of the exploitation and oppression experienced by peasants in the age of feudal enslavement.
The bourgeoisie may have acknowledged a transcendental perspective, relative to Protestantism, but they remained firmly rooted in the mundane and were, to a degree, sympathetic towards feudal precedent. There was no moral rebirth with them, no clean break with the past, since capitalism is ever a mode of industrial feudalism, an artificial as opposed to a natural form of exploitation. Just as Christ acknowledged the Father, so parliamentarians acknowledge royals, democracy being a kind of diluted autocracy, the bourgeoisie sharing power with the aristocracy, as symbolized by the distinction in England between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the bourgeoisie themselves divisible between capitalist and socialist interests, not to mention different shades of capitalism, as in the heyday of Tory/Liberal confrontation in Victorian times. As in Christ, so in parliamentarianism, everything must be divided, divisible, and divisive! Compromise is taken for the norm and, indeed, transformed into an ideal, not simply regarded as the best way of dealing with divisions but considered sacrosanct in itself - valid for all time!
Well, those who, as Bolshevik-styled communists, signify an extension of democracy into absolute channels ... don't think so, even though they pertain to the democratic spectrum and are themselves materialists, concerned with the ethical application to society of a proletarian humanism based on the teachings of Karl Marx, whose Communism is to pseudo-democracy what Protestantism was to democracy proper - namely the theoretical foundation for political action, Marx following on behind Christ as the Anti-Christ, state socialism no less anti-democratic, in the bourgeois atomic sense, than capitalism was pro-democratic, the means, one feels, to the overthrow of liberal democracy.
Yet not, on that account, the means to Transcendentalism, which appertains to the third and highest spectrum, the theocratic spectrum, as one that would seem to have played only a very secondary role throughout the age of parliamentarianism, theoretical influence notwithstanding, and only began to take an independent line with the rise of Fascism, an ideology biased towards Roman Catholicism but revolutionary and independent enough to signify, in the person of the Leader, a crude approximation to the Second Coming, the basis of a genuinely theocratic society in which religion becomes absolute, if on terms diametrically antithetical to the absolutism of its inception in various degrees and kinds of Creator-worship. Does not the leader of a fascist state personify divinity on terms the converse of the God-Kings of pagan antiquity?
Certainly, one would be hard-pressed to deny the divine status of the Leader in a fascist society, even if, in the late-stage petty-bourgeois context to which we are of course alluding, this status is less than a truly objective intimation of the Holy Ghost and more like a representation of the Father, given its quasi-autocratic implications. But fascism and royalism are really antithetical, and if sovereignty is vested in the Monarch in an autocratic society, the ruler equivalent to the Father there, then it is most assuredly vested in the Leader in a theocratic society, who becomes the personification of the Holy Spirit, the leading embodiment of truth, an intimation of ultimate divinity. Only in a democratic society is sovereignty vested in the People, who are entitled to elect representatives to parliament who govern and/or serve on their behalf.
In
Early in the twentieth century, however, a further, even more radical example of the same kind of revolution occurred in Russia and, bearing in mind the progress of history towards an absolute age, it resulted in the eventual emergence of a People’s republic, necessarily proletarian in character and therefore beyond the bourgeois compromise of the French Revolution. Beyond a Soviet-type revolution history cannot go on the middle, or democratic, spectrum, pseudo-democracy being the ultimate form of democracy, where sovereignty is vested in the proletariat and a sort of dictatorial democracy ... of the proletariat ... prevails, the antithetical equivalent to the democratic dictatorship of the Cromwellian revolution. The only way forward after this is Fascism and its ideological successor in Social Transcendentalism, but this pertains to the top, or theocratic, spectrum and can only be hostile towards republicans of whatever degree, as sovereignty is vested in the Leader, who becomes dictator to the masses, a no-less absolute figure than the autocratic monarch of royalist times, because equivalent to God.
Thus a totalitarian society is inevitably anti-republican and anti-democratic, the Leader alone responsible for determining the course of evolution, and thereby leading from above, pulling the masses after him towards the post-Human Millennium, that stage in time when man will have been completely overcome and only the Supermen prevail, in the guise of brain collectivizations artificially supported and sustained, though not without human supervision and assistance from qualified technicians. Only in the second phase of this post-Human Millennium, when the old brain has been surgically removed from each Superman, would such technicians become superfluous, as the truly classless, free society of the Superbeings, or new-brain collectivizations, hypermeditated towards transcendence and thus the attainment of pure spirit (free electrons) to the post-Millennial Beyond.
All this is, of course, pertinent to Social Transcendentalism and therefore to the ideology propounded by the closest approximation on earth to the Second Coming. If Fascism was petty bourgeois in character, the crude beginnings of a theocratic society, then Social Transcendentalism is proletarian and, hence, absolute, the more objective ideology of the Second Coming for a post-democratic age, an age when real progress towards the post-Human Millennium can be made, as Social Transcendentalism strives to extend the top spectrum towards a theocratic absolutism, and thereby paves the way for universal civilization.
Pertaining to the tail-end of the middle spectrum, Communism simply isn't qualified to further progress towards the post-Human Millennium. Its concept of Millennialism is necessarily subjective, envisaging not the supersession of men by post-human life forms, but a kind of global equalitarian society based on the ethics of proletarian humanism. In short, it lacks a capacity for truth, being an extension of ethics beyond bourgeois relativity to a kind of proletarian absolutism germane to People’s democracy. But such a relatively absolute phase of democracy cannot stretch into a genuinely proletarian age. There is only one way forward, and that is through Social Transcendentalism. For it is only the last stretch of the top spectrum which is truly absolute in character. The age of People’s republics, no less than that of bourgeois republics, will soon be a thing of the past. Tomorrow belongs to us!
PART TWO: DIALOGUES
LITERARY DISTINCTIONS
BRENDAN: I understand, Neal, that you are of the opinion that a novelist isn't necessarily an artist, these days, just because he writes novels, but can be one of three things.
NEAL: That is correct. He can be an artist, an anti-artist, or a philosopher, using the latter term in the contemporary sense as applying, in the main, to metaphysical writers, or men who identify more with essence than appearance.
BRENDAN: How, then, do you distinguish between novelists as artists and novelists as anti-artists?
NEAL: Very simply! Between those who write in an illusory vein, intimating of truth or envisaging a future society in an expressive style, and those, on the contrary, who specialize in writings of an autobiographical character, making the crux of their novels hinge on the story of their lives.
BRENDAN: Thus you are distinguishing, I take it, between novelists like George Orwell on the one hand, and Henry Miller on the other.
NEAL: Yes, between those who indirectly extend literature towards objective truth, and those who directly indulge in subjective fact - a distinction, in effect, between bound-electron equivalents and pseudo-electron equivalents, bearing in mind that we are discussing the novelist, within the broader framework of bourgeois/proletarian civilization, in relation to petty-bourgeois culture, as relative to contemporary Western society, with particular reference to the United States.
BRENDAN: So we are not referring the novelist-as-artist to bourgeois criteria, which would presumably be to discuss the novel in traditional fictional terms.
NEAL: No, the story-teller of old is precisely the kind of artist that the anti-artist is in rebellion against in his 'romantic' fixation on autobiography. The modern novelistic anti-artist is anti-fiction, fiction being the traditional preserve of the artist, who abstracts fictions from external facts and thus creates a story. The modern novelistic artist, on the other hand, is pro-truth, truth being the goal of evolution in pure spirit, the approach to this goal in literary terms necessarily requiring of the artist either fidelity to illusion, i.e. anticipations or intimations of truth, which is a quasi-philosophical approach, or (assuming he is more of a pure artist) an extension of abstract technical procedures in his work towards some consciously- or unconsciously-envisaged future literary goal of a totally non-expressive art, an art reflecting the post-atomic status of a free-electron age, in which only pure poetry would be produced. This artist takes the direct route to truth by approximating literature to a free-electron status whereby words, the electron equivalents, are freed from the proton/neutron constraint of emotions/meanings, about which, in atomic writings, they invariably revolve. The artist who intimates of truth, however, takes the indirect route to it, since his use of illusion requires fidelity to grammatical conventions in the interests of a meaningful expression of this intimation. He approximates more closely to the modern philosopher, who also approaches truth indirectly ... through the medium of expression, albeit in a more intensively non-literary way than the artist.
BRENDAN: You are distinguishing, I presume, between a kind of lesser modern artist and a greater modern artist, as applying to the indirect and direct approaches to truth, conceived in literary terms.
NEAL: I am! And while the lesser artist approximates to the metaphysical philosopher, the greater artist approaches, in his predominantly abstract prose, the pure poet of the future absolute civilization, a civilization in which all forms of relative literature, including the most poetic of petty-bourgeois novels, would be taboo. Generally speaking, these two types of modern artist are relative to the distinction, within the wider parameters of bourgeois/proletarian civilization, between what I call mainstream petty-bourgeois culture on the one hand, and subsidiary petty-bourgeois culture on the other hand, so that, as a rule, the greater artist will be indigenous to the United States, the lesser one to Western Europe, with particular reference to Britain and France, which are fundamentally bourgeois nations influenced by, though not pioneering, petty-bourgeois trends.
BRENDAN: So you would contend that while the predominantly abstract tradition especially appertains to the United States, the illusory, or indirect, route to truth appertains more to the United Kingdom and France, thereby enabling us to distinguish between novelists, on the one hand, like William Burroughs, particularly with regard to works such as The Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine, and novelists, on the other hand, like George Orwell, whose 1984 must rank as one of the best examples of a novel's intimating, for its time, of what were then future trends, and thereby approaching truth indirectly - through the medium of literary expression.
NEAL: Yes, such a distinction is certainly apposite, although it will usually be found, with the British, that the intimation of future trends, as you put it, is less than objective, falling woefully short of optimism, as can also be borne out by such an illusory novel as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, with its nightmare projection of an envisaged artificial society of the future.
BRENDAN: Would you describe Huxley as generally a lesser artist?
NEAL: No, for apart from the above-mentioned work the only novel I can think of which entails an illusory projection of characters into a futuristic setting is Ape and Essence, which focuses on the aftermath of a nuclear war, as affecting
FROM OLD BRAIN TO SUPERCONSCIOUS
KEITH: Apparently there is more to the old brain than just a subconscious, and more to the new brain than simply a superconscious, if I understand you correctly.
CHRIS: There is, though traditional psychology has failed to stress that fact. The old brain is divisible between a subconscious and a feeling/visionary body, while the new brain is likewise divisible between a superconscious and a feeling/visionary body, the principal difference being that whereas in the old brain the subconscious is dominated by the feeling/visionary body, in the new brain it is the superconscious which dominates its alpha-stemming antithesis. And this is because the ratio of protons and neutrons to electrons, or vice versa, is dissimilar in each of the brains - the atomic integrity of the old brain being heavily biased towards the proton/neutron ingredients, that of the new brain being biased towards the electron ingredient, so that whereas protons and neutrons dominate electrons in the former, electrons dominate protons and neutrons in the latter.
KEITH: Presumably that is why the old brain is a predominantly feeling/visionary phenomenon and the new brain, by contrast, a superconscious phenomenon or, more correctly, essential noumenon?
CHRIS: Absolutely! Being antithetically constituted, the old and the new brains function in different ways, according to their respective atomic integrities. Egocentricity, as we customarily understand it, is a combination of these two disparate functions; feelings and visions/thoughts coming up from below, and awareness coming down from above, each of which meet in the corpus callosum, that psychological link between the two brains - the cerebellum and the cerebrum.
KEITH: Whereas the cultivation of pure consciousness, as the mystics understand it, depends upon our ability to transcend feelings and visions/thoughts, and presupposes a deeper commitment to the superconscious - in other words, to a consciousness undiluted by feelings and visions/thoughts.
CHRIS: Yes, to superconsciousness purely and simply, since we do not feel with our superconscious mind. We register feelings in our body through the agency of soul, the body's mind, as it were, which consciousness becomes aware of, to the detriment of its own expansion.
KEITH: Thus consciousness and superconsciousness are approximately the same?
CHRIS: No, consciousness is our superconsciousness existing as a bound-electron equivalent in a day-to-day context of ordinary utilitarian and/or relaxed receptive awareness. When, however, we strive to tune-in to our superconscious in order to cultivate awareness for its own sake, divorced from will, we experience superconsciousness, or consciousness elevated above feelings and thoughts, in a free-electron context, to a higher pitch of awareness. Ordinarily our consciousness, although originating in the superconscious, is less elevated and therefore encumbered by feelings and thoughts, which impinge upon it, causing us to respond to them in some way. If we haven't habitually sought to develop our consciousness, we will be more exposed to the encroachments of feelings and thoughts than otherwise. Indeed, we may become our feelings or thoughts rather than our consciousness of them. Consequently we will be more exposed to the encroachments of feelings/thoughts than otherwise, and therefore become enslaved to the flesh, the body/brain, at such times. The object of evolutionary progress, however, is to become free of this enslavement, to cultivate consciousness independently of the body, and thus aspire towards the Divine, which would be pure consciousness.
KEITH: And therefore completely beyond the flesh, beyond all manifestations of atomicity, with their proton/neutron roots?
CHRIS: Precisely! When we purposely cultivate awareness by tuning-in to our superconscious we achieve a free-electron consciousness, an absolutely post-atomic consciousness elevated above the usual relatively post-atomic consciousness of the everyday conscious mind, which, when we aren't enslaved by or succumbing to feelings, emotions, sensations, thoughts, fantasies, et cetera, functions as a relatively bound-electron consciousness - as when we watch television or listen to the radio. This is the consciousness which is contiguous with the subconscious, that part of the conscious mind which pertains to the old brain and exists there as an absolutely bound-electron equivalent enslaved to and dominated by the majority proton/neutron content of the feeling/visionary body.
KEITH: As when we sleep and witness the dreams that the majority proton/neutron content of the old brain foists upon our subconscious.
CHRIS: Yes, our subconscious is, at such times, the passive spectator of the dream process, which takes place independently of conscious volition, and is thereby absolutely bound to the proton/neutron control, unable to transcend it in any way.
KEITH: Thus one could speak of an old brain/subconscious dichotomy as applying to this distinction between the feeling/visionary body and the subconscious, phenomenon and noumenon, idea and will, but a will so enslaved to and dominated by the proton/neutron root ... as generally to be incapable of conscious volition.
CHRIS: Correct! Though there are occasions when, under duress from a particularly oppressive dream, even the subconscious can muster the necessary resolve to revolt against its oppressor, and we wake-up before matters in the nightmare have come to a grisly pass, or so it seems! Even the subconscious has willpower, though nowhere near as much as the conscious mind, which is relatively free to direct the body along any desired channel of activity. When the conscious mind is turned away from the body, however, it ceases to function as will but becomes the free-electron consciousness of the superconscious.
KEITH: Interesting how there is a spectrum of consciousness from the subconscious to the superconscious via an intermediate level of everyday consciousness, a spectrum which pertains to the spirit or psyche as opposed to the body/soul, and is therefore separate from feelings and dreams.
CHRIS: Indeed! And in its highest reach, that of the superconscious, separate from thoughts and visions as well! For we do not think with our superconscious but use it, as awareness directed towards a conceptual end, to elicit and order thoughts from the minority neutron content of the new brain, in which such concepts are housed. What feelings are to consciousness in the old brain, thoughts are to consciousness in the new one, which is to say, its antithesis, except that whereas in the former context feelings tend, through the medium of the senses, to condition consciousness, in the latter context it is generally consciousness which, through the agency of the will, conditions thought - at least during waking-life periods. For during sleep the old brain prefers to indulge in dreams, which are feelings made manifest to the subconscious through perceptual images.
KEITH: Then what of new-brain visions, particularly with regard to synthetically-induced ones?
CHRIS: These are thoughts made manifest to the superconscious through perceptual images, a kind of waking-life dream state in which consciousness perceives the visual contents of the new brain as the minority neutron content is freed from majority electron control and thus from the will, which, though not entirely neutralized, is rendered passive before the highly intriguing spectacle of the synthetically-induced visions that we refer to as the 'trip'. An hallucinogen like LSD directly appeals to the new brain, where it reduces the threshold of the minority proton/neutron content from the level of concepts to the level of visions, from the quasi-essential to the apparent, albeit an appearance rendered static by dint of its proximity to the majority electron content. Just as sleep lowers the threshold of consciousness to the subconscious and thereby allows the old brain free play, so LSD lowers the threshold of the new brain and thereby permits the superconscious to contemplate the visionary contents of its antithesis. From being a thought-mechanism, the new brain becomes a vision-mechanism. With sleep, the old brain is raised from a feeling bias to a dreaming bias. With 'trips', the new brain is lowered from a conceptual bias to a perceptual bias. Sleep lowers consciousness, whereas LSD raises it.
KEITH: Though the latter doesn't raise it as far, I presume, as would transcendental meditation.
CHRIS: No, since LSD directly appeals to the new brain and only indirectly to the superconscious, whereas transcendental meditation directly appeals to the superconscious and not at all to the new brain, i.e. to the minority proton/neutron content of its atomic structure. The 'trip' is a quasi-occult experience, the meditation state, by contrast, a hypermetaphysical one - the difference, in a sense, between the phenomenal at its furthest reach and the noumenal at or near its inception. The 'trip' is the culmination of an alpha-stemming tradition, the meditation state the beginning of an exclusively omega-oriented aspiration. The one is basically Occidental, the other Oriental. The one stems from a tradition of proton indulgence in the use of alcohol, the other from a tradition of electron indulgence in the use of hashish and kindred mind-expanding drugs. The former tradition lowers consciousness by weighting the proton/neutron content with increased sensuality, whereas the latter tradition expands consciousness by imposing increased awareness upon the electron content. In the first context, the distilled, i.e. alcohol, is used to sensualize the old brain and, following on its heels, the synthesized, i.e. LSD, is used to visualize the new brain. In the second context, the naturalistic, i.e. hashish, is used to increase sensual consciousness and, following on its heels, the supernaturalistic, i.e. transcendental meditation, is used to increase spiritual consciousness. Alcohol leads to LSD as surely as dope to meditation in the evolutionary progression of each tradition! Of course, neither tradition is absolute. For, in a certain sense, tobacco is the occidental equivalent to dope and, conversely, tea the oriental equivalent to alcohol, though both tobacco and tea are considerably milder than their respective counterparts. Tobacco does not raise sensual consciousness to anything like the same extent as hashish or marijuana. Conversely, tea does not lower consciousness, by appealing to the old brain, to anything like the same extent as alcohol, particularly the wines and spirits. So whilst a relativity has prevailed in each tradition, it has not prevented a bias, one way or the other, from emerging in accordance with the use of stronger drugs, so that the Occident has remained predominantly alcoholic and the Orient, by contrast, predominantly hashistic, despite the recourse of each civilization to tobacco and tea respectively. The one tradition has mainly stemmed from the Diabolic Alpha, while the other one has mainly aspired towards the Divine Omega.
KEITH: Though the Occident presumably began by directly stemming from the Diabolic Alpha and has now reached or is approaching a stage of indirectly stemming from it, whereas the Orient began by indirectly aspiring towards the Divine Omega and then proceeded, in due course of time, to directly aspire towards it - a distinction, in the one case, between distilled alcohol and synthesized LSD, and, in the other case, between naturalistic hashish and supernaturalistic transcendental meditation.
CHRIS: Yes, which we may alternatively define, in atomic terms, as a progression from a proton equivalent to a pseudo-electron equivalent in the case of the Occident, and from a bound-electron equivalent to a free-electron equivalent in the case of the Orient. It is the example of the Orient that we must follow in regard to the development of a transcendental civilization.
KEITH: Then the final human civilization will be entirely metaphysical, with regard to the practice of transcendental meditation?
CHRIS: Correct! And it will lead, in due course of time, to the Host-human Millennium, the first phase of which - a quasi-occult one - will entail the widespread use of synthetic hallucinogens like LSD by the Supermen, the first of two life forms who, created by millennial technicians, will be human brains artificially supported and sustained in communal contexts. With the subsequent establishment, however, of the second of the post-human life forms, the superbeingful new-brain collectivizations, millennial evolution will progress to its highest phase, a wholly metaphysical phase involving the practice of hypermeditation - a more intensive and purer form of meditation than was practised, if I may be permitted to anticipate the future, by the transcendental proletarians of the civilization preceding the post-Human Millennium. This hypermeditation will lead to transcendence, to the freeing of the majority electron content of the new brain from its minority proton/neutron content - in other words, to the freeing of superconsciousness from the new brain, so that pure spirit can soar heavenwards towards its ultimate goal in the Omega Beyond, a goal, however, which is unlikely to be attained to for some considerable period of supra-atomic evolution, as the various Spiritual Globes from whichever Superbeing on whichever habitable planet converge towards and expand into one another in a continuous process leading from separateness to unity. As you can see, life has a long way to go before it becomes a candidate for transcendence! But at least it is slowly evolving, in the guise of men, towards that distant goal in a truly superconscious mind. Both the old and new brains are destined to be discarded, as the superconscious continues to expand towards the omega goal of evolution. From discarding them relatively, evolving life will proceed to discard them absolutely, the removal of the old brain preceding the transcendence of the new!
DEVELOPMENTS IN THE ARTS
GAVIN: I am fascinated by this theory of yours that, like art and music, literature evolves along a kind of disjointed spectrum or, more correctly, series of overlapping spectra ... from philosophy to poetry via fiction, each stage of this evolution being independent of the others and yet still indicating some kind of continuity.
JAMES: Yes, and to revert to atomic terminology, one could describe philosophy as the proton root, fiction as bespeaking an atomic integrity, and poetry becoming, with full maturation, a free-electron equivalent. A similar distinction also applies, as you remarked, to art and music, so that we can describe the evolution of art in terms of a development from a proton root in sculpture through an atomic integrity in painting to a free-electron culmination in holography. Likewise we can define the evolution of music from rhythmic beginnings through a melodic atomicity to a climax in pure pitch.
GAVIN: Let us take one art form at a time, shall we? Beginning with literature.
JAMES: This begins, as I said, in philosophy, as an analytical concern with external appearances, and proceeds to an apparent/essential compromise in fiction, before culminating in an exclusive concern, through poetry, with essence. Philosophy stems from an aristocratic absolutism in pagan civilization which, in the Western context, stretches from a grand-bourgeois root (Bacon) through a bourgeois stem (Kant) to a petty-bourgeois flowering (Wittgenstein), at approximately which time it is also transmuted from appearance to essence and becomes, at the hands of petty-bourgeois revolutionaries, a pseudo-electron equivalent, a kind of reformed proton, which endows it with an anti-philosophical integrity appertaining to its metaphysical bias. Genuine philosophy, by contrast, ends with the furthest reach of appearance in a critique of language which, in comparison with its inception as a critique of natural phenomena, is not as genuine as might at first appear! Nevertheless, this philosophy - academic philosophy as we may call it - signifies the furthest stretching of philosophy from its aristocratic roots, and corresponds to contemporary representational sculpture in art and to a kind of Afro-Caribbean rhythm-biased music involving percussion instruments. By contrast, the development of metaphysical philosophy, which mainly stems from Schopenhauer, bespeaks a separate spectrum of literary endeavour, though one paralleling the philosophy spectrum from its petty-bourgeois inception, while completely outstripping it as we tend towards a proletarian climax in an ultra-metaphysical collectivized format. One might describe this pseudo-philosophy as corresponding to modern abstract sculpture in art and to a melodic rhythm-biased music which, like Calypso, uses percussion instruments in a variety of pitches to largely melodic ends.
GAVIN: And what about fiction?
JAMES: Being a largely atomic art form, the novel can be either biased towards the proton, as when it is highly fictional and mainly concerned with appearances, or biased towards the electron, as when it is predominantly illusory and mainly concerned with essences. Or, alternatively, it can approximate to a sort of atomic balance between the two, as when appearance and essence are granted equal treatment by a quintessentially bourgeois novelist - the other types of novel being grand bourgeois and petty bourgeois respectively. The bourgeois novelist creates in such a fashion that essence is bound to appearance, and so engenders the enslavement of illusion to fiction, the former functioning as a bound-electron equivalent, the latter as a proton equivalent within the overall atomicity of his quintessentially literary novel. The petty-bourgeois novelist, on the other hand, specializes in essence, pushing literature towards truth, and so creates a work in which the electron content of illusion or non-expression predominates over the proton content of fiction or illusory expression, depending on the type of petty-bourgeois novelist in question, that is to say, whether he corresponds to a bound-electron status or to a pseudo-electron status; whether his work is illusory, i.e. intimating of truth or some future society through expressive means, or predominantly non-expressive, i.e. largely abstract.
GAVIN: So we are alluding to a distinction between, say, George Orwell and William Burroughs, are we?
JAMES: Yes, and while the bound-electron expressive novelist stems from an atomic tradition, corresponding to the furthest reach of painting and classical music, the pseudo-electron non-expressive novelist corresponds to the anti-philosopher, to the extent that he presupposes the development of a new literary spectrum which, beginning as an autobiographical revolt against fictional literature, and therefore briefly paralleling the tail-end of the old in both its traditional and modernist manifestations, should extend to the boundaries of a proletarian absolutism, without, however, ceasing to be petty bourgeois.
GAVIN: So that leaves us with the poet - the highest kind of writer.
JAMES: It does! And we may contend that although poets have long existed, they haven't been genuinely poetic, prior to the inception and development of contemporary metaphysical poetry, but enslaved to appearance and description, functioning more as a bound-electron than as a free-electron equivalent, creating a pseudo-poetry that smacks of traditional philosophy and fictional literature. Only with the comparatively recent development of metaphysical poetry, which parallels anti-philosophy, have poets begun to appear in their true light ... as men of essence and literary freedom. Needless to say, this development has attained to greater heights in the mainstream petty-bourgeois culture of contemporary America than ever it has in Europe, particularly with regard to the extension of the genuinely poetic into impressive, or abstract, writings, such as one finds in the 'Cantos' of Ezra Pound and, to a greater extent, the late poetry of Allen Ginsberg. We can speak here of a relatively free-electron poetry, a poetry which is relatively post-atomic, combining the metaphysically expressive with the metaphorically impressive, in accordance with the extreme relativistic criteria of bourgeois/proletarian civilization. Like non-expressive novelistic writings and anti-philosophy, this genuine poetry signifies the beginnings of a different spectrum of poetic development, one paralleling the end of the old pseudo-poetic spectrum and extending beyond it towards a proletarian absolutism, such as must some day arise on wholly free-electron terms, with the inception and subsequent development of a transcendental civilization.
GAVIN: Presumably when poetry will be created on absolutely post-atomic terms, with regard to impression alone?
JAMES: Yes, the ultimate pure poetry of a free-electron age. At that juncture in time poetry will attain to full maturity on computer discs, the transcendental medium, par excellence, of a proletarian civilization.
GAVIN: So this ultimate poetry won't exist in a new spectrum of poetic endeavour, but will signify a continuation of the free-electron spectrum from contemporary petty-bourgeois relativity to subsequent proletarian absolutism.
JAMES: Yes, a continuation paralleling that from neo-Buddhism to Social Transcendentalism in religion.
GAVIN: Having outlined the evolution of literature from its philosophical inception to its poetic consummation, let us now turn, if you will, to music and art, and briefly discuss their parallel evolutions.
JAMES: Which are, of course, from a proton root through an atomic compromise to a free-electron climax, both relatively and absolutely. In music, we shall find the first stage exemplified by rhythm, by a music exclusively or predominantly conceived in rhythmic terms. From there music will evolve to a second stage in melody supported by harmony, which signifies a compromise between rhythm and pitch, protons and electrons, and thus reflects an atomic integrity. Finally, after a number of intermediate emancipations ... with especial reference to petty-bourgeois civilization and its relatively post-atomic jazz, music will evolve to an absolutely free-electron status, in adherence to the criteria of an exclusively omega-oriented civilization, and thus attain to its goal in pure pitch, in compositions the notes of which are completely free from rhythmic attachments. Such an ultimate music will be the norm wherever proletarian civilization is developed, and it will largely stem from modern jazz, just as pure poetry will stem from the relatively post-atomic poetry of contemporary
GAVIN: So this absolutely free-electron music is part of a separate spectrum of musical evolution from the European classical tradition.
JAMES: Absolutely! Since, if it doesn't correspond to a bound-electron equivalent, such classical music corresponds, in its avant-garde manifestation, to a pseudo-electron equivalent, which pertains to a different spectrum of creative evolution - one paralleling the tail-end of atomic tradition and extending as far beyond that as petty-bourgeois criteria will permit.
GAVIN: Thus a parallel development with the pseudo-electron literature of William Burroughs, which exists on a different level, within a different spectrum, to the largely illusory novel-writing of, say, George Orwell.
JAMES: Precisely! In the context of a lesser music, just as the expressive illusory novels of the typical European author are lesser literature when compared with the (greater) literature of the pseudo-electron novelist. So the music of the next civilization will stem from the highest music of contemporary American civilization, viz. modern jazz, being, however, as different from that relatively post-atomic music as pure poetry ... from its petty-bourgeois precursor. Pure jazz as opposed to modern jazz.... As for the evolution of art, it proceeds, like literature and music, towards a free-electron climax through a number of similarly independent spectra of evolutionary development, commensurate with a distinct atomic status, so that, from humble proton beginnings, we may note a disjunctive continuity through successive art forms towards the ultimate art form of the future. Beginning, then, with aristocratic sculpture in the round, the evolution of art is through lower grand-bourgeois vase painting to murals, which signify a higher grand-bourgeois integrity, and thence to representational painting on framed canvas, that approximately bourgeois stage of artistic evolution. From which we proceed to painting of a partly or exclusively non-representational character on frameless canvas, bespeaking a lower petty-bourgeois preserve, and from there, via a different spectrum, to higher petty-bourgeois art in the form of light art, that relatively post-atomic art form. This then leads us to the climax of art in the representational, or rather, abstract holography of the coming transcendental civilization.
GAVIN: In what way or ways is light art relatively post-atomic?
JAMES: By being a combination of materialism and spirituality, the one conceived on the highest terms, as pertaining to the glass or plastic tubes of the light work, and the other conceived in terms of the electric or neon lighting which, particularly in the most transcendental examples of this art form, can be used to symbolize the spirit, to intimate of omega divinity. That there is a lower type of light art, of materialist/expressionist tendency, I do not deny. Yet this is another factor in that art form's relativity, one that could never apply to abstract holography, as germane to a transcendental civilization, and for the simple reason that such a civilization, being absolute, would have no place for the quasi-occult - in other words, no place for expressive, materialist alternatives. The holography of that civilization would be purely impressive, and such an impression, designed to intimate in the most unequivocal way of pure spirit, would be projected into space conceived as the interior of a Meditation Centre, free from material surrounds or casings, as light purely and simply, which would constitute its conceptual absolutism. One could not contemplate a higher type of art than that - at any rate, not objectively considered. For, although the Supermen of the first phase of the post-Human Millennium may be contemplating the visionary contents of their new brains, thanks to LSD or some such synthetic hallucinogen, and such contemplation be directed at the apparent inside their brains rather than (as with abstract holography) at the quasi-essential outside them, those visionary contents won't be impressive but expressive, not abstract but largely representational and, therefore, quasi-occult, on a lower level to abstract holography, because perceptual rather than conceptual.
GAVIN: And yet evolution will still have to pass through a hallucinogenic phase, if only to get to an ultra-metaphysical one.
JAMES: Yes, the process of evolving toward the ultimate metaphysical, or supernatural, absolute in the post-Millennial Beyond must take place on relative terms while life is subject, as it is with men and will continue to be with their immediate successors, to relativity. While the representational aspect of hallucinogenic stimulation may constitute a fall from the impressive absolutism of holography, at least it is situated within the new brain rather than without it ... in surrounding space, and thus signifies, on that account, some kind of evolutionary progression, even if only on relative terms. The truly absolute mode of progress will only come following the subsequent elevation of millennial life to its superbeingful stage, when pure contemplation succeeds the impure contemplation of the Supermen. This higher contemplation, involving the experience of hypermeditation carried out in the context of new-brain collectivizations, will in due course lead to transcendence, and thus to the goal of millennial evolution in the space-centred Heaven of the post-Millennial Beyond. It would be beyond all art, which at its highest level is designed to intimate, through apparent means, of the essential, viz. the Omega Point. This hypermeditation would be divine and therefore entirely essential, the spirit's contemplation or, rather, direct experience of itself in absolute purity. Art ends, in any objective sense, with pure holography, essential as opposed to apparent, but hallucinogenic contemplation will signify a pseudo-metaphysical subjective extension of art into a post-civilized, post-human age. Just so, pertaining as ever to the human and civilized, art began with pure sculpture, apparent as opposed to essential. Yet before art there were dreams which, antithetical in every respect to trips, bespoke a pre-human, pre-civilized aesthetic beginning, a beginning that involved the contemplation of naturalistic visions by the subconscious. Thus a spectrum of evolutionary development leading from pre-human dreams to post-human trips passes through the intermediate human development of art which, as we discovered, is divisible into approximately seven stages, corresponding to class-evolutionary distinctions in a disjunctive spectrum, or series of overlapping spectra, which stretch from a sculptural absolutism to a holographic absolutism. Before they created and contemplated art, men and/or their ape-like predecessors dreamt. After they have completed the evolution of art, as of literature and music, men or, rather, their superhuman successors will trip. But dreams and trips are alike two extreme manifestations of cerebral activity, the former pertaining to the majority proton/neutron content of the old brain, the latter to the minority proton/neutron content of the new brain. Evolving life will only be truly free when it gets beyond the contemplation of proton/neutron appearances by directly experiencing electron essences. The finest art, literature, and music have intimated of the truth, and to that extent served as a means to an end, a pointer to that ideal society which I equate with the post-Human Millennium. It took man a long time to bring art to the level of an intimation of truth. For in its earliest stages, those of sculpture, vase painting, murals, even much painting, it stemmed from and sought to emulate or describe naturalistic fact. We can have no truck with such fact now, for we are in favour of supernaturalistic truth, and can only intimate of this through the most free-electron art, an art stemming from the best or foremost developments of contemporary American civilization and evolving through the highest level of civilization, as germane to a transcendental proletariat, to its future consummation in the purest terms. Like pure poetry and modern jazz, the best light art is situated on a free-electron spectrum that will extend into an absolute phase with the development of this ultimate civilization. We cannot take over any of the relatively free-electron arts ourselves, but we can certainly continue from where they leave off, and on a basis that will become uniquely our own, producing absolutely free creations which, whether in literature, music, or art, should bring that final spectrum to a divine climax.
CORRELATIONS IN SEX AND ART
SHEILA: If what you say is true ... about politics, art, and sex all hanging together on an equal level of development in any given class-stage of evolution, then it should be possible for one to equate a given sexuality with a compatible aesthetic or political development, and thus come to form a better understanding of that sexuality both in terms of its nature and the extent of its applicability to any specific society.
DONAL: I agree! And therefore, not altogether surprisingly, I have worked out an exact correlation between each of the subjects to which you refer, with particular reference to the relationship between sex and art.
SHEILA: Please proceed to expatiate on this correlation!
DONAL: Well, I divide sex, no less than politics and art, into spiritualistic and materialistic categories, since such a distinction is endemic to a relative civilization, where either an atomic dualism or a relatively post-atomic dualism prevails, as in Britain and America respectively. I also distinguish between two stages of petty-bourgeois evolution within each of these relativities, viz. an early and a late, and further divide each stage into two phases, the first of which I equate with a revolt against civilized precedent, the second of which I equate with the attainment to a new civilized ideal - a distinction, in effect, between lower and higher manifestations of a given class integrity.
SHEILA: Hence the barbarous art of the lower/early petty-bourgeoisie and, by contrast, the civilized art of the higher/early petty-bourgeoisie, to name but one of the two petty-bourgeois class stages. Though one could just as easily refer to early/lower petty-bourgeois art and, by contrast, to late/lower petty-bourgeois art, if one wanted an alternative logical structure within which to work.
DONAL: I agree, though I prefer to reserve the distinction between lower and higher for the type of art being produced within the context of any given class stage, whether early or late petty-bourgeois. However, since we were intending to correlate a given level or type of sex with a compatible aesthetic framework, we may as well concentrate more on those subjects and distinguish, to begin with, between lower and higher manifestations of early petty-bourgeois sexuality and their aesthetic correlates, before proceeding to tackle the parallel manifestations of those same subjects as applying to the late petty-bourgeoisie, always bearing in mind a further distinction between the spiritualistic and the materialistic side of each subject.
SHEILA: Which can presumably be equated with the predominating moral bias of any given manifestation of petty-bourgeois culture?
DONAL: Yes, with particular reference to its mainstream manifestations, as applying to
SHEILA: Against which the Nazis were to rebel in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
DONAL: Until their ascension to power in 1933 enabled them to destroy virtually everything for which it had stood. As should now be apparent, Nazism signified a lower/late petty-bourgeois rebellion against Weimar civilization, being essentially a spiritualized politics and therefore opposed, in particular, to materialistic manifestations of civilized art and sexuality, the two chief representatives of which in Germany at that time were Abstract Expressionism and soft-core unisexual pornography, by which I primarily mean a kind of rump-biased heterosexual pornography, one involving young women in a variety of rear positions. If one is to find an aesthetic equivalent for Nazism, it must be in architectural light art, in the lower, impressionistic art of the late petty-bourgeoisie - a type of spiritualistic barbarism paralleling expressionist light art, its materialistic counterpart, which was more sculptural than architectural.
SHEILA: Certainly the Nazis had a reputation for light art, for building 'cathedrals of light', as during the annual Nuremberg rallies, when numerous spotlights were trained on the night sky from a variety of angles and positions, making for a kind of dome of light above the heads of the assembled faithful. Such architectural light art, corresponding to a barbarous because paradoxical use of light, would presumably parallel the sculptural light art of those artists who would appear to be primarily in rebellion against Abstract Impressionism, as mainly pertaining to America, and who consequently employed a materialistic barbarism.
DONAL: Yes, and whose sexual equivalent would be homosexuality, a barbarous sexuality not unknown to Communists either. However, as for the Nazis, who opposed Communists and homosexuals alike, we should have little hesitation in contending that the sexuality most relevant to them was paedophilia, or the condition of being sexually attracted to children, which accords, it seems to me, with a lower/late petty-bourgeois phase of sexual activity, being, in large measure, a revolt against rump-biased soft-core pornography, a fresh sexual medium, but one employed in a paradoxical and, hence, barbarous way.
SHEILA: Are you serious?
DONAL: Perfectly! Just as architectural light art bears no resemblance to Abstract Expressionism, and Fascism no resemblance to
SHEILA: Thus from the contemporary point of view, both paedophilia and homosexuality are passé, anachronistic modes of barbarous sexuality.
DONAL: Absolutely! Following the brutal demise of Nazism, the way was clear for the development of higher/late petty-bourgeois sex and art, which took the forms of hard-core pornography and abstract light art, as relevant to the late petty-bourgeois civilization of the Federal Republic of Germany on its materialistic side, and to post-War American Republicanism on its spiritualistic side - the former the relevant political setting for a bias favouring hard-core homosexual pornography and abstract-expressionist light art, the latter the relevant political setting for a bias favouring hard-core heterosexual pornography and abstract-impressionist light art, which usually takes the form of slender neon tubing symmetrically arranged rather than, as with its 'materialistic' counterpart, a-symmetrically arranged in everywhichway anarchic fashion.
SHEILA: Doesn't a kind of sculptural light art continue to exist with these developments?
DONAL: Yes, particularly in
SHEILA: Thus certain barbarous American trends in sex and art would be adopted by
DONAL: Yes, until such time as that integrity was no longer necessary and could be superseded by Social Transcendentalism's mature phase, the phase more dedicated to construction than destruction, when abstract holography would come to supplant the barbarous, or representational, variety and, in sexual matters, hard-core juvenile pornography become the logical successor to soft-core juvenile pornography, with its representational perspective.
SHEILA: How exactly would juvenile pornography become hard-core?
DONAL: By exclusively focusing on the rump and, in particular, anus of the mature teenage model, be it boy or girl. Such a hard-core absolutism would transcend both heterosexual and homosexual hard-core pornography, the former tending to focus on the vagina, the latter on the penis. From being sexist, pornography would become post-sexist in the transcendental civilization, a juvenile's rump distinct from either male or female sex organs and significant, moreover, of a higher order of unisexual focus - one literally transcending sex. In such fashion pornography would attain to its consummation, a consummation wholly relevant to computer discs and thus to VDU contemplation, while holography was likewise brought to its consummation in the purest abstractions, abstractions originating in sculptured objects projected into space through the reflection of mirrors.
SHEILA: Quite a remove from Nazi paedophilia and architectural light art!
DONAL: To be sure! And quite a remove from all modes of civilized late petty-bourgeois art and sex as well, not to mention civilized late petty-bourgeois modes of religion like neo-Buddhism and mescaline tripping, about which we have not said a word! Certainly there will be no toleration of barbarous modes of late petty-bourgeois art or sex either, which means that paedophiles and homosexuals, if any such exist in Eire, would be subject to censure and, if necessary, internment. Similarly there would be no encouragement of either architectural or sculptural light art, nor, I need scarcely add, of their civilized successors. A Social Transcendental
SHEILA: That is something to which one can only look forward!
RELIGIOUS INTEGRITIES
STEVE: What would be the religious integrity specifically germane to Social Transcendentalism?
SEAN: A relatively civilized mode of upward self-transcendence dependent upon LSD or some such synthetic hallucinogen. In other words, the indirect cultivation of awareness through the contemplation of artificially-induced visionary experience - in short, through tripping, which would take place in public within the institutional context of Meditation Centres, under the watchful eye of specially-trained spiritual guides.
STEVE: So tripping would presumably constitute the lower phase of religious evolution within a civilized proletarian context.
SEAN: Yes, a relative absolutism on a par with representational holography in art, tonal synthesizer compositions in music, expressive metaphysical poetry in computer literature, and so on. Something distinct, in other words, from late petty-bourgeois absolute relativity, including neo-Buddhism.
STEVE: And thus currently beyond the pale of bourgeois/proletarian civilization.
SEAN: Yes, officially speaking! Probably no more than an intimation of things to come, once People’s civilization gets properly under way, as I hope it will do in
STEVE: So it would be a stage on the road to an absolutely free-electron equivalent, once the introduction of the absolute phase of People’s civilization became feasible.
SEAN: Yes, which would be with the transformation from Social Transcendentalism to Super-transcendentalism in the second phase of the civilization in question, when hypermeditation became the relevant religious commitment.
STEVE: What, exactly, would distinguish this hypermeditation from transcendental meditation?
SEAN: Principally the fact that it would be experienced with the body in a vertical position, free from the ground, through utilization of a special harness suspended from some support apparatus within the Meditation Centre, an apparatus which would enable the hypermeditator to remain suspended from above, in a levitation-like posture. This physical transcendentalism would correspond to an absolutely post-atomic integrity, conferring a hyperspiritual status on the meditator in question, his mode of meditation also being hyperspiritual, i.e. centred on awareness and the cultivation of awareness, elevated above even the most positive feelings which, in pertaining to the old brain, would be irrelevant to an absolutely post-atomic civilization, particularly during its mature phase.
STEVE: So this Super-transcendentalism, as you call it, would constitute an aspect of the True World Religion.
SEAN: Undoubtedly the most important aspect, though not, however, the only one! For, as I envisage it, lectures on the future course of evolution and certain 'cultural' ingredients, like abstract holography, pure synthesizer music, and impressive computer poetry, would also have a place within the overall context of the True World Religion, which to some extent begins with the first phase of People’s civilization and simply attains to a climax with its second phase.
STEVE: After which time the same thing presumably begins again, albeit on higher and more intensive terms.
SEAN: Yes, with the introduction of the Millennium-proper and consequent elevation of post-humanist life to a post-human status, as human brains become artificially supported and no-less artificially sustained in communal contexts, establishing thereby the Supermen of the lower phase of millennial evolution, one given to LSD tripping - as in the corresponding phase of the preceding civilization - but this time on more extensive and intensive terms, the tripping more regular and probably stronger as well.
STEVE: Who will be responsible for creating the Supermen?
SEAN: Qualified technicians, or men with more than a superficial grasp of evolutionary requirement, a kind of serving nobility stemming from the bureaucracy, leadership, scientific community, or whatever. Such men will create and then serve the first of the post-human life forms, rather as a gardener serves his plants. They will also, in due course, create the second of the post-human life forms, the Superbeings, who, as new-brain collectivizations, will duly hypermeditate towards transcendence and, hence, ultimate salvation, that is to say, the escape of pure spirit from the remaining new-brain matter.
STEVE: You mean they will remove the old brain from each Superman and thereupon upgrade post-human life to an absolute status, with more intensified collectivizations.
SEAN: Indeed, thereby establishing the ultimate life-form on earth, each Superbeing, or hypercollectivity of new brains, being the antithetical equivalent of a tree. Well, just as trees preceded apes in the slow evolution of life on earth, so the Superbeings will succeed the Supermen who, by contrast, may be regarded as the antithetical equivalent of apes. Now just as trees stem from the phenomenal globe of planet earth, so the Superbeings will aspire towards the noumenal globe of pure spirit, a transcendence destined to converge towards and expand into other such transcendences in a heavenly journey towards the definitive unity of the ultimate Spiritual Globe - namely, the Omega Absolute. However, before all that can come to pass, life on earth must be directly programmed for transcendence, and this will be the responsibility of the serving nobility in the post-Human Millennium, who will create the Superbeings out of the Supermen, according to the demands of the occasion.
STEVE: And when they have achieved their objectives in this matter?
SEAN: There will be nothing more for them to do, in consequence of which they will gradually withdraw from active service and, eventually, die out, leaving behind an absolutely classless society of Superbeings - god-like beings perfectly capable, one imagines, of looking after themselves or, rather, their selves, i.e. of hypermeditating towards complete salvation.
STEVE: This presumably isn’t something that the meditators of the preceding post-humanist civilization would be capable of doing.
SEAN: No, they would be unable to attain to pure spirit in space, but could, at any rate, make the most of their situation by attaining to pure spirit within a relative context, their superconsciousness elevated above the intrusion of troublesome feelings, not to say thoughts, and elevated, moreover, above the contemplation of the visionary contents of their new brains. Theirs would certainly be a more absolute phase of transcendental evolution!
STEVE: Yet before this higher phase could be seriously contemplated and extensively introduced by the leaders, post-humanist life would presumably have to pass through a phase of LSD tripping?
SEAN: Correct.
STEVE: All over the world?
SEAN: I believe so. After all, it would be a precondition of being able to successfully hypermeditate that evolving life had passed through a phase of indirect hypermeditation, as it were, through LSD tripping; that the relative had preceded the absolute, and thereby opened-up the new brain to a degree which made an absolute orientation both possible and desirable. LSD would force consciousness up towards the visionary contents of the new brain, up towards superconsciousness. You can't expect people to hypermeditate who have spent the greater part of their lives drinking beer or wine, indulging in various degrees of downward self-transcendence in contexts of sensual stupor! When you are dealing with the proletariat, you are dealing with the urban masses, people whose psyche isn't necessarily disposed to upward self-transcendence. Therefore a precondition of making it so disposed is first to ban or phase-out alcoholic and other such sensual indulgences, and then induce them to trip and thus have their psyche almost physically wrenched away from the sensual - a precondition of their eventually being in a position to take hypermeditation seriously. For hypermeditation won't be like transcendental meditation, that petty-bourgeois extreme relativity. It must lay claim to an absolute integrity, as appropriate to a civilized proletariat. But before the proletariat can become absolutely civilized, they must become relatively civilized, and they will only become this, it seems to me, through the assistance of LSD tripping, the trip constituting a form of quasi-meditation. Once alcohol, tobacco, and other such sensual drugs have been banned, as would be the case in a post-atomic civilization, commensurate, so I believe, with 'Kingdom Come', then a substitute stimulant must be made available not only as a means of compensating the masses for the loss of traditional drugs but, more importantly, of upgrading their religious bias from the sensual to the spiritual or, at any rate, quasi-spiritual.
STEVE: So it appears that if LSD is for universal export, once the drive towards People’s civilization gets properly under way in certain countries, Social Transcendentalism must also be so, since corresponding to the relative phase of post-atomic civilization as a quasi-religion.
SEAN: Yes, I believe you are right! For Social Transcendentalism is primarily a religious ideology, and it would therefore have to take root in all countries before Super-transcendentalism, or the absolute phase of People’s religion, became possible. It signifies the Centre, that transcendental successor to the Christian Church, not to mention every church-equivalent throughout the world, and must be orientated towards the establishment of a universal centre, or global community of Transcendentalists, which will signify the total eclipse of statehood come the absolute phase of People’s civilization. Statesmen are at best petty-bourgeois democratic types, but proletarian leaders, when genuine, should be theocratic centrists, dedicated to the furtherance of a free-electron absolutism throughout the world. If they cannot be absolutely such throughout the relative phase of People’s civilization, they can at least be statesman-like centrists, and thus testify to a relativity biased towards the theocratic absolute.
STEVE: In other words, theocratic quasi-centrists.
SEAN: Yes, and therefore opposed to state-like designations, because fighters for the development of religion and associated cultural achievements towards the absolute. Wherever Social Transcendentalism takes root, you can rest assured that it will be 'all up' with the State. Free-electron equivalents, even when 'quasi', cannot abide anything proton- and/or neutron-constituted.
STEVE: And neither are they deeply enamoured, one imagines, of pseudo-electron equivalents, with their people-as-state integrity.
SEAN: No, but they understand such pseudo-electron equivalents and are determined to convert their upholders to a quasi-electron status in the course of time. For Social Transcendentalism is the root from which the flower of Super-transcendentalism will stem!
PART THREE: APHORISMS
ON EVOLUTION
1. Evolution proceeds from alpha to omega, from an inception in the first stars to a culmination in the ultimate Spiritual Globe. It doesn't begin in absolute beauty. It begins, on the contrary, in absolute ugliness, a formlessness of raging flame appertaining to the 'first cause' of any particular galaxy - in all probability the central star there. Stars may appear beautiful from a distance, i.e. from a human point-of-view, but viewed close-up they would suggest the ultimate ugliness, a truly frightening, chaotic, seething mass of flame, the visual intensity of which was matched only by the aural intensity of infernal noise! In sum, the nearest experience to Hell - short, that is, of one's being literally burnt alive!
2. Yes, stars are terribly ugly and, given their primal nature, could not be otherwise. It is not beauty that is absolute but ugliness, as germane to the subatomic proton-proton reactions of pure soul. Ugliness precedes beauty as surely as evil precedes good, or illusion precedes truth. Theology may distinguish between a divine Father and a diabolic Satan, between 'Creator' and 'Devil', but that is largely for the sake of convenience, a mere relative antithesis between fictions abstracted from specific cosmic facts - namely, a central (unseen first-mover) star and the peripheral star known to us as the sun, the latter equivalent, in Biblical terms, to a 'fallen angel', or a star which exploded out of the primal one in or near this part of the Universe. In actual fact, however, both a tangential star, like the sun, and the central star are pure soul, or subatomic reactions. You cannot have atomicity in a star, only in a planet, or partly cooled star, and then only in relation to the mineral and organic, with the emergence of atoms. The Devil may be depicted in Christian mythology as beastly, and hence highly ugly, and the Father as elderly and handsome, but such a contrast, though theologically expedient, does little justice to the similarity which must in reality exist between the sun and the central star of the Galaxy - namely that the central star would be just as ugly, viewed close-up, as the sun. Leaving burdensome theology aside, we may maintain, with utter conviction, that evolution begins in ugliness and only slowly proceeds towards the Beautiful through the development of benign nature.
3. I wrote 'benign' advisably. For anyone familiar, through encyclopaedias and the like, with primeval times will know that the first manifestations of life on this planet were anything but beautiful! Indeed, they were extremely ugly, and not only with regard to reptiles but to nature in the raw, the earliest plants, which formed dense and pitiless jungles, traps of pain and death for other life forms, including early man, who was no less ugly than everything else, since descended from apes. If reptiles were the ugliest of primeval life forms, then the ensuing mammals were not much better, and even the caveman, wrapped in furs and carrying a club or crude spear for hunting, left a lot to be desired, what with his ape-like features and hairy body, his painful soul and wild behaviour. Pain is of course the qualitative attribute of ugliness, the stars being pure pain, though a pain that is beneath all understanding, since they lack a consciousness and body to register it, theology thereby entitled to endow the Father (as an anthropomorphic extrapolation from the central star) with a painless, or 'heavenly', status, against which the conscious pain of plants, animals, and men must seem a 'fall', even if, like all such Biblical falls, it is really a fall forwards, or something tending towards the possibility of beauty and, therefore, pleasure. Even early man had a capacity of sorts for pleasure, as did - and still do - the animals and, to a lesser extent, the plants. But he lived mainly in pain, like a wild beast, hunting and hunted, fearful and feared, the victim of just such a 'fall', conscious of his pain, less ugly than the beasts, but still predominantly so!
4. In time, however, life evolved to beauty, not just in man but also, to a degree, in plants and animals - a slow, gradual process of transforming ugliness, refining upon such beauty as had been achieved, ordering life in such a way as to make pleasure predominate when, with regard to man, pagan civilization came to supersede the primeval barbarism of primitive man in certain parts of the world, particularly the Middle East and, thereafter, Greece and the Mediterranean as a whole.
5. Early civilization was not, of course, hedonistic in essence but, rather, stoical and therefore largely a continuation, on more refined terms, of primitive barbarism, a negative prelude to a positive climax, the romantic, so to speak, preceding the classical, stoicism leading, as in ancient Greece, to hedonism, once the pursuit of pleasure had come to replace the endurance of pain as the chief virtue. At last, beauty triumphant over ugliness, man living on the electron side of the atomic dualism of the flesh to a greater extent than on its proton side - at least where the privileged Few were concerned; though we should never forget that life was still a predominantly painful affair for the slaves and soldiers and other categories of men whom we may describe as less than civilized, i.e. not permitted or able to be hedonistic. Only a small minority could be civilized in this pagan sense, indulgent of crude positive sensation and sensuality as the lowest commitment to spirit, the pseudo-spirit of the minority electron content of the flesh, given the absolutely autocratic integrity of pagan civilization, one stemming from pure soul in aristocratic stoicism.
6. When we turn to Western civilization in its early-stage grand-bourgeois manifestation, however, we find that beauty has become more refined, that, even after a painful and largely stoical inception during the Dark Ages, Roman Catholic civilization has a profounder concept of the Beautiful than had either the ancient Greek or Roman civilizations, and a no-less profounder concept of pleasure, a more refined sense of pleasure through positive sensation in the rites and sacraments of the Church. Now that the slender Blessed Virgin has come to supersede the fleshy Venus as the ideal of feminine beauty, the highest type of the Beautiful, we find the concomitant attribute of the highest type of sensuality, the ideal of refined pleasure in the smell of incense and the feel of Holy Water, the appearance of the colourful priestly vestments and the stained-glass windows, the celebration of the Eucharist through the sacramental symbolism of Christ's body and blood, the lighting of candles and the murmured chanting of Latin, the parallel placement of the hands in prayer and other such refined sensual indulgences as signify an evolutionary progression over the unabashed sensuality (hedonism) of the civilized pagans which, from a Catholic standpoint, was regarded as sinful, its contemporary equivalent, in a similar indulgence of crude sensuality, necessitating confession and neutralization, as it were, through priestly absolution. Being in part an extension of sensuality from crude to refined levels, Catholicism anticipates sin and expects confession. Appertaining to the inception of the theocratic spectrum, on which a knowledge and intimation of truth avowedly exists, it cannot encourage a religious indulgence more applicable to the autocratic spectrum. Not pseudo-spirit but quasi-spirit is its religious ideal, through a very moderate indulgence of the minority electron content of the flesh. If the masses are too backward to appreciate truth in the unadulterated guise of the Holy Spirit, then they must at least make efforts to curb their sensuality and maintain allegiance to the refined beauty of the Blessed Virgin. There is no higher beauty than hers!
7. Which is, of course, a theological acknowledgement of a biological fact - namely, that beauty, as the highest manifestation of phenomenal form, attains to a climax in the female body, with particular reference to the face. Beautiful women are not only more beautiful than beautiful or handsome men; they are more beautiful than beautiful animals and plants as well, the culmination of a process of evolution that began in nature and proceeded, via the animals, to mankind, where its purest and most absolute manifestation was to be found in woman. For what is absolute beauty but a form that is untarnished by ugliness, a perfectly formed human body and face? If evolution began in absolute ugliness, then it was not until mankind had reached the stage of producing beautiful women ... that it attained to absolute beauty or, at any rate, to the nearest equivalent thereof. We cannot in all honesty claim that a cat or a flower is more beautiful than a beautiful woman, even though we may recognize a lower manifestation of the Beautiful in it, perhaps even a lower manifestation of absolute beauty - one less complex or ingenious than in a woman. And yet, even with regard to the Catholic Middle Ages, we must admit that refined beauty and pleasure were the preserve of only a tiny minority of people, usually aristocratic or grand bourgeois, and that, far from sharing in it, the masses were little better off than the slaves of ancient Greece and Rome. Whether peasants or artisans, their lifestyles would have been less than civilized when judged from an aesthetic point-of-view. For civilization was still an elite affair, surrounded by a sprawling barbarism of proton pain and ugliness, slavery and disease, poverty and dirt. It could not have been otherwise; the galactic-world-order still prevailed!
8. But evolution must continue, and whether revolt is fuelled by resentment against the control or by a genuinely revolutionary urge or, indeed, by a paradoxical combination of both, another 'fall' was in order, this time from beauty and refined pleasure to evil and hate, the Lutheran protest against subservience of the Church to autocratic dominion, a late-stage grand-bourgeois rebellion against early-stage grand-bourgeois precedent, a period of religious strife and inter-denominational persecution, the great schism known as the Reformation, which gave birth to early Protestantism as a 'romantic' phase of religion in revolt against the classicism of the Roman Catholic Church, a kind of Christian equivalent to stoicism. Well, if Lutheranism signified a 'fall' from refined pleasure to unrefined hatred, or a puritanical hatred of pleasure, it was nevertheless the inception of a new civilization, which was to flower into the religion of love, a fresh classicism superior to the Catholic variety to the extent that emotional love is superior to refined pleasure, or the Good to the Beautiful. This bourgeois civilization, centred in Christ, was to last from approximately the 17-19th centuries, pushing Catholic civilization into an inferior historical position, since the latter still clung to beauty, in the person of the Blessed Virgin, and could not do otherwise. Protestant classicism was triumphant!
9. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, however, a new reformer and revolutionary writer was at work undermining the ethical foundations of this second Western civilization, and another 'fall' ... from the positive side of the emotional plane to the negative side of the feeling one ... was in the making - namely, the Marxist fall from goodness and love in Puritan classicism to illusion and sadness in Communist romanticism, the revolt of the Anti-Christ against Christian precedent, an antithetical equivalent of the Lutheran (anti-Virgin?) revolt against Catholicism, necessarily early-stage petty bourgeois in time and, like all such revolts, successful only after a protracted struggle with the status quo, both inside and outside Russia, the country destined, through Lenin, to become the world's first Communist state. Inevitably, the
10. However that may be, the age of relative truth (neo-Buddhism) and happiness cannot last for ever, neither on its American nor its Russian sides, since evolution must go forwards to an absolutely transcendental age, an age when not happiness but awareness will be the primary religious ideal. In other words, there must be an extension of the theocratic spectrum beyond the Hitlerian Second Coming to an Anti-Hitler and/or True World Messiah, in which the relative absolutism, so to speak, of hypercontemplation, corresponding to a 'fall' from happiness to visionary awareness, from the majority electron content of the old brain to the minority proton content of the new brain, will supersede the extreme relativity of positive feelings, and thus signify the romantic inception of a new and higher civilization, as germane to Social Transcendentalism.
11. Not, then, an antithetical equivalent of the Blessed Virgin, but a straight antithesis between the inception of the autocratic spectrum in ancient Greek/Judaic civilization and the future culmination of the theocratic spectrum in Social Transcendentalist civilization; the first phase, in stoicism, of the former civilization corresponding to the second phase, in hypermeditation, of the latter one; the first phase, in hallucinogenic enlightenment, of the latter civilization corresponding to the second phase, in hedonism, of the former one, though as a straight antithesis in each case. For just as stoicism preceded hedonism in the ancient autocratic world, so hypercontemplation of hallucinogenic enlightenment must precede hypermeditation in the future theocratic world, the one significant of a romantic 'fall' from late-stage petty-bourgeois classicism in transcendental meditation, the other indicative of a classical 'rise' applicable to the higher phase of an absolutely transcendental age, with the progression from Social Transcendentalism to Super-transcendentalism, as germane to the True World Religion. Whether one chooses to regard the first phase as specific to the Anti-Hitler and the second as specific to the True World Messiah, with proletarian and classless distinctions respectively, or to regard them both as but two aspects of the same absolute age ... is relatively unimportant. Suffice it to say that the one presupposes the other, and that both alike are two sides of the True World Religion. If the goal is experience of the majority electron content of the new brain, then the experience of the minority proton content of that same brain will constitute a quasi-spiritual phase of religious evolution, the necessary prelude to higher things.
12. But even the indulgence of absolute awareness through hypermeditation is only a stage on the road to higher things - namely, the supersession of men by the Supermen and Superbeings of the first and second phases of the post-Human Millennium, when, firstly, human brains and, subsequently, new brains (or human brains minus the old brain) will be artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts, so that a situation the converse of that which preceded pagan civilization, and indeed mankind in general, duly arises - a situation as much above and beyond man as, first, trees and, later, apes were beneath and before him ... in the early evolution of life on this planet. So a straight antithesis, in the first phase of the post-Human Millennium, between Supermen and apes, and likewise a straight antithesis, in its second phase, between Superbeings and trees, antitheses which, in religious terms, would in each case be between different degrees of awareness and different degrees of stupor; between that which, in the trees, is beneath consciousness and that which, in the hypermeditative new-brain collectivizations, would be above it; or that which, in the apes, is only crudely conscious and that which, in the hypercontemplative brain collectivizations, would be highly conscious - the one natural, the other supernatural.
13. And so we can now take evolution on beyond the post-Human Millennium to the post-Millennial Beyond, in accordance with the guidance of written truth, and envisage the Spiritual Globes of pure spirit emerging from the Superbeings with the culmination of their hypermeditation. Such free-electron transcendences, the antithesis to planets, will converge towards and expand into other such transcendences in a cumulative process leading, in due course, to the formation of Galactic Spiritual Globes, or globes of pure spirit that are so vast as to rival the sun in scale, the antithesis, in short, of peripheral stars. Well, such a process, taken to its ultimate conclusion, should result in a Universal Spiritual Globe, the sum-product of all convergence and expansion of Galactic Spiritual Globes, and this ultimate globe of pure spirit, corresponding to the Omega Point (de Chardin), will constitute an antithesis to the central stars (one to each galaxy), and so bring evolution to a climax on terms diametrically antithetical to its inception in the raging flame of pure soul. What began in the Many will culminate in the One. What began as proton-proton reactions will culminate in electron-electron attractions. What began as absolute ugliness will culminate in absolute truth. What began as the pain that is beneath all understanding will culminate in the peace that is above all understanding. What began in the archdiabolic will culminate in ultimate divinity. What began as a gaseous revolt against the void will culminate in the utmost being. Such an utmost beingfulness could never be the source of an absolute fall into the lowest doing of pure soul. There is no 'eternal recurrence' in that sense, even if earthly evolution may be regarded as progressing from one absolute to another via a relativity, and the progression towards the second absolute is interpreted in terms of a return to absolutism, albeit it be diametrically antithetical to the first.
14. No matter, the ultimate absolutism of the Omega Point will not be the source of innumerable alpha absolutes of pure soul. On the contrary, it will be an eternal peace, the culmination of all evolution in ultimate truth. Stars and planets will eventually disintegrate, leaving the Void to the peace that surpasses all understanding. The Universe won't simply culminate in God; it will be God. For the more Heaven expands the less room there will be for Hell, and we may be confident that the expansion of the former will hasten the decline of the latter. Eventually, not a single star or planet will remain in existence, and the birth of new stars out of exploding gases will cease to be possible in a void which is increasingly being filled by God's presence, the steady expansion of pure spirit. Only when the last star collapses and disintegrates ... will the Universe be brought to perfection in pure spirit alone. The utter triumph of spirit over soul will be but a reflection of evolutionary progress towards a divine universe, a universe destined to last forever. All appearances having passed away, only essence remaining. Such is the way of evolution - a way that culminates in bliss!
15. But not without the historical struggle that takes place in the world and that, no matter how sure one may be of the final outcome, remains of the gravest importance for those of us engaged in it on behalf of the True, as of truth. The struggle with the enemy, be he autocratic or democratic, aristocratic or plutocratic, is never easy; for the alpha side of the Universe and all that stems from it is tenacious and strong! Those of us privileged to struggle on behalf of theocracy, particularly the ultimate theocracy of Social Transcendentalism, will have to struggle long and hard to overcome the reactionary and traditional enemies of evolutionary progress, whose numbers are legion. We shall have to endure much hardship and make great sacrifices. But we shall have the consolation of knowing that the current of evolutionary progress flows on our side, and that, come what may, truth alone will eventually triumph!
ON CIVILIZED EVOLUTION
1. In a truly aristocratic civilization, such as the early phase of ancient Greece, stoicism is the religious ideal, because pain tends to vastly predominate over pleasure, and the courageous endurance of pain is consequently regarded as the noblest posture. Beginning in an absolute phase of proton domination, this negative civilization proceeds, in due course of pagan time, towards a more relative integrity, in which hedonism, or the pursuit of pleasure, comes to be regarded as the chief good. It switches, in other words, from the proton side of an atomic divide to its electron side, from negative to positive sensations, as relative to the minority electron content of the flesh. Thus it progresses from a soulful to a pseudo-spiritual bias, and with this progression comes a more marked distinction between an elite - formerly stoical - of pleasure-seekers and a mass of toiling sufferers, in contrast to the more general diffusion of pain prevailing hitherto. The elite, mainly aristocratic, switch from their proton origins to a kind of electron-biased identification, because pleasure pertains to the electron side of the flesh, which is, of course, its positive side. Thus, in reflecting the atomic constitution of the flesh, sensual civilization in its higher phase reserves the pursuit of pleasure for that tiny minority, who function as electron equivalents, while simultaneously obliging the vast majority - peasants, soldiers, slaves, etc. - to function as proton equivalents in a generally painful existence. The elite are what they are precisely because their lifestyles are morally superior to those of the toiling, suffering masses - positive and pleasurable rather than negative and painful. If stoicism was the moral ideal of the earliest aristocrats, one not widely shared by the masses, then hedonism became the ideal of their more fortunate successors in the relative phase of pagan civilization.
2. With the development of Catholic civilization out of the painful Dark Ages in Western Europe, we find a similar dichotomy between an elite and a toiling mass, because, for all its moral progress, Catholic civilization is still a predominantly sensual civilization and must accordingly reflect the ratio of protons to electrons in the flesh, with, paradoxically, the upper classes functioning in an electron-biased context and the lower classes - peasants, artisans, soldiers - remaining akin to proton equivalents. From being exclusively autocratic, as in ancient
3. However that may be, the disparity between refined pleasure and unrefined pain in early Western civilization, between admiration for the Beautiful and endurance of ugliness, was but a reflection of the ratio of electrons to protons in the flesh, since Catholic civilization was essentially sensual. Not so the proton-biased revolt against this extreme relativity, which took the form of the Reformation and signified a 'fall' from beauty and pleasure to evil and hate, that is to say, from the positive side of the flesh to the negative side of the heart, from the higher side of a sensual plane to the lower side of an emotional one, the inception of ethical civilization in the Protestant revolt, the beginnings of a truly relative Christian civilization. For, unlike the flesh, the atomic constitution of the heart, that seat of the emotions, is, if anything, more balanced, with a slight preponderance of electrons over protons, if one is prepared to believe, as many people would, that love is a stronger emotion than hate; though, naturally, this will depend on the individual, not least of all in terms of his class integrity as conditioned, in large measure, by environment. Suffice it to say that, for a majority of small-town and suburban dwellers, love would be considered the stronger emotion, if only marginally so! Yet the emergence of Protestant civilization reflected a progression from the outer to the inner, from the flesh to the heart, from refined pleasure to negative emotions, though it didn't, of course, emerge without a bitter struggle with autocratic and theocratic precedent, not least of all in England, where a bloody civil war was necessary to shift the balance of power towards the bourgeoisie.
4. However, if love was the religious ideal of the Protestants, it didn't automatically follow that everyone would experience or uphold it. On the contrary, there were plenty of people more disposed to hate, and not only among the masses! For if the heart is approximately balanced between electrons and protons, it follows that an emotional civilization will reflect this balance, and so divide power or sovereignty between the bourgeoisie and the (newly-emergent) proletariat, as signified by the two-party system, with the haters, or representatives of evil, on one side, and the lovers, or representatives of good, on the other, as between Liberals and Tories, the democratic compromise of an ethical civilization, with an emotional Church behind it. What began in evil, as a hatred of beauty and autocracy, progresses only slowly towards good, as a love of justice and democracy. But this civilization remains relative, divided between disparate interests, as between capitalism and socialism, electron-biased Tories and proton-biased Liberals.
5. Since Protestant civilization was centred in an ethical compromise, so the revolt against it was post-ethical, the reflection of another 'fall', this time from the positive side of the emotions to the negative side of the feelings, from the heart to the old brain, from love to sadness. This Marxist-Leninist revolt gave birth to a new civilization, with
6. Since a relative absolutism in hedonism preceded the extreme relativity of Roman Catholic civilization in the Middle Ages, so a relative absolutism in LSD-induced visionary awareness will have to follow the extreme relativity of Communist civilization, if there is to be any real evolutionary progress towards the Millennium, that post-human epoch in time. Thus one is speaking of another 'fall', germane to the inception of a new and, indeed, ultimate civilization, this time from the happiness classicism of mature Socialism to the visionary awareness of LSD tripping, from the majority electron content of the old brain to the minority proton content of the new brain, and the consequent emergence of another elite to lead the masses in the name of Social Transcendentalism and its concomitance of evolutionary truth. Just as the atomic constitution of the old brain signifies an imbalance favouring the electron - if, as many people would agree, happiness is deeper than sadness - and thus represents an evolutionary progression beyond the marginal electron imbalance of the heart, so the ratio of electrons to protons in the new brain may be assumed to far outbalance anything found elsewhere, including its immediate evolutionary precursor, and to a degree whereby an antithesis with the flesh may be inferred. Consequently the era of LSD tripping will be superseded, in due time, by an era of hypermeditation, or meditation solely centred on awareness and conducted, via the aid of special harnesses suspended from overhead pulleys, at a vertical, and hence transcendental, remove from the ground; an era which will correspond to a progression from the minority proton content of the new brain to its (vastly) majority electron content, as religion becomes truly absolute and society, far from embracing a People’s democracy (as in socialist states), increasingly comes to reflect this religious absolutism to an extent whereby any degree or form of proton control or identification becomes both unnecessary and irrelevant, the need for a Leader, in the first-phase sense, no longer valid, since society will have become too firmly set on course for the post-Human Millennium to require any such dictatorial guidance.
7. Just as the aristocracy, including the monarch, are distinct from the peasantry in a royalist society, so a meritocracy, including the Leader, must be considered distinct from the proletariat in a Centrist society (as we may call that which is based around the concept of the Centre, as signifying the omega-most sensible arrangement of society), and thus function as proton equivalents vis-à-vis the People, serving their interests as well as those of the Leader. If the aristocracy of the Catholic civilization of Western Europe became electron equivalents, to be served by the proton masses, then the meritocracy of a Social Transcendentalist civilization in any future Centrist society must serve the masses and follow the directives of their Leader, in whom sovereignty would be vested no less absolutely than (it was) in the autocratic monarch. If aristocracy and meritocracy are antithetical, then so, too, are the peasantry and the proletariat, the former functioning in autocratic terms as proton equivalents, the latter corresponding, in a truly theocratic society, to electron equivalents; the former serving the aristocracy, the latter being served by the meritocracy. Thus the Leader does not rule the people like a monarch, but, as his title suggests, leads them. He leads because he is out front, because he represents evolutionary truth, and this empowers him to dictate. He is no mere People’s representative, accountable to the People. For he is not of the People but antithetical to them - a proton equivalent vis-à-vis an electron mass.
8. Where, on the other hand, the people are sovereign, as in the more emotional context of parliamentary democracy, they are divided between proton and electron sides, corresponding to proletariat and bourgeoisie, and will elect a representative to govern on their behalf. Such a representative will not, of course, represent all the electorate, but solely those to whom he corresponds on whichever elemental terms. Thus an elected proton equivalent, or member of the left-wing party, will govern on behalf of the workers, whereas an elected electron equivalent, or member of the right-wing party, will govern on behalf of the bourgeoisie, provided, however, that his party is in office. In either case, the elected representative will be accountable to his supporters, since he corresponds to them.
9. Where, by contrast, there is no such elemental correspondence - of protons to protons or of electrons to electrons - there can be no accountability, and so the sovereign, be he monarch or dictator, is comparatively free to go his own way, whether in terms of his own interests or those of evolutionary progress and, by implication, what is best in the People - namely, their spiritual potential. As an electron equivalent, the monarch paradoxically rules a proton mass of peasants, soldiers, slaves, etc., whereas the dictator, corresponding to a proton equivalent, no less paradoxically leads an electron mass of proletarians, police, military police, etc. I say 'paradoxically' with some justification, since it is logically more in the nature of a proton equivalent to rule, indeed to tyrannize, and of an electron equivalent to serve himself, which, to some extent, each type does. The earliest kings, or tyrants, were, of course, almost invariably proton equivalents; for early pagan society was by no means atomic but, rather, subatomic, since that which is atomic presupposes evolution to the relative and, in particular, to a democratic level of society, whether physically or emotionally. Yet most Western kings, certainly in the Roman Catholic civilization of Medieval Europe, had effectively become electron equivalents, given, in conjunction with the aristocracy generally, to the pursuit of pleasure and to admiration of the Beautiful, and consequently they were no longer truly representative of the aristocratic, with its stoical foundations.
10. Doubtless 'rule' is the Western equivalent or successor to pagan tyranny, just as 'government' appears to be the democratic equivalent or successor to feudal rule. A democratic politician, whose party is in office, will both represent and govern, representing his constituents or, more correctly, his supporters in the local constituency, but governing the mass of those who did not vote for him and who are accordingly his elemental antithesis. By contrast, the dictator of a Fascist/Centrist society will lead, or serve, the People in his capacity as a proton equivalent vis-à-vis a newly-established electron mass. Yet this leadership will sometimes paradoxically entail the metaphorical cracking of a coercive whip! To speak of him in this connection as a ruler, however, would simply be to mistakenly regard him, in cruder terms, as an autocrat, or someone who rules (tyrannizes) over the masses in his own and/or fellow aristocrats' material interests. Quite the contrary, he will have the People's interests at heart, either soulfully, as in a Socialist dictatorship, or with regard to their spiritual progress, as in a Fascist and, hopefully to a much greater extent in the future, Centrist (Social Transcendental) one. Whereas the first kind of dictatorship eventually leads to a Socialist democracy, where a particle-biased electron proletariat are politically sovereign, the second kind of dictatorship will eventually lead to a Centrist theocracy, where the proletariat, become classless in an electron-wavicle equivalent, are religiously sovereign. It is all the difference between the old and the new brains, between spiritual politics and political religion. In the Socialist case, one may claim that dictatorial leadership is by the autocratic intelligentsia, since they correspond to the minority proton content of the old brain, whereas in the Centrist case it is by the theocratic intelligentsia, who correspond to the minority proton content of the new brain. The governmental representatives of the People, who come in-between this, will generally correspond, as democratic intelligentsia, to the electron/proton (neutron?) content of the midbrain. The collapse of the Soviet Union has already demonstrated the progression from State Socialist autocracy to Social Democracy, and, hopefully, a future Centrist revolution in Ireland or elsewhere will demonstrate, in due time, the emergence of a Social Theocracy from republican democracy.
11. Within the Western Christian framework we can list the evolution of divinities - primary and secondary - as follows: the Father, the Blessed Virgin, the Anti-Virgin, the Son, the Anti-Christ, the Second Coming, and the Holy Ghost. If the Father corresponds to the autocratic spectrum, then the Blessed Virgin corresponds to the Catholic inception of the theocratic spectrum, after which the Lutheran schism gives birth to an heretical subdivision of the theocratic spectrum in early Protestantism. From being negative in its first phase, Protestantism becomes positive in its second phase, largely through the influence of Calvin, who might be defined (in contrast to Luther's status as the Anti-Virgin) as the Pro-Christ, and thus attains to a classical perfection in Christianity-proper, as germane to the religion of love, with Christ as its cynosure.
12. Further along this relative theocratic spectrum, however, we encounter the Marxist rebellion against the practical implementation, in liberalism and capitalism, of Protestant theology, which leads, via Lenin, to the birth of a new religion, based on the teachings of the Anti-Christ, in Soviet Communism, the first phase of which, under the dictatorships of Lenin and Stalin, is negative, the second phase, largely in consequence of Khrushchev's subsequent influence, becoming positive with the attainment - under, first, Gorbachev and then, more completely, Yeltsin - of a classical perfection in which People’s democracy and socialism are the political and economic concomitants, respectively, of what had been Marxist-Leninist theology. This does not imply, however, that Khrushchev corresponds to a Second Coming, though there is of course scope for various interpretations and generalizations in this largely speculative sphere of historical determinism! Neither need we seriously attach such a status to Hitler, if we are basing our contentions on strictly Western theological progressions from the Blessed Virgin to the Second Coming, which necessarily remain sketchy; though Hitler certainly signified a revolt against Soviet Communism, if in its first, or Bolshevik, phase. The only phase or time during which such a revolt is historically valid is when it is against the classical phase of a preceding civilization, so that we get a 'fall', as with Luther and Marx, from the classical perfections of mature Catholicism and Protestantism respectively, a 'fall', in the paradoxical nature of evolution, to the negative, or romantic, side of a higher moral plane. But we should not overlook the fact that both the Anti-Virgin and the Anti-Christ pertain to the heretical subdivision of the theocratic spectrum, because no anti-divinity could legitimately pertain to its main or absolute part, only the positive divinities of the Blessed Virgin and the Second Coming respectively. So instead of being a revolt against classical Communism, the Second Coming, regarded from a Western standpoint, would be an extension of the truly theocratic spectrum into a new and final religion, the True World Religion of Social Transcendentalism - a religion which could only lead, in due time, to the ultimate divinity of the Holy Spirit, with the culmination of all evolution.
13. The evolutionary sketch outlined above is not, of course, ideal. For the Christian framework is limited, and accordingly fails to do proper justice to the evolution of religion considered in its totality, as a global phenomenon. I have already used other frameworks in my speculations, the most comprehensive being that which extends the theocratic spectrum beyond an antithetical equivalent (Second Coming) of the Blessed Virgin in a straight antithesis (involving opposite spectra) between one absolute and another, such as the True World Messiah and Moses. For, after all, Western civilization begins on an early-stage grand-bourgeois level with Roman Catholicism, which is necessarily relative when compared with the absolute inception of civilization in pagan antiquity. Similarly, the concept of a Second Coming, pertaining to this Christian framework, is relative (if on extreme terms) in comparison with the absolute culmination of civilization still to-come, with the transcendental future. Of what use is such a concept to a person of Hindu or Buddhist or Moslem or Judaic descent? He will regard it as applicable to Christianity and to Christianity alone, and would take umbrage at the prospect of having to abandon his own religion for the sake of another, no less parochial one. Clearly, a clean break with all parochial, so-called world religions is desirable, if people are eventually to come round to an ultimate world religion. Now this can only be achieved by reference to a True World Messiah, a Jewish concept transcending everything parochial, a concept appertaining to Judaism no less than to the historical desire of the Jewish people for a religion that will transcend all others and unite mankind in a common faith. I cannot say that I am particularly partial, in this respect, to the concept of a Second Coming, even if, in the paradoxical order of things in this relative world, it may have some value vis-à-vis Christians and, in particular, Catholic peoples.
14. Regarded, then, from a more comprehensive point-of-view, civilized evolution proceeds from an aristocratic absolutism in stoical antiquity to an aristocratic relativity, or relative absolutism, in hedonistic antiquity, that is to say, from a romantic to a classical phase within a pagan context. Then comes the early-stage grand-bourgeois phase of civilization in Roman Catholicism, though not before the Dark Ages have paved the way for this new classicism in a kind of relative absolutism of aristocratic tyranny. Against this we get a late-stage grand-bourgeois rebellion through early Protestantism, and this in turn leads to a fresh classicism in bourgeois Puritanism. An early-stage petty-bourgeois revolt against mature Protestantism is the next logical evolutionary step and, manifesting in early Communism, this duly leads to classical Communism in a late-stage petty-bourgeois/early proletarian context of People’s democracy, which, under the ideological sanctions firstly of détente and then of glasnost, perestroika, etc., is prepared to peacefully co-exist with the bourgeois West, just as the Protestant West was prepared to co-exist, if not always peacefully then at least grudgingly, with the Roman Catholic civilization of an earlier time. This finally brings us to the transcendental future, with civilized evolution again manifesting in two phases - the first, or romantic, phase with regard to the relative awareness of LSD-induced visionary experience, and the second, or classical, phase with regard to the absolute awareness of hypermeditation, both of these antithetical to the equivalent phases of pagan antiquity, LSD tripping to hedonism and hypermeditation to stoicism. So just as pagan antiquity was beneath the Western Christian pale, so transcendental futurity will be above it, the True World Messiah appertaining to a classless absolutism as opposed to a petty-bourgeois relativity. In between come the Catholic, Protestant, and Communist civilizations, as germane to grand-bourgeois, bourgeois, and petty-bourgeois stages of evolution, their classical ideals refined sensuality, love, and happiness respectively.
PART FOUR: MAXIMS/NOTES
ON IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRA, ETC.
1. From the autocratic and the democratic to the theocratic; from the monarch and the prime minister and/or president to the dictator.
2. From the monarchic and the prime ministerial and/or presidential to the dictatorial; from rule and representation to service.
3. From autocratic and democratic economics to theocratic economics; from Feudalism and Capitalism and/or Socialism to Centrism (Centre trusteeship of the means of production).
4. From autocratic and democratic politics to theocratic politics; from Authoritarianism and Parliamentarianism to Totalitarianism.
5. From autocratic and democratic religion to theocratic religion; from Paganism and/or Roman Catholicism and Protestantism and/or Communism to Social Transcendentalism and/or Super-transcendentalism.
6. From autocratic economics and democratic politics to theocratic religion; from Feudalism and Parliamentarianism to Social Transcendentalism.
7. From autocratic politics and democratic religion to theocratic economics; from Authoritarianism and Protestantism and/or Communism to Centrism.
8. From autocratic religion and democratic economics to theocratic politics; from Paganism and/or Roman Catholicism and Capitalism and/or Socialism to Totalitarianism.
9. From autocratic economics and politics to autocratic religion; from Feudalism and Authoritarianism to Roman Catholicism.
10. From democratic economics and politics to democratic religion; from Capitalism and/or Socialism and Parliamentarianism to Protestantism and/or Communism.
11. From theocratic economics and politics to theocratic religion; from Centrism and Totalitarianism to Social Transcendentalism.
12. From an economic (proton) root and a political (atomic) stem to a religious (electron) flower; from soul and matter to spirit.
13. In Ireland, where Social Transcendentalism should first take root, economics and politics will be subordinated to religion. Hence, while being centrist and totalitarian, Social Transcendentalism should remain primarily religious. In other words, Social Transcendentalism comes first, because in Ireland, traditionally, religion takes precedence over economics and politics. (Unlike, for example, in
14. Social Transcendentalism is the first phase of a proletarian religion, the relative (LSD-induced visionary awareness) phase leading, in due course, to Super-transcendentalism, in which hypermeditation becomes the absolute focus of religious endeavour.
15. With the attainment to the second phase of proletarian religion, both economics and politics will effectively cease to exist in any recognizable sense. However, while Social Transcendentalism is the order of the day, centrism and totalitarianism will continue to prevail, though in a subordinate capacity to the religious essence of the movement. Social Transcendentalism is not politically centrist (in the middle-ground sense of that term), but religiously cent(e)rist. For the Centre, as defined by me in relation to Social Transcendentalism, is the most radically omega-orientated of all phenomena.
16. Although embracing both economic and political responsibilities, the Social Transcendentalist leader will predominantly remain what he had been (before assuming office), namely an electron equivalent, and this because he is not simply a dictator but, more importantly, a religious guide, the embodiment, as it were, of the Holy Spirit. Thus his sovereignty is primarily justified on religious grounds, in contrast to the sovereignty of a political and/or economic dictator like Hitler or Mussolini, who puts politics first, whether in terms of Nazism or Fascism.
17. Instead of subordinating religion - Protestant and/or Catholic - to politics, as did Fascism, Social Transcendentalism will subordinate politics to religion and economics to politics. Both of these fundamentally diabolical phenomena will be eclipsed by religion and absorbed into the Leader, who, alone, should have the moral and spiritual strength to bear them in the name of truth and the concomitant development by the People of their spiritual potential. Neither economics nor politics can corrupt the Social Transcendental Messiah, who will subordinate these proton and atomic phenomena to his electron will, which is divine.
18. Thus he who represents the Divine Will is the true approximation to the Second Coming and/or True World Messiah. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini can be said to have done so! Only the Leader of Social Transcendentalism can be accredited true messianic status; for he is essentially an electron equivalent, who must subordinate politics and economics to his will.
19. Consequently, he forms an antithesis to the true kings of autocratic antiquity, monarchs who were proton equivalents ruling the populace in their own, largely soulful interests. Such kings may have been surrounded, in time, by an electron-biased ruling nobility, or aristocracy, but their responsibilities of state ensured a less hedonistic, and therefore more stoical, lifestyle. Likewise the leader of a Social Transcendentalist society may find himself, in the relative nature of things, surrounded by a proton-biased serving nobility, or bureaucracy, who must execute his will and thus serve the People. But for all his dictatorial responsibilities, he will remain predominantly an electron equivalent, in spiritual touch with the electron-biased proletariat to a no-less significant extent than (was) the ruling monarch of autocratic antiquity in soulful touch with the proton-biased peasantry of his kingdom.
20. Monarch - aristocracy - peasantry/soldiery: a proton - electron - proton-biased atomicity indicating a distinct bias for the proton side of matter. Leader - bureaucracy - proletariat/police: an electron - proton - electron-biased atomicity indicating a distinct bias for the electron side of matter. The former stemming from the proton-proton reactions of pure soul; the latter aspiring towards the electron-electron attractions of pure spirit. From the Father to the Holy Ghost, as from the First Cause to the Final Effect.
21. And yet one should never forget that such atomic divisions and structures are but rough guides to basic realities rather than immutable absolutes. There is an electron side to every proton equivalent; a proton side to every electron equivalent. The king, too, can be hedonistically self-indulgent when it suits him. The leader can also be ruthlessly dictatorial when he considers it appropriate to be so. True absolutes are both anterior and posterior to material evolution, though flame can consume it. The real purpose of our being here is to get spirit beyond material constraints and, worse still, its exposure to soul. For pure spirit is indestructible!
22. Ideal slogan for the true Irish people: Forever theocratic!
23. Militant propaganda slogan against the false Irish people: Democrats beware, theocrats are here!
24. Just as, for the revolutionary democrat struggling on behalf of socialist ideology in a liberal democracy, the most appropriate slogan would be: Forward to a People’s democracy! so, for the revolutionary theocrat struggling on behalf of Social Transcendentalism in a Catholic theocracy, the most appropriate slogan must be: Forward to a People’s theocracy!
25. As liberal democracy to the socialist revolutionary, so Roman Catholicism to the revolutionary theocrat. You do not extend the democratic spectrum (from liberal to social democracy) without a struggle with the liberal status quo. Similarly, you will not extend the theocratic spectrum (from Roman Catholicism to Social Transcendentalism) without a struggle with the Catholic status quo. Needless to say, both struggles are mutually exclusive.
26. Catholicism corresponds to a grand-bourgeois autocratic (feudal) theocracy. By contrast, Social Transcendentalism will correspond to a proletarian theocratic (centrist) theocracy. There is all the difference between the Middle Ages and the twenty-first century in these two theocracies.
27. People have often spoken of a Jewish world conspiracy, but, in reality, there can be no such thing. The Jew will never dominate the world, for the simple reason that we are evolving towards an ideological identification and away, in consequence, from tribal roots. Social Transcendentalists of Jewish descent may well be in highly influential positions in the world to-come, but to regard them as Jews would be to fall into an anachronistic trap nothing short of slanderous!
28. An Israeli Social Transcendentalist would be as far from being a Jew as an Irish Social Transcendentalist from being a Celt. As far as I am concerned, Israelis and Irishmen are but passing (nationalist) phenomena in between tribal and ideological extremes. In the coming age, there will be neither Jews nor Celts, neither Israelis nor Irishmen, but regional components of supra-national federations of Social Transcendental Centres.
29. One should perhaps distinguish between worker and proletarian, reserving the use of the latter term for citizens of socialist states, with the implication that they signify a transformation from the proton to the electron side of an atomic integrity, and are therefore essentially different from and superior to the proton-biased masses of a bourgeois state who, by contrast, are but an evolutionary stage further along from peasants (serfs), as a liberal manifestation of proton enslavement.
30. In this respect, nothing could be more subjective and slanderous than to refer to proletarians in socialist states as 'mob', 'rabble', 'herd', etc., as some Western writers, of liberal tendency, are only too disposed to doing. If such terms are ever applicable to the people at all, they would seem more relevant to the proton masses, or workers, of a liberal society, who are simply the exploited and exploitable victims of a bourgeois elite, and may accordingly come to reflect this fact, from time to time, in uncivilized conduct and speech.
31. Social Transcendentalism in Ireland cannot solely appeal to proletarians, but must be regarded as an Irish Movement, a movement intended to extend theocracy in a Social Transcendentalist direction, rather than to extend democracy in a socialist one, and consequently aimed at the supersession of all democracy and, by implication, republicanism, which is but an acknowledgement of the People’s political sovereignty, the very sovereignty Social Transcendentalism looks down upon from its theocratic vantage-point.
32. For its founder knows that religious sovereignty signifies a superior evolutionary development, being a reflection of post-republican and truly theocratic thinking, in which the Leader comes to embody and/or intimate of the Holy Spirit in his correspondence to a Second Coming, beyond and above any democratic sovereignty, the kind that every true Irishman will know, in his heart of hearts, to be a Protestant phenomenon, more relevant to the British than to the time-honoured upholders of a theocratic bias.
ON ANTITHETICAL EQUIVALENTS, ETC.
1. Autocratic - democratic - theocratic; one might even say: horses - carriages/cars - motorbikes, if one wanted to establish approximate correlations where such modes of transportation were concerned. Certainly there is something autocratic (aristocratic) about using a horse for transportation, just as there seems to be something theocratic (proletarian) about the use of a motorbike. And coming in-between these two extremes is a middle-of-the-road mode of democratic (bourgeois) transportation in carriages/cars.
2. Of course, the carriage preceded the car, which only came into its own during a late-stage petty-bourgeois era, when streamlining (artificial beauty) reached unprecedented levels of perfection and, as a corollary of this, road performance was greatly improved - an evolutionary progression commensurate with the attainment of crude pre-classical black-and-white photography to colour photography or, alternatively, of crude pre-classical black-and-white film to colour film.
3. Now just as there was a progression, on the civil side of four-wheeled transportation, from carriages to cars, so there was a like-progression, on its commercial side, from carts and/or coaches to vans and/or lorries, not to mention from horse-drawn coaches to buses and/or motorcoaches on its public side.
4. As regards the theocratic (proletarian) spectrum of transportation, one could contend that bikes (bicycles) preceded motorbikes in a like-progression from the manual to the automotive. Elsewhere in my writings, I have contended that mopeds should be conceived as following motorbikes in the evolution of two-wheeled transportation, and I believe that, despite a strong temptation to place them in-between bikes and motorbikes as a kind of cross or transition between the two, this contention remains valid, largely on the grounds that we are distinguishing between a late-stage petty-bourgeois mode of transportation and an early-stage proletarian mode, the latter of which presupposes a 'fall' (forwards) from full automation to semi-manual manipulation within the higher context of a less materialistic body design.
5. With regard to scooters, which I equate with a late-stage petty-bourgeois mode of transportation, there seems to be valid grounds for placing them at the tail-end, as it were, of the autocratic spectrum, as a kind of successor to the horse, commensurate with such other pseudo-autocratic or quasi-theocratic phenomena as military dictatorships, sculptural light art, funk-jazz, and quasi-poetic philosophical writings. In other words, as a mode of transportation diametrically opposite - though not antithetical to - motorbikes, which, in returning to political analogies, can be regarded as fascistic.
6. So if scooters and motorbikes are on the extreme spectra of a late-stage petty-bourgeois era, they may be regarded as flanking the modern car, that socialistic mode of contemporary road transportation. A genuine antithesis can only be established, it seems to me, between the inception and culmination or, alternatively, relative inception and relative culmination of opposite spectra. Thus horses and motorbikes would constitute an example of the latter, as between, say, early-stage grand-bourgeois and late-stage petty-bourgeois modes of transportation, whilst a more absolute antithesis could be inferred between, say, elephants and mopeds, or their future successors.
7. This contention concerning the nature of antitheses obliges me to revise a previous evaluation, appertaining to certain earlier works, which posited apes and Supermen as antithetical equivalents and, by a similar token, trees and Superbeings as a more extreme manifestation of the same type of antithesis. Anyone familiar with my more recent work, namely that which concerns the division of human evolution into autocratic, democratic, and theocratic spectra in a sort of disjointed progression, will sooner or later discern the anomaly in regarding apes and Supermen as antithetical equivalents or, more correctly, Supermen as the antithetical equivalent of apes when, as I have elsewhere pointed out, such an equivalent can only be inferred to exist between antithetical parts of the same spectrum.
8. Now if civilized human evolution begins in the autocratic and culminates in the theocratic, as I happen to believe, then anything pre-human or pre-civilized can only be conceived of as pre-autocratic, whether we are alluding to cavemen, apes, or trees, and, similarly, anything post-human or post-civilized can only be regarded as post-theocratic, whether in the guise of technological personnel, Supermen, or Superbeings (millennial supervisors, human brain-collectivizations, and new-brain collectivizations respectively).
9. An antithesis, then, can only be established between opposite spectra, so one is obliged to conclude that pre-autocratic apes and post-theocratic Supermen form an antithesis, as, on more radical terms, do pre-autocratic trees and post-theocratic Superbeings.
10. By contrast, an antithetical equivalent should only be inferred to exist between phenomena on the same spectrum, such as, say, late-stage grand-bourgeois Cromwellian revolution on the inception of the democratic one, and early-stage petty-bourgeois Leninist revolution at, or just before, its tail-end, these revolutions in large measure owing their motivation to the parallel theocratic schisms signified by Lutheran Protestantism and Marxist Communism respectively, which form a similar antithetical equivalent, albeit one less radical than that between early-stage grand-bourgeois Roman Catholicism and late-stage petty-bourgeois Fascism.
11. I like to distinguish between middle class and bourgeoisie in the sense that I equate the former with spiritual/professional commitments and the latter with material/commercial commitments, so that a distinct dichotomy can be inferred to exist, in any relative society, between these two disparate categories, as between electron equivalents and proton and/or neutron equivalents.
12. Proceeding from a class-evolutionary viewpoint, I should therefore have to distinguish between upper-middle-class priests and grand-bourgeois feudalists, middle-class vicars and bourgeois capitalists, and lower-middle-class gurus and petty-bourgeois socialists.
13. Similarly, an artist may be described as middle class and a scientist, by contrast, as bourgeois. In the present century, the chief distinction will be that between lower middle-class artists and petty-bourgeois scientists, though where, say, the seventeenth century is concerned, the prefixes 'upper' and 'grand' would be more appropriate. Whatever the case, I have no hesitation in maintaining that the middle classes are superior, morally and socially, to the bourgeoisie, to the degree that spirit is superior to matter.
14. Proton autocrats - atomic democrats - electron theocrats. Autocracy is a stemming from the Father, democracy a Christian compromise, and theocracy an aspiration towards the Holy Spirit. Autocracy signifies a proton-proton reaction (between monarch and populace), democracy an atomic compromise between reaction and attraction, and theocracy an electron-electron attraction (between leader and masses). Autocracy fades away with the emergence and development of democracy, theocracy only comes properly into its own with the decline and eclipse of democracy.
15. A fading autocracy (constitutional monarchy) is a pseudo-autocracy, a not-yet-independent and absolute theocracy (Roman Catholicism), a pseudo-theocracy, its endorsement of the Holy Spirit considerably diluted by 'autocratic' compromise with the Blessed Virgin, a concession to beauty rather than to truth. Genuine theocracy can only emerge as an aspiration towards truth, in concentrated awareness. One might say that pseudo-theocracy indirectly aspires towards truth (perfect essence) through beauty (perfect appearance), a highly contradictory and paradoxical situation! And yet still preferable to any autocratic stemming from ugliness.
16. Autocratic academies - democratic universities and/or technical colleges - theocratic seminaries. Between academies and seminaries (or their future Social Transcendentalist successors) one finds the democratic, humanist institutions of universities and the socialistic, post-humanist institutions of technical colleges and/or polytechnics. Certainly the age is partial to the development of the latter, though the former still exist in abundance throughout the civilized world, even if their status is in decline in most Western countries, where technical considerations are taking precedence.
17. However, a genuinely theocratic country would abolish university education and demolish obsolescent theological colleges, replacing them with its own higher institutions of theological learning, as germane to Social Transcendentalism, and thus the truth. It would doubtless subordinate technical colleges and polytechnics to theological ones, though by no means neglect their welfare, since technological studies will continue to be an important branch of post-humanist learning.
18. There would, however, be no academies left in existence. For if democratic institutions are unacceptable to a theocratic society, then autocratic ones would be nothing less than totally irrelevant! But, of course, a society that is essentially theocratic, even if on a pseudo-theocratic basis, will not have too many academies in any case. Rather, they pertain to autocratic democracies (or democratic autocracies), like
19. To be sure, ambivalence is part-and-parcel of British dualism, of the bourgeois, Christian compromise. If the People are not technically sovereign in Britain's Constitutional Monarchy within the United Kingdom, then they are at least intermittently and, in practice, sovereign, since they are free to elect representatives to parliament who, in the paradoxical order of such a liberal democracy, will both represent and govern them, depending on the political bias in question.
20. Such an ambivalent, ambiguous situation has been the norm in Britain for some three centuries, and it will doubtless continue to be the norm until such time as history may decide otherwise. The British could not, in all honesty, move towards a social democracy, even if some of them wanted that. Far too many of them don't and, besides, even most Socialists are tarred by the parliamentary brush. They speak of a gradual progression to Socialism, but in reality no such gradualism could bring about a social democracy in a society run along republican lines. Probably a majority of the so-called Socialists would not want that, in any case, since they are British and therefore too set in their political and social thinking, as well as accustomed to compromising with the opposition and (no less shamefully from a genuinely socialist point-of-view) with the nobility!
21. If most democratic peoples are destined to remain democratic in the short-term, though, eventually, on a more socialistic level than that to which they have hitherto been accustomed, then those peoples who may be described as essentially theocratic must remain theocratic, though on a higher level than hitherto!
22. The ultimate revolution in Eire must accordingly ensure progress from Roman Catholic theocracy to Social Transcendentalist theocracy, but such a revolution will not be achieved without a struggle with the State. As a political religion, Social Transcendentalism will be privileged to use the Church in its battle against the State. For once it wins the support of the Church, it will have sufficient moral authority to defeat the State. Then it will be in a position to build the Meditation Centres appertaining to its own religious integrity, which is nothing less than, potentially if not at this point in time literally, that of a True World Religion or, at any rate, the relative (LSD-induced visionary awareness) phase thereof, serving as a precondition for the absolute (hypermeditative) manifestation of the True World Religion, the literal practical manifestation of it, to flower in due course.
23. But no flowering, no classical Become without a preceding romantic Becoming in Social Transcendentalism, the internal apparent phase leading to the truly essential phase in the course of evolutionary time - a situation corresponding to a progression from the proton new-brain to the electron superconscious.
24. From the Republic of Ireland to the Irish Social Transcendental Centre, from nationalism to ideological identification, from the tricolour to the abstract emblem (Y-like in design) of the Second Coming and/or True World Messiah. If the true Irish people have been selected as a new 'chosen people', it is because of their theocratic bias, their ethnic suitability to embrace and expand a higher theocracy, to effect the wider dissemination, through word and deed, of Social Transcendentalism, to be the root motivator of a projected Federation of Social Transcendental Centres stretching across the British Isles, Western Europe, and, eventually, farther afield. An Irish Social Transcendental Centre would know when and where to proselytize the truth of the True World Religion, as well as how!
ON ART, ETC.
1. The twentieth century witnessed the growth of a split in art between democratic and theocratic trends, a split, in effect, between Liberal Realism and Socialist Realism on the one hand, and Liberal Realism and Fascist Realism on the other hand. The democratic artist, be he liberal or radical, represents the People, or that section of them - bourgeoisie, proletariat - with whom he chooses or is obliged to identify. The theocratic artist, by contrast, intimates, in a variety of ways and in varying degrees, of the Holy Spirit, is free to 'do his own thing' irrespective of whether or not it brings him public approval. He alone is sovereign, not the People, and consequently he sets such artistic/spiritual standards as he can achieve, leading, like a fascist dictator, from above. Thus his art - symbolist, post-painterly abstractionist, surrealist, etc., is fascistic or, better, Transcendentalist. It doesn't require the People's approval. But neither, in a liberal society, can it be forced upon them! Consequently it remains, by and large, an elite phenomenon.
2. In a liberal society, democratic art cannot be forced upon the People either, though a socialist society can encourage the People to view and attempt an appreciation of the Social Realist art on offer. Needless to say, there will be little or no Modern Realist art on offer in such a social democracy, and neither, of course, will there be much theocratic art, as produced by the painterly avant-garde in the liberal West. The People’s artist must represent the proletariat, almost literally, though often mythically, as so many militant Marxists overthrowing or opposing bourgeois rule.
3. Ironically, militant Socialist Realism becomes anachronistic in an age of détente, with its peaceful co-existence with the West. Rather, it appertains to the militant phase of Communist struggle (particularly within Russia) against the bourgeois/aristocratic tradition. Where there are no representatives of the old order left in power, the justification for militant Socialist Realism must be held in question. Only a more benign, positivistic Socialist Realism, reflecting the day-to-day lives of the average proletarian, preferably in a working context, would seem to be in order. Such a civilized Socialist Realism will reflect the progress of Socialism as it bears upon the transformation of the proletariat from a proton bias under the old order to an electron bias under the new one, following the inevitable socialist revolution. One might even contend that a militant Socialist Realism would be demeaning to the proletariat in such a People’s democracy.
4. However that may be, militant Socialist Realism would certainly not demean or misrepresent the workers (proton equivalents) of a liberal democracy, where the perpetuation of syndicalism affords the Western Social Realist a vehicle for militant dramatization ... in the form of the workers' struggle against bourgeois oppression, thus creating or perpetuating the myth of Marxist revolt.
5. But such a militant form of Socialist Realism is only one aspect (necessarily extreme) of democratic representative art in a liberal society and, from the establishment's viewpoint, hardly the most important or attractive aspect either! For co-existent with this art is Modern Realism, the conservative alternative to (left-wing) Socialist Realism, which generally portrays middle-class life in its complacent, classical setting, and therefore may be said to represent the electron-equivalent bourgeois and/or petty bourgeois of the contemporary West. All very smug and relaxed, in contrast to the workers' struggle against capitalist oppression or, as in the more left-wing types of Modern Realism, the frank portrayal of the effects of such oppression upon the worker from a democratic socialist point-of-view. One sees it in certain of the works of Hockney, just as one saw its nineteenth-century precursor in Degas, Manet, and Renoir. Perhaps 'capitalist realism' would be the most appropriate term for this classical democratic art, the representative type of contemporary academic art?
6. In the nineteenth century, however, academic art was less bourgeois and more aristocratic, or neo-aristocratic, in character, not so much a classical democratic art as an humanistic autocratic one, as represented by the choice of pagan (ancient Graeco-Roman, Egyptian, Hebrew, Byzantine, etc.) subject-matter, congenial to artists like Alma-Tadema, Poynter, Leighton, and other such exponents of fin-de-siècle decadence, not to mention earlier masters like David and Ingres, who indubitably displayed a taste for autocratic nostalgia in an age of ongoing democracy, an age seemingly no-less partial to the prototypical social-realist works of Courbet, Millet, and Le Dounier, as well as to some revolutionary theocratic works from the brushes of Turner, Redon, and Moreau, each of whom preferred to 'do his own thing'.
7. If humanistic autocratic art is now dead and unlikely ever to arise again, democratic art is still alive in both the liberal West and the socialist East, if to a lesser extent than formerly. For the growth of theocratic art, particularly in France and the United States, is in many respects the most important contribution of the twentieth century to artistic progress, outweighing the achievements, varied as they may be, of Socialist Realism which, while bringing democratic art to a republican climax, signifies the tail-end of an old tradition rather than the inception and development of a new, higher order of painting, as pertaining to the Holy Spirit. It is this theocratic art which, in the evolutionary nature of things, has taken over from and extended beyond the democratic, as in the case of Op art, a late-stage petty-bourgeois successor to early-stage petty-bourgeois painterly avant-garde art - painting, of whichever description, being incapable of extension beyond petty-bourgeois criteria, coming to a climax, one might say, on avant-garde and/or Social Realist terms.
8. Thus in a late-stage petty-bourgeois era the only truly contemporary art will be theocratic Op, a genre above and beyond the scope of conventional painting. Beyond this, however, lies the art of the proletariat, the light art, holography and, in particular, abstract computer art of an absolutely theocratic civilization, such as I hope will take root in Eire in the not-too-distant future, following a progression to truly classless criteria.
9. Needless to say, an absolutely theocratic society would not encourage anything democratic, so there would be neither Modern Realism nor Socialist Realism, nor even earlier (petty-bourgeois) forms of theocratic art, whether abstract, and therefore at best quasi-theocratic (given the democratic nature of the painterly genre), or as Op or Kinetic art, and therefore fascistic. Only that which could be described as relevant to a proletarian civilization, the logical successor to the spiritualistic, late-stage petty-bourgeois civilization of the contemporary West, with particular reference to the United States, and one not at all connected with or stemming from its materialistic counterpart in the (former) Soviet Union.
10. Not all avant-garde or modern art is theocratic, as an intimation of truth. Much of it is neo-autocratic in an anti-aesthetic and expressionist kind of way, more concerned to distort nature and the natural than to intimate of pure spirit. An art of the Ugly rather than of the Beautiful, the Ethical, or the True. Some of it is even neo-pagan, and thus a glorification of sensuality, hedonism, sun, strength, nature, etc. And, of course, it should not be forgotten that nature-painting of any description is fundamentally autocratic, that is to say, concerned not with man, still less the Holy Spirit, but with that which, as nature, stems from the First Cause and thus, by implication, solar energy.
11. If nature precedes man and his democratic, humanistic concerns, then nature-painting, whether in the hands of a Constable or a Cortot, a Monet or a Rousseau, is beneath democratic painting as a kind of more absolutist autocratic art than that which focuses, even in pagan guise, on men and human society generally. To be sure, not a great deal of representational nature-painting was done in the twentieth century, least of all among the truly representative artists of the age. But we should not let this fact lead us to attribute a democratic or a theocratic bias to paintings of nature done in a semi-abstract or minimalist style. A more contemporary technical treatment of natural phenomena does not constitute the truly modern! Rather, it is a form of attenuated autocratic art, indicative of the lowest type of twentieth-century art, using the latter term in its strictly painterly sense.
12. If the highest type of twentieth-century art has its limits, how much more limited must this autocratic art appear when compared with that which, as holography and (more importantly in the immediate future) computer graphics, is beyond painterly art, and as much above and beyond such art as pagan sculpture was beneath it! Indeed, to do this ultimate art justice, we should distinguish between holography, as a true antithesis to the inception of 'art' in pagan sculpture, and computer graphics, as a true antithesis to pagan and, in particular, ancient Greek amphora art. In contrast to the antithetical equivalent that may be inferred to exist between light art and medieval stained-glass in a fascist/catholic distinction. Thus holography and computer art are as much above and beyond the pale of Western civilization ... as pagan sculpture and amphora art were beneath and before it.
13. Concerning elites, who are always a minority, one may note a progression, commensurate with autocratic/democratic/ theocratic distinctions, from aristocrats to meritocrats via plutocrats. Whereas the autocratic aristocrats rule the populace (largely in the guise of peasants), the democratic plutocrats both rule and serve the People (as middle class and/or workers), while the theocratic meritocrats serve the masses (largely in the form of proletarians).
14. A parallel description to the above categories can be discerned in the distinction between Lords, Ministers, and Commissars - the Lords ruling a subject populace, the Ministers representing (ruling and serving) a sovereign people, and the Commissars serving the free proletarian masses.
15. However, one should distinguish between Commissars (more usually bureaucratic Ministers) of a socialist stamp and, conversely, those of a centrist one; for whereas the former endeavour, in their democratic capacity, to serve the material interests of the proletarian masses, the latter will strive, in their theocratic capacity, to serve what is best in the People - namely their spiritual potential, even though compromises with materialism will of course have to be made.
ON SEX, ETC.
1. Autocratic lesbianism, democratic heterosexuality and/or homosexuality, theocratic pornography. Heterosexual sex is to the democratic compromise between proton and electron equivalents. viz. workers and bourgeoisie, what homosexuality is to its socialist successor, that is to say, the logical sexual concomitant of an atomic civilization. If heterosexual sex corresponds to a proton/electron relativity between women and men, then homosexual sex corresponds to an electron-electron attraction between men. However, there is still a relativity of sorts involved with the latter, and therefore an extension of humanism towards an absolute integrity. Thus homosexuality is more suited to a social democracy than to a parliamentary one, and we need not doubt that many Socialists, or would-be Socialists, are essentially homosexual. This is not to say, however, that all those who consider themselves socialist are really what they claim to be! A strong bias for pornography would indicate a fascistic temperament and ideological suitability for theocracy, a strong bias for heterosexual relations ... a democratic or bourgeois integrity.
2. Now let us turn to the two extremes - those corresponding to the autocratic and the theocratic respectively. If lesbianism was the autocratic norm, then it was on account of the stemming from proton absolutism of the early (pagan) civilizations, their subatomic constitution favouring, in sexual as in most other matters, something equivalent to a proton-proton reaction. But lesbianism was not the sole sexuality, nor even the most important one where some ancient peoples were concerned; for there also existed, at least with the ancient Greeks and Indians, a taste for erotic sculpture, which undoubtedly played a significant role in relieving sexual tensions! We may say that nude sculpture was to them what pornography is to us or, at any rate, to those of us with a theocratic bias. Thus an antithesis may be inferred to exist between latter-day pornography and erotic sculpture.
3. However, if autocratic sexual indulgence implied a radical concession to materialism, to the sub-organic as well as to a pre-atomic proton absolutism in the form of lesbianism, the latter a later and more 'democratic' development than the former (corresponding to the progression, in modern times, from heterosexuality to homosexuality), then we need not doubt that theocratic sexual indulgence implies a radical concession to idealism, to the supra-organic, which manifests itself in various forms and degrees of pornography.
4. Pornography, then, is the theocratic sex of the age, somewhat beyond the sculptural connection, in medieval iconography, of the Blessed Virgin or of her elevation onto stained-glass and canvas, an intellectualized, spiritualized compromise existing between lovers in the flesh, whether lesbian, heterosexual, or homosexual. I have described it as fascistic, but that would apply to adult pornography, particularly of a hard-core nature, whereas its evolution to a proletarian level presupposes the use, through computers rather than magazines, of juveniles in an ultimate pornography only appropriate to a Social Transcendentalist age and society, in which a more attenuated sexuality, focusing on mature (16-19) teenagers, was the morally desirable alternative to properly adult levels of sex. No doubt, earlier levels of pornography, together with the three kinds of fleshy sex, would be taboo in an absolutely theocratic society. Propagation would increasingly become an artificial affair, invoking Centrist regulation and supervision. Sperm banks and artificial insemination would gradually supersede natural sexual activity as the appropriate method of reproduction for an advanced civilization. Couples, whether married or otherwise, would become a thing of the past, a reflection of atomic compromise, and this no less the case with regard to homosexuals than to their heterosexual counterparts.
5. Regarding lesbianism again, my conception of a lesbian age, as germane to an autocratic society, isn't one - necessarily oversimplified - which posits lesbian relations solely between females but, on the contrary, one that regards all relations, whether between men and women or men and men, as fundamentally lesbian on account of the pre-atomic integrity of pagan society and, as a corollary of this, the reactive nature of sexual relationships. In short, women would have been too reactive, by and large, to contemplate or indulge in regular sex with their own kind. The ability of women to have attractive sex with one another comes later, at that point in time when women undergo masculinization to a degree whereby any such seemingly lesbian relations partake of a quasi-homosexual character. Exceptions to this rule there may have been, but I am quite convinced that women would not have gone in for strictly lesbian sex with each other in pagan times!
6. Concerning musical instruments, there exists, as in other contexts, a distinction between the autocratic, the democratic, and the theocratic. Broadly, instruments falling within the first category include percussion, wind, and brass; instruments within the second category include strings, keyboards, and guitars; while those within the third category include harps, organs, and synthesizers. Again, to generalize, we may hold that 'autocratic' instruments are played horizontally and naturally, i.e. with naked contact of fingers; that 'democratic' instruments are played horizontally and artificially, i.e. with bow, plectrum, etc; while 'theocratic' instruments are played vertically and artificially. There is about the 'democratic' instruments a kind of dualistic compromise between the horizontal and the vertical, the natural and the artificial, as befits their bourgeois status.
7. If acoustic upright pianos correspond to a liberal democratic integrity, then electric pianos signify a progression along that same democratic spectrum to an integrity corresponding to social democracy, and may accordingly be regarded as socialistic, in conjunction with electric guitars. By contrast, the distinction between an acoustic organ and an electric organ would correspond to the theological distinction (on the schismatic theocratic spectrum) between Protestantism and Communism, whereas the truly theocratic instruments, corresponding to the catholic and fascist parts of the main theocratic spectrum, would be further apart from each other because flanking the 'false' theocratic instruments, and therefore more akin to the distinction between a harp or, alternatively, harpsichord and a synthesizer. Has not the harp long symbolized Ireland's Roman Catholic theocratic integrity?
8. However that may be, we are advancing towards an age when the harp should be supplanted by a more advanced 'theocratic' instrument, if not exactly a Moog synthesizer these days ... then one of its more sophisticated and autonomous successors in the form of a synthesizer appropriate to a Social Transcendentalist age. Needless to say, all 'democratic' and 'autocratic' instruments would then become taboo!
9. Referring to the autocratic, it seems feasible to contend that the popularity of the saxophone in the present century owes not a little to its vertical handling, since possessing a kind of quasi-theocratic integrity as an instrument equivalent to a military dictatorship, being on the tail-end, as it were, of the autocratic spectrum, and thus the logical successor to more horizontal types of brass (trumpet) and wind (flute) instruments. But not, definitely not, electronic!
10. A decidedly important factor with regard to Social Transcendentalism that will distinguish it, during both its phases, from petty-bourgeois LSD-tripping and/or transcendental meditation, will be its dependence, for practical realization, on specially-constructed chest-to-crotch harnesses suspended from an overhead scaffold-like apparatus within any given Meditation Centre, so that its practitioners are lifted free of the ground and enabled to trip or meditate, as the case may be, in a vertical posture - free, to all appearances, of their bodies.
11. In such fashion, the body will be immobilized and thus rendered incapable of disturbing or dominating the mind, a particularly important consideration where LSD tripping is concerned, in that people would not be able to walk about or otherwise make physical nuisances of themselves. A tripper trussed-up in one of these harnesses would be unable to leave the Meditation Centre during the duration of his trip, and so his psychic experiences would be strictly confined to the Centre in question, where qualified personnel would ensure his mental and/or physical wellbeing.
12. Of course, I do not wish to stress the negative advantages of this procedure at the expense of the positive ones, which should always remain paramount - namely, that the individual practitioners of the true religion will be in the best possible physical position to cultivate spirit by dint of being in an absolutely vertical posture some feet above the ground, a posture as levitation-like as its psychological concomitance is transcendental.
ON BRITAIN AND IRELAND, ETC.
1. In relation to the Irish, Scots, and Welsh, the English have always effectively functioned as proton equivalents, holding an atomic U.K. together through domination. Thus the 'Celtic fringe' is - and has long been - a predominantly electron equivalent. One might say, to extend the analogy, that the relationship of British imperialism to natives in Empire and Colony was akin to a proton domination of electron slaves. Freedom for the enslaved is, above all, release from proton domination, and its realization must entail, at some point in time, the development of a free-electron society, a society consciously dedicated to the furtherance of spiritual freedom.
2. If Britain signifies, through its allegiance to a Constitutional Monarchy, an autocratic democracy, then Eire signifies, in its allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church, an autocratic theocracy. A bourgeois republic, like France, would correspond, by contrast, to a democratic democracy, whilst a People’s republic, like China, may be accounted a bureaucratic democracy.
3. In religion Protestantism signifies a democratic theocracy, whereas Fascism is more akin to an autocratic theocracy. The only true theocracy, a theocratic theocracy, so to speak, will arise from Social Transcendentalism, as germane to true religion. Thus for
4. Anyone who defines himself as a theocratic theocrat, i.e. a Social Transcendentalist, should find literature, particularly in its novelistic essence, beneath him, since literature is fundamentally a liberal art-form, scarcely to be countenanced by a theocratic mind!
5. Democracy-proper, akin to literature-proper, is ever a liberal phenomenon. For a late-stage petty-bourgeois era, essentially post-liberal in character, there are one of two possibilities. Either democracy can be stepped up, or improved upon, and one gets a system of proportional representation, akin to a magazine short-story in literature, or it can be transcended in a new 'genre', namely the bureaucratic democracy germane to Socialism, a political equivalent to colour film.
6. At present, proportional representation and bureaucratic democracies co-exist. But there are also liberal and/or autocratic democracies still in existence, political anachronisms corresponding to the literary anachronisms of novels and plays, genres still favoured by many Englishmen, writers and readers alike! Given these analogies between politics and literature, one is tempted to ascribe more relevance to magazine short-stories within a P.R. democracy than to either novels or colour films. Likewise one might suppose colour films to have more relevance to a bureaucratic democracy than to either of the other kinds. But this is purely speculative.
7. From the autocratic kingdom to the democratic state, from the Father to the fleshy side of Christ (Liberalism). From the democratic church to the theocratic centre, from the spiritual side of Christ (Protestantism) to the Holy Spirit. Thus civilized evolution may be perceived as progressing from a subatomic proton inception in the Kingdom to a supra-atomic electron consummation in the Centre via an atomic compromise in the balance between state and church. In other words, a progression from soul to spirit via matter.
8. Matter evolved out of soul, but spirit evolves - and will increasingly evolve - out of matter. Paganism and Roman Catholicism were alike religions of soul, Protestantism signifying a 'fall' (forwards) into matter, Communism yet another, as a later and in some respects more refined materialism, whereas Fascism signified a reaction, in part, against such materialism in the form of a new spiritual impetus, the inception of a religion of spirit that will develop more absolutely in the guise of Social Transcendentalism, the religion of spirit and, consequently, ultimate world religion.
9. An alternative word for Centre would be 'Saviourdom', an antithesis to 'Kingdom'. In the former, the dictator leads; in the latter, the monarch rules. The one as embodiment of the Holy Spirit, the other as embodiment of the Father. In between, the collectivized institutions of church and state, deriving their collective integrity from the Christian notion of the equality of all souls/spirits and, hence, sovereignty in the mass, the people, with the political concomitant of representation and, so far as the Church is concerned, the religious concomitant of guidance.
10. Just as the first civilizations were beneath fictions and thus given to the propitiation or worship of facts, both cosmic and natural, so the ultimate civilization will be above illusions, and thus given to the comprehension and experience of truth. Just as the propitiation of natural phenomena preceded the worship and/or propitiation of mythical abstractions (fictions), so the experience of spirit, or superconscious mind, should succeed the acknowledgement of such contemporary illusions (scientific abstractions) as the curved-space theory and the notion of an expanding (cosmic) universe.
11. Distinctions between cosmic and/or natural facts and mythical fictions on the one hand, and between spiritual truth and scientific illusions on the other, are only relevant to a relative civilization, not to an absolute one; the same of course applying to those theological abstractions - a cross between the mythical fiction and the scientific illusion - to be found in quintessentially dualistic and, hence, atomic civilizations, such as the Christian.
12. Hitherto civilization has never been entirely civilized but, except in the earliest absolute examples, a combination, to varying extents, of the civilized and the barbarous. If the earliest civilizations were, in their stoical integrity, a kind of controlled or regulated barbarism, then the relative civilizations, including the Christian, signified a distinction between a civilized elite and a barbarous populace, a distinction still applying where petty-bourgeois civilization, with its transcendental bias, is concerned. The development of a truly civilized civilization, embracing the vast majority of people, has yet to come about. But it will only do so, it seems to me, on Social Transcendentalist terms, as the masses are led (from above) towards the highest cultural and religious allegiance.
13. Even Communism, which is fundamentally a petty-bourgeois ideology on the side of the People, cannot create a truly civilized civilization, since, despite its commitment to the proletariat, it makes no provision for the highest culture and religion but tends, on the contrary, to represent the People on their own necessarily barbarous terms, in accordance with its democratic bias. No ultimate civilization can be established on the basis of representative leadership! It requires the utmost theocratic leadership, in which political sovereignty is firmly and absolutely vested in the Leader, the Saviour of his - and eventually all - people(s). And not simply in a positive sense ... as saving for, but also, if less importantly, in a negative sense ... as saving from, saving, above all, from the State, and thus democracy, republicanism, parliament, elections, representation, and other such political concomitants of statehood, that atomic integrity stemming from the autocratic sovereignty of kingdoms.
14. The highest, most civilized civilization is indubitably of a free-electron integrity, significant of the greatest spiritual freedom on human terms. It will inexorably lead towards the still greater spiritual freedom of the post-Human Millennium. And that, in turn, will inevitably lead to the ultimate spiritual freedom of pure spirit in the post-Millennial Beyond. Verily, how can an honourable and progressive man not be in favour of all this?
15. A truly civilized civilization will always act not in the name of the People but in the name of the Truth. The Leader serves the Truth. For theocracy is ever above and beyond democracy, the culmination of human evolution.
16. Communism does away with the Church but extends the State. Social Transcendentalism will, if successful, do away with the State but extend the Church ... into the Centre. In the one case, a social democracy. In the other case, a social theocracy. Both, in their contrary ways, are absolutist, in accordance with the absolute criteria of an incipiently extreme age. There is no church/state relativity in Communism, any more than there could be in Social Transcendentalism. People do not congregate in a Communist church, as they would in a Protestant one, since no such institution exists. An absolute age demands state or church, not both! Communism chose the former, Social Transcendentalism has chosen the latter, and on no-less genuine terms than the other camp's was pseudo.
17. For the progression, in respect of Communism, from liberal to social democracy, or bureaucratic democracy, corresponds to a development from the genuine state to the pseudo-state, which is to say, from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat, from the national to the international entity beyond it, as beyond any intermediate petty-bourgeois nationalism/internationalism.
18. Make no mistake, the pseudo-state, applying to a transformed proletariat (now electron equivalents) within the ideological context of an international entity, is historically superior to the genuine state! And, by a like-token, genuine centrism, in a theocratic theocracy, would be superior to the pseudo-centrism of the RC church, which corresponds to an autocratic theocracy. If Communism signifies a contraction of materialism from capitalism to socialism, then Social Transcendentalism most definitely signifies an expansion of the spiritual into the True World Religion. The former, tied to the tail-end of the democratic spectrum, can never be anything more than petty bourgeois, even though it is pro-proletarian. The latter, appertaining to an extension of the main, or non-schismatic, theocratic spectrum beyond petty-bourgeois Fascism, will be genuinely transcendental, one might even say the upholder of a People’s theocracy, bearing in mind its absolute status.
19. But such a People’s theocracy would be primarily concerned with what is best in the People, namely their spiritual potential, and not with the People as a people, which, by contrast, would constitute an illogical concession to materialism, as appertaining to the democratic spectrum, and thus to Socialism. Not for the ultimate theocracy to act in the name of the People, like some democracy, but primarily in the interests of their spiritual potential, whether in terms of the direct cultivation of spirit (awareness) in each individual or, less ideally but nevertheless imperatively, in terms of the dissemination of the Truth and, hence, Social Transcendentalism to various appropriate countries overseas - a procedure which, one way or another, may entail personal sacrifices on the individual's part. One might say that this latter procedure corresponds to the 'social' side of the ideology, the direct cultivation of spirit, by contrast, to its 'transcendental' side. Not until the Truth was established world-wide ... could a true spiritual absolutism emerge, paving the way for the post-Human Millennium.
20. The higher, more intellectual men can make personal sacrifices in the name of the Truth, grasped in its theoretical and abstract formulation. Not so the broad mass of people who, whether as soldiers or civilians, policemen or bodyguards, will respond to the concrete and tangible embodiment of the Truth in the person of the Leader. They will make sacrifices for the Leader, not for his truth, about which they may be largely if not totally ignorant! And the Leader will be more significant in their eyes to the extent that he appears before them as a spiritual guide, nay! the personification on earth of the Holy Spirit, rather than as a politician, be he president or prime minister, and thus a mere representative of the People. For, in truth, the Leader is no politician, and he knows that the People generally despise and avoid politics, being potentially, if not actually, beyond it, as so many candidates for theocracy.
21. Pertaining, as he does, to the climax of the theocratic spectrum, the Leader stands before them as a refutation of politics, the denier of the State, with its presidents and prime ministers, and thus the saviour of the People from democratic materialism ... for the life of the spirit, the Eternal Life to-come. He signifies an electron absolutism, and so leads from above, leads from the Centre, the embodiment of spiritual freedom. The People, if they are loyal to their selves and to their developing electron-biased constitution, cannot but be loyal to him; for he is their hope and encouragement, their promise of a better future, the phenomenal mirror to their spiritual selves.
22. Autocratic subnationalism, democratic nationalism, social democratic internationalism, and theocratic supra-nationalism: a progression from the proton-biased tribe to the electron-biased ideology via the atomic nation-state. A genuinely theocratic society, or Social Transcendental Centre, can only be supra-national, and hence dedicated to the establishment and furtherance of a federation of Social Transcendental Centres, in accordance with its classless integrity. Neither bourgeois nationalism nor proletarian internationalism can be relevant to a genuinely theocratic society in a transcendentalist phase of social evolution. To think in these anachronistic terms is to put oneself beneath the pale of genuine transcendentalist criteria. If
ON CLOTHES, ETC.
1. The dress is autocratic, by which I mean that it conforms to a centrifugal absolutism in its one-piece cylindrical shape. Whether we are referring to very long dresses, germane to an aristocratic age, or to contemporary minidresses, necessarily petty-bourgeois in character, we are dealing with an autocratic mode of clothing.
2. By contrast, democratic clothing is always dualistic, or relative. It affirms an atomic compromise between the feminine and the masculine, skirts and trousers. And this compromise is further indicated in the relativity of skirts to blouses and/or jackets on the one hand, and of trousers to shirts and/or jackets on the other hand, so that each of the sexes reflects a dualistic integrity, the one to a large extent the converse of the other.
3. Coming to a theocratic mode of clothing, a mode the antithesis of the dress, we enter the realm of the post-dualistic, where a centripetal absolutism prevails in the form of a one-piece phallic shape or design. I am of course alluding to boiler suits, which are a rudimentary manifestation of a more synthetic and absolute trend still to arise, a kind of proletarian precursor to the one-piece zippersuit of the future, doubtless the only kind of clothing permissible in a truly theocratic society, where an aspiration towards the absolutism of the Holy Spirit would be the religious/moral norm.
4. If boiler suits, usually in denim, are socialistic, then these synthetic zippersuits will be centrist, or relative to a Social Transcendentalist integrity. No-one will dress like a democrat, in a two-piece suit or, worse still, like an autocrat, in a dress. Only the closed-society absolutism of a one-piece zippersuit will prevail!
5. Since I have elsewhere distinguished between kingdom and state on the one hand, and between church and centre on the other, as reflecting an evolutionary progression from the subatomic to the supra-atomic via the atomic (church/state) compromise, I shall refer the above-listed modes of clothing to their respective politico-religious parallels, thus equating dresses with the Kingdom, skirts with the State, trousers with the Church, and one-piece zippersuits with the Centre, a progression from the subatomic absolute to the supra-atomic absolute via an atomic compromise in bourgeois relativity. Thus like the Church, two-piece suits testify to a bound-electron equivalent, one-piece zippersuits testifying, like the Centre, to a free-electron equivalent. Dresses and skirts, like kingdom and state, are proton and neutron equivalents respectively.
6. Whereas the button-up collared shirt is relative, divisible into two halves, as it were, and further divisible between masculine buttons and feminine button-holes, the T-shirt is absolute, all-of-a-piece, and thus purely masculine in character. Besides making dressing easier, it conforms to the extreme relativistic criteria of a late petty-bourgeois/early proletarian age, being the sartorial complement to jeans (cords or denims). In conjunction with this other masculine attire, it reflects a socialistic and unisexual integrity, and this whether or not the wearer is consciously socialist and/or unisexual. It accords with colour films, colour photography, and rock music, as appertaining to the tail-end of the middle, or democratic, spectrum of political evolution.
7. One should distinguish between the upgrading of an old-style form of bourgeois, relative clothing, whether masculine or feminine, and the new-style relative clothing more absolutist in construction. Thus one should distinguish between, say, a cord or denim trouser suit, the jacket of which overlaps the legs in traditional bourgeois fashion, and a cord or denim trouser suit with a short, waist-length jacket. In the former case, a conventional relativity between masculine trousers and feminine jacket; in the latter case an absolutist relativity between masculine trousers (jeans) and jacket. Whereas the one finds its political analogue in a P.R. liberal democracy, the other should be equated with a radical, or socialist, democracy. Whereas the one is aligned with the heterosexual, the other provokes a homosexual analogue. Thus the absolutist relativity of contemporary jean suits, in which no feminine overlapping of the leg occurs, is on a cultural level with the theocratic democracy of Communism and the masculine relativity of homosexuality. If appearances were invariably aligned with essences, one would have no hesitation in regarding a person who dressed in the above-mentioned manner as either a communist or a homosexual, or both. Certainly his mode of dressing corresponds to an extreme petty-bourgeois integrity.
8. Now consider the man who wears a boiler suit or, better still, a one-piece zippersuit that zips up the front and gives him the appearance of a pilot or even of an astronaut. Such a man would be dressed in an absolutist manner, the antithesis to a woman in a dress, and so approximate to proletarian criteria of sartorial appearances. The political or, rather, religious analogue evoked here would be Social Transcendentalism, while the sexual analogue would be pornography, particularly of a radical nature, and the man concerned might well be a pornographer and/or transcendentalist of one type or another. Such a man would almost certainly despise those who dressed in a relative manner, considering them bourgeois or, in the case of the more extreme relativities, petty bourgeois. Whether or not he knew anything about political/sexual analogies, his appearance would correspond to a radical theocracy, theirs, by contrast, to either liberal or social democracy, thereby existing on an inferior evolutionary level.
9. Where women are concerned, the upgrading of bourgeois, knee-length skirts takes the form of the mini, with or without a jacket, thereby retaining a relatively feminine appearance. Recourse to jeans or jean suits would place the woman on an equal communist/homosexual footing with a man so attired, and thus bring her into line with contemporary petty-bourgeois criteria. We need not doubt, however, that proletarian females will eventually gravitate from contemporary sartorial relativities to a one-piece zipper absolutism along the lines of the aforementioned zippersuit.
10. In countries with a church/state dichotomy, conforming to their atomic status, it usually transpires that one side prevails over the other in accordance with the ethical/ideological bias of the people concerned. Thus in Britain, the State prevails over the Church, whereas in Ireland the converse is generally the case. And as though to symbolize this, not to say reinforce the respective distinctions, Britain retains allegiance to the Monarchy, Ireland to the Papacy. On the one hand, an autocratic democracy; on the other hand, an autocratic theocracy. To conceive of the Church being stronger than the State in monarchic Britain is as impossible as to conceive of the converse situation in papal Ireland.
11. During the atomic stage of evolution, each people retains a distinct, nay, an antithetical bias, and one that will remain such should post-atomic absolutism replace atomic relativity in the not-too-distant future, if in radically dissimilar ways, so that a new distinction arises between, on the one hand, the theocratic centre in Ireland and, on the other hand, the bureaucratic pseudo-state in Britain, the former as hostile to democrats as the latter to autocrats.
12. An Englishman, especially when middle class, easily adopts a utilitarian attitude to the weather on a hot summer's day; he wears the bare minimum, perhaps no more than sandals and shorts. Religious or moral considerations don't occur to him, since he is largely devoid of them. His attitude is crassly philistine! By contrast, an Irishman is more likely to keep his clothes on, irrespective of the heat: socks, shoes, trousers, and shirt being the minimum requirement. To the typical pragmatic Englishman, he may appear foolish, but that is only from a utilitarian point-of-view. For the Irishman will know or, at any rate, sense that there is also a moral dimension which is more important - namely, that clothing is worn not just to keep warm but to cover the flesh, to hide the body, and this applies no less on a hot day than on a cold or a wet one. Hence his attitude, unlike the Englishman's, is largely conditioned by religious considerations. It is profoundly moral!
13. If clothing were worn merely to keep one warm, then there would be little or no point in people in the Middle East, Iran, or North Africa wearing any. But, as a rule, they are buttoned- and/or wrapped-up from head to toe, especially in the case of women. Partly of course this protects them from the sun, but it is also an aspect of Islamic law, of a moral-world-order imposed by religion. Generally speaking, theocratic peoples, wherever they may be, respect this moral dimension, whereas democratic peoples are only too willing to discard or, more correctly, shun it, since they respect merely the utilitarian dimension, which they mistakenly suppose, in their short-sighted materialism, to be the only one. Instead of shunning or ignoring the sun, they rush to greet it, like so many heathens, obsessed by the prospect of sunbathing. No wonder such people remain loyal to the ideals of an open society! A passive form of sun-worship confirms their pagan bias - the opposite of a truly religions orientation.
14. The above example of the way in which an Englishman can misunderstand and, consequently, belittle an Irishman is but one of countless examples that could be given. Clearly, so long as the Irish remain under British rule and/or influence, they will never be evaluated according to their true worth, but be expected to behave in a British manner.... Which, because they won't or can't, leads to additional friction and belittlement in a vicious circle of prejudice and misunderstanding! Salvation for the Irish is intrinsically linked with freedom from the British, freedom from the democratic, and will only come when Ireland is elevated to a radically theocratic status in an island purged of British, and hence democratic, influence.
15. There can be no compromise between theocracy and democracy in the future! The age demands an absolutist choice: either radical theocracy in the form of Social Transcendentalism, or radical democracy in the form of Socialist Republicanism. There can be no question of Ireland's adopting the latter!
16. If Britain was the hub or cynosure of a world empire, then Ireland, elevated in the aforementioned manner, should become the hub or, at the very least, root-motivator of a world centre, an ideological grouping of radically theocratic peoples that will stretch - in the short term - across those parts of the globe, including North Africa and South America, not destined for Socialism but entitled to work for Social Transcendentalism and, by implication, the eventual defeat of democracy in the world at large. What Britain was on materialistic terms, Ireland should become on spiritualistic terms; and on the most absolute spiritualistic terms at that, not, as traditionally, on the level of Catholic missionary work, but with regard to what I have called the True World Religion, with its supra-national integrity.
17. If an autocratic hairstyle is long, then a theocratic hairstyle is short. If an autocratic hairstyle hangs down, then a theocratic hairstyle sticks up. Because they are alike absolutist, both hairstyles will be without a parting.
18. Not so the democratic hairstyles in between these two extremes, by which I mean the medium-length hairstyles that, in the liberal case, favour a parting in the centre of the head and, in the radical case, favour a peripheral parting. The traditional liberal hairstyle naturally favours a relativity, consonant with dualistic criteria, but does so in a way bespeaking a balance between the feminine and the masculine, which is to say, between each side of a central parting. By contrast, the radical hairstyle, whilst affirming a relativity, does so on terms which assert the superiority of the masculine side of the parting so that, instead of a feminine/masculine balance, one finds a masculine bias, and this in response to radical and/or homosexual criteria. So we may affirm an evolution of hairstyles that passes from autocratic beginnings to theocratic endings via a democratic compromise, in which medium-length parted hair is the norm.
19. Where the democratic compromise stage is concerned, a distinction will, of course, exist between feminine and masculine hairstyles, whether in terms of a continuing autocratic bias in the former or of its democratic modification in relation to the latter, as described above. A woman's hair will generally be longer than a man's in a liberal society, whereas a society stressing sexual equality, and thus invoking a masculine bias compatible with homosexual criteria, will encourage women to wear their hair shorter, perhaps as short, or medium-length, as a man's, with the attendant concession of a more or less peripheral parting.
20. A more comprehensive outline of the evolution of hairstyles should bear in mind that the progression from one absolute to another takes place by degrees, so that a peripheral parting which favours the feminine will precede a central parting, just as a peripheral parting favouring the masculine will succeed it. Thus one could speak of a grand-bourgeois/petty-bourgeois antithesis (either side of a bourgeois relativity) in which the peripheral parting will be on opposite sides of the head. Thus whereas the grand-bourgeois parting favoured the right-hand side of the head, corresponding to the old brain/subconscious mind, the contemporary petty-bourgeois parting favours its left-hand side, the side proximate to the new brain/superconscious mind. The first parting attests to a feminine imbalance, the second to a masculine one. In between, the central parting through which, in accordance with bourgeois relativity, the two sides of the head are in approximate balance, as between state and church, lesbianism and homosexuality. However, such a balance no longer holds sway to any appreciable extent; for most people - women included - are partial to the left-hand side peripheral parting, and thus to a bias towards the Church or, at any rate, towards theocracy, while remaining, in their relativity, essentially democratic. Only in a radically theocratic society would an absolutist hairstyle be systematically encouraged and, as already remarked, it would be short and vertical, constituting an exclusive masculinity, a proletarian antithesis to absolutist femininity in the unparted long hair of the autocratic aristocrats of pagan antiquity.
ON CHURCH AND STATE, ETC.
1. The autocratic temple, the democratic church, and the theocratic centre. From a worship of the Creator to an aspiration towards the Holy Spirit via a worship of and aspiration towards Christ. From absolute enslavement to absolute freedom via a dualistic compromise. From soul to spirit via matter, in this case 'human'.
2. The autocratic subego, the democratic ego, and the theocratic superego; from subconscious to superconscious via the conscious mind.
3. Where formerly, in liberal societies, politics and religion were separate, as between state and church, the post-liberal societies signify a progression from the relative to the absolute in the form of religious politics - the false world religion of the People.
4. By contrast, societies that were genuinely Catholic and thus pre-liberal or, better, anti-liberal, can only progress from an uneasy compromise between church and state to a political religion, an absolute theocracy, in the guise of post-fascist Social Transcendentalism, which upholds the true religion of what is best in the People, namely their spiritual potential, and aims to cultivate this potential in the most systematic and radical way, in the interests of spiritual progress.
5. Thus we are distinguishing between the communist illusion and the centrist truth, between the tail-end, as it were, of the democratic spectrum and the post-fascist level of the theocratic one. Only this latter can extend towards the post-Human Millennium and, hence, the overcoming of man in the Supermen and Superbeings of its successive phases, as evolution draws nearer to a climax in pure spirit.
6. From time to time, in accordance with the acquirement of fresh insights, I, like anyone else, revise my opinions and/or theoretical positions, and will do so now with respect to the distinction between aristocrats, plutocrats, and bureaucrats, which I formerly regarded as roughly synonymous with autocratic, democratic, and theocratic distinctions. Not so! A more comprehensive - and hence objectively correct - evaluation will include meritocrats, or those who embody the principle of elite leadership and passionately maintain that the best minds should be allowed and encouraged to go to the top ... if society is to be progressively and sensibly run. These meritocrats are, in effect, the intelligentsia, and they can only be equated with the theocratic, and thus with the coming age of meritocratic guidance.
7. So where, then, do bureaucrats fit in, if they are not, after all, to be equated with the theocratic? Well, the simple answer to this is ... on the left wing of the democratic spectrum, whether moderate or extreme. In a liberal democracy a relative distinction exists between capitalistic plutocrats and socialistic bureaucrats. In a radical democracy, on the other hand, there exists only a kind of bureaucratic absolutism, which is intended to serve the People. Thus a bureaucratic state is ipso facto communist, the successor, in effect, to states upholding a compromise between plutocracy and bureaucracy.
8. Where, however, no such compromise has traditionally been upheld or, rather, where a theocratic bias has generally prevailed over secular concerns, then the logical evolutionary progression is from a kind of diluted, clerical meritocracy to a radical fascist or post-fascist meritocracy, such as would further curb plutocratic and bureaucratic tendencies in response to its more absolute theocratic integrity, thereby utilizing most of the monies available for the service of the Truth and, consequently, the consolidation and dissemination of the new enlightenment - a policy not disassociated from the service of what is best in the People, namely their spiritual potential. Naturally, a certain amount of bureaucratic service, not to mention plutocratic generation of capital, would still be necessary, but a minimum bureaucracy, corresponding to the 'social' aspect of Social Transcendentalism, with particular reference to welfare, housing, and health. Thus a Social Transcendental Centre could broadly be defined as a bureaucratic meritocracy, in contrast to the meritocratic bureaucracies that tend to prevail in communist states.
9. An absolute antithesis may consequently be inferred to exist between autocratic aristocrats and theocratic meritocrats, whereas the antithesis between democratic plutocrats and democratic bureaucrats can only be relative. Even communist bureaucracies are essentially democratic, serving the People.
10. If
11. Autocratic ruralism, democratic provincialism/suburbanism, radical democratic urbanism, theocratic supra-urbanism. A liberal democracy tends to reflect a provincial/suburban relativity, as between Conservatives and Liberals, whereas a social democracy reflects an urban absolutism. The big city is essentially an environment aligned with radical democracy. Beyond and above such an environment lies the supra-urban context germane to a radical theocracy, a Social Transcendentalist theocracy. Alternatively, one could term it supra-rural.
12. However that may be, it should not be confounded with the urban, since signifying a more evolved constitution, one, I should think, in which tall, well-spaced curvilinear buildings tend to predominate over any oblong, rectilinear arrangements of tenement-type dwellings. Indeed, one in which such materialistic arrangements no longer exist, all buildings having become curvilinear, hence transcendentalist in construction and design - residential and commercial, cultural and educational facilities no longer separate but integrated into the one overall structure, thus creating the concept of an omega complex, whereby all parts, or functions, are dovetailed into the whole, the ultimate form of civic development on earth.
13. The current existence and continuing creation of large, curvilinear housing estates, as in Northern Ireland, more than suggests a supra-urban tendency in process of development. It is as though we are being confronted by the antithesis - communal and curvilinear - to the castles and palaces of autocratic antiquity - an arrangement owing nothing to suburban and urban, not to mention provincial (small town), precedent.
14. Nature reflects an atomic integrity or, if you prefer, dichotomy, and therefore the natural is always a compromise and tension between atomic divisions, no less the case in political than in sexual relations. Just as, in politics, an opposition between conservative and liberal interests reflects a natural order, so, in sex, heterosexual behaviour is ever natural or, more correctly, naturalistic.
15. Opposed to this natural order, however, is that which, arising at a later time, scorns such an atomic division in favour of a pseudo-electron (protons in disguise) one-sidedness, and in politics this takes the form of a social democracy, its sexual equivalent ... homosexuality. The natural and the anti-natural alike appertain to the atomic spectrum. Not so the subnatural and the supra-natural, which appertain, in their very different constitutions, to the subatomic (proton) and supra-atomic (electron) spectra respectively, the former manifesting in an autocratic context, the latter in a theocratic one; the former the antithesis to the latter. If the subnatural is beneath politics and, in a certain sense, sex, then the supra-natural will be above it, the former existing on the mundane level of economic materialism, the latter on the transcendental level of theocratic spirituality - a distinction between kingdom and centre, as between erotic sculpture and computer erotica, aristocratic rule and meritocratic leadership.
16. Coming in-between the subnatural and the natural, however, one has what may be termed the pro-natural, manifesting sexually in lesbianism, that is to say, in a pseudo-proton (crude electron) one-sidedness, and politically in a pro-democratic Cromwellian pseudo-tyranny, equally one-sided in character, though essentially pertaining to the democratic spectrum, where it stands to the natural as a relativistic absolute to an absolute relativity. Indeed, the subsequent emergence, on the same spectrum, of the anti-natural ... establishes an antithetical equivalent with the pro-natural, as between homosexuality and lesbianism, Bolshevik pseudo-dictatorship and Ironside pseudo-tyranny. One could alternatively speak of the natural being flanked by the pre- and post-natural, two modes of extremism not to be confounded with the truly absolute extremities of the subnatural and the supra-natural respectively.
17. As the early-Christian (Roman Catholic) civilization of Medieval Europe arose out of the Dark Ages accompanying and following the barbarous eclipse of late-pagan Graeco-Roman civilization, so the early transcendental (Communist) civilization of countries like Russia arose out of the pseudo-Light Ages accompanying the decline of late-Christian (Protestant) Anglo-American civilization. Contrary to popular superstition, evolution proceeds upwards in a spiralling movement, never exactly repeating itself, but manifesting antithetical parallels with an earlier age the higher it ascends.
18. Thus to speak of an impending new Dark Ages would be to succumb to the superficial notion of an 'eternal recurrence' at the expense of objective historical evaluation. The Anglo-American antithetical equivalents of the Graeco-Roman stoical/hedonistic phases of late-pagan civilization are puritanism and promiscuity respectively - the one an expression of Protestant ethics, the other a consequence of republican revolution in the so-called Age of Enlightenment. The former a calculated asceticism, the latter a sublimated self-indulgence.
19. As the catholic Counter Reformation to the Reformation, so the fascist reaction to Communism, the latter an antithetical equivalent of the former, an aspect of antithetical parallels in evolutionary spirals.
20. If early paganism - Egyptian/Byzantine civilization - was not a specifically Western development, then neither need late transcendentalism - Social Transcendentalist/Super-transcendentalist civilization - be so, since given to global aspirations.
21. Western civilization, in the widest possible geographical sense of that term, begins with Graeco-Roman late paganism, progresses to early-Christian Catholicism, progresses from there to late-Christian Protestantism, and culminates in early-transcendental Communism. The first and last are of course tangential to Western civilization-proper, as manifesting in the atomic compromise, or dichotomy, between Catholicism and Protestantism. They are akin, in resurrecting a sexual analogue, to the relatively absolute extremes of lesbianism and homosexuality flanking a heterosexual relativity.
22. If Catholicism is a bound-electron equivalent, then Protestantism is its neutron opponent, a kind of suburban opposition to provincial (town) religion. By contrast Communism is an urban ideology, just as late paganism was rural and thus as much pre-natural, in our specific atomic sense, as Communism is post-natural. Only late transcendentalism could be supra-natural, as pertaining to a supra-urban environment, just as early paganism was subnatural, the absolute reflection of a desert environment.
23. Thus genuinely autocratic and theocratic extremes flank the democratic civilizations, though only the Christian and, in particular, Protestant civilization may be accounted genuinely democratic.
ON THE SUPRA-NATURAL, ETC.
1. Increasingly I dislike the term 'supernatural', because it suggests a heightened naturalism, a kind of higher naturalism that contrasts with nature. To my mind, 'supra-natural' does more justice to the concept of that which is above and beyond nature, i.e. a question of free-electron unity in attraction, in contrast to the uneasy and problematic compromise between protons and electrons, not to mention neutrons, in organic matter. The supra-natural is divisible, it seems to me, into the artificial and the civilized, the one pertaining to the material world, the other to the spiritual one.
2. A distinction, then, between, say, plastic furniture and a mind attuned to pure awareness, neither of which is incompatible with the twin aspects of Social Transcendentalism, which embraces both a bureaucratic and a meritocratic dimension, the former aligned with the material world, and hence artificial; the latter with the spiritual world, and hence civilized. Perhaps, after all, the artificial, or synthetic, would be better described by the term 'supernatural'?
3. When Christian theology distinguishes between the body and its afflictions, as between the Father and the Devil, the one good and the other evil, it is acknowledging the fact that, in general, ill-health is the exception to the rule, and therefore that the work of the Creator, namely the body, reflects the rule, whereas that of the Devil, in ill-health, reflects the exception. Sound enough in its rather simple logic, though scarcely an argument in favour of the Holy Spirit! For no matter how much the rule of good-health may prevail over the exception of ill-health in the vast majority of people, the body is still an obstacle to the extensive cultivation of spirit, and no man can ardently aspire towards the Holy Spirit who also acknowledges and serves the Father.
4. To take a compromise position between the Creator and the Holy Ghost is to be Christian. To turn away from the Creator, and by implication His Son, and aspire towards the attainment of pure spirit ... is to be transcendental, and thus supra-natural, an enemy of everything subnatural and natural. Such a closed-society position is the only truly theocratic religion, above and beyond all autocratic and democratic attachments, free from enslavement to soul and to that which stems from it, in matter. Free for spirit.
5. The age of a truly theocratic religion may still be some way into the future, but, in the meantime, Social Transcendentalism, and by implication Social Transcendentalists (theocratic centrists), must rigorously oppose everything that accrues to the open-society mentality of those who would keep humanity enslaved to the past - to the natural and the subnatural. Only through systematic struggle with reaction and tradition will a new and ultimate civilization in the history of the world emerge.
6. Early-pagan ugliness, late-pagan beauty; early-Christian evil, late-Christian good; early-transcendental illusion, late-transcendental truth - an approximate quantitative attribute to each stage of civilized evolution.
7. On the other hand, an approximate qualitative attribute thereof would read: early-pagan pain, late-pagan pleasure; early-Christian hate, late-Christian love; early-transcendental sadness, late-transcendental happiness, a happiness achieved through increased awareness.
8. Ugliness is the doing against self, and the qualitative attribute of such negative behaviour is pain; beauty is the doing for self, and the qualitative attribute of such positive behaviour is pleasure; evil is the doing against others, and the qualitative attribute of such negative behaviour is hate; good is the doing for others, and the qualitative attribute of such positive behaviour is love; illusion is the being against self, and the qualitative attribute of such a negative stance is sadness; truth is the being for self, and the qualitative attribute of such a positive stance is happiness.
9. Because Social Transcendentalism aims at the establishment of a supra-natural, supra-urban, supra-national society, it favours the concept of a classless society, the logical outcome to a process of world-historical evolution directed not, as with Communism, against the bourgeoisie, but towards the dissemination and development of true religion. It does not intend to extend democracy at the expense of the bourgeois state, but to extend theocracy at the expense of the Church. It does not favour a proletarian exclusivity, but the classless integration of as many different classes as possible into the new, Social Transcendentalist community for the purposes of furthering that community's true interests.
10. A proletarian opposition to the bourgeoisie is communistic, because relative. Only a people struggling, under the guidance of Social Transcendentalism, for the extension and expansion of theocracy to the level of true religion can be intrinsically classless, that is to say, existing on an absolute level of society for purposes beyond the pale of class warfare, which pertains, after all, to the State and therefore could not be relevant to a centrist society, above and beyond all class distinctions. But not every people are qualified to struggle in such a fashion at this juncture in time, and class warfare will doubtless remain valid for those who aren't, as demanded by their proletarian social integrity.
11. An approximate list of class-society distinctions in the history of civilized evolution would read as follows: early-pagan aristocratic absolutism; late-pagan aristocratic/grand-bourgeois absolutist relativity; early-Christian grand-bourgeois/bourgeois relativity; late-Christian bourgeois/petty-bourgeois relativity; early-transcendental petty-bourgeois/proletarian absolutist relativity; late-transcendental proletarian absolutism.
12. Ultimately, the only truly and genuinely classless society will arise in the second phase of the post-Human Millennium, with the new-brain collectivizations of the Superbeings - that life-form far superior to man and, in all probability, existing in specially-constructed space cities from which spiritual transcendence, achieved through high-level meditation (hypermeditation), would be more likely of attainment than on the earth, in close proximity to the latter's gravitational pull. What rumour and legend have sometimes taken for flying saucers (UFOs) might well be such space cities constructed by advanced human-equivalent life on other, unknown planets in the Galaxy.
13. Fundamentally, the theocratic spectrum has always been classless, even during its Roman Catholic inception, since stressing the brotherhood of man, with particular reference to Christians. Likewise the Nazis emphasized the brotherhood of Germanic, or Aryan, man. Needless to say, both brotherhoods were upheld in the face of certain religious and/or racial outsiders.
14. Just so, Social Transcendentalism will be obliged to exclude certain categories of men from its classless integrity vis-à-vis proletarian opposition to the bourgeoisie. In truth, there will hardly be a bourgeoisie for Social Transcendentalist proletarians to be in opposition to, the vast majority of their opponents probably being reactionary aristocrats, tribalists, gypsies, clericals, and socialists - capitalism not being traditionally indigenous, so to speak, to the peoples concerned.
15. Definitions of contemporary political madness: the application of communist criteria to theocratically-biased societies or, conversely, the application of fascist criteria to democratically-biased ones. A failure, in each case, to come to grips with the ideological complexity of the world as deriving from the age-old dichotomy between the material and the spiritual, materialism and spirituality. The first madness will lead to a
16. However that may be, the deepest ideological dichotomy is not between Germans of one denominational persuasion or another, but between dissimilar ideological peoples of disparate race. Thus the spiritual/material dichotomy between, for example, the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons has remained an ideological dichotomy in the national manifestation, traditionally, of Anglo-Irish hostility. Such a dichotomy, necessarily profound, will still exist between the two peoples if and when Ireland adopts Social Transcendentalism and Britain socialism. But, all the while, forces of evolutionary pressure will be at work undermining materialism at the expense of its upholders, and thus bringing the world closer to a spiritual absolutism. For the material/spiritual dichotomy is merely a transient phenomenon, reflecting the passage of human evolution through an atomic stage of its unfolding. What began in a soulful (autocratic) absolutism will culminate in a spiritual (theocratic) absolutism, having passed through a material (democratic) relativity.
ON ROMANTICISM AND CLASSICISM, ETC.
1. Just as Judaism was a revolt, in part, against pagan polytheism, so, in like measure, Protestantism was a Western revolt against Roman Catholic polytheism, substituting the one truly Christian divinity, viz. Christ, for the plethora of associated divinities to which the Catholic Church appeared to attach as much if not more importance, viz. the Father, the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, St. Peter, and a number of lesser figures derived from the Gospels and, inevitably, the Church itself.
2. Now, however, it seems that a new kind of polytheism exists in various parts of the world where, under Marxism-Leninism or some derivative thereof, the practice of collective leadership prevails, the communist authorities not simply People’s representatives but also elevated to a pseudo-theistic status commensurate with their dictatorial prerogatives. If Marx and Lenin are traditionally the chief 'divinities' of this pseudo-religion, then the current president and other high-ranking leaders of the communist state constitute its lesser 'divinities', apt subjects for iconization for the adulation of the proletariat, faithful followers of the gospel according to Marx and Lenin.
3. However, no such secular polytheism would be permissible in a society under Social Transcendentalist guidance, where a new monotheism, embodied in the Leader, would signify the attainment of a classicism superior to either Protestant or Judaic precedent, a classicism relative to the Second Coming and/or True World Messiah, reflecting an aspiration towards the Holy Spirit rather than an acquiescence in Christ or a stemming from the Father. If polytheism indicates a stemming from the Many, the diabolic roots of evolution, then monotheism indicates, by contrast, an aspiration towards the One, its divine consummation. Whether this Oneness is diabolic or divine or a combination of both ... will depend on the epoch and people in question.
4. Let us therefore list the approximate evolution of world civilization in a way which reflects this polytheistic/monotheistic alternation, as between romantic and classic antitheses: early-pagan (Byzantine) polytheistic romanticism, late-pagan (Judaic) monotheistic classicism; early-Christian (Roman Catholic) polytheistic romanticism, late-Christian (Protestant) monotheistic classicism; early-transcendental (Communist) polytheistic romanticism, late-transcendental (Centrist) monotheistic classicism.
5. Graeco-Roman civilization (which in relation to the West I have elsewhere characterized as late pagan) was of course polytheistic and thus, in effect, a continuation of early-pagan civilization vis-à-vis Judaism, with its monotheistic bias. Early Christianity, whilst in part an extension of Graeco-Roman polytheistic precedent, also embraced Judaic monotheism with regard to a Creator (the Father), compliments of the Old Testament (Jehovah), and thereby took on that relativity characteristic of Christian civilization, with its atomic dichotomy, a relativity still accruing, at a later date, to the Protestant revolt in favour of a more absolutist, monotheistic orientation in the person of Christ, Himself a relative, or anthropomorphic, divinity.
6. Christian decadence is characterized not by an atheism that turns its back, as it were, on the Father and Christ, but by a slandering of these two traditional divinities. Hence one could define it as a perverse relativity, a negative dualism wherein the Christian civilization is progressively polluted by internal slander. The analogy of sheep in a pen who, instead of jumping over its fence into freedom, remain imprisoned, to steadily worsen their living conditions, is not entirely inappropriate here! The Western bourgeoisie do pretty much the same thing, fouling Christianity with their blasphemous slander, but lacking the courage or desire to abandon it. Clinging negatively to a class allegiance out of formalism rather than conviction. Sowing the seeds of their own demise in soulless materialism.
7. If the civilized petty-bourgeoisie are now capable of compiling and appreciating poetry anthologies, such anthologies are not abstract but descriptive and expressive. Only in a Social Transcendentalist civilization would anthologies of abstract poetry be the norm, as an aid to contemplation, an aspect of religious striving, part of every Meditation Centre's cultural stock. And such poetry would be the highest literature precisely because it induced contemplation rather than necessitated reading; because its appreciation favoured the electron as opposed to neutron and/or proton side of the new brain; because, in a word, it neutralized the will!
8. As of old, literature, like art (holography) and music (pitch-oriented synthesizer tonality), would once again become inseparable from religion, an aspect of Social Transcendentalist self-realization. Consequently no secular literature, art, or music would be encouraged, all democratic institutions of the arts - libraries, art galleries, museums, theatres, concert halls, etc. - having been transcended in the interests of a theocratic absolutism, people thus being encouraged to attend the Meditation Centre for such culture - apart from the possibility of films, videos, audios, and so on - as they may desire, the availability of the highest art itself a sufficient inducement in this regard. Secular art having been consigned to the rubbish heap of bourgeois (church/state) history, obsolescent religious art likewise, the way would then be clear for the highest theocratic art to blossom on the firm foundations of a Social Transcendentalist civilization, drawing men nearer to the Holy Spirit and, hence, simultaneously pointing towards the future post-Human Millennium.
9. Verily, so long as a single library or museum or concert hall or art gallery remains in existence, this ultimate civilization will not come to pass! Those who patronize and uphold these secular institutions cannot be expected to further the cause of the truly theocratic institution that must bear sole responsibility for cultural nourishment of the spirit in their wake. This task must be entrusted to people more attuned to theocratic progress, the revolutionary fighters for a better future - one based on sound Social Transcendentalist criteria!
10. Unlike the Protestant church, the Roman Catholic church, more absolutist in character, catered to the various arts (literature, music, painting, sculpture), as did the temples of Graeco-Roman pagan civilization, the early Greek in particular. By banishing art from its precincts, however, the Protestant church, though well-intentioned in regard to itself, unwittingly encouraged the growth of secular art, with a consequence that various democratic institutions of cultural nourishment quickly came into being, and not simply to replace the cultural void created by Protestantism, but to satisfy a growing demand for secular culture as an expression of democratic freedoms and rights, the cleavage between state and church becoming more radical with the emancipation of the State attendant upon the Age of Enlightenment (or pseudo-Enlightenment) and, following the French Revolution, the progressive decadence of Western - meaning primarily Protestant - civilization.
11. For if, during the classical phase of Protestant civilization, the Church was more influential than the State, by the time its romantic phase arrived the converse was increasingly becoming the case, with the State and, as a corollary of this, secular art growing in importance as time wore on, a trend which could not but culminate in the state absolutism of communist pseudo-civilization, with its all-powerful opposition to the Church and predisposition towards Socialist Realism - the most secular democratic art conceivable.
12. Just as communist pseudo-civilization arose out of the decadence of Protestant civilization, and this in spite of a Catholic tradition, albeit one subject to Western influence, so the future Social Transcendentalist civilization should arise out of the church-biased Roman Catholic civilization of contemporary Ireland and, contrary to Communism, extend the legacy of the Church to a degree whereby, in the form of the Centre (the religiously-biased institution germane to Social Transcendentalism), it becomes all-powerful and can consequently dispense with the State and its secular culture altogether, arrogating political, not to say economic, responsibilities to itself. In this civilization, art (in the fullest sense of that term) will once again become exclusively the 'handmaiden of religion', as it was in the distant past and, to a degree, still is wherever a genuinely Catholic civilization prevails, and this in spite of its continued co-existence with the secular art of the democratic, Protestant tradition - an art which, together with its communist successor, will be rigorously proscribed, once Social Transcendentalist criteria obtain in Ireland, as elsewhere, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
13. In literature, the novel is the most democratic art form, the one that strives to be popular and, hence, commercial, whether written from a conservative or a social democratic point-of-view. Admittedly, a small number of novelists aspire towards theocracy to a degree, as did Aldous Huxley, and are thus akin to painters who push canvas art in an abstract direction. But that is still merely the 'best of a bad job', so to speak, within the novelistic context, an elite procedure that will only appeal to the most spiritual intelligentsia and not to the broad mass of novel readers who, as before, require a more unadulterated democratic literature, particularly in countries like Britain and America.
14. Needless to say, such literature would be taboo in a radically theocratic society - indeed, the writing and reading of novels, no matter how good their intentions, would be discouraged, if not proscribed, as unworthy of serious attention. Only a democratic society, and in particular a liberal one, can take the novel for granted, just as it takes paintings and symphonies for granted - those plastic and musical counterparts to novelistic literature. All this will change in the future, as much regarding the obsolescent theocratic and autocratic arts ... as the more conspicuously obsolescent democratic ones, not to forget the Social Realist successors to the latter.
ON REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE, ETC.
1. The only true and worthwhile revolution is the one that changes everything, not just a few things here and there! The Social Transcendentalist revolution, if successful, will be the most radical and far-reaching revolution ever. The Kingdom or, rather, Centre that he who corresponds to a Second Coming/True World Messiah intends to establish ... will be no mere continuation of open-society democracy, but the radical break with tradition, nature, the world, etc., that all true believers, whether Christian or Judaic, have awaited for centuries - a break that will confirm them in their belief and test its authenticity.
2. Those who oppose this revolution will be judged severely, as they fully deserve! The sword of truth will cleave the faithless from the faithful, the liars from the true. Only those with faith in my teachings will be saved for the Centre, the others ... damned to a banishment irrevocable! And they include all those who appear Christian on the surface but, underneath, would oppose the Second Coming and seek to protect the Church from criticism and supersession, the false believers who have substituted the institution of the Church for the living truth it exists to convey, the truth of the 'kingdom within', and would consequently oppose radical change, especially any radical change that threatens their vested interests.
3. Christ taught that those who came unto Him would have to abandon parents and family. It is ever the same where a true revolutionary is concerned. You do not become a revolutionary by clinging to tradition or by hanging-on to the luxuries of bourgeois life. You must be free, absolutely free, for the cause, not be inhibited by concern for parents or family. You must be prepared, if necessary, to sacrifice them for it!
4. If heterosexual behaviour is natural and homosexual behaviour anti-natural, corresponding, in political terms, to a communist opposition or alternative to liberal democracy, then anal intercourse between women and men should be regarded as a kind of homosexual heterosexuality, the sexual equivalent of democratic socialism, a sort of relative or diluted anti-naturalism in between liberal and communist contexts. Alternatively, one could contend that, in the evolution of anti-natural sexuality, anal 'heterosexuality' precedes bisexuality, meaning an oscillation between straight heterosexuality and homosexuality, a more extreme relativity than that evinced by the anal violation of women, though a degree of this may still figure in bisexual relations or practices.
5. Thus one would be distinguishing, to risk a further political analogy, between a Democratic Socialist equivalent and a Social Democratic equivalent, the one preceding the other as from early to late stages of petty-bourgeois evolution.
6. If one were to return to the absolutist inception of the democratic spectrum, one would probably be justified in also speaking of Cromwellian or Whig lesbianism, but that is another matter and now I only wish to add that, by contrast, a truly theocratic sexuality, i.e. a supernatural sexuality, must involve recourse to pornography of one degree or another, either with adults (soft or hard) or - more for the transcendental future than the mundane present - the use, via computers, of lawful teenage juveniles.
7. A supernatural sexuality is precisely one in which there is still a natural relation between model and masturbator/voyeur, as between female and male, vagina and penis, except that, the model being a reproduction and not a real-life flesh-and-blood woman, the sexual proceedings/relations are necessarily one-sided (absolutist) and sublimated. Hence supernatural.
8. The present age is partial to much hard-core adult pornography, and this static mode of sublimated sexuality can be contrasted with the video/film active mode which suggests a sexual parallel with a military dictatorship, i.e. the pseudo-autocratic successor to the autocratic rule of monarchs. The sex film does not, as a rule, induce supernatural participation but, rather, the subordination of the viewer to the passive role of voyeur of other people's sexual activity. A contrast, no doubt, with the pagan inception of autocratic sexuality in the worship of erotic sculpture, some of which, being static, must have induced actual copulation.
9. One wonders whether the numerous arms and legs of certain oriental statues, for instance, were not specifically intended to discourage active participation by suggesting animation, the ever-active dance of sexual life. Speculation aside, the significance of contemporary sublimated sexuality in the evolution of life towards a theocratic climax cannot be underestimated, and, certainly, pornographic erotica will continue to be respected wherever theocracy gains the ascendancy, even, in some future societies, to the extent of completely displacing other modes of sexuality, the democratic not excepted.
10. The genuine artist is ever a law unto himself, a man who says what he wants to irrespective of whether or not it will be appreciated by the majority of people. He is a kind of Arts Führer, in whom creative sovereignty resides, and he leads from above, setting new standards and creating fresh interpretative possibilities, which the public may draw near to if they wish or, more correctly, are capable of appreciating what he has suggested, achieved, or whatever.
11. Thus he is essentially theocratic, in contrast to the bogus, or democratic, artist, who aims to please the broad masses - whether bourgeois or proletarian - and thus prostitutes his creative talent (such as it is) in the name of popularity and, by implication, financial success. In a democratic society, the genuine artist will always be the exception, doing his own thing at the expense of popular acclamation and, hence, financial betterment. But an age is coming when no democratic art will be available, and then, in the theocratic society that ensues, the theocratic artist will be the rule - in fact, the only representative of artistic endeavour.
12. Economics - politics - religion; science - philosophy - art; autocratic - democratic - theocratic; aristocratic - plutocratic - meritocratic; beauty - goodness - truth; pleasure - love - happiness; Father - Son - Holy Ghost; protons - neutrons - electrons; kingdom - state - centre; propitiation - worship - self-realization; subego - ego - superego; soul - matter - spirit; Hell - Purgatory - Heaven; child - youth - adult.
13. The aristocratic kingdom - the technocratic church/plutocratic state - and the meritocratic centre: from the autocratic to the theocratic via the bureaucratic/democratic, paralleling an evolutionary progression from the Father to the Holy Spirit via the Son, Who, in His humanistic relativity, embraces both the aristocratic and the meritocratic, as a kind of diluted Father and Holy Spirit respectively, but is not, in any absolute sense, aristocratic or meritocratic.
14. The next civilization will be as much beyond Christ as the Christian one was beyond the Father, or Creator. There can be no literal Second Coming ... of Christ as a cross between alpha and omega. Embodied Holy Spirit does not acknowledge the Father, but champions an evolutionary course set on the freeing of all spirit from the body. He who corresponds to a Second Coming, i.e. the founder and teacher of what, in its radical truthfulness, deserves to become a truly global religion, does not bear the name 'Christ', and neither should he be regarded as such. For that would be an insult to peoples of non-Christian descent.
15. Those who believe in a literal return of Christ are simply the dupes of theological expedience. No such Christ - transmuted into pure spirit following His Ascension into Heaven - will ever return, for no such ascension ever literally occurred. It was simply theologically correct that the Church should have taught the Ascension into Heaven (on the Third Day) in order to show simple humanity that there was more to life than the body and its dying, that, due to evolutionary progress, a dimension of life transcending the body had been discovered, as taught by Christ, and that future progress for mankind lay in expanding the spiritual at the expense of the sensual.
16. The Ascension served as a metaphor for this divine possibility in man, as in evolution, and has accordingly been upheld wherever Christian and equivalent religious teachings have prevailed. But in reality no man, not even Christ, can ever literally ascend into Heaven, the realm of pure spirit. Evolution must pass through two post-human life forms before transcendence becomes possible, and this contention is at the core of my teachings, the teachings, as I said, of a new or second Christ-like figure, less a Second Coming than - at any rate potentially - a True World Messiah.
17. But there are vested interests and fools who will cling to the past, seeking, in the process, to deny or slander my teachings. It is really amazing how many stupid people are in positions of traditional power, people whose innate intelligence, even cleverness, has been stunted and limited by their class allegiance to the doctrinal teachings of their faith and, not least of all, by the influence of a rural or partly rural lifestyle, their dependence on nature in natural or semi-natural surroundings precluding the development of a truly radical, transcendental mentality!
18. Ah, the enemies of evolutionary progress are legion, but Judgement must be severe if that progress is not to be held back indefinitely by the purblind machinations of sophisticated fools! All power to the Centre! Let Social Transcendentalist truth spread throughout the world, in order that it may eventually become united in the faith of the ultimate theocracy!
