Op. 46

 

ELEMENTAL SPECTRA

 

Supernotational Philosophy

 

Copyright © 2013 John O'Loughlin

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CONTENTS

 

Aphs. 1–285

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1.   Idealistic sadness/falsity on the negative divine pole, and joy/truth on the positive divine pole.  Naturalistic hate/ugliness on the negative diabolic pole, and love/beauty on the positive diabolic pole.  Materialistic humility/weakness on the negative worldly-alpha pole, and pride/strength on the positive worldly-omega pole.  Realistic evil/pain on the negative alpha-worldly pole, and good/pleasure on the positive omega-worldly pole.  Negative down and positive up, but negative and positive in both naturalistic and artificial manifestations of each spectrum, with the noumenon preceding the phenomenon in the one case, but the superphenomenon preceding the supernoumenon in the other case - qualities and quantities, superquantities and superqualities.

 

2.   From the Cartesian mind/brain dichotomy to a brain absolutism via a mind-brain symbiosis - the declining path of Western civilization from bourgeois dualism to proletarian monism via a petty-bourgeois dualistic monism.  Or, alternatively, from relativity to absolutism via a relativistic absolutism.  In contrast to the theocratic civilization beyond, with its superbrain absolutism a precondition, via a brain-mind relativistic absolutism, of supermind absolutism - the supermind of the Holy Spirit.

 

3.   Transcendental Socialist being-doing in space-time.  Social Transcendentalist doing-being in time-space.  Space-time is equivalent to supertime; time-space to superspace.

 

4.   Transcendental Socialist light-heat in mind-brain.  Social Transcendentalist heat-light in brain-mind.  Mind-brain is equivalent to superbrain; brain-mind to supermind.  Supermindful God and superbrainy Devil beyond the bodily/superbodily world.

 

5.   Particle-suggesting status of records on account of their round, materialistic construction; wavicle-suggesting status of tapes on account of their elongated, idealistic construction.  Devil and God?

 

6.   Possibility, indeed probability, of conventional tapes as a Social-Democratic ideological equivalent in relation to Democratic Socialist long-playing albums, with microtapes a Social Transcendentalist equivalent in relation to Transcendental Socialist compact discs.  In both of these latter cases, a reduction in scale commensurate with theocratic centro-complexification.

 

7.   Earth - air - fire - water: those time-honoured basic elements which, in relation to my philosophy, can be listed as follows: idealistic air, naturalistic fire, materialistic water, and realistic earth, with air and earth forming one pair of opposites, fire and water another - the former moral and amoral, both of the latter immoral.  Hence, evaluating each element within a naturalistic framework, we may speak of divine air, diabolic fire, worldly-alpha water, and alpha-worldly earth, reserving, in each case, the possibility of a negative/positive option, as between negative air (wind) and positive air (oxygen); negative fire (raging flames) and positive fire (gentle flames); negative water (storm) and positive water (calm); negative earth (landslide, earthquake) and positive earth (soil).  Moreover, I should like to draw attention to the connection between air and light, fire and heat, water and coldness, and earth and darkness, so that we can speak of an air/light vis-à-vis earth/darkness polarity on the one hand and of a fire/heat vis-à-vis water/coldness polarity on the other hand.  Clearly, just as light and darkness are antithetical, so, by a like token, are heat and coldness.  They are also adversaries locked-in to an age-old combat, with victory - as a rule temporary - going to the side with the highest ratio of whichever quantity/quality complement - whether air/light over earth/darkness or vice versa, and fire/heat over water/coldness or vice versa.  Whether fire turns water to steam or water quenches fire will obviously depend upon the ratio of the one to the other, since these immoral polarities are, above all, the active adversaries, in contrast to the relatively more passive adversaries of air and earth, light and darkness, which passively oppose each other in their respective moral and amoral integrities.

 

8.   In regard to artificial energy, however, the production of electricity may be regarded as paralleling our earth-water-fire-air distinctions according to whether it is produced via coal (conventional electricity), water (hydro-electricity), atomic fission (nuclear electricity), or air (turbo-electricity), with realistic, materialistic, naturalistic, and idealistic implications respectively.  Thus the production of electricity through coal corresponds to worldly amorality; the production of electricity through water corresponds to worldly immorality; the production of electricity through atomic fission corresponds to diabolic immorality; and, finally, the production of electricity through air or gas corresponds to divine morality.  Consequently a realistic country like Britain should favour the first option; a materialistic country like the United States should favour the second option; a naturalistic country like Russia should favour the third option; and an idealistic country like Ireland should favour the fourth option.  Hopefully, it will be the fourth option which ultimately prevails, as the world is gradually brought to divine criteria.  Yet all energy production, whether natural or artificial, corresponds to the negative pole of any given spectrum (be it divine, diabolic, or worldly); for energy thrives on friction and therefore is inherently reactive.  It is power, purely and simply.  All the more reason why we should harness it sensibly and responsibly in the centuries to come!

 

9.   As to the connection between air and light, which is not at first so apparent as the one between fire and heat, we have the experience of daylight to draw upon, since such light is only perceptible because of the air it travels through, which has the effect of 'highlighting' it.  For without the atmosphere surrounding the earth, sunlight would no more be perceptible here than it is in interstellar space or, for that matter, on the surface of the moon, where the sun is just another star shining in the distance.  It is because of this intimate connection between air and light that traditional meditation techniques like those associated with the Tao te Ching have stressed the importance of preliminary deep-breathing exercises; for an increased intake of oxygen into the blood will lead to an increase of consciousness, or spiritual light, in the mind, which is the raison d'être of meditation.  On the other hand, such latter-day forms of meditation as eschew preliminary breathing exercises are simply indicative of spiritual decadence, being, in effect, wordless prayer rather than a dynamic meditational commitment, and may therefore be regarded as symptomatic of a Beckettian void, a Sartrean neant, a Schopenhaurian will-less passivity which finds its artistic parallel in much abstract art of the twentieth century.... Not that I am here implying that the West should adopt Taoism at the expense of Christianity or its decadent successor; for that would be a vain attempt to reverse time and seek to accommodate itself to oriental tradition.  But I am convinced that when meditation is resurrected on a properly transcendentalist basis in the future, it will be far more dynamic than passive, if on artificial rather than naturalistic terms, as relative to the use of industrially-produced oxygen, breathing masks, etc.

 

10.  To distinguish between smiling with lips closed as positive Divine and smiling with lips parted as positive Diabolic, i.e. as Christic and Antichristic equivalents, by dint of the wavicle connotation of closed lips and the particle connotation of parted lips or, more specifically, the teeth which are exposed in consequence of a slightly open mouth, each tooth, whether upper or lower, implying a particle status.  Thus an electron-wavicle equivalent in the former case and an electron-particle equivalent in the latter one.  Divine and diabolic because of the head nature, or confinement to the face, of smiling, which, unlike laughing, doesn't involve the body.  But if smiling is divisible in this way, then so is its opposite - namely, the condition of being 'down in the mouth', which is usually termed scowling, whether gloomily or angrily, depending on whether the lips are closed or parted, making a wavicle impression or creating a particle impression (through exposed teeth).  In the one case a negative divine status commensurate with a proton-wavicle equivalent, in the other case a negative diabolic status commensurate with a proton-particle equivalent.  Fatheristic and Satanic equivalents vis-à-vis the Christic and Antichristic equivalents discussed above.

 

11.  With the world, however, the body is more involved and therefore worldly equivalents are less mental than bodily in character, whether in terms of crying or laughing.  For crying is to laughing what scowling is to smiling - the alpha-stemming antithesis of an omega-oriented norm, a minus in contrast to a plus.  Whether we then divide crying and laughing into materialistic and realistic alternatives, as between, say, loud crying and/or laughing on the one hand, and quiet crying and/or laughing on the other hand (with correspondingly disparate physical pressures on one or another part of the body, viz. neck or lungs, ribs or stomach), the fact nevertheless remains that crying corresponds to an alpha-stemming worldly equivalent and laughing to an omega-oriented one, in contrast to both scowling and smiling, whether diabolic or divine.  Thus whereas these latter alternatives are inherently elitist, or the prerogative of 'heads', crying and laughing are inherently populist, and therefore more characteristic of 'bodies', or the mass man, with alpha and omega implications.  Indeed, it could be argued that women are more partial to crying than men, since of a comparatively alpha-stemming disposition.  However that may be, neither worldly equivalent will be found, as a rule, among men of intellectual or spiritual distinction (Christ Himself is reputed never to have laughed), since, as 'heads', they relate more to either God or the Devil rather than to the world, which is generally beneath their pale.  A laughing saint would be as incongruous as a smiling 'man of the world' (sinner), whether or not the latter parted his lips.

 

12.  To conclude: let us therefore distinguish between: a) idealistic scowling and/or smiling (lips closed); b) naturalistic scowling and/or smiling (lips parted); c) materialistic crying and/or laughing (loud/heavy); d) realistic crying and/or laughing (soft/light); with the first and fourth moral and amoral respectively, but the second and third immoral, as in the sense that we formerly distinguished between divine morality, both negative (alpha stemming) and positive (omega orientated); diabolic immorality, both negative and positive; worldly-alpha and worldly-omega immorality; alpha-worldly and omega-worldly amorality.  Although some men are fairly balanced between one or another of these three basic extremes, it cannot be said of all men; for evolutionary pressures are increasingly making for an omega-oriented one-sidedness, in which either laughing or smiling, depending on the type of man, is the preponderating norm - a norm which attests to an electron bias.

 

13.  The Camusian contention that man is in the world but not of it can hardly be said to apply to the great majority of men who, particularly in the democratic West, conform to a bodily and, hence, worldly disposition.  Rather, it has especial applicability, give and take the inevitable relativity of human experience, to those men who may be described as predominantly either diabolic or divine, and who are accordingly less 'bodies' than 'heads'.  With the intellectual and spiritual elites, it can certainly be said that, although they have their existence in the world, they are above and beyond it in their essential selves, be those selves diabolic or divine, and thus more conscious than the average man of not being of the world.  Indeed, it is this consciousness which, according to Camus, makes for the feeling of absurdity, and, to be sure, it often transpires that a man of God, or mind-biased 'head', will feel the absurdity of God in the world by dint of the world's indifference if not downright opposition to what he represents.  Outsiders are rarely or never 'men of the (bodily) people' but, rather, talented idealists for whom the worldly realism of average humanity is more a fact to be regretted than rejoiced in!  Now what applies to outsiders in relation to average people, or insiders, also in some degree applies to outsiders in relation to themselves, since the Divine and the Diabolic seldom if ever agree - except, that is, in regard to their mutual antipathy towards the world.  However, if it can scarcely be said of men in general that, in relation to outsiders, they are in the world but not of it, we must nevertheless concede that, in relation to women, most men are less of the world than in it.  For it would appear that, traditionally, the majority of women are both in the world and of it, and act accordingly, striving both to serve and to mollify the male sex.  It is for this reason that they are usually shielded from that sense of absurdity which can descend on men when they become conscious, particularly to an existential degree, of the disparity between their physical presence in the world and their spiritual and/or soulful aspirations beyond it.

 

14.  Despite possible appearances to the contrary, a 'head' can never be a 'cunt' or a 'prick', to cite popular lingo; for such denigratory proletarian epithets have reference to bodies - indeed, are projections of a bodily, or mass, type onto others who are perceived, rightly or wrongly, as meriting one or other of these strong terms of abuse.  Whatever a 'head' may think of them (and I for one strongly repudiate their use) such terms focus attention upon the sexual organs and accordingly posit a worldly, or bodily, disposition in the person so abused.  Broadly, one may distinguish 'cunts' from 'pricks' on the basis of an autocratic/democratic division, with those on the one side falling into a feminine category and those on the other side falling into a masculine one, though both categories are inherently worldly and therefore irrelevant, so I contend, to the diabolic/divine distinctions which tower above the world, whether on an alpha or an omega basis.  Yet subdivisions of these worldly categories do, however, exist, and are to be heard among those bodily proletarians especially partial to their use, who may well regard them as constituting a more accurate description of the person under fire, so to speak - be he a 'cunt' or a 'prick'.  Thus, in the one case, a distinction between 'sodd*** cunts' and 'fuck*** cunts', whilst in the other case a distinction between 'fuck*** pricks' and 'sodd*** pricks'.  Hence, in effect, an overall distinction between materialism and realism, with 'sodd*** cunts' and 'sodd*** pricks' at antithetical materialistic points, but 'fuck*** cunts' and 'fuck*** pricks' at antithetical realistic points in a spectrum stretching from 'sodd*** cunts' to 'sodd*** pricks', that is to say, from 'cunts' who sodomize to 'pricks' who sodomize, with the less extreme and more heterosexual 'cunts' who fornicate or practise coitus and 'pricks' who do likewise coming in-between.

 

15.  And yet, while the great majority of people who use or reap such unpleasant expressions are undoubtedly bodily, there is scope, in a sense, for their extension beyond the world to the diabolic, whether on an alpha or an omega basis, so that a naturalistic equivalent may be inferred which, though less abusive than either of the worldly terms by dint of its inherent sexlessness, would suggest, contrary to my initial contention, the possibility of diabolic 'heads' being subject to denigratory abuse either as 'frigg*** cunts' or 'frigg*** pricks', depending on the perceived class or ideological status of the 'head' in question.  However that may be (and I have to confess to never having heard use of either term in all my long experience of proletarian terms of abuse), there can be no doubt that such expressions will be far less relevant to 'heads' than to 'bodies' by dint of their inherently sexual nature.  To suppose, in the light of the above possibility, that an absolutist use of either term, viz. 'cunt' or 'prick', as in 'that cunt' or 'this prick', entails a denigration of divine 'heads', i.e. minds rather than brains, would be both illogical and absurd; for a divine 'head' is even less of a body than a diabolic one and, especially with regard to omega-oriented divinity, should be above reproach.  In sum, such terms, whether or not used in conjunction with sexually active references, are only really relevant in and to the world.  It is for this reason that a divine society, based on Social Transcendentalist criteria, would discourage and eliminate, so far as was humanly possible, all reference to 'cunts' or 'pricks' among the People.  Indeed, it is questionable whether such terms would be in regular use in that kind of society; for we cannot ignore the racial and social factors which contribute towards their regular employment and accordingly render them especially prevalent in countries like Great Britain, which is both autocratic and democratic.  Even the Soviet Union was opposed, so far as I know, to the use of such expressions by the People; though that would be partly because 'cunts', so to speak, had been officially eliminated during the Revolution and the ensuing People's democracy had thereby rendered recourse to such terms of abuse obsolete - at least in theory.  For is not the object of communist revolution to divide the 'pricks' from the 'cunts' and thereafter establish a classless, or proletarian, society ... in which only 'pricks' prevail?

 

16.  Further to the above I find, on reflection, that one must theoretically allow for the possibility of a denigration of divine 'heads' from a worldly and/or diabolic (more likely) point of view, and on the basis of a 'snogg*** cunt/snogg*** prick' dichotomy, such as will logically flesh out, so to speak, our previous contentions on both alpha-stemming and omega-oriented levels, thus completing the full gamut of denigratory possibilities from idealism to realism or, alternatively, from realism to idealism, depending on whether we take an alpha-stemming (devolutionary) or an omega-oriented (evolutionary) point of view.  Thus: idealistic 'snogg*** cunts' and/or 'snogg*** pricks'; naturalistic 'frigg*** cunts' and/or 'frigg*** pricks'; materialistic 'sodd*** cunts' and/or 'sodd*** pricks'; realistic 'fuck*** cunts' and/or 'fuck*** pricks' - all of which denigratory phrases can be diagrammatically accounted for as follows:-

 

             ALPHA                                                 OMEGA

 

               1.  idealistic 'snogg*** cunts'               8.  superidealistic  'snogg*** pricks'

               2.  naturalistic  'frigg*** cunts'            7.  supernaturalistic  'frigg*** pricks'

               3. materialistic 'sodd*** cunts'             6.  supermaterialistic  'sodd*** pricks'

               4.  realistic  'fuck*** cunts'                   5.  super-realistic 'fuck*** pricks'

 

with a progression or, rather, devolutionary regression from (1) to (4) on the one hand, and an evolutionary progression from (5) to (8) on the other hand.

 

17.  Of snobs, nobs, yobs, and slobs in relation to idealism, naturalism, materialism, and realism - in that order.

 

18.  A novelette should be more than just a short novel; it should be as distinct from a novel as a cigarette from a cigar or a two-seater car from a four-seater one.  In other words, a novelette is a different genre than a novel, more petty bourgeois than bourgeois, and there is no reason why anyone who writes novelettes should also want to write novels.  Nor is there any valid argument against such a person being called a 'novelettist'.

 

19.  In regard to the parallel cited above between novelettes and two-seater cars, I can see no reason why such cars should not be called 'carettes', thereby standing to cars as cigarettes to cigars or, as I have contended, novelettes to novels.

 

20.  Better to be alienated from others than alienated from the self.

 

21.  Zoos will doubtless increasingly become a kind of Noah's Ark for the survival and protection of certain animals long after animals in general cease to exist in the wild, and largely because there will be no wild in the world of the future in which such animals could exist.  Thus the zoo, considered as an institution, will keep a minimum number of each species in existence as a kind of zoological record of species traditionally found in the world - much as a museum keeps a minimum number of objects of historical importance as a curatorial record of their antiquity.  From being a place where wild animals are kept in captivity for the benefit of public curiosity, the zoo will become the only place where animals can still be found, thereby transferring the reality of animal existence from the wilds to civilization, from the outside to the inside, from freedom to captivity, from the private domain to the public domain.  One could speak of the zoo that is the last refuge of animals as a superzoo, though eventually even that will cease to exist, as evolution also leaves man behind in its quest for the absolute.

 

22.  Although I regard the institution of marriage as inherently incompatible with the Social Transcendentalist 'Kingdom of Heaven' to come, since indicative of an alpha-stemming period of time, I would regard it as a revolutionary transformation for the better within the marriage ceremony if instead of the groom placing a wedding ring on the ring finger of his bride, the bride pinned a wedding badge on the chest, e.g. lapel, of the groom, in response to a sexual transvaluation whereby the woman had to prove her willingness for the man, rather than vice versa.  Thus instead of: 'Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?' we would have something to the effect of: 'Do you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?' followed by the pinning of a small, curvilinear badge on the man's chest.  For it seems to me that men have deferred to women long enough and that, particularly within the context of civil marriage, women ought henceforth, during the remaining duration of the marital custom, to defer to men.  After all, placing a ring on the fourth finger of a bride entails a concession, on the man's part, to alpha-stemming 'cuntesque' criteria (the ring being of vaginal and centrifugal connotation in contrast to the phallic and centripetal connotation of a badge) which few enlightened 'men of the people' would surely wish to make?  It amounts to an atomic compromise between man and woman which, the more evolved the man, can only prove unacceptable.  In fact, the truly enlightened, free-electron man or, rather, superman ... will scorn marriage anyway, deeming it too bourgeois.  He would find both the placing and wearing of rings unacceptable - the mark of a 'cunt'.  He looks forward to an age when only curvilinear badges will obtain, and not necessarily in connection with marriage either!

 

23.  Possibility of distinguishing between: journals and/or periodicals, serious newspapers, tabloids, and magazines on the basis of a spectrum that stretches from realism to idealism via materialism and naturalism.  Hence realistic journals, materialistic newspapers, naturalistic tabloids, and idealistic magazines, with (broadly) worldly amoral, worldly immoral, diabolic immoral, and divine moral implications - depending, to a greater or lesser extent, on the type of journal, newspaper, tabloid, or magazine in question.

 

24.  From ladders to lifts via stairs - a kind of trinitarian progression from the Father to the Holy Spirit via the Son; though, given the fact that ladders, stairs, and lifts come in different shapes and sizes, not to mention materials, we should further distinguish between divine, diabolic, and worldly parallels in each case, with tripartite options respectively.

 

25.  The fact that the assertion of a successive Trinity was adjudged heretical in one age does not automatically render it so in another.  To speak of three divinities, one succeeding another on an evolutionary basis, may be judged heretical in a naturalistic alpha-stemming age, when the Father, as the nearest Western equivalent of the alpha absolute, will have more theological importance than the Holy Spirit, and when Christ, as the true focal-point of Christianity, will be regarded as signifying the 'Three-in-One'.  But it would be a poor sort of Churchman who regarded it as heretical in an age which is sufficiently evolved to have an omega orientation, in which only the Holy Spirit will count for anything in the divine reckoning, and then only on the basis that it resides in the Second Coming and can be transferred to the People ... should they democratically elect to opt for it at the expense of their worldly, i.e. political, judicial, and economic, sovereignties which, thereafter, would pass to the Second Coming who, through his political Centre, took such 'sins of the World' upon his shoulders, as it were, in a spirit of Christ-like sacrifice ... in order that the People could go free of them and be all the more credibly saved in consequence.  Yes, I do believe in a successive Trinity, with the Father (alpha) leading to the Son (Christ) and the Son in turn leading to the Holy Spirit (omega), which will be the ultimate divinity, a divinity emerging via the People and the post-human life forms engineered out of them or, rather, their cyborg successors ... as positive pure spirit, the wavicle electron-electron attractions which should contrast absolutely with the wavicle proton-proton reactions of the central star of the Galaxy from which, in my view, the theological postulate of the Creator was consciously or unconsciously extrapolated.  To some extent it could be claimed that the Father is an autocrat's divinity, the Holy Spirit a theocrat's divinity, and Christ a democratic compromise, appropriate to the world, coming in-between.  Certainly, I never speak in the name of the Father, like Christ, but always from an omega standpoint, symptomatic of the Holy Spirit.  And I claim transcendent sovereignty for myself on the basis not only of my supertruth, commensurate with messianic revelations concerning the human and post-human path to Heaven, but also of my virginal celibacy - a no-less important factor in establishing and maintaining a messianic credibility!  Should the People desire such sovereignty for themselves or, rather, their selves, they will have to vote accordingly, when the Social Transcendentalist option is put before them.  Only thus can they become Holy Spirit and enter the 'Kingdom of Heaven' or, as I should say in relation to the 'Third Person' of the Trinity, Superheaven.

 

26.  Consequently, all men must come to me if they wish to be saved; for I am the Superway, the Supertruth, and the Superlife, and no man can enter the (Social Transcendentalist) 'Kingdom of Heaven' unless he votes for such a kingdom, and a majority of the votes so cast permit of its establishment - an establishment whereby political, judicial, and economic sovereignty would be transferred to the Saviour in return for the ultimate sovereignty - the religious sovereignty of the Holy Ghost.  Only such peoples as the Second Coming has chosen would be entitled to this ultimate sovereignty, should they so decide.  The true, or Catholic, Irish people of the Republic of Ireland are first and foremost on his list.  It is in Eire that he wishes to set up the world's first Social Transcendentalist Centre, as a precondition of an envisaged federation of Social Transcendentalist Centres which will eventually embrace the entire globe, bringing transcendent salvation to every corner of the earth.  But in order that this goal may receive even a faint glimmer of hope, he requires the democratic co-operation of the Irish electorate; for they are democratically sovereign, albeit in a nominal way, and can become deeply theocratically sovereign if they so decide.

 

27.  It could be said of Christ that he took the external 'sins of the world' upon his shoulders at the Crucifixion, whereas it would seem to be the destiny of the Second Coming (who is not literally Christ) to take the internal 'sins of the world' upon his shoulders, once he assumes dictatorial power in the name of the saved People.  An historical distinction between a proton outer and an electron inner - alpha and omega orders of 'worldly sin'.  Death and life.

 

28.  Devolution of divinities, or the concept of God, from the Creator to Christ via the Blessed Virgin, and evolution of divinities, or the concept of God, from Christ to the Holy Spirit via the Second Coming.  In contemporary terms it could be said that 'God' has reached the evolutionary level of the Second Coming, and that the Second Coming will accordingly signify God in the world until such time as the People collectively become Holy Spirit, when God will attain, albeit crudely, to its ultimate manifestation prior to eventual transcendence, that is to say, when the concept of God will depart from both the Creator and Christ and become focused on the 'Third Person' of the Blessed Trinity.  Such a People's God, or God of the People, will gradually develop in and beyond the People, i.e. through the succeeding post-human life forms (superbeings and supra-beings) engineered out of them or, rather, the (transitional) cyborgs ... by qualified technicians, towards a definitive realization in positive transcendent spirit - pure and blissful, the unified culmination of all evolution.

 

29.  To a certain extent the State is always an oppressor of the People, since the State levies taxes (unlike the Church which, through its divine mission, seeks to alleviate the sufferings of the People by bringing them closer to Christ).  In the age-old struggle between the State and the Church, which is equivalent to the Dark and the Light, the latter is destined to triumph, though not before the Centre has come to pass and all remaining State responsibility been dovetailed into the Centre, which will reshape and redefine such responsibility in accordance with its overriding religious essence, thereby subordinating it to an inferior place in the overall hierarchy of Centrist priorities.  In Ireland the struggle, traditionally, between State and Church has been particularly acute by dint of the former being an instrument of British imperialism and the latter being, in its true manifestation, the representative and chief consolation of the indigenous people.  Thus the struggle between the Dark and the Light has taken on, until comparatively recent times, a British/Irish division which, while largely extinct in the South, still obtains in the North (British Ulster).  Only with the advent of the Social Transcendentalist Centre will the worldly relativity of State and Church in the South be eclipsed and transcended by the divine absolutism of Centrist Light - a light with its own subordinate darkness (social) rather than one which is obliged to co-exist with a separate, distinct, and (particularly in the case of the British state) often hostile darkness.  Then and only then will the way be open for the unification of Ireland and an end to all state/church relativity, as desired by the Second Coming, if the 'Kingdom of Heaven' is to come properly to pass in Ireland as a whole. (As an afterthought, we could describe the republican State which has replaced the British imperialistic and partly monarchic State as a darkness [with a small d], as opposed to a Darkness [with a capital D].  Such a republican darkness can and, I believe, will be transcended, or absorbed into the Social Transcendentalist Centre [where it will undergo 'social' transmutation], if the electorate of the Republic of Ireland so deem it.  For Social Transcendentalism will democratically appeal to the Irish people in their own interests, to exchange the nominal worldly sovereignty which historical expedience has thrust upon them for the divine sovereignty that will save them from the world [of nominal republicanism] and enable Ireland to become, under Messianic auspices, the first component of the envisaged supra-national 'Kingdom of Heaven', a Light unto other nations and a champion of Social Transcendentalist redemption.  For only thus can the Divine Will be done and God's Kingdom actually come.)

 

30.  Being and doing translated into play and work, with devolutionary and evolutionary implications: alpha divine playing-against-self, alpha diabolic working-against-self, worldly alpha working-against-others, alpha worldly playing-against-others; omega worldly playing-for-others, worldly omega working-for-others, omega diabolic working-for-self, omega divine playing-for-self.  As a rule, it will be found that divine and diabolic modes of play and work are psychical, in contrast to the physical nature of worldly modes of play and work.  Therefore we may further qualify our basic devolutionary/evolutionary distinctions as follows:-

 

        DEVOLUTION                                                           EVOLUTION

           

        1. alpha-divine psychical playing-against-self             8. divine-omega psychical playing-for-self

        2. alpha-diabolic psychical working-against-self         7. diabolic-omega psychical working-for-self

        3. worldly-alpha physical working-against-others       6. worldly-omega physical working-for-others      

        4. alpha-worldly physical playing-against-others        5. omega-worldly physical playing-for-others                                               

            

with (1) and (8) idealistic, (2) and (7) naturalistic, (3) and (6) materialistic, and (4) and (5) realistic - always bearing in mind our devolutionary and evolutionary distinctions, which render each antithetical equivalent somewhat mutually exclusive.  Thus the more a man plays for himself, the less he will play against himself; the more a man works for himself, the less he will work against himself; and so on.  It also follows that the more a man plays for himself, the less he will be disposed to work for himself, and vice versa, although no man is ever exclusively any one thing, neither with regard to the Divine and/or the Diabolic nor with regard to each of the worldly options, whether alpha or omega.  We are composites with a specific bias one way or another, even when we most approximate, say, to an omega orientation as opposed to an alpha-stemming one.  To be predominantly divine or diabolic or worldly is nothing exceptional in a world where absolutes are goals rather than established facts.  But to be divine, diabolic, or worldly in equal measure would be as impossible as to be only divine or diabolic or worldly.  It would be equivalent to being an idealist, a naturalist, a materialist, and a realist all rolled into one, and thus nothing at all.  For equal attributes would simply cancel one another out, making for an abstract void which, theoretically speaking, would be morally nothing where the absolute was everything - assuming its eventual realization in the omega Divine.  No, a man is, for example, an idealist only by dint of being predominantly idealistic.  And what applies to the divine attribute applies no less to the diabolic one and to each of the worldly attributes as well.  A balance between all four would be practically as well as morally impossible.  Life is a struggle between the divine, the diabolic, and the worldly, not a rapprochement between incommensurables.  On the alpha-stemming (proton) side of the atom, a devolutionary struggle between different negative orders of playing and working.  On the omega-aspiring (electron) side of the atom, an evolutionary struggle between different positive orders of playing and working.  Atomic overlappings will of course occur in the world.  But as life draws closer, in evolutionary terms, to the omega absolute, so playing and working can only become correspondingly more absolutist in character and, no less importantly, psychical as opposed to physical.  Eventually even psychical work will be eclipsed and accordingly left behind by psychical play, which, as I conceive it, is commensurate with spiritual self-realization.

 

31.  There are, it seems to me, four grades of superman - namely, particle-biased atomic electron, wavicle-biased atomic electron, electron particle, and electron wavicle, which, translated into concrete terms, would be equivalent to: a) muscular supermen; b) fleshy supermen; c) brainy supermen; and d) spiritual supermen.  Or, more simply, supermen of the muscles, the flesh, the new brain, and the superconscious mind, with muscle and flesh supermen polar opposites in the world, but new-brain and superconscious supermen polar opposites appertaining to the Devil/God dichotomy beyond it.  Thus whereas muscular and fleshy supermen are inherently bodily, brainy and spiritual supermen are of the omega-oriented head - the former more characteristic of the Nordic and, in particular, American West, the latter ... of the Slavic and Third World East.  For there is indeed an ascending hierarchy of supermen from First to Third World via Second World status, which parallels our basic tripartite distinctions between world, Devil, and God, or, alternatively, body, brain, and mind.  Not that the West, for example, is devoid of brain- and mind-biased supermen - any more than the East is without muscular or fleshy supermen.  It is just that the former will generally be more characteristic of the diabolic and divine parts of the globe, whereas the latter will typify its inherently worldly parts, which include the greater part of the Germanic West - that predominantly Caucasian civilization traditionally.  For in our tripartite geographical and economic divisions of the globe into First, Second and Third Worlds, we find, broadly speaking, caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid racial distinctions - distinctions which, no matter how generalized, are not without some relevance in the formation and overall existence of body-brain-mind options.  In the twentieth century the most representative categories of supermen were of the muscular and fleshy types, which largely pertained to the West, whereas the brain type had a fringe standing (in relation to the truly contemporary) in the Communist East and has yet to come fully into his own - a fact which applies even more to the mind type of superman who, particularly in the Third World, is more a potentiality than an actuality at present.  His time has also still to come.  Indeed, speaking of supermen, or those who are class-consciously 'turned on' at one or another points of an electron-biased orientation, we can grade then from 1-4 in terms of realism, materialism, naturalism, and idealism, with the fleshy bias, i.e. good-looks, womanizing disposition, etc., being symptomatic of realism; the muscular bias being symptomatic of materialism; the new-brain bias (with its rational implications) being symptomatic of naturalism; and, finally, the superconscious bias (with its transcendental implications) being symptomatic of idealism - all biases existing, needless to say, on 'super' levels of their respective spectra.

 

32.  There is no single relation between mind and brain, since people are not classifiable on an identical basis.  Take, for example, the age-old dichotomy between art and science.  Artists are clearly a different category of human beings from scientists - a category that, when true to itself, is predominantly of the mind rather than of the brain.  The artist is one for whom mind, and hence subjective imagination, is uppermost, whereas the scientist is one for whom the brain, and hence objective inquiry, is uppermost.  It is a wavicle/particle dichotomy, and although the artist has a brain, we can safely believe that it is subordinate to his mind and thus acts in the service of imagination - in contrast to the scientist, for whom, as already noted, the brain predominates, and thus subordinates mind to its objective inquiry.

 

33.  To expand this dichotomy: one could argue that the artist's brain is an aside to his mind, or wavicle bias, whereas the scientist's mind is an aside to his brain, or particle bias.  The artist's head - at any rate when judged in a traditional imaginative light - is a kind of extrapolation from the central star of the Galaxy, which in its wavicle purism corresponds to the Creator, whereas the scientist's head - again judged in alpha-stemming terms - is a kind of extrapolation from the sun, which, in its particle crudeness, corresponds to the Devil.  The former is predominantly and inherently light ... with a heat aside; the latter predominantly and inherently heat ... with a light aside, so that while mind, corresponding to light, is the essence of the one, brain, corresponding to heat, will be the essence of the other.  Therefore an artist is akin to God in the world, a scientist akin to the Devil there - two completely separate, independent beings whose ratio of mind to brain or vice versa is indicative, in its dichotomous nature, of two essentially antithetical destinies.  Any attempt to judge them according to identical criteria, as though there was a single mind-brain relationship, can only lead to error.

 

34.  Now what applies to 'heads', of both this and other descriptions, also applies, if to a lesser extent, to 'bodies', where different ratios of nominal mind to brain or, conversely, of nominal brain to mind can be found, depending on the type of worldly person in question, be he of a particle or a wavicle bias, disposed to fact or disposed, on the contrary, to fantasy ... in accordance with whether he is regarded as being, in a manner of speaking, largely extrapolated from the earth's crust or, alternatively, from its core - in greater or lesser degrees.  The brain-biased 'body', who may well be bony or nervous or muscular, tends to look-in, as it were, at fact, scientific or otherwise, from the outside, i.e. as an interested spectator, whereas the mind-biased 'body', who may well be hot-blooded or vascular or fleshy, tends to look-in at fantasy, be it fictional or otherwise, from an interested spectator's, and hence passive, point of view.  Neither of them will be actively intellectual or imaginative, as a rule.  Now what applies to alpha-stemming 'bodies' applies no less to omega-oriented ones, who will be rather more democratic than autocratic, whether on muscular or fleshy terms.  A similar particle/wavicle dichotomy cuts across the bodily working class, with (muscular) blue-collar workers broadly in the particle category and (fleshy) white-collar workers broadly in the wavicle one.  'Heads' of an omega-oriented disposition, whether of the new brain or the superconscious mind, will of course reflect a similar particle/wavicle dichotomy, with Super-antichristic and Superchristic implications, depending on whether we are considering artists or scientists, religious leaders or economists, Communists or Transcendentalists, etc., etc.  In the electron-particle case, a superbrainy integrity; in the electron-wavicle case, a supermindful integrity - the ratio of brain to mind, or vice versa, depending on the type of omega-oriented 'head' in question.  The supreme artist, or Second Coming, is effectively a manifestation of Holy Spirit in the world, being the farthermost imaginative stretch of a spectrum tending from the Father through Christ to himself or, put in psychological terms, from the subconscious to the superconscious via intermediate consciousness.

 

35.  One of the things which our quartet of 'isms' ... from realism to idealism via materialism and naturalism ... tends to highlight, from an omega-oriented standpoint, is the narrow and rather limited value of dialectical materialism in explaining the historical process.  For were history nothing more than a series of materialist frictions within a materialistic context, such a view as is expressed by dialectical materialism would be largely if not totally valid.  But given the fact that, besides materialism, history also embraces realism, naturalism, and idealism, both in terms of devolution and evolution, it stands to reason that the materialist interpretation of history is only very partially valid, having a validity whose partiality mainly pertains to a materialistic phase of history, with particular reference to the anarcho-syndicalist struggles of the particle-biased blue-collar proletariat within the confrontational framework of a dialectic the envisaged outcome of which is the demolition of bourgeois capitalist power and the correlative achievement of a workers' republic.  Thus we can see that, as an expression of the workers' struggle, dialectical materialism is an inherently Western phenomenon; for the dialectic, being relative, is essentially worldly, and where materialism prevails over realism, as it often does in the more advanced Western countries, then the dialectical struggle between workers and capitalists will take a materialistic form, i.e. have as its objective the total eradication of capitalist exploitation in the interests of a socialist absolutism which transcends liberal relativity.  Let there be no doubt here: dialectical materialism is but one expression of the historical process, an expression largely confined to the West, or First World, in its materialistic (late) phase, which co-exists, as a rule, with dialectical realism, or the parliamentary struggle between the Left and the Right conceived as an end-in-itself, rather than a means to a proletarian end.  Thus where dialectical realism and, hence, liberalism (in the broad sense of that term) is inherently relative, dialectical materialism strives towards the complete dethronement of the bourgeoisie in the name of worker management, ownership, and overall control of the means of production.  Where dialectical realism is syndicalist, it is anarcho-syndicalist.  Where dialectical realism is centralist, it is decentralist.  Where dialectical realism is amoral, it is immoral.  And, changing to a sexual metaphor, one could argue that where dialectical realism is heterosexual and/or bisexual, it is homosexual.  The proletariat are regarded, in the schema of dialectical materialism, as agents of their own socialist salvation, rather than simply as tools or bargaining counters in the hands of union representatives.  Anarcho-syndicalism is far more worker orientated than union orientated.  It is essentially a grassroots phenomenon.

 

36.  However, if the dialectical process, whether realist or materialist, is inherently worldly, and thus largely Western, there can be no question that above and beyond the world in the, as it were, diabolic and divine parts of the globe, no such interpretation or mode of historical change will strictly apply; for where the Second and Third Worlds are concerned, we are not dealing with worldly relativity, as germane to the body, but with diabolic and/or divine absolutism, as germane to the head in each of its omega-oriented manifestations.  Therefore we are concerned not with dialectical realism or materialism but, on the contrary, with what I shall describe as post-dialectical naturalism in the one case, that of the diabolic, and post-dialectical idealism in the other, that of the divine.  Thus the (former) Soviet Union was born less from a dialectical struggle between workers and capitalists than from a Bolshevik imposition ('vanguardism') upon the proletariat which, in its party-collectivist implications, could only be symptomatic of post-dialectical naturalism - a procedure traditionally more applicable to the Slavic East than to the Nordic West, given its comparatively diabolic, or new-brain, standing.  Contrasted to which, we may in due course find a messianically individualistic leadership of the People (by the Second Coming) in those countries where divine criteria - as especially applicable to a wavicle-biased white-collar integrity - are more relevant, including, I hope, Eire, Israel, and a variety of Third World countries partial to post-dialectical idealism.  For whereas naturalism is of a particle bias and therefore collectivistic, idealism is of a wavicle bias and accordingly individualistic, placing more emphasis on the Leader principle than on party leadership (though no people are ever exclusively only one thing), as did Fascism - in many ways a foretaste or crude intimation of the Social Transcendentalist 'Kingdom of Heaven' to come.

 

37.  However that may be, both post-dialectical naturalism and post-dialectical idealism are no-less valid explanations of history and modes of historical change for the 'head' peoples to whom they especially apply than ... dialectical realism and dialectical materialism for the 'bodily', or Germanic, peoples of the contemporary West.  To imagine that dialectical materialism is the sole or even chief vehicle of historical change, as does Sartre in his Critique of Dialectical Reason, is simply to leave the head out of account.  Now if that is respectable among so-called progressive thinkers in the democratic West, it can only be frowned upon in the theocratic East, where Leninist and/or Maoist criteria tend to take precedence over Marxism.  The time is fast approaching when even the West will find the dialectical explanation of history unconvincing on any but a very partial basis.  For if post-dialectical trends are to prevail in the world at large, both dialectical realism and its rather more intransigent counterpart will have to be consigned to the rubbish heap of history, there to rot in sordid isolation from the ongoing process of world-historical change.

 

38.  In relation to the physical States of bourgeois and/or republican democracies, the (former) Soviet State was metaphysical, which is to say, one primarily constituted on the basis of the People rather than, as in Western contexts, the basis of either the government, as in Britain, or states collectively envisaged as part of some vast inter-state nation, such as the United States of America.  In fact, taking parliamentary democracy first, we may characterize the governmental State as realist, the inter-state State as materialist, and the People's State as naturalist, with worldly amoral, worldly immoral, and diabolically immoral distinctions respectively, given that the governmental State exists, in effect, as a sovereign individual, i.e. parliament, whereas both the inter-state State and the People's State are inherently collectivistic.  Indeed, if we seek alpha-stemming correlations for each of these omega-oriented, or evolutionary modes of the State, we find (working from the top down) that the People's State has its antithetical parallel in a diabolic autocracy with one sovereign ruler; the inter-state State has its antithetical parallel in the city states and/or early nation states of a worldly alpha autocracy, or tyranny; and, finally, the governmental State has its antithetical parallel in the aristocratic oligarchies of ensuing democratic autocracies, of which the House of Lords affords us the best existing example, since it co-exists with the House of Commons in a Janus-like State which is both autocratic and democratic at the same time - autocratic as regards the Lords, but democratic with regard to the Commons.  Now whereas alpha-stemming antiquity affords us plentiful examples of political separatism and isolationism, omega-oriented modernity has, by contrast, a more cohesive and unified face - at any rate, as regards the constitutions of the different kinds of States, whether or not they overlap with the traditional forms of the State or, indeed, with one another.  For no State is ever entirely one thing, the People's State not excepted, since it has a physical as well as a metaphysical dimension, the former expressed in the various republics of the union.  And yet, if the People's State is predominantly metaphysical, it is not on that account spiritual.  For we should distinguish between the metaphysical and the spiritual as between People's democracies and the envisaged People's theocracies which I equate with the coming Centre.  Thus whereas the diabolic, or new-brain level of the State is metaphysical as opposed to physical, like the worldly or bodily levels of the State (whether governmental or inter-state), the Centre will be predominantly spiritual to the extent that it equates with a divine, or superconscious, order of society above and beyond all statism - diabolic as well as worldly.  For the Centre is not another form of the State but, on the contrary, a manifestation of the 'Kingdom of Heaven' on earth, and therefore the end of the State.  Embracing the People, the Centre will absorb state responsibility into itself and thereby transcend both the physical and the metaphysical in the name of the spiritual.  Thus the spiritual and the metaphysical are not, as may at first appear, identical, even though both are absolutist.  We are dealing with a wavicle/particle electron dichotomy between a religious absolutism on the one hand, and a political absolutism on the other, both of which stretch beyond worldly relativity, with its half-measure religious sovereignty (Christian) and half-measure political sovereignty (parliamentary).  It is just that where the Omega God (the Holy Ghost) is a full-measure religious sovereignty, as pertaining to the superconscious mind, the Omega Devil (Antichrist) is a full-measure political sovereignty, as pertaining to the new brain.  Hence wherever the omega-oriented 'Kingdom of Heaven' obtains, we shall find a spiritual absolutism, in contrast to the metaphysical or soulful absolutism of the omega-oriented 'Kingdom of Hell', with its full-blown political sovereignty.  In the one case a People's theocracy, in the other case a People's democracy - God and Devil beyond and above the politically and religiously half-sovereign world.

 

39.  Strictly speaking, the State is any mode of political organization within certain broadly accepted geographical boundaries.  It is not a country or land mass, since Ireland is a country with, at the time of writing, two States, one republican and the other a part of the United Kingdom, and land, at any rate, ice masses like the North Pole and Antarctica have never been States, since no-one has seen fit to live on them and set up some form of political administration.  Thus the State and the geographical boundaries of a country are not necessarily synonymous, although as a rule we do find State and country overlapping, as it were, in mutual identification.  Certainly, there cannot be a State if there is not a country, or a densely populated area of land traditionally inhabited by peoples of neighbouring or kindred tribes.  Peoples make countries, and countries make States.  Before the white man came, the Australasian continent was not a country, still less a State or collection of States, but simply a sparsely inhabited land of no national determination.  The white colonists created Australia, and in Australia they created the democratically-organized States which typify the modern nation, a nation, like America and Canada, which is rather more materialist than either realist or naturalist - the world in its late, or final, phase.

 

40.  Although I admire Arthur Koestler as a writer, I find his desire for a reconciliation, on the basis of a chemically-induced balance, between the old brain and the new brain, the former conceived by Koestler as predominantly emotional and the latter as predominantly intellectual, is less a solution to the alleged problem of man's 'divided house', to use his phrase, than a retreat from transcendental progress towards a balanced dualism reminiscent of Harry Haller's redemption in The Steppenwolf, that Jekyll and Hyde novel by Hermann Hesse, in which the warring divisions between 'beast' and 'god' in its split-personality protagonist are finally overcome through a conversion process which results in Haller's accepting his human wholeness.  Something analogous to that is essentially what Koestler wants to see come about, though, in fairness to him, he regards the emotional old brain (cerebellum) as traditionally and inherently more powerful than the intellectual new brain (cerebrum), and therefore as something that has to be controlled, if necessary via chemical means, in the interests of a psychic balance.  However, such a balanced solution to the alleged imbalance which Koestler perceives in (amongst other publications) Janus - A Summing Up as the root cause of man's historical and social dilemma ... is no less bourgeois than Harry Haller's conversion to dualistic integration in The Steppenwolf, since it leaves humanity where we find it today - torn between old and new brains, beast and god.

 

41.  No, a perpetual relativity is hardly the solution to man's dualistic predicament!  Evolutionary progress demands a higher solution, and if in the course of such progress man is overcome (to use a Nietzschean turn-of-phrase), then the resulting life forms engineered out of him will be less disposed to relativity and correspondingly more disposed to aspirations towards a projected divine culmination of evolution in the ultimate absolutism - the absolutism, I need scarcely add, of the Holy Spirit.  Certainly a new-brain collectivization would have no such dualistic divisions (or imbalances) as man, and while brain collectivizations may have to precede new-brain ones, we need not doubt that even they would be capable of a greater degree of integrated spirituality and omega orientation than man, and so stand closer, in evolutionary terms, to that new-brain absolutism which must come if evolution is to transcend a perpetual humanism ... such that could only appeal to a worldly and, in effect, bourgeois mentality.  Besides, quite apart from moral and spiritual motivations (which are always uppermost in any idealistic mind), there is the population factor to consider, a factor to which Koestler draws more than passing attention in The Ghost in the Machine, and obviously in the spirit of someone deeply fearful of the consequences, both demographically and socially, of unchecked population growth.  Yet, even with the inevitability of wars for some time to come, it is highly probable that the immense population increases which the twentieth century spawned will continue to rise at an ever-increasing rate, thereby making it virtually inevitable that, sooner or later, man will be obliged to transcend his species and become post-human, achieve, through artificial mutation engineered by various qualified technicians, the status of artificially-supported and no-less artificially-sustained brain collectivizations, which will have the distinct advantage of being able to 'house' far more lives in a given environment, or in the dwindling space available on this planet, than could reasonably be 'housed' in the human context, where bodies and bodily needs necessarily take up and require more space.  Not only would the standard of life be considerably improved, i.e. rendered more consistently spiritual, through brains being artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts but, no less significantly, such contexts would be the only way in which the vastly greater populations of the future could reasonably be accommodated, with ever-increasing degrees of centro-complexification ... as when new-brain collectivizations supersede, via artificial mutation, brain collectivizations, and a life form antithetical, in evolutionary terms, to trees rather than, as with the preceding stage, to apes on trees ... ultimately comes to pass, a life form which I have elsewhere termed a Supra-being (to distinguish it from the preceding Superbeings, or brain collectivizations).  Such an ultimate life form would take-up even less room than the penultimate one and, in any case, would find its proper environment in space centres where, at a relatively safe remove from the earth's gravity, the hypermeditative process which should lead to transcendence, and thus to the attainment of electron-electron attractions, would receive the maximum environmental encouragement.  However, if Supra-beings are too far into the future to be worth seriously contemplating at present, the same, I believe, cannot be said of Superbeings, or brain collectivizations, which, in their hypertripping capacity, would logically follow-on from the cyborg stage of evolution here on earth, and in numbers greatly in excess of the current human population of the globe.

 

42.  As to the cyborg stage of evolution, which I equate with a transition coming in-between transcendental man and the first of the post-human life forms, I would not want to give too exclusively an impression of robot-like beings who strut about the earth like knights in shining armour, since any such eventuality could prove more violent and competitive, in its unfolding, than that to which we are accustomed in terms of human life, particularly if the said robotic cyborgs felt they were invincible and ultrapowerful, scarcely accountable to governmental and/or social control!  Heaven forbid that anything remotely resembling the sci-fi productions of star-wars type scenarios involving clashing metallic 'men' should ever materialize in reality!  My hope is that if extensive transplantations or transmutations of human organs eventually lead to men becoming more artificial than natural, the men in question will be more disposed to peace and social integration than to war and gangsterism, being, to all intents and purposes, an improvement upon Les hommes moyen naturels/sensuels.  Perhaps the term 'cyborg', with its robotic connotations, is too strong, or should be confined to only a comparatively small minority of future 'men' - like, for example, the police, who may well become the most artificial category of persons or, at any rate, have recourse to a kind or level of cyborg transmutation denied to the masses in general, with, maybe, metallic rather than plastic parts (inner or outer) for purposes of social expedience.  But of course the police, or superpolice (as they might well have become by then), would be accountable to the leadership, and therefore pledged to behave in a manner guaranteed to uphold the peace, whether or not this sometimes resulted in a certain degree of intimidatory or corrective discipline.

 

43.  Whatever the form it actually takes, it does seem that a transitional stage from late man to the first of the post-human life forms will have to be evolved through, and I dare say that life in that period will be more artificial for the great majority of people than natural.  After all, man was not made in a day but, if we adopt a non-mythical approach to his origins, gradually emerged from the ape, or a certain species of ape.  Now what applies to the emergence of man must surely apply to the emergence, in due course, of the Superbeing, that antithesis, as I conceive it, to the ape, and first of our envisaged two manifestations of post-human life - the other of course being the supra-beingful new-brain collectivizations which, in their greater uniformity and increased centro-complexification, would be as far beyond or posterior to man, in evolutionary terms, as trees were before or anterior to him, bearing in mind that trees preceded apes in the overall evolution or, as I prefer to regard it, devolution of life on earth ... from the starry cosmos.  Ah, it is with the ultimate post-human life form that the dawn of a new cosmos will be in sight - a supercosmos, as it were, of the omega heavens converging and expanding in electron-electron attractions.

 

44.  To distinguish between negative individualism, whether divine or worldly, which is alpha stemming, and positive individualism, whether divine or worldly, which is omega orientated, in regard to both negative spiritual and negative physical self-transcendence on the one hand, and to both positive spiritual and positive physical self-transcendence on the other hand.  Likewise to distinguish between negative collectivism, whether diabolic or worldly, which is alpha stemming, and positive collectivism, whether diabolic or worldly, which is omega orientated, in regard to both negative soulful and negative physical self-assertion on the one hand, and to both positive soulful and positive physical self-assertion on the other hand.  Taking negative individualism and negative collectivism first, we are distinguishing between proton-wavicle self-transcendence, proton-particle self-assertion, atomic-proton self-assertion, and proton-atomic self-transcendence, with alpha divine, alpha diabolic, worldly alpha, and alpha worldly overtones.  By contrast, positive individualism and positive collectivism may be described, starting from the bottom up, in terms of electron-atomic self-transcendence, atomic-electron self-assertion, electron-particle self-assertion, and electron-wavicle self-transcendence, with omega worldly, worldly omega, omega diabolic, and omega divine overtones respectively.

 

45.  Competition and co-operation are terms we can exchange for negative and positive, with alpha-stemming modes of individualism and collectivism competitive, but omega-oriented modes of individualism and collectivism co-operative.  In the one case, competitive either vis-à-vis oneself or others, and, in the other case, co-operative either vis-à-vis oneself or others, bearing in mind that the 'self' differs between spiritual and physical according to whether we are referring to the divine or to the middle worldly, that 'others' differ between physical and soulful according to whether we are referring to the extreme worldly or to the diabolic, at whichever poles of their respective spectra.  The divine is always wavicle centred, the diabolic particle centred, whether on a subatomic or a supra-atomic basis, whereas the worldly options are biased towards particles or wavicles within an atomic framework.  Individualism is accordingly a wavicle integrity, noumenal in the case of the divine, whether alpha or omega, phenomenal in the case of the middle worldly antithesis, whereas collectivism is a particle integrity, noumenal in the case of the diabolic, whether alpha or omega, phenomenal in the case of the extreme worldly antithesis, i.e. worldly alpha and omega.  You can only have collectivism between particles, which come together in groups while yet retaining their basic unit differentials.  A wave, or wavicle, is an individual entity, not a collection of separate parts.

 

46.  Concerning the distinction we have drawn between alpha-stemming competitive and omega-oriented co-operative antitheses, we find ourselves with the paradoxical integrities, for example, of competitive self-transcendence in the cases of the alpha divine and alpha worldly options, but co-operative self-assertion in the cases of the worldly omega and omega diabolic options.  This is because competition is inherently reactive, and the proton aspect of the atom is nothing if not reactive, whereas co-operation is inherently attractive, as are electrons within the electron aspect of the atom.  Just as proton-proton reactions precede worldly atomicity, so electron-electron attractions succeed it.  Hence we should distinguish between competitive self-transcendence and co-operative self-transcendence on both spiritual (divine) and physical (worldly) levels, with an analogous distinction between competitive self-assertion and co-operative self-assertion on both soulful (diabolic) and physical (worldly) levels.  War is basically competitive self-assertion within the collective context, whereas sport, by contrast, is predominantly co-operative self-assertion (team work, mutual respect, shared skills, etc.) within the collective context.  Sex is basically competitive self-transcendence within the individual context, whereas dance is predominantly co-operative self-transcendence within the individual context.  Both pairs of antitheses are inherently worldly, if on different terms - the first pair materialistic, and hence extreme worldly, but the second pair realistic, and hence middle worldly.  Of course, competitive elements enter into the co-operative integrities and vice versa; for just as war has a co-operative side - at any rate, between members of the same army - so sport has a competitive one, now more, now less, according to the contextual circumstances. (The average football match contains more passes than tackles, a fact which testifies to its predominantly co-operative essence.)  Likewise, sex and dance are partly interchangeable so far as the basic ratios of competition to co-operation are concerned, though, as a rule, there will be more competition in sex than in dance and, conversely, more co-operation in dance than in sex, always bearing in mind our fundamental distinction between the reactive and the attractive, negativity and positivity, which corresponds to the terms under discussion.

 

47.  Now what applies to the worldly dichotomies applies just as much to the diabolic and divine dichotomies above, where self-transcendence and self-assertion are both competitive and co-operative, depending on the level and type of divine or diabolic equations, whether alpha or omega.  The equation of competitive, or negative, self-transcendence with the Father would be no less valid than the equation of co-operative, or positive, self-transcendence with the Holy Spirit.  Taking the subconscious and the superconscious as our psychic parallels to the divine poles, we may characterize dreaming as a manifestation of competitive self-transcendence ... in contrast to, say, LSD tripping as a manifestation of co-operative self-transcendence.  Similarly, the equation of competitive self-assertion with Satan would be no less valid than the equation of co-operative self-assertion with the Antichrist.  And if we extrapolate old-brain and new-brain options as parallels to the diabolic poles, we may characterize old-brain activity, whether emotional or wilful, as a manifestation of competitive self-assertion ... in contrast to new-brain activity, whether intellectual or wilful, as a manifestation of co-operative self-assertion.  Both are of course soulful rather than spiritual, which is to say heat rather than light.

 

48.  However, it would be wrong to suppose, in too Koestlerian a fashion, that the old brain is entirely emotional and the new brain entirely intellectual; for in point of fact emotions stretch from the one to the other, as of course does the intellect.  It is rather that old-brain emotions will generally be more negative, and therefore aggressive, than those of the new brain ... on account of the greater preponderance of protons over electrons in that brain, whereas new-brain emotions will generally be more positive, or integrative, on account of the preponderating electron bias in the overall atomicity of the new brain, a brain which stands in a kind of atomically antithetical relationship to the old one - the lower, or alpha-stemming, brain.  Thus whereas old-brain emotions are likely to be competitive, new-brain emotions will be co-operative, even though equally self-assertive.  Taking awareness, emotions, and intellect as the three major factors or experiences of the psyche, we should ascribe a wavicle status to awareness, a particle status to emotions, and a kind of atomic status to intellect, which comes somewhere in between - almost as a cross, or compromise, between awareness and emotion.  Yet we must not forget that just as emotions and intellect stretch from the old brain to the new brain, so does awareness, since we can distinguish between subconscious alpha-stemming awareness, as in dreams, and superconscious omega-oriented awareness, as in meditation.  Whether the awareness in question be truly divine or a by-product of the diabolic ... will depend on the type of brain any given person has.  For we have already established that not all brains are equal, and that while some are akin to extrapolations from the central star of the Galaxy, others seem to have been predominantly extrapolated from the sun, being to all intents and purposes more emotional than mindful or, which  amounts to the same thing, more heat than light.  An omega transvaluation within the framework of evolutionary progress does not alter the relativity of this basic polarity; for divine and diabolic spectra are just as distinct on a superconscious/new-brain basis as on a subconscious/old-brain one.  Spirit and soul remain parallel despite relative fusings or overlappings, the 'mind' person and the 'brain' person are not interchangeable but two opposite types - artist and scientist, divine and diabolic, wavicle and particle, whether negatively or positively, competitively or co-operatively, biased towards protons or towards electrons.

 

49.  And yet, if Koestler is wrong to divide the old and new brains too glibly between emotion and intellect, it could be claimed that my own division between divine mind and diabolic brain is less than wholly right.  Since we have agreed that awareness and emotions are the twin poles of the head conceived on a sort of vertical rather than horizontal basis, and that intellect comes somewhere in between, it seems somehow better to distinguish between mindful and emotional people on a divine/diabolic basis, and to conceive of intellectual, or brainy, people as worldly or, at any rate, an amalgam of the two.  I say this because my long familiarity with Koestler's fascinating tripartite distinctions between humour, science, and art has suddenly thrust itself upon me, making me freshly conscious of a parallel between humour and emotions, science and intellect, and art and awareness, with electron-particle, atomic-electron, and electron-wavicle overtones - at least in relation to an omega orientation (seeing that alpha-stemming 'humour' would be rather black and possibly more aligned with a scowl-producing phenomenon than with one inducing smiles!).

 

50.  Koestler distinguishes in a variety of books, not least The Act of Creation, between what he calls the 'Haha!' reaction, the 'Aha!' reaction, and the 'Ah ...' reaction, alleging connections with humour, science, and art respectively.  Now if we examine these reactions in the light of my own atomic parallels, we shall find that the 'Haha!' reaction, being absolutist and particle suggesting, connotes with an electron-particle absolutism; the 'Aha!' reaction, being relative and therefore atomic suggesting, connotes with an atomic-electron relativity; and the 'Ah ...' reaction, being absolutist and wavicle suggesting, connotes with an electron-wavicle absolutism.  Thus instead of having a horizontal progression, as in Koestler, from 'Haha!' to 'Ah ...' via 'Aha!', the latter of which is manifestly a combination of the other two, we would have a vertical arrangement with 'Ah ...' at the top, 'Aha!' in the middle, and 'Haha!' at the bottom - the 'Ah ...' reaction co-operatively self-transcending, the 'Aha!' reaction both self-transcending and self-assertive on co-operative terms, and, finally, the 'Haha!' reaction co-operatively self-assertive.  Thus whereas the 'Ah ...' reaction would pertain to the superconscious region of the psyche as the awareness aspect of the new brain and be inherently subjective, the 'Haha!' reaction would correspond, by contrast, to the emotional aspect of the new brain and be inherently objective.  The 'Aha!' reaction, on the other hand, would correspond to the intellectual aspect of the new brain and be both subjective and objective in possibly equal measure.

 

51.  Taking cosmic parallels to the above, one could argue that awareness is an extrapolation from the central star of the Galaxy, emotion an extrapolation from the sun, and intellect an extrapolation from the moon, since, like intellect, the moon is rather more atomic than absolute on either a wavicle or a particle basis.  But, of course, direct extrapolations would only have effect with regard to the subconscious, that is to say with regard to negative awareness, emotion, and intellect respectively, since positive awareness, emotion, and intellect are predominantly factors of the superconscious, situated, as it is, within the new brain, a brain far less alpha stemming, on whichever level, than the old one which, as Koestler rightly maintains, considerably precedes it in chronological time.  Unlike him, however, I would argue that the old brain is a manifestation of organic devolution from central star, sun, and moon, whereas only the new brain is truly evolutionary, having potentials for positive awareness, emotion, and intellect which stretch way beyond the worldly plane towards a reality, or series of realities, at once superdivine, superdiabolic, and superpurgatorial (if we may be permitted to equate purgatory with a cross between Heaven and Hell, i.e. as a sort of superlunar compromise between superstellar and supersolar intimations).  However that may be, it is to positive self-transcending awareness that I attach the greater importance, since only that is truly divine.  The other aspects of the omega-oriented psyche will have to be transcended in the course of time; for better than both the 'Haha!' and the 'Aha!' is the 'Ah ...' of blessed enlightenment.

 

52.  Self-transcendence has its true pole not in self-assertion, as Koestler contends, but in self-consciousness, which is an atomic, or egocentric, psychic experience standing to self-transcendence as the phenomenal to the noumenal - at any rate on an alpha-stemming basis of, as it were, negative self-transcendence (dreams) to negative self-consciousness (embarrassment).  For antithetical to the alpha-stemming duality is the omega-oriented dualism of positive self-consciousness (pride) and positive self-transcendence (LSD trips), with superphenomenal and supernoumenal implications respectively, each of which exists on a wavicle basis.  Thus while self-transcendence represents the alpha and omega divine poles, self-consciousness signifies a kind of worldly divine antithesis to each pole - an egocentric middle-ground standing in-between subconscious and superconscious awareness extremes.  Likewise, antithetical in such a way to negative self-assertion is negative self-denial (mortification of the flesh), which stands to the former in a phenomenal light.  But if the noumenal precedes the phenomenal, then the superphenomenal precedes the supernoumenal, and we find positive self-denial (fasting, celibacy) antithetical to positive self-assertion - a duality no less particle-centred than its alpha-stemming counterpart.  While self-assertion represents the alpha and omega diabolic poles, self-denial stands, in both its negative and positive manifestations, as a kind of worldly diabolic antithesis to each pole - an egocentric middle-ground in between subconscious and superconscious emotional extremes.  Thus where we are in effect speaking, with regard to the divine spectrum, of Fatheristic and Christic distinctions on an alpha-stemming basis, but of Superchristic and Superfatheristic distinctions on an omega-oriented one, the diabolic spectrum affords us parallel distinctions between the Satanic and the Antichristic on an alpha-stemming basis, with, in the omega-oriented case, Super-antichristic and Supersatanic implications.  Proton wavicles - atomic wavicles (negative and positive) - electron wavicles ... in the one case; proton particles - atomic particles (negative and positive) - electron particles ... in the other case.  Light and heat, whether negative or positive.

 

53.  Consequently, we may conclude by saying that whereas self-transcendence and self-assertion are parallel poles of parallel spectra, i.e. divine and diabolic, self-consciousness is the antithetical pole to the former and self-denial the antithetical pole to the latter, and this whether we are treating of an alpha-stemming or an omega-oriented duality.  Self-transcendence and self-assertion are simply the outermost poles of truly divine and diabolic equivalents.  Indeed, just as Koestler distinguishes between 'Ah ...' - 'Aha!' - and 'Haha!' reactions, which are all positive, so, for the sake of a more comprehensive perspective, we should admit of their negative antitheses, which can be defined in terms of 'Oh ...' - 'Oho!' - and 'Ohoh!', the first self-transcending, the third self-assertive, and the second an intellectual cross between each of the others.  In fact, we would have, in these old-brain experiences, the nearest thing to direct extrapolations from the central star of the Galaxy (the alpha divine), the moon (the alpha purgatorial), and the sun (the alpha diabolic), given their spiritual, intellectual, and emotional distinctions.  Probably myth, the occult, and tragedy would be the most approximate disciplinary parallels to the art - science - humour (comedy) trinity advanced by Koestler in connection with the omega-oriented 'Ah ...' - 'Aha!' - 'Haha!' reactions, the negative self-transcending tendency of the 'Oh ...' reaction, so to speak, being associated with myth, the negative self-transcending/self-assertive compromise of the 'Oho!' reaction being associated with the occult (a sort of primitive science), and the negative self-assertive tendency of the 'Ohoh!' reaction being associated with tragedy and, hence, tears.  Competitive where the Koestlerian trinity is co-operative, this alpha-stemming trinity would be the negative aspect of a Janus-faced entity which, in the totality of its psychic dimensions, stretches from the old brain to the new one.  Doubtless, the more balanced the psyche between subconscious and superconscious, whether consciously, intellectually, or emotionally, the greater the likelihood that neither negative nor positive self-transcending and self-assertive tendencies will apply, but only a humanistic dualism in between self-consciousness and self-denial, with but a comparatively weak peripheral response either side, depending on the type of worldly person in question.  For whereas divinely-biased people are largely self-transcending and diabolically-biased people largely self-assertive, worldly people, coming in-between, are either self-conscious or self-denying, as befitting the phenomenal middle-ground in between noumenal extremes.  In the one case a worldly divine analogue and, in the other case, a worldly diabolic analogue, whether negative or positive, phenomenal or superphenomenal.

 

54.  It seems indisputable to me that grammatical contractions of the order of 'I'm' for 'I am', 'don't' for 'do not', and 'he'd' for 'he had' or even 'he would' are requisite, whenever possible, to paperback writing, since a paperback is an absolute form of book (no sharp distinction between cover and pages, both being made from paper) which calls for a correspondingly absolutist, or superphenomenal, writerly technique.  Not so a hardback, where we have a relativity between the hard cover and the paper pages which smacks of bourgeois phenomenalism and calls for an equally relativistic writerly technique, as with 'I am', 'do not', 'he had', etc., used virtually without fail.  To write for hardback publication in a superphenomenal, or contracted, manner would seem as illogical and incongruous to me as ... to write in a phenomenal, or relativistic, manner for paperbacks.  The one format is essentially bourgeois, the other proletarian, and the method of writing should reflect this class distinction if anomalous, paradoxical productions are not to occur - as, sadly, all too frequently happens!  Even works that were originally written in a relativistic fashion for hardback publication should, where feasible, be rewritten or, at any rate, reprinted in an absolutist manner, in the event of subsequent paperback publication.  As a rule, the relativistic technique is left as originally written, and the result is the paradoxical phenomenon of a petty-bourgeois paperback, or perhaps I should say softback, which is neither fish nor fowl, but effectively a wolf in sheep's clothing.

 

55.  One of the things which most distinguishes the truly modern, omega-oriented philosophical book (if philosophy is really the word) from traditional, alpha-stemming works of philosophy is the absence or reduction of apparent divisions - divisions between volumes, books, parts, and chapters.  Indeed, the more alpha stemming the work of philosophy, the more likely it is to be divided into a number of subsidiary books and/or parts, which testifies, it seems to me, to the divisive, competitive, and superficial nature of life in an autocratic age or society, a nature which to some extent extends into a democratic age or society, although rather more on the basis of parts and chapters than of volumes and books.  Certainly, I have always eschewed, in my own writings, the kinds of apparent divisions which are so ubiquitous in traditional philosophy, even up to and including Sartre, whose Critique of Dialectical Reason, originally intended to extend over two volumes, embraces book, part, and chapter divisions in the manner of the most hidebound autocrats, not excepting Schopenhauer himself, whose The World as Will and Representation comes in two volumes with four books in each!  Nor should we overlook the fact that the Bible is also guilty of alpha-stemming divisions, being in effect two volumes, each of which comprises a number of books divided into chapters, the chapters in turn divisible into verses, so that there is a four-way division along patently autocratic lines.  Frankly, no such divisions could be countenanced in an omega-oriented age or society, where only the most evolved type of 'book', one largely if not entirely indivisible as to chapters, parts, books, etc., would do justice to and adequately reflect the transcendental aspirations of the People towards divine unity.  My own foremost writings, which are rather more theosophical than philosophical, aim at just such a literary indivisibility - the indivisibility of supernotational centro-complexification within a strictly omega-oriented, or essential, framework.  The other, more traditional works - usually published in book form - should be consigned to the rubbish heap of alpha-stemming antiquity, where they can return to dust.

 

56.  Emotion and awareness are to the psyche what intellect is to the brain: namely its essence.  Now we have already argued that the psyche stretches from subconscious origins to a superconscious culmination, or high-point, and that emotions and awareness accrue in the main negatively to the subconscious but positively to the superconscious, making for alpha-stemming and omega-oriented distinctions.  The emotional psyche, whether subconscious, superconscious, or a combination of both, should be termed the soul ... to distinguish it from the conscious psyche which, at both subconscious and superconscious extremes as well as in the strictly conscious middle-ground, we may call the spirit.  Soul and spirit can be either negative or positive, according to whether we are concerned with the subconscious or the superconscious or, indeed, with a cross between the two ... when we have a dualistic soul and spirit respectively: half-negative and half-positive.  On the other hand, intellect, which we have just contended to be the essence of the brain, is neither soulful nor spiritual but, for want of a better term, wilful, i.e. full of will, since it does not arise of its own volition, so to speak, but has to be created and maintained through conscious effort, in accordance with the essentially phenomenal nature of the intellect - a sort of cross between wavicles and particles, awareness and emotions, meanings and words, which corresponds to brain atomicity, whether we are alluding to the negative intellectuality of the old brain or to the positive intellectuality of the new one or, indeed, to a compromise between the two brains.  For unlike the soulful psyche, which on its negative side may be regarded as in some sense an extrapolation from the sun, i.e. a proton-particle absolutism, and equally unlike the spiritual psyche, which on its negative side may be regarded as in some sense an extrapolation from the central star of the Galaxy, i.e. a proton-wavicle absolutism, the negative intellect, like the old brain of which it is the essence, can be regarded as in some sense an extrapolation from the moon, with, correspondingly, an atomic-proton integrity which is rather more materialistic than either idealistic (as in the case of awareness) or naturalistic (as in the case of emotions).  Such intellectual materialism renders the intellect comparatively mundane in relation to both the soul and the spirit, and for this reason it is more fitting to equate it with purgatory than with either Heaven or Hell - a kind of negative purgatory in relation to the old brain, though a rather more positive purgatory in relation to the new one.  Now since the intellect is inherently purgatorial, it is not surprising that it stands closer to the worldly nature of the physical body by dint of being used more often than not - certainly by the great majority of people - in the body's service.

 

57.  Thus Schopenhauer was fundamentally correct to regard the brain as an offshoot of the body to the extent that we are concerned with the use of intellect, whether negatively or positively, in its service rather than as a quasi-transcendent noumenal reality which, like the psyche in both its emotional and conscious manifestations, exists independently of the body on divine and diabolic terms - indeed, as extrapolations from much older cosmic sources than the earth or even the moon.  Where Schopenhauer was at fault - and this may well owe something to his Germanic antecedents - was by including the psyche in his definition of brain, so that both emotion and awareness, of whichever kinds, are implicitly denied extraterrestrial origin and relegated, willy-nilly, to the mundane status of world-serving intellect, with its lunar overtones.  Granted that a worldly people will perceive the brain and, by implication, the psyche in this material light, we cannot exonerate even so untypical an intellect as Schopenhauer's from accusations of an unduly worldly emphasis in his explanation of the brain's origin and justification.  Certainly the blossom and fruit on trees susceptible to such growths would not confirm the alleged utilitarian origins of the brain or, rather, its psychic concomitants, since blossom and fruit are to the tree what the head is to the body - entities derived, in all their essentials, from earlier and, therefore, cosmic sources.  Should one prefer, as seems to me quite reasonable, to extrapolate subconscious awareness from blossom and subconscious emotion from fruit or, at any rate, the fruit on fruit-bearing trees, there could be no obstacle to one's extrapolating subconscious intellect from nuts on nut-bearing trees, since nuts stand to fruit in a comparatively materialistic light, a light which may well owe its origin more to the moon than to the sun, given the materialistic nature of the former (as already discussed) in relation to the comparatively naturalistic, and therefore inherently more diabolic, nature of the latter.  Thus whereas blossom and fruit would accord with a kind of organic blueprint, in nature, for the subconscious psyche, having divine and diabolic overtones by dint of the wavicle-suggesting status of the one and the particle-suggesting status of the other, nuts on nut-bearing trees could be regarded in terms of a kind of organic blueprint, in nature, for the brain, with particular reference to the old brain, of which negative intellect is the lunar essence.  I concede that this is highly speculative, yet it has to be admitted that, like the brain, nuts are rather more atomic than either fruit, with its particle (seed) essence, or blossom, with its wavicle (petal) essence - both of which suggest psychic correlations.

 

58.  Now just as some trees are rather more blossom- than fruit-orientated, some rather more fruit- than blossom-orientated, and others rather more nut-orientated than either blossom- or fruit-orientated, so people differ in terms of their predominating psychic or intellectual dispositions, many being neither particularly psychic nor intellectual but inherently bodily, like those trees which are bereft of or comparatively scarce in blossom, fruit and/or nuts, and may accordingly be regarded as being predominantly worldly.  However that may be, it would seem that the psyche is less a function of the brain than a subatomic substratum ranging through it (both old and new) from alpha to omega, which co-exists with it on both wavicle and particle terms, self-sufficient and inherently independent of the intellect as such which, whether alpha stemming or omega orientated, is the brain's true function, and one, moreover, having intimate connections with the body - just as, to revert to our cosmic parallel, the moon has intimate connections with the earth, whereas both the sun and the central star of the Galaxy, corresponding to subconscious emotion and awareness respectively, are somewhat less intimate, if not altogether aloof.

 

59.  Consequently, we must free the psyche from the brain, or from too close an association with the brain, and more in terms of the superconscious than the subconscious which, in any case, is anterior rather than posterior to it.  But by freeing the psyche from the brain I do not intend to suggest that it should be more widely identified with the physical body, as has happened in the (Germanic) West in recent decades; for while that is undoubtedly a step beyond worldly identifications of psyche and brain, it is more symptomatic of superworldly materialism than of either superdiabolic naturalism (positive emotions) or superdivine idealism (positive awareness), and thereby reduces the psyche to the flesh/muscle body instead of elevating or, rather, expanding it towards wavicle and particle alternatives of the superconscious head, as pertinent to God/Devil noumenal absolutisms beyond both the bodily world and, no less importantly, the purgatorial intellect.  Where the democratic and largely Germanic peoples of the West are concerned, the post-worldly identification of psyche with the flesh/muscle body is only to be expected, and is symptomatic, it seems to me, of a socialistic equivalent indicative, in large measure, of Western decadence.  By contrast, the identification of psyche with the soulful, or emotional, superconscious is communistic and comparatively Slavic, as befitting an electron-particle absolutism.  Such a positive diabolic identification can only be opposed and superseded by the positive divine identification of psyche with the spiritual, or awareness, superconscious, which in my estimation is transcendent, as appropriate to an electron-wavicle absolutism.  It is this highest manifestation of the omega psyche, commensurate with positive light rather than positive heat, that must eventually prevail in the world, bringing humanity to the Holy Spirit ... as the omega 'Kingdom of Heaven' strives, under messianic auspices, to bring universal salvation to pass.  For unless awareness gets the better of emotion, no matter how positive the latter may happen to be, no true salvation can be achieved, and omega hell will continue to pass itself off as omega heaven, eclipsing the light of lights with the heat of heats.

 

60.  Whilst on the subject of light and heat distinctions, we should remember that whereas in the everyday world of artificial energy like electric light and electric fire, light is the essence of the one and heat the essence of the other, the heat which accrues to light, as its aside, is apparent, as is the light which accrues, as an aside, to heat.  Thus there is a sharp distinction between light-heat in the case of electric light and heat-light in the case of electric fire, both of which are subsidiary to the overall, or essential, manifestation of each mode of artificial energy.  Broadly speaking, electric light, with its apparent heat, corresponds to the spiritual superconscious, or an electron-wavicle equivalent, whereas electric fire, with its apparent light, corresponds to the soulful superconscious, or an electron-particle equivalent, conscious and emotional parallels in artificial light and heat which point up the moral distinction I was making earlier between spirit and soul, or Heaven and Hell.  So long as emotion, or heat, remains the principal factor, there can be only a subsidiary awareness, or light.  Conversely, so long as awareness, or light, remains the principal factor, there can be only a subsidiary emotional level, or heat.  Spirit and soul are no more identical or interchangeable than electric lights and electric fires or, for that matter, jazz and rock, scooters and motorbikes, Fascism and Communism, Heaven and Hell.  Positive emotion is no less germane to an omega hell than positive awareness to an omega heaven.  Superconscious love (positive heat) and superconscious truth (positive light), with aesthetic (heat-light) and joyful (light-heat) asides respectively.  For as beauty is the light of love, so joy is the heat of truth.  Love and truth are no less incommensurate than beauty and joy.  Either one pursues beauty through love or, alternatively, one pursues joy through truth.  For love and truth are the principal options at stake.

 

61.  Strictly speaking, art is to awareness what music is to emotion - the creative means whereby each spectrum of the psyche may be articulated and granted a phenomenal mould.  Art is no less the eye of the spiritual psyche than music the ear of the soulful psyche, whereas literature is the voice of the intellectual brain - at any rate, on its highest levels.  Thus, broadly speaking, literature stands between art and music as the art form of the intellect, being conveyed neither in images nor sounds but solely through words, or verbal symbols, and thereby assuming a comparatively atomic status in between wavicle and particle extremes.  Indeed, taking each of the arts in turn, we may categorically maintain that art, corresponding to awareness, is the highest, with music, corresponding to emotion, next, and literature, corresponding to intellect, third - a third which places it in a position analogous to the moon vis-à-vis solar and stellar precedents.

 

62.  Yet just as the moon is closer to the earth than are either the sun or the central star of the Galaxy, so literature, the art form of the brain, is closer to architecture than either art or music are, the reason being that architecture is inherently a bodily art form and therefore more mundane than lunar or solar.  It is precisely because architecture is bodily in character that literature stands closest of all the arts to it, given the connection (already touched upon) between the brain and the body, as between the moon and the earth.  Rare indeed is the novel which doesn't have reference to some architectural context or other, be it in city, town, or village.  But there is no reason why literature should be too deeply concerned with music or art - unless, of course, we are dealing with those rather hybrid novels which, whether philosophic or poetic, seek to accommodate truth or love, joy or beauty.  Naturally, philosophy and poetry would be more suited to such purposes than either philosophical or poetical literature, though both are still tied to the intellect to the extent that they are conceived in verbal form and aim, rather more exclusively, at wavicle and particle extremes, whether negatively (and alpha stemming) or positively (and omega orientated).  Now although literature is not specifically worldly, still less divine or diabolic, it has a greater affiliation, in its intellectual essence, with the world than with either God or the Devil, and may accordingly be described as comparatively purgatorial - a purgatorial middle-ground in between heavenly awareness and hellish emotion, whether negative or positive, which is nothing less than intellectual.

 

63.  Thus when true to itself - though it has to be admitted that the arts are almost infinitely adaptable - art will be idealistically spiritual, music naturalistically emotional, literature materialistically intellectual, and architecture realistically physical - with all due variations and gradations, depending on the type of art, music, literature, or architecture in question, whether alpha stemming or omega orientated, negative or positive, natural or artificial.  The highest form of each art or, rather, superart, viz. light art, electric music, avant-garde literature, transcendental architecture, will be most representative of the arts in an omega-oriented age or society, though the highest art of all, viz. light art, will best represent the omega aspirations of a transcendental civilization towards spiritual perfection in the omega absolute.  A divinely-biased society can only encourage such art at the expense not merely of traditional art, viz. drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, mosaics, and stained glass, the latter three of which are more closely alpha stemming, but even to some extent at the expense of each of the other arts, in whichever guise, as well.  For in a divinely-biased society it is positive awareness, rather than positive emotions or intellect or even physicality, which counts for most and which should accordingly be given special emphasis.  Soul, intellect, and the body should progressively count for less, eventually counting for little or nothing at all.  For they are obstacles to the light of the spirit as it expands on free-electron terms towards the maximum realization of truth - a truth that will incorporate its own joy, a light with its own heat, beyond even the highest art which man, in his thirst for salvation, can achieve.

 

64.  Hence, to sum up diagrammatically, one can distinguish the naturalistic alpha-stemming arts from the transcendental (supernaturalistic) omega-oriented ones as follows:-

 

                    ALPHA                                         OMEGA

                                                

                       1. art (idealism)                            8. superart (superidealism)

                       2. music (naturalism)                    7. supermusic (supernaturalism)

                       3. literature (materialism)             6. superliterature (supermaterialism)               

                       4. architecture (realism)                5. super-architecture (super-realism)                      

    

with (1) and (8) having spiritual implications, the former negative and the latter positive, proton and electron wavicles respectively; (2) and (7) having soulful implications, both negative and positive, proton and electron particles; (3) and (6) having intellectual implications, again negative and positive, atomic proton and atomic electron; and (4) and (5) having physical implications, likewise negative and positive, proton atomic and electron atomic respectively.

 

65.  Of course, what can be said of the arts in general can, to a certain extent, just as easily be said of each art form in particular, since divisions along the fourfold lines outlined above are also to be found in each of them taken separately, which would suggest a relatively divine, diabolic, purgatorial, or worldly status, commensurate with idealism, naturalism, materialism, and realism, subordinate to the absolute status of the art form in question.  Thus art, for example, can be divided into drawing, painting, and sculpture, with a relatively divine and/or diabolic status accruing to drawing (inherently idealistic if graphic but naturalistic if emotional); a relatively purgatorial status accruing to painting (inherently materialistic if three-dimensional); and a relatively worldly status accruing to sculpture (inherently realistic if representational), bearing in mind our correlative distinctions between awareness, emotion, intellect, and the physical body.  Likewise, music can be divided into singing, instrumental, and dancing, with singing divisible between divine and diabolic options (inherently idealistic if centred in awareness but naturalistic if overly emotional); instrumentals having purgatorial implications (inherently materialistic both on account of their intellectual and instrumental dimensions); and dancing assuming a worldly significance (inherently realistic on account of its physical nature).  Similarly, literature will be divisible into poetry, whether divine or diabolic (inherently idealistic if awareness centred but naturalistic if emotional); novels, which assume a purgatorial status (inherently materialistic because intellectual); and theatre, which can be described as worldly (inherently realistic on account of the bodily nature of acting - with characters in the flesh of worldly time).  Finally, what applies to the third art form applies just as much to the fourth, namely architecture, which is likewise divisible into religious, monumental, and civic manifestations, the religious itself divisible along divine/diabolic lines, as in the cases of poetry, singing, and drawing, whether in terms of cultural or ethnic priorities (inherently idealistic if governed by spiritual considerations but naturalistic if ruled by the passions); the monumental assuming a purgatorial status (inherently materialistic if motivated by gratification of the intellectual will); and the civic reflecting a worldly status (inherently realistic by dint of its utilitarian purpose in the service of everyday bodily living).

 

66.  Thus just as each art form has an overall, or general, status vis-à-vis its rivals, so one can impute a specific, or particular, status to the branches of any given art form considered independently, which will be subordinate to the general status of the art form as a whole.  Therefore art will remain idealistic in relation to music on a general basis, whereas sculpture will be realistic in relation to painting, painting materialistic in relation to drawing, drawing naturalistic and/or idealistic in relation to painting or sculpture, and so on ... with other possible permutations within the relatively bourgeois framework I have just described.  For light art is, in a manner of speaking, the drawing of a transcendental age or society, photography its painting, and holography its sculpture, with all due ideological distinctions between the various types, or branches, of superart - as, naturally, of supermusic (rock, jazz, and pop distinctions), superliterature (with avant-garde poetry, film, and television-play distinctions), and super-architecture (with tower, block, and estate distinctions).  For to limit ourselves just to drawing, painting, and sculpture would be to take a too-narrowly atomic view - one omitting both alpha and omega extremes.  Now while such a view is doubtless compatible with art per se (as opposed to, say, superart), it can never do proper justice to the whole truth, which necessarily aims at the widest and most comprehensive perspective.  Even the possibility of subart, as appropriate to an alpha-stemming age or society, has to be allowed for, and if divisions along the lines of stained glass, mosaics, and ceramics approximate to the mind - brain - body distinctions we have already drawn, then it should be apparent that the omega-oriented antitheses of such divisions will not be drawing, painting, or sculpture, but light art, photography, and holography, with light art antithetical to stained glass, photography antithetical to mosaics, and holography antithetical to ceramics, so that a tripartite arrangement roughly commensurate with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost can be posited, which will read as follows:-

 

           1. stained glass           drawing          light art

               2. mosaics                  painting          photography

               3. ceramics                 sculpture         holography

 

with those in the first column alpha stemming, those in the second column atomic, and those in the third column omega orientated - the top trio divisible between divine and diabolic options, depending upon whether awareness or emotion is the principal factor in any given work; the middle trio having purgatorial implications on the basis of a comparatively intellectual persuasion; and the bottom trio being worldly to the extent that we have a correlation neither with the psyche nor the brain, but with the body considered in terms of a dimension of physicality.

 

67.  Doubtless what applies to art, regarded in this comprehensive manner, must also in some degree apply to music, literature, and architecture, since if we can distinguish between alpha, atomic, and omega options with regard to art, there is no reason why each of the other arts should not also be subject to such tripartite distinctions, making for pagan, Christian, and transcendental divisions which accord with the full-gamut, so to speak, of devolutionary and evolutionary possibilities.  Consequently primitive music, divisible into vocal, instrumental, and dance categories, will have its omega antithesis in contemporary electric music like rock, jazz, and pop,  rather than in the classical types of music which, to a greater or lesser extent, are dependent on orchestral ensembles and thereby reflect an atomic middle-ground in between pre- and post-atomic extremes, particularly in regard to the use of acoustic means and their relation to music scores on the one hand and to conductors on the other.  Therefore electric music or, rather, supermusic will parallel the superart we have just discussed, with, so I contend, an especially close parallel between rock and light art, jazz and photography, and pop and holography, given the idealistic and/or naturalistic character of rock, depending on whether it is keyboards based and 'soft' or guitar based and 'hard'; the materialistic character of jazz, particularly modern jazz, which is essentially an intellectual rather than either a spiritual or an emotional form of supermusic; and the realistic character of pop which, like holography, is fundamentally bodily, or physical, and thus dance orientated - a mode of supermusic less purgatorial than worldly, and so standing in an ideologically inferior relationship to both jazz and rock, which, when true to their respective forms, are of the new brain and superconscious respectively.  For whereas jazz is predominantly if not exclusively instrumental and therefore intellectual, rock, being largely a vocal supermusic, is either spiritual or soulful, of the awareness superconscious or of the emotional superconscious, depending on whether it is 'soft' or 'hard', wavicle centred or particle centred - in a word, divine or diabolic.  Thus rock is essentially the ultimate music, having both Transcendental and Communist implications which transcend both Ecological jazz and Socialist pop, whether the latter be 'soft' or 'hard', rhythm 'n' blues or rock 'n' roll.  Spirit and soul are alike best served through vocals, while the intellect is granted musical articulation through instrumentality, and the body through dance.  'Heads' will inevitably prefer rock or jazz to pop, which is the mode of supermusic most designed to cater for 'bodies', i.e. the broad proletarian masses.  In this respect, it parallels holography and television plays on the corresponding bodily levels of superart and superliterature respectively, while civic and, in particular, domestic architecture of a rectilinear design will be its super-architectural parallel - one more intrinsically bodily than either of the others, given the overall worldly nature of architecture vis-à-vis both literature and art, not to mention music or, in this context, supermusic.

 

68.  Consequently, distinctions between the 'conventional' and 'super' are crucial to an understanding of the differences between bourgeois and proletarian arts - the former atomic and the latter post-atomic and/or free-electron.  A transcendental society ('alternative' within the framework of bourgeois civilization) is a society of superart, supermusic, superliterature, and super-architecture, all of which are inherently different from and ideologically superior to the conventional, or bourgeois, modes of art, music, literature, and architecture.  But if they are superior to the atomic arts, they are antithetical to the pre-atomic and/or bound-proton arts which stand to them as alpha to omega, whether the alpha be divine, diabolic, purgatorial, or worldly in general or in particular terms, depending on the kind of 'subart' in question.  However, that is not a subject I particularly wish to enlarge upon, since my own orientation is towards the omega, with especial reference to the most idealistic modes of each superart, viz. slender neon light art, soft pitch-oriented rock, ordered abstract poetry, and centripetal architecture of a suitably curvilinear design.

 

69.  Idealism, naturalism, materialism, and realism: the four ideological options which correspond to air, fire, water, and earth, taking the four principal elements in order of merit, rather than in the conventional sequence of earth-air-fire-water.  Now supposing that air idealism, fire naturalism, water materialism, and earth realism are correlated with methods of taking drugs, from sniffing (snorting) to smoking, and from drinking and/or injecting to eating and/or swallowing, then we would have to categorize sniffing as an idealistic approach to drug consumption, smoking as a naturalistic approach, drinking and/or injecting as a materialistic approach, and, finally, eating and/or swallowing as a realistic approach, with correspondingly divine, diabolic, purgatorial, and worldly implications, depending on the kind of drug in question, be it alpha stemming or omega orientated or, indeed, an atomic compromise lying somewhere in between the two extremes.  Thus we could contend that sniffing corresponds to air, smoking to fire, drinking and/or injecting to water, and eating and/or swallowing to earth, since these are the principal methods of drug consumption, and such methods would seem to correspond to our basic fourfold elemental divisions - divisions which, as I have elsewhere argued, can be approximately correlated with moral evaluations of the kind listed above, i.e. divine, diabolic, etc.  What is particularly apparent about these methodological distinctions is that both the idealistic and naturalistic categories, viz. sniffing and smoking, are absolute, whereas both the materialistic and realistic categories, corresponding to purgatorial and to worldly evaluations, are relative, as in regard to drinking and/or injecting on the one hand, and to eating and/or swallowing on the other hand.  For are not the divine and the diabolic likewise absolute in relation to the purgatorial and the worldly, as elsewhere described with regard to wavicle mind (spirit) and particle mind (soul) vis-à-vis the brain (intellect) and the physical body (will), or, alternatively, with regard to the central star of the Galaxy and the sun vis-à-vis the moon and the earth, both of which are inherently atomic and therefore relative.

 

70.  However, if materialism and realism are relative in relation to naturalism and idealism, they are alike divisible along parallel spectra into tripartite options corresponding to pagan, Christian, and transcendental distinctions, with alpha-stemming, atomic, and omega-oriented implications ... as before.  In other words, we should be able to distinguish horizontally as well as vertically between drugs and their method of consumption, thereby arriving at a more comprehensive perspective which stretches from naturalistic origins to an artificial, or synthetic, culmination on each of our elemental spectra, with drugs of an atomic nature situated in between.  Here, as an example of what I mean, is a table listing the main categories of drugs in this way, beginning with idealistic sniffing and proceeding via naturalistic smoking and materialistic drinking and/or injecting to realistic eating and/or swallowing:-

 

           1. opium                        incense/snuff           cocaine

               2. cannabis                    tobacco                   hashish

               3. morphine                   alcohol                   heroin

               4. magic mushrooms      confectionery          LSD

 

with those in the first column alpha stemming, those in the second column atomic, and those in the third column omega orientated.  Of course, both needles for injecting drugs and capsules and/or tablets for swallowing them are comparatively recent inventions, scarcely entitled to an alpha-stemming status, but inherently contemporary methods of drug consumption.  Therefore whilst it is obvious that heroin will be injected rather than drunk like alcohol, we must assume a drinking mode of drug consumption for the alpha category of liquid drugs, whether in terms of strong spirits or some vegetable extract like sake, to which morphine may or may not have been added.  Similarly, whilst it is obvious that LSD will be swallowed rather than eaten, we must assume that magic mushrooms are chewed before being swallowed, as in the case of chocolate liqueurs which, strange though it may seem, adequately fill a middle-ground worldly position in between alpha and omega worldly, or realistic, extremes.  Of course, I do not wish to imply that because LSD can come in capsule or tablet form it is inherently worldly, corresponding to earth as opposed to air, fire, or water, since that would surely invalidate my long-standing theories concerning LSD as an idealistic drug suitable for a transcendental society.  I simply wish to point out the correlation that exists, as I see it, between tablet swallowing and earth, both of which can be regarded as solids in relation to air, fire, water, and their respective correlations in sniffing, smoking, and injecting.  However, the mode of drug consumption must have some bearing on the nature of the drug being consumed, which could indicate that perhaps LSD is not as biased towards the divine as I have hitherto believed but, rather, is comparatively superworldly on account of its solid presentation in either capsule or tablet form?

 

71.  Since every philosopher will have some kind of view of himself in relation both to the philosophical tradition and to contemporary philosophy, not to mention in relation to himself as a philosopher, I should like to put forward my own view which, no matter how seemingly presumptuous or conceited it may at first appear for a self-taught thinker (particularly to those so-called professional philosophers who are really 'professors of philosophy'), strikes me as being highly credible.  To begin with, I should like to establish my credentials as an idealist rather than a realist or materialist or naturalist, since it should be clear to my readers by now that I have always pursued and advocated the most idealistic course at the expense of what I perceive to be lesser courses - courses corresponding to the worldly or the purgatorial or the diabolic, as the case may be.

 

72.  Thus my own idealistic bias obliges me to regard my work in a divine light and to set myself at the apex of an evolutionary hierarchy of contemporary philosophy which stretches from Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to Arthur Koestler, having as its alpha-stemming antithesis a devolutionary hierarchy comprised of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, and Plutarch - in that order.  Hence, if I may resort to my customary diagrammatic mode of distinguishing between alpha-stemming devolutionary and omega-oriented evolutionary levels of the mainstream ideological positions, we will find this distinction conceived on the basis of a fourfold division between the four greatest philosophers of classical antiquity and the four, including myself, whom I regard as the greatest of the moderns, which will read as follows:-

 

                           1. Plato                  8. O'Loughlin

                                      2. Aristotle              7. Koestler

                                      3. Socrates              6. Sartre

                                      4. Plutarch             5. Russell

 

with Plato and myself significant of antithetical forms of idealism, Aristotle and Koestler significant of antithetical forms of naturalism, Socrates and Sartre significant of antithetical forms of materialism, and Plutarch and Russell significant of antithetical forms of realism.  Certainly, Plato was the greatest of the ancients, since by far the most idealistic, whereas Aristotle, Socrates, and Plutarch signify a philosophical descent, irrespective of historical chronology, from naturalism to realism via materialism.  Conversely, Bertrand Russell, being a modern philosopher of strongly liberal persuasion, may be regarded as the leading representative of philosophical realism who, ideologically speaking, stands at the base of a hierarchy stretching via Sartre and Koestler, the former materialistic and the latter naturalistic, towards an idealistic summit of which my own Social Transcendentalism may be regarded as the ideological apex.  For where Sartre is socialistic and Koestler communistic (in spite of his disillusionments), I am transcendentalist, in the idealistic and specifically theocratic sense to which I normally apply that term, and thus stand at the furthest possible ideological remove from Russell, which is to say, as Irish air/light from British earth/darkness.  To me, Russell is the principal philosophical voice of the omega world, Sartre the principal philosophical voice of the omega purgatory, Koestler the principal philosophical voice of the Omega Hell, and I the principal philosophical voice of the Omega Heaven - the Heaven horizontally antithetical to Plato's, with its abstract Ideas.  Furthermore, whereas idealism is identifiable with religion and naturalism with science, materialism is identifiable with economics and realism with politics.  Certainly, Sartre was more disposed to economics than to science, in contrast to Koestler, whose biological bias or, rather, bias towards biology confirms a naturalistic status, albeit one antithetical, in so many regards, to Aristotle's.  Then, too, Sartre was a rather ugly little man, as - if Nietzsche is to be trusted - was Socrates, his alpha antithesis.

 

73.  Speaking of Nietzsche, it is only fair to add that if modern German philosophers are to be categorized in the fourfold manner outlined above, then Nietzsche should take the idealistic position above Schopenhauer who, with his scientific bent, is more naturalistic, while Marx should be placed in the materialistic category and Hegel in the realistic one, so that, working upwards, Hegel would parallel Russell, as much for political as for historical reasons, Marx would parallel Sartre, Schopenhauer would parallel Koestler, and, finally, Nietzsche would parallel myself, as below.

 

                                    8. Nietzsche (idealism)

                                      7. Schopenhauer (naturalism)

                                      6. Marx (materialism)

                                      5. Hegel (realism)

 

 However, I firmly believe that these nineteenth-century Germans are a poor second to the ensuing philosophers of the twentieth and (in my case) twenty-first century, and consequently do not deserve to be given pride of philosophical place in any comparison, antithetical or otherwise, with classical antiquity.

 

74.  Speaking of distinctions between philosophical realism, materialism, naturalism, and idealism, which broadly correspond to political, economic, scientific, and religious persuasions, each of which can be further correlated with a given moral spectrum, be it worldly, purgatorial, diabolic, or divine, it should be possible for us to equate realism with the will, materialism with the intellect, naturalism with the soul, and idealism with the spirit, so that, taking each of our most representative modern philosophers in turn, we can equate Bertrand Russell with the triumph, though Liberalism, of bodily will; Jean-Paul Sartre with the triumph, through Socialism, of new-brain intellect; Arthur Koestler with the triumph, through Communism, of superconscious soul; and myself with the triumph, through Transcendentalism, of superconscious spirit.  For omega will is of the liberal body, omega intellect of the socialistic brain, omega soul of the communistic superconscious, and omega spirit of the transcendental superconscious - will worldly, intellect purgatorial, soul diabolic, and spirit divine, as befitting the respective natures of Liberalism, Socialism, Communism, and Transcendentalism as they ascend from realism to idealism via materialism and naturalism, in conjunction with an omega-oriented politics, economics, science, and religion.  Hence, with regard to the aforementioned German philosophers, Hegel represents will, Marx intellect, Schopenhauer soul, and Nietzsche spirit - Hegel and Nietzsche as far apart as earth and air, with Marx and Schopenhauer equivalent, in philosophical terms, to water and fire or, what amounts to the same, economics and science, those contiguous disciplines flanked by politics and religion.  For if politics is the lowest discipline, since correlative with the world, then religion is very definitely the highest, having to do with man's self-transcending quest for the heavenly Beyond.  In between come purgatorial economics and diabolic science with their intellectual and soulful correspondences - the former materialistic and the latter naturalistic, water and fire trapped between earth and air extremes.  Certainly, Russell and I are just as far apart as Hegel and Nietzsche, the philosophical nadir and apex of nineteenth-century German philosophy.

 

75.  As regards twentieth-century German philosophy, Spengler, Hussurl, Jaspers, and Heidegger would probably suffice as the most representative philosophers with which to posit (see below)

 

                                    8. Heidegger (idealism)

                                      7. Jaspers (naturalism)

                                      6. Hussurl (materialism)

                                      5. Spengler (realism)

 

a similar quartet of ascending 'isms', whether or not one considers them superior - as noumenal vis-à-vis

phenomenal - to their nineteenth-century predecessors.  Certainly, I regard them as inferior to the quartet beginning with Russell and culminating in myself!

 

76.  We have already established an order of rank in the arts, with art at the top, music second, literature third, and architecture at the bottom, and to this was added an order, or probable order, of drugs based on their mode of consumption, which placed sniffed drugs at the top, smoked drugs in second place, drunk and/or injected drugs in third place, and eaten and/or swallowed drugs in fourth, with, so I contended, air - fire - water - earth correlations.  Such being the case, it should follow that there will be a connection between art and sniffed drugs, music and smoked drugs, literature and drunk and/or injected drugs, and, finally, architecture and eaten and/or swallowed drugs, bearing in mind our distinctions between three stages of each art form, viz. 'sub', 'middle ground', and 'super', and the corresponding stage of any correlative drug, be it alpha stemming, atomic, or omega orientated.  Therefore whilst a strictly middle-ground/atomic correlation between art and snuff may be assumed, superart, viz. light art, would suggest the likelihood of cocaine or some such omega-oriented drug being used in the interests of greater appreciation, since drugs and art, on whichever evolutionary plane and of whichever kind, normally go hand-in-glove, so to speak.  Now doubtless while most people would admit to a connection between literature and alcohol, particularly where novelists are concerned, the more radical connection between heroin and film would also have to be accounted for, if one is to do adequate justice to the contention that film is a mode of superliterature and heroin a mode of superdrug, both of which correspond to the omega pole of the third, or water, spectrum in each context, whether of the arts or drugs, and should accordingly prove correlative.

 

77.  Obviously, a bourgeois middle-ground society will be more indulgent of a literature/alcohol correspondence than of a film/heroin one, because literature and alcohol have long been partners in crime - as, for that matter, have tobacco and music, with particular reference to classical music; although the rather more omega-oriented connection between supermusic, viz. rock, and hashish would hardly come as a shock to most people, whether or not they had anything to do with either.  For hashish is the superdrug most suitable, by dint of its correlative diabolic (smoking) essence, for use with supermusic, itself a diabolic art in relation to divine superart, purgatorial superliterature, and worldly super-architecture, the latter of which would probably be best served by LSD, given its architectonic properties, as in the case of visions of an architectural order.

 

78.  Now, obviously, strict correlations between any given art form and the drug most paralleling it will be more the practical exception, I shall argue, than the rule, given the vast amounts of ignorance and muddle-headedness which usually obtain in life.  But I do believe such correlations are possible, and that even when any given art form is subdivided - as in the case, say, of superart being subdivided into light art, photography, and holography - the same drug or, in this instance, superdrug would be most applicable, the only difference being its mode of consumption, which should level, where possible, with the subdivision in question.  Hence if cocaine, the superdrug correlative with superart, is most applicable snorted where light art is concerned, it would be more applicable injected in relation to photography, and swallowed, presumably in capsule form, in relation to holography, the reason being that while light art and snorted cocaine correspond to idealistic modes of superart and superdrug respectively (although the naturalistic possibility of smoking cocaine in relation to light art of a less idealistic and possibly more sculptural type has also to be allowed for), photography and injected cocaine would correspond to their materialistic modes, and holography and swallowed cocaine to their realistic modes respectively, given the correlation between transcendental light art/snorted cocaine and air, sculptural light art/smoked cocaine and fire, photography/injected cocaine and water, and holography/swallowed cocaine and earth - the four principal elements, which correspond to idealism, naturalism, materialism, and realism (in that order).

 

79.  Obviously, what goes for superart and its equivalent drug would also go, in like manner, for supermusic, superliterature, super-architecture, and their correlative superdrugs, not to mention for conventional, or bourgeois, art, music, literature, architecture, and their correlative drugs, like snuff, tobacco, alcohol, and confectionery, as well as for alpha-stemming subart, submusic, subliterature, and subarchitecture and the (sub)drugs most correlative with them, like opium, cannabis, morphine, and magic mushrooms.  Interestingly, I have placed cannabis and hashish in an alpha/omega antithetical relationship because of the naturalistic constitution ('grass') of cannabis in contrast to the artificial, or synthetic, constitution ('shit') of hashish - a distinction which could also be said to apply to tea in relation to coffee, given the more naturalistic constitution (leaves) of tea which suggests - at any rate to this writer - an alpha-stemming status commensurate with cannabis, opium, morphine, etc., albeit of a much less potent order.

 

80.  Of course, I am not here advocating the use of drugs with the arts, merely pointing out the connection which I believe to exist between them, granted the intrinsically religious nature of drugs and their mind-altering properties - properties which art, as the 'handmaiden of religion', has long been aware of and had no scruples in confirming.  Indeed, it would be scant exaggeration to say that drugs are inseparable from religion, and that without them there would be no religion in the higher, mystical sense - as, in fact, is the case where moralizing, worldly Protestantism is concerned, which, as every Catholic will know, is as far removed from true religion as the body from the mind.  In fact, it is largely because of its Germanic, bodily nature that Protestantism forbade the use of incense in church, since incense is something one sniffs, and a sniffing idealism would hardly be compatible with bodily realism, which, wherever possible, contrives to leave the head out of account and to concentrate, in a manner of speaking, on its own puritanical replacements.  But, of course, Puritanism is the religion of a bodily people, and should that people become decadent ... promiscuity takes its place - a promiscuity which is the secular, or tails, side of a coin with Puritanism as its religious head.  Doubtless drunkenness is the secular fall of a head people who, in their decadence, are no longer capable of that temperance which the Church would have expected of them during the heyday, so to speak, of Catholic civilization, and on the perfectly plausible grounds that alcoholic self-indulgence is a thing less spiritual than worldly or, at any rate, purgatorial.  Hence something to avoid.  For while some drugs increase consciousness, others, like alcohol, decrease it, and no true spirituality can be pursued on the basis of diminished consciousness!  The test of a drug's validity is whether, in conjunction with art, it makes for an expansion of consciousness.  Only drugs with an idealistic, synthetic bias will be found to pass this test as a rule, since most drugs - as the term suggests - have the effect of reducing consciousness, and accordingly fly in the face of spiritual evolution.

 

81.  But whether or not a drug is used in conjunction with a particular art form, religion is more than either and must ultimately transcend both art and drugs as the spirit expands, of its own inherent volition, towards Eternity.  The ultimate religion must be as far above drugs as worldly religion was beneath them, even if, during its initial phase, recourse to certain appropriate drugs will be had ... as much to break the hold of traditional drugs, like alcohol and tobacco, as to assist in the development of a transcendent consciousness.  Certainly, drugs will be around for some time to come, and it would be highly unreasonable, not to say unrealistic, of one to suppose that mankind could do without them in the meantime, especially when conditions are harsh and no alternative means of escape or, rather, escapism can be found.  Yet drugs are more than just pain-killers or means of escapism; they can also, as we have argued, expand consciousness and thereby improve the quality of life for those who habitually use them.  It would certainly be an improvement on today's state-of-affairs if the only drugs being used in this respect were of the artificial, or omega-oriented, variety, and preferably only the safest and most transcendental ones at that!  For as long as ambiguity and muddle-headedness prevail, alpha-stemming, worldly, and omega-oriented alternatives will continue to jostle for supremacy in a world which is neither fish nor fowl but more like a crazy animal driven everywhichway by the conflicting currents of open-society chaos.  Such an unstable animal is both sick and dangerous, like the society of which it is a part.

 

82.  Accordingly, let there be judgement against both alpha and worldly drugs, and then may each type of omega-oriented society keep to the drug most appropriate to itself, whether realistic, materialistic, naturalistic, or idealistic, until such time as, one by one, the lower orientations are eclipsed by the higher ones and, finally, even the ultimate omega-oriented society, idealistic to the core, transcends its principal drug in the name of pure spirituality, beyond even the highest mode of superart to which the highest mode of superdrug can relate.

 

83.  Having already emphasized the connection between religion and art, it behoves me to add that similar connections exist - and have long existed - between science and music, economics and literature, and politics and architecture.  For we have established that the arts form a hierarchy which stretches from architecture at the bottom to art at the top, and to this was added a similar hierarchy stretching from politics and economics to science and religion, whether on the analogous basis of realism, materialism, naturalism, and idealism, or of the world, purgatory, Hell, and Heaven, or, indeed, of earth, water, fire, and air - in that ascending order.  Consequently, when one takes this hierarchy into account, one finds that politics and architecture are in parallel positions, as are economics and literature, science and music, and religion and art, thereby confirming the hypothesis of a connection between each pair, however we would like to interpret such a connection.

 

84.  I shall not attempt to be unduly methodical here but, clearly, the connection between politics and architecture must be attributable to the down-to-earth nature of each or, at any rate, to worldly politics and architecture.  On the other hand, the connection between literature and economics is less straightforward, although each discipline has a certain volatility which contrasts with the stability and even stolidity of the realistic pair, thereby suggesting a bias rather more fluid than solid.  As to science and music, both of which correspond to fiery naturalism, the heat factor has to be taken into account, a factor which, corresponding to experiment in the one case and to emotion in the other, paves the way for the conquest of nature, whether organic or human.  Above heat, however, comes light, and it is their idealistic commitment to spiritual light which distinguishes religion and art from each of the lesser pairs, even when, as is often the case, mutual overlappings of content and discipline occur.

 

85.  Thus darkness-coldness-heat-light is a parallel hierarchical quartet (in this case noumenal) corresponding to earth-water-fire-air, and their more complex disciplinary offshoots.  As much distance between religion and politics as between art and architecture or, for that matter, air/light and earth/darkness, and whereas the former is true, the latter is good (at any rate, on the omega plane).  Similarly, as much distance - albeit lesser in relation to the above-mentioned pair - between science and economics as between music and literature or, for that matter, fire/heat and water/coldness, and whereas the former is beautiful, the latter is strong.  For strength is no less above goodness than beauty is beneath truth (just as weakness is no less above evil than ugliness is beneath falsity), and while goodness and strength form an omega earth/water pair corresponding to the world and purgatory, truth and beauty form an omega air/fire pair corresponding to Heaven and Hell.  Darkness and coldness on the one hand, heat and light on the other - darkness and light (pleasure and joy) no less antithetical than coldness and heat (pride and love).

 

86.  However, just as we may distinguish between quantities as primary and qualities as secondary, with earth-water-fire-air in the primary category and darkness-coldness-heat-light in the secondary category, so a like-distinction can be drawn between quantitative disciplines like politics, economics, science, and religion (in ascending order), and qualitative disciplines like history, mathematics, philosophy, and art, with the former quartet equivalent to primary elemental quantities and the latter quartet to their secondary qualities, and so much so that politics and history, economics and mathematics, science and philosophy, and religion and art should appear no less complementary to each other than earth and darkness, water and coldness, fire and heat, and air and light, bearing in mind their analogous standings.  For is not history a consequence of politics, no less than darkness a consequence of earth?  And is not mathematics a consequence of economics, no less than coldness a consequence of water?  And is not philosophy a consequence of science, no less than heat a consequence of fire?  And is not art a consequence of religion, no less than light a consequence of air?

 

87.  Indeed, I would go so far as to say that each of the qualitative disciplines is not only a consequence of the corresponding quantitative one, but its logical complement, as inextricably bound to it as the tails side of a coin to the head side of which it forms the (noumenal) obverse.  Now where the head side of a coin is formal and the tails side informal, so we find that the quantitative, or primary, disciplines noted above are formal in relation to the qualitative, or secondary, disciplines which complement them so informally in the overall expression of their unfolding.  Politics is formal, whereas history is informal.  Economics is formal, whereas mathematics is informal.  Science is formal, whereas philosophy is informal.  Likewise, religion is formal, whereas art is informal.  Is this not equivalent to saying that whereas those on the one side are phenomenal, those on the other side are noumenal - essence as opposed to appearance?

 

88.  I believe it is, and for this reason we cannot categorically assert that the phenomenal always precedes, or is a precondition of, the noumenal; for I have previously argued, in collaboration with Schopenhauer, that the noumenal precedes the phenomenal on the natural plane, and therefore must concede that where the contrary obtains, we are dealing not with the natural but with the artificial or, what amounts to the same, with an omega orientation rather than with an alpha-stemming one.  Thus where the latter is concerned it may well be truer to say (as I have elsewhere maintained) that politics precedes, or is a precondition of, history.  But where alpha-stemming naturalistic politics and history are concerned, we would have to contend that history is a precondition of politics or, put as before, that politics is a consequence of history, not vice versa.  Just as, in returning to the corresponding element, it would have to be agreed that darkness is a precondition of earth on the alpha-stemming plane, which is equivalent to saying earth is a consequence of darkness, whether or not that noumenal quality derives from the gradual cooling of the earth's molten core.  Similarly water would be a consequence of coldness (the Ice Age) no less than economics a consequence of mathematics (Babylonian calculus).  Fire would be a consequence of heat (hot gases, friction) no less than science a consequence of philosophy (ancient Greek).  Finally, air would be a consequence of light (which causes oxygen-producing plants to grow) no less than religion a consequence of art (cave drawings, carved stone).  For on the alpha-stemming naturalistic part of any given spectrum, be it worldly, purgatorial, diabolic, or divine, the noumenal precedes the phenomenal, and if light is noumenal in relation to air, then light precedes air, just as art precedes religion - the former noumenally informal and the latter phenomenally formal.  Such it is on the divine spectrum, and such it must be on the diabolic spectrum of heat/fire and philosophy/science; the purgatorial spectrum of coldness/water and mathematics/economics; and the worldly spectrum of darkness/earth and history/politics.  Only with the artificial or omega-oriented part of each spectrum will this not apply, and simply because, in complementing Schopenhauer on an antithetical basis, I have consistently argued that the superphenomenal precedes the supernoumenal as its quantitative precondition.

 

89.  Hence art or, more specifically, superart is as much a consequence of super-religion (transcendentalism) as superlight is a consequence of superair (meditation techniques involving deep breathing).  Now what applies to the divine option applies no less to each of the other options, where superscience precedes superphilosophy, super-economics precedes supermathematics, and superpolitics precedes superhistory, at both negative and positive poles of their respective artificial or omega-oriented spectra.  I shall not overtax the reader's patience by adding the artificial elemental equivalents, but he can rest assured that the same principle obtains, and with as much justification on the negative pole, for example, of electric light as on the positive pole of spiritual superlight.

 

90.  Before there can be superlight there must be superair, which is equivalent to saying that before self-contemplation of superconscious mind can be properly achieved through a dynamic meditation technique, there must firstly be a period of intense breathing exercises (in the future using artificially-produced oxygen) which increase the amount of oxygen in the blood and thereby 'stoke up' the fires of spiritual illumination.  No pure air, no pure light!  Similarly before there can be superart, there must first of all be a super-religious sense which underlies it and provides the thematic motive for its unfolding.  Behind Mondrian's art - which is only relatively 'super' in view of its painterly nature - there was theosophy.  Doubtless, behind most light art there will be some mode of transcendentalism which is both a guide to and an inspiration for the subsequent superartistic unfolding.  True art is not created in a void but reflects a religious stance.  It is the superphenomenal preceding the supernoumenal - superair preceding superlight.

 

91.  Tory rugby union, Liberal rugby league, Labour football league.  Rugby union is a gentleman's rugby, on the whole less physically competitive than rugby league, which stands, it seems to me, between naturalistic rugby union and materialistic football league as a sort of realistic middle-ground sport.  Gaelic (so-called) football would be superidealistic and therefore comparatively nazi - at any rate, when played indoors.  For it is more likely that the outdoor variety is less superidealistic than supernaturalistic and, hence, republican.

 

92.  Race war - sex war - class war: three stages of generalized social warfare with, so I contend, alpha, worldly, and omega implications respectively.  Thus race war and class war are antithetical, the former preceding worldly sex war and the latter succeeding it.  We live in an age of class war, even though both sex and, alas, race wars are still extant.

 

93.  Modern music, by which I mean supermusic, has tended, as a rule, to favour an instrumental combination of bass, drums, guitar, and keyboards, a basic quartet which corresponds to our fourfold elemental divisions between earth, water, fire, and air - in that order.  For the bass is fundamentally a realistic (bodily) instrument corresponding in its phenomenal manifestation to earth and in its noumenal or musical manifestation to darkness; drums are fundamentally materialistic (intellectual) instruments corresponding in their phenomenal manifestation to water and in their noumenal manifestation to coldness; the guitar is essentially a naturalistic (soulful) instrument corresponding in its phenomenal manifestation to fire and in its noumenal manifestation to heat; keyboards, especially synthesizers, are essentially idealistic (spiritual) instruments corresponding in their phenomenal manifestation to air and in their noumenal manifestation to light.  Thus a hierarchy may be said to exist which stretches from the bass to keyboards, as from earth to air, with drums and guitars situated in-between: the former equivalent to water and the latter to fire.  Consequently just as air and earth are diametrically antithetical, like light and darkness, so are keyboards and bass.  Now just as fire and water form a closer, more contiguous diametrical antithesis, like heat and coldness, so a similar antithesis may be inferred to exist between guitars and drums.  In the one case all the difference, musically speaking, between Heaven and the world.  In the other case the less radical difference, again musically speaking, between Hell and purgatory.  For keyboards are no less divine in relation to the worldly bass than guitars are diabolic in relation to the purgatorial drums.  It is the difference between idealism and realism on the one hand, but between naturalism and materialism on the other, with all the same moral implications.

 

94.  Similar fourfold distinctions should be drawn between arpeggio chording, whether on guitars or keyboards, and rhythmic chording; for whereas the former is realistic on account of its relative and individualized nature, the latter is materialistic on account of its relative and collectivized nature.  Yet both are lower than, and thus musically inferior to, the absolute collectivized nature of scalic single-note playing, which is naturalistic, and the absolute individualized nature of sustained single-note playing, which is idealistic.  For these techniques correspond to the world and purgatory vis-à-vis Hell and Heaven or, what amounts to the same, darkness and coldness vis-à-vis heat and light.  Thus whereas finger-picked arpeggio chords on guitar are realistically mundane, sustained single notes on guitar would be idealistically divine.  And whereas strummed chords on guitar are materialistically purgatorial, single-note scales ('runs') on guitar would be naturalistically diabolic.  For the different modes of playing correspond to the moral concomitants of our four basic elements, viz. earth-water-fire-air, with earth and air forming the major diametrical antithesis, as between realism and idealism, but water and fire forming the minor diametrical antithesis, as between materialism and naturalism.  A relative wavicle equivalent vis-à-vis an absolute wavicle equivalent on the one hand, and a relative particle equivalent vis-à-vis an absolute particle equivalent on the other hand.

 

95.  Of course, each of our four principal instruments, viz. bass, drums, guitar, and keyboards, is capable of being played in any of the aforementioned ways and often is, too.  But I should like to put forward the contention that each instrument will be played in the way most appropriate to itself when there is an exact correlation between its phenomenal status in the omega-oriented hierarchy described above and the noumenal sound which is drawn from it, i.e. when both instrument and technique are fully co-ordinated.  Now because I perceive the bass as realist, and therefore at the foot of the instrumental hierarchy, it seems to me that finger-picking arpeggio chording will be the most relevant technique, given its realistic status vis-à-vis block chording.  Similarly, for drums it would appear that block chording or, at any rate, the simultaneous striking of two or more drums (including bass drums and symbols) in order to achieve a regular beat is the most relevant drum technique, given the comparatively materialistic standing of both drums and block chording in relation to their respective hierarchies.  Likewise, fast single-note playing would seem to be the technique most relevant to the electric guitar, since both are comparatively naturalistic, whereas sustained single-note playing is the technique I would most associate with 'conventional' keyboard and, in particular, synthesizer playing, to the extent that both instrument and technique are identifiable with idealism, which, in contrast to naturalism and materialism (though not to realism) strives to achieve a wavicle equivalent, and on an absolute individualized basis.  Fast-note scalic playing would seem, by contrast, to indicate a particle equivalent on account of the rapid succession of notes which form an absolute collectivity commensurate with naturalism and, hence, the diabolic, soul, hell, etc.  On the other hand, the simultaneous striking of several notes in block chording would be comparatively materialistic, and thereby indicative of a relative collectivity commensurate with the purgatorial, as pertinent to an intellectual persuasion.  Certainly all these instruments are usually played in a variety of ways, whether above or below the most appropriate technique, but that detracts nothing from the theory propounded here, which posits an optimum correspondence between instrument and technique, irregardless of whether or not such a correspondence is to everyone's taste.

 

96.  Undoubtedly the synthesizer is gradually displacing and eclipsing instruments like the bass, drums, and guitars, in consequence of which I would argue that realistic, materialistic, and naturalistic techniques, corresponding to the instruments in question, are in some degree redeemed through absorption into the overall synthesizer system, thereby becoming less genuinely worldly, purgatorial, or diabolic, as the case may be.  Probably absorption is a prelude to and precondition of subsequent transmutation, leading, eventually, to the complete eclipse of subidealistic techniques.

 

97.  Whilst on the subject of supermusic, I of course acknowledge that other instruments, such as violins, saxophones, flutes, etc., are often used in conjunction with or as alternatives to one or other of the lead instruments already described, and that the voice is no mean contributor to musical idealism or naturalism, either.  Probably the electric violin is the stringed instrument most suited to the idealistic role by dint of its wavicle-sustain properties, which of course depend upon bowing, whereas the saxophone is the wind or, at any rate, brass instrument most suited to the naturalistic role by dint of its facility for fast-note, particle-biased playing.  Thus the violin (not to mention flute) can be regarded as an alternative to electric keyboards, and the saxophone (not to mention viola) as an alternative to electric guitars, ideologically inferior as any acoustic instrument will be in relation to electric ones.  Yet all instrumental combinations are possible in an open society; it is only in a closed one that such 'freedoms' would be eclipsed.

 

98.  I should like to put forward the theory that while theocrats, aristocrats, plutocrats, and autocrats are alpha-stemming grades of ruling elite, democrats, bureaucrats, technocrats, and meritocrats are omega-oriented grades of leading elite, with religious, scientific, economic, and political distinctions - distinctions which correspond, as elsewhere maintained, to the four principal elements.  Thus to explain my theory with the aid of a diagram, we shall find the following alpha/omega divisions:-

                 

                   ALPHA                                  OMEGA

 

                       1. theocrats (religion)            8. meritocrats (religion)

                       2. aristocrats (science)           7. technocrats (science)

                       3. plutocrats (economics)       6. bureaucrats (economics)

                       4. autocrats (politics)             5. democrats (politics)

 

 with, so I contend, a relatively antithetical standing between theocrats and meritocrats, aristocrats and technocrats, plutocrats and bureaucrats, and autocrats and democrats, but a diametrically antithetical standing, firstly in major terms, between theocrats and autocrats on the one hand and democrats and meritocrats on the other, and, secondly in minor terms, between aristocrats and plutocrats on the one hand and bureaucrats and technocrats on the other - the former corresponding to an air/earth antithesis and the latter to a fire/water antithesis.  For we need not doubt that theocrats and autocrats signify as radical a diametrical antithesis on the alpha-stemming side as ... democrats and meritocrats on the omega-oriented side - all the difference, in fact, between religion and politics; whereas aristocrats and plutocrats signify a less-radical diametrical antithesis equivalent to the distinction between science and economics, an antithesis no less minor on the omega side where, as we have seen, it takes the form of bureaucrats and technocrats.  By contrast, the antithesis horizontally established between meritocrats and theocrats, technocrats and aristocrats, etc., has to do with opposite poles of the same spectrum in each case, thereby indicating a series of antithetical equivalents, as between meritocrats and theocrats (the Holy Spirit and the Father) or technocrats and aristocrats (Antichrist and Satan).

 

99.  Consequently we have an alpha and an omega divine status on the religious spectrum, an alpha and an omega diabolic status on the science spectrum, an alpha and an omega purgatorial status on the economic spectrum, and, finally, an alpha and an omega worldly status on the political spectrum, with antithetical equivalents established between bureaucrats and plutocrats (the Second Coming and the Virgin Mary) in the one case, and democrats and autocrats (Protestant Christ and Catholic Christ) in the other case.  Admittedly, it may seem odd to distinguish between autocrats and aristocrats, since most people have been conditioned to regard aristocrats as cutting across occupational boundaries rather than as a class, or category, no less distinct from autocrats than, in my view, technocrats from democrats, and thereby limited, in their occupational status, to a specific elemental category - in this instance, that of traditional science. Yet many aristocrats are, and have been, men of science (as opposed to men of religion, economics, or politics), and I would argue that they are as distinct an elemental category as, say, theocrats or plutocrats - a thing which applies just as much, albeit on antithetical terms, to technocrats in relation to meritocrats above and to bureaucrats below.  Doubtless most people would accept without demur the distinction between autocrats and democrats, since it corresponds to opposite poles of the political spectrum, and the world, particularly in its British manifestation (where it takes the form of a division between the House of Lords and the House of Commons), has far more experience of such an antithesis than of the higher, more radical antitheses which accrue to the economic, scientific, and religious spectra above, the omega poles of which are either comparatively recent developments, as in the cases of bureaucrats and technocrats, or have yet to come properly to pass - something which undoubtedly applies to any meritocratic religious leadership which, much the way that bureaucracy and technocracy have supplanted plutocracy and aristocracy in the communist East, would not co-exist with alpha-stemming theocracy but strive to completely supplant it as the sole embodiment of religious idealism.  For, unlike an atomic society, a free-electron society will endeavour to realize an omega exclusiveness in which only meritocrats, technocrats, and bureaucrats exist, since such a society is commensurate with a proletarian absolutism above and beyond bourgeois relativity.

 

100. Politicians are always talking about personal responsibility (individual self-assertion), and while this may be a formula for worldly success - of which Britain has always been a keen friend - it is as far removed from divine wisdom as earth from air or darkness from light, the reason being that, unlike worldly folly, divine wisdom has reference to transpersonal absorption (self-transcendence) in spiritual unity - a procedure which the Catholic Irish have always shown more aptitude for - albeit on a tangential basis - than the Protestant British.  However, in between the extremes of worldly folly and divine wisdom we find impersonal responsibility (corporate self-assertion) on the one hand, and impersonal absorption (collective self-transcendence) on the other hand, and while the former is purgatorial, the latter is diabolic - water and fire, stupidity and cleverness, as germane to an American/Russian dichotomy.  For if the British are fundamentally foolish and the Irish essentially wise, then the Americans are fundamentally stupid and the Russians essentially clever, since stupidity and cleverness form a water/fire diametrical antithesis in between the earth/air antithesis of folly and wisdom.  It is the difference between cold and heat, rather than darkness and light.

 

101. The positive wisdom of truth/joy; the positive cleverness of beauty/love; the positive stupidity of strength/pride; the positive folly of goodness/pleasure.  Conversely, we can speak of the negative wisdom of sorrow/falsity; the negative cleverness of hate/ugliness; the negative stupidity of humiliation/weakness; the negative folly of pain/evil.  Consequently we have a distinction between alpha and omega manifestations of idealism, naturalism, materialism, and realism.

 

102. Private enterprise inevitably leads to the perpetuation of divisions between rich and poor, since those who are capable of or disposed to amassing private wealth through the success of their enterprise will continue to do so.  Fundamentally, it makes no difference whether or not they are taxed more stringently since, even after higher taxation, they remain rich in relation to those whom they exploit, and accordingly a worldly society remains in place.  Only on either the Transcendental Socialist basis of State ownership or on the Social Transcendentalist basis (as propounded by me) of Centre trusteeship ... can such worldly divisions be transcended.  For public ownership and/or trusteeship permits of a more even distribution of wealth (from the centre) and can therefore maintain an absolute society which is neither rich nor poor but either Communist or Transcendentalist, depending on the emphasis of that distribution, i.e. whether social and bureaucratic, as in the case of State ownership, or religious and meritocratic, as should transpire in the case of Centre trusteeship.  Such post-worldly absolute societies would be 'beyond good and evil' in the worldly sense of relative class divisions between the poor and the rich, being, by contrast, either beautiful or true.

 

103. Just as mineral formations precede plant life in the overall evolution or, rather, devolution of life (from the alpha absolute) on this planet, so we should allow for the possibility of a life form or stage of life antithetical to minerals, which would precede transcendence and, hence, the attainment of electron-electron attractions to the transcendental Beyond.  Such a stage of life would emerge, I contend, from supra-being new-brain collectivizations as the final phase of their development, a phase in all probability pending transcendence, or the possibility thereof, when Supra-beings would assume an intensely luminous appearance in consequence of sustained hypermeditation, becoming what we may term Ultrabeings.  This luminosity, indicative of spiritual expansion, would suggest an antithetical equivalent to the luminous quality or capacity of certain mineral deposits, such as diamonds, and it would be in the interests of those responsible, as technicians, leaders, etc., for the servicing of these new-brain collectivizations to have them boosted into space within the context of space centres, in order to avoid the potentially disastrous consequences of radioactive contamination both during and following the transcendental process.

 

104. Thus to extend my previous theories, one should allow for three stages of post-human life, with Ultrabeings constituting the third - a life form effectively antithetical to mineral deposits.  With three stages of cosmic devolution ... from the central star of any particular galaxy to planets via stars in general (including the sun), it seems only logical to allow for three stages of natural devolution ... from minerals to animals via plants.  Likewise, we should have three stages of supernatural evolution, beginning with Superbeings (brain collectivizations) and progressing via Supra-beings to Ultrabeings, as well as three succeeding stages of supercosmic evolution, beginning with planetary spiritual globes and progressing via galactic spiritual globes to a grand culmination in the universal spiritual globe, viz. the Omega Point.  Hence six stages of devolution beneath man and six stages of evolution beyond him, with human life itself divisible into three basic stages, viz. pagan, Christian, and transcendental, each of which is subdivisible into two phases, beginning, in paganism, with stoicism and hedonism, continuing, in Christianity, with Catholicism and Protestantism, and culminating, in transcendentalism, with contemplation (of artificially-induced visionary experience) and meditation.  Perhaps the fact that Christ had twelve apostles is not without some metaphysical significance in light of these theories?

 

105. Liberal cinema film; Socialist television film; Communist video film; Transcendentalist trip.  Four ascending stages of artificial visionary experience, corresponding to realism, materialism, naturalism, and idealism?

 

106. It seems to me that the threefold division of meals which generally obtains in the West, viz. breakfast, dinner, and tea, corresponds to the Holy Trinity, with breakfast correlating with the Father, dinner with the Son, and tea (or supper) with the Holy Spirit, so that the average open-society type of person will be equally disposed to all three meals, the hard-line Christian type of person be more disposed to dinner, while those whose religious bias is for one or other of the extremes will tend to place greater store by the corresponding meal, be it breakfast or tea.  I, myself, have consistently eschewed breakfast for many years, have eaten only a comparatively small dinner, but never failed to have both tea and supper, which, given my bias for the Holy Spirit, may not be without some ideological significance.  Indeed, I have known people who eat only one meal a day ... in the evening, and such people were more transcendental than Christian.  By contrast, an aunt of mine with a distinctly alpha-stemming disposition regards breakfast as the most important meal of the day, which only goes to prove that there is probably more to our eating habits than at first meets the eye!  A person who eschewed breakfast on ideological grounds would be more enlightened, it seems to me, than one who insisted on its importance.  It would be a closed-society attitude commensurate with an antithesis to the Father, which is to say God as Creator.

 

107. Hands out of pockets and by one's side when walking along the pavement is an alpha-stemming autocratic parallel.  Hands in trouser or jean pockets when out walking is a worldly democratic parallel.  Hands in short zipper-jacket pockets when out walking is an omega-oriented theocratic parallel.  A man can be judged according to where his hands are when walking along the pavement.  Father, Son, and Holy Ghost options.  A child can be trained accordingly.

 

108. The countryside is an autocratic environment par excellence.  Everywhere one sees the horizontally centrifugal tendency of nature, which sharply contrasts with the urban tendency towards the vertically centripetal.  It is only too inevitable that bungalow-type dwellings will be found in abundance in rural or provincial areas.  For such dwellings betray, in their horizontal structures, a centrifugal orientation which accords with country life - at any rate, as far as nature in the raw is concerned.  Bungalows and cottages (their historical precursors) are not only the lowest types of dwellings physically; they are the lowest types ideologically - inferior to both two-storey houses and multi-storey flats.  It is as though one proceeds from the autocratic countryside to the theocratic city via the democratic town; for with environmental distinctions of this kind come corresponding ideological distinctions, even when such distinctions are not consciously registered or publicly proclaimed.  No-one who is at home in the big city, with its towering buildings, could possibly be complacent about or happy in the country.  They are antithetical worlds, incommensurable and irreconcilable.  Alpha and omega of earthly life.

 

109. I believe shoulder bags can be ideologically distinguished, one from another, according to whether they are rectilinear, curvilinear, or a sort of amalgam of the two, and it is my view that whereas the rectilinear variety are Socialist and the curvilinear variety Transcendentalist, the variety which suggests an amalgamation of the two are Communist, since a combination of both democratic (rectilinear) and theocratic (curvilinear) elements, as befitting a naturalistic equivalent.  As to duffel bags, which are curvilinear but open at the top, we have, it seems to me, a Nazi parallel, since their idealism, unlike that of curvilinear shoulder bags, is rather more centrifugal than centripetal, and thus somewhat neo-alpha in character.

 

110. Just as we have distinguished between Socialist, Communist, and Transcendentalist types of shoulder bag on the basis of rectilinear and curvilinear designs, so similar tripartite distinctions can be drawn in regard to T-shirts as Socialist, muscle shirts as Communist, and vests as Transcendentalist, with an ascending ideological importance as we proceed from the rectilinear to the curvilinear via a sort of cross between the two.  Strictly speaking, a conventional T-shirt should only be worn by those whose ideological persuasion is Socialist (in the bodily democratic sense), whereas a muscle shirt, which in its sleeveless design is closer to a vest, should only be worn by those of Communist persuasion (in the soulfully theocratic sense), and a string vest by Transcendentalists (or people whose ideological persuasion is theocratic in the ultimate spiritual sense).  A strict correlation between each of these People's shirts and/or vests and the equivalent type of shoulder bag should also be established; for ideological togetherness is perfection, whether your perfection is bodily, soulful, or spiritual.

 

111. Centrifugal and centripetal: extrovert and introvert; selfless and selfish.  Since we are distinguishing between alpha-stemming and omega-oriented tendencies, it should be possible to maintain that whereas the alpha-stemming person will display centrifugal tendencies, including extroversion and selflessness, his omega-oriented counterpart, by contrast, will display centripetal tendencies, including introversion and selfishness.  Indeed, whereas the former will be fundamentally autocratic, the latter will be essentially theocratic and therefore quite antithetical, in every respect, to the alpha-stemming person.  Of course, there are people - perhaps in Western societies the great majority - who are more balanced between alpha and omega, autocracy and theocracy, than lopsided either way, and they would accordingly be democratic, which is to say, neither particularly centrifugal nor centripetal, but an approximately equal combination of each.  Such people are also a more-or-less balanced combination of extroversion and introversion, selflessness and selfishness.  For extroversion and selflessness are, of course, centrifugal tendencies, whereas introversion and selfishness are alike centripetal.  The former pair are aligned with the proton component of the atom, the latter pair with its electron component, and while there is nothing unusual, least of all in a worldly society, about dualistic combinations in an atomic framework, it should not be forgotten that extremes are also possible, both before and after the strictly atomic middle-ground, of which extroversion and selflessness are expressions of the former, but introversion and selfishness expressions of the latter.  Paradoxical though it may seem, a selfish person, i.e. one who is regarded as being predominantly selfish, rather than either predominantly selfless or balanced between the two poles, is likely to be more evolved than an ordinarily half-selfish/half-selfless person, given the correlation between selfishness and the centripetal.

 

112. However, there are degrees and kinds of selfishness, corresponding to the four spectra I have described elsewhere, and while selfishness on a realistic, or bodily, basis may (understandably) appear low to a person accustomed to a more elevated kind of selflessness - say, adherence, through autocratic idealism, to some primitive Godhead, it nevertheless has to be said that even 'low' selfishness is preferable to 'low' selflessness, such as would be expressed by bodily adherence to autocratic realism.  For the omega aspect of things is always preferable, from an evolutionary standpoint, to their alpha aspect - at any rate, in regard to antitheses which accrue to the same spectrum.  Inevitably, selflessness of an idealistic order will be eclipsed, following the Resurrection (through Social Transcendentalism), by idealistic selfishness ... in Holy Spirit, and it is very doubtful that people or peoples who wallow in realistic selfishness would ever be qualified to embrace the idealistic variety, through meditation, in due course.  The fact is that, ethnically speaking, progression along a given spectrum is more the general norm within stable societies than a stepwise ascent or descent between disparate and, in the main, irreconcilable spectra.

 

113. Since life embraces both devolution and evolution, we should speak of devolution from the One to the Many in regard to alpha-stemming antiquity, but of evolution from the Many to the One in regard to omega-oriented futurity (modernity would be an understatement).  Indeed, just as we find a devolutionary regression from autocratic theocracy to democratic autocracy via theocratic autocracy and autocratic autocracy, so there is (and must increasingly be) an evolutionary progression from autocratic democracy to democratic theocracy via democratic democracy and theocratic democracy, and in both cases the divine apex is One and the worldly nadir Many.  Theocracy is concerned with the One, whether that be the Father, the Holy Spirit, or even Christ, whereas democracy and, to a lesser extent, autocracy is a reflection of the Many.  Democratic autocracies and autocratic democracies are phenomena of the Many.  But whereas the former is the nadir of alpha-stemming devolution, the latter is the inception of omega-oriented evolution, which should lead, via democratic democracies and theocratic democracies, to the apex of theocratic unity in the democratic theocracy of the Social Transcendentalist Centre, as far removed from the Oneness of autocratic theocracy as it is possible for any theocratic Oneness to be.  Alpha and omega - beginning and end of the One.  Therefore to distinguish between a convergence from the Many to the One, as from the democratic superworld to the theocratic superheaven (via intermediate stages of ideological evolution), and a divergence from the One to the Many, as from the theocratic Creator (central star of the Galaxy) to the autocratic world (via intermediate stages of ideological devolution).

 

114. It is not being selfish that is wrong but how you are selfish, i.e. whether on a bodily or a spiritual plane or on some intermediate intellectual or soulful one.  Similarly, selflessness is not necessarily right or moral just because it is selfless.  There are bodily and intellectual types of selflessness which, judged from a soulful or a spiritual standpoint, are less than wholly desirable.  Yet, regarded objectively, being spiritually selfless (through worship) is inferior to being spiritually selfish (through self-realization) - that is to say, inferior to the extent that it signifies an alpha-stemming idealism in contrast to the more evolved, and infinitely more desirable, omega-oriented idealism of the Holy Spirit.  Just as the spiritually selfless stand on a higher level than the soulfully selfless, so the spiritually selfish stand on a higher level than the soulfully selfish, and the soulfully selfish on a higher level than the intellectually selfish, who in turn stand above the bodily selfish.  For just as body (will) is inferior to brain (intellect), so soul (emotion) is inferior to spirit (consciousness), the former pair appertaining to the world and to purgatory, the latter pair appertaining to Hell and to Heaven, whether on an alpha or an omega basis, with regard to protons or to electrons, negativity or positivity.  As I have elsewhere argued, there is a cosmic precedent for each spectrum, with which such religious terms may be identified - at any rate, in relation to alpha-stemming Heaven, Hell, purgatory, and world.  For the omega-oriented positive parallels are rather more evolved than devolved, and for that reason I have usually attached the prefix 'super' to each of them, beginning with superworld and progressing, via superpurgatory and Superhell, to Superheaven - the ultimate selfishness of transcendental self-realization.

 

115. I sometimes wonder whether distinctions between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost don't simply boil down, in common Christian usage, to parallel distinctions between the male sexual organ, the heart, and the conscious mind, so that the Father is really quite different from and inferior to the Creator-God (Jehovah) extrapolated from the central star of the Galaxy, since merely extrapolated from the penis.  As to the Virgin Mary, whose name (like the Father's) speaks for itself, a parallel with the female sexual organ can obviously be inferred, since the emphasis is on her virginity.  Thus an ascension from the Father/Virgin Mary to the Holy Ghost via Christ, which is to say, from the sex organs, male and female, to the conscious mind via the heart - pagan, Christian, and transcendental distinctions, both concurrently and successively.  But if the Father is different from and less radically theocratic than, say, Jehovah (conceived as Creator-God in the true cosmic sense of that term), then the Holy Ghost must likewise be different from and less radically theocratic than, say, the Omega Point ... of transcendent futurity.  In other words, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost would have to be seen in a purely Western and, in particular, Germanic light, which must needs fall short, at each pole, of true theocratic absolutism, not just in the strictly Christian middle-ground of the Son, where 'God' assumes a quintessentially worldly status flanked - dare I say it? - by subworldly and superworldly 'gods'.

 

116. Undoubtedly the hardness, or desired hardness, of men (particularly in the West) derives from the phallic roots of life in the erection, whereas the softness, or desired softness, of women no-less undoubtedly derives from the vaginal roots of life in sexual submission.  Thus as a penis must be hard in order to penetrate a vagina, so, correlatively, men should be hard and women soft - at any rate, while sexual commerce is a societal norm.  For we are heading towards an age and civilization when hardness will be no less inapplicable to men than softness to women, and largely because, in transcending traditional sexual customs, men and women will blend into a post-sexist superhuman identity wherein distinctions of 'hard' and 'soft' would be equally irrelevant because equally false.  The future superperson will be neither hard nor soft but either soft-hard (males) or hard-soft (females), and the lion will accordingly have lain down with the lamb in a transcendent synthesis.

 

117. It seems to me that whereas paperback publications approximate, when original, to a Socialist equivalent or ideological parallel, the joint publication of paperbacks and tapes in plastic cases suggests a Communist equivalent, whereas independent tape publications approximate to a Transcendentalist equivalent by dint of their curvilinear standing in relation to (rectilinear) books.  Thus whereas paperbacks, being rectilinear, parallel conventional T-shirts, it would seem that tapes, being curvilinear, parallel vests, the coming together into joint formats of tapes and paperbacks paralleling muscle shirts, with, as in previous instances, socialist, communist, and transcendentalist distinctions.

 

118. Unlike a bottle of beer, a can of beer is rather akin to a frameless work of art, whereas a can of cola is more akin to a poster or even to a photograph, both of which are no less beyond the pale of oil paintings than cola is beyond the pale of alcoholic drinks.  Which is another way of saying that whereas frameless paintings and canned alcohol are petty-bourgeois norms, posters and/or photos and cola are alike proletarian norms.

 

119. Heavenly spirit from the awareness subconscious to the awareness superconscious.  Hellish soul from the emotional subconscious to the emotional superconscious.  Purgatorial intellect from the old brain to the new brain.  Worldly will from the blood/bone body to the flesh/muscle body.  Thus spirit, soul, intellect, and will are not only separate, they are eternally co-existent in man, though not always to the same extent or with equal force or on identical terms, since, in relation to the latter point, we must distinguish between alpha and omega, negative and positive, with regard to both the age and the type of individual.  Yet whether alpha-stemming negativity or omega-oriented positivity is uppermost in any given individual, all men are fourfold composites of spirit, soul, intellect, and will, and so they must remain until man is transcended in the Superbeing and a wholly post-human life form comes to pass.  Just as the highest men are those in whom spirit is uppermost, so the lowest are those in whom will predominates.  The soulful and the intellectual types come in-between, like Hell and purgatory vis-à-vis Heaven on the one hand and the world on the other hand.

 

120i.  Whether your Heaven be alpha or omega, you are one for whom a wavicle bias preponderates over both particle and atomic biases.

    ii.  Whether your Hell be alpha or omega, you are one for whom a particle bias preponderates over both wavicle and atomic biases.

    iii. Whether your purgatory be alpha or omega, you are one for whom an absolute atomic bias preponderates over both wavicle and particle biases.

    iv.  Whether your world be alpha or omega, you are one for whom a relative atomic bias preponderates over both wavicle and particle biases.

 

121i.  Thus the proton-wavicle bias of Alpha Heaven, but the electron-wavicle bias of Omega Heaven.

    ii.  Thus the proton-particle bias of Alpha Hell, but the electron-particle bias of Omega Hell.

    iii. Thus the atomic-proton bias of alpha purgatory, but the atomic-electron bias of omega purgatory.

    iv.  Thus the proton-atomic bias of alpha world, but the electron-atomic bias of omega world.

 

122i.  The essence of negative spirit is sadness, whereas the essence of positive spirit is joy.

    ii.  The essence of negative soul is hatred, whereas the essence of positive soul is love.

    iii. The essence of negative intellect is humiliation, whereas the essence of positive intellect is pride.

    iv.  The essence of negative will is pain, whereas the essence of positive will is pleasure.

 

123i.  The appearance of negative spirit is illusion, whereas the appearance of positive spirit is truth.

    ii.  The appearance of negative soul is ugliness, whereas the appearance of positive soul is beauty.

    iii. The appearance of negative intellect is weakness, whereas the appearance of positive intellect is strength.

    iv.  The appearance of negative will is evil, whereas the appearance of positive will is goodness.

 

124. One could argue that where the 'apparent' corresponds to the phenomenal, the 'essential' corresponds to the noumenal.

 

125. With the alpha of things, the noumenal precedes the phenomenal, whereas with the omega, by contrast, the phenomenal precedes the noumenal.  The phenomenal corresponds to an atomic middle-ground in between subatomic (noumenal) and supra-atomic (noumenal) extremes.  Hence Christ is a phenomenal divinity (atomic man) in between the noumenal Creator (wavicle proton-proton reactions) and the noumenal ultimate Creation (wavicle electron-electron attractions); a relativity (of the 'Three in One') in between two absolutes.

 

126. Only the absolute is strictly divine, though the omega absolute will be more truly divine than the alpha absolute because a divinity of bliss as opposed to a divinity of great sorrow - all the difference, in effect, between the envisaged supra-atomic electron-electron attractions of the ultimate absolute and the subatomic proton-proton reactions of the primary absolute, which corresponds to the central star of the Galaxy (a wavicle star in contrast to the particle stars which revolve around it), as, indeed, to the central stars of galaxies in general.

 

127i.  Truth is apparent, like air or, rather, the sky, but the essential realization of truth leads to joy, which is a corresponding light.  No joy without truth, since the one is a precondition of the other and they form two sides of the same coin - the coin of Omega Heaven.

    ii.  Beauty is apparent, like fire, but the essential realization of beauty leads to love, which is a corresponding heat.  No love without beauty, since the one is a precondition of the other and they form two sides of the same coin - the coin of Omega Hell.

    iii. Strength is apparent, like water, but the essential realization of strength leads to pride, which is a corresponding coldness.  No pride without strength, since the one is a precondition of the other and they form two sides of the same coin - the coin of omega purgatory.

    iv.  Goodness is apparent, like earth, but the essential realization of goodness leads to pleasure, which is a corresponding darkness.  No pleasure without goodness, since the one is a precondition of the other and they form two sides of the same coin - the coin of omega world.

 

128.   Since goodness, strength, beauty, and truth signify an ascending order of (phenomenal) ideals effectively germane to four different omega-oriented civilizations, so pleasure, pride, love, and joy likewise signify an ascending order of (noumenal) ideals germane to their aforementioned counterparts.

 

129i.  The lowest or worldly omega-oriented civilization (realist) will place a moral emphasis on goodness and its reward - pleasure.

    ii.  The second lowest or purgatorial omega-oriented civilization (materialist) will place a moral emphasis on strength and its reward - pride.

    iii. The second highest or hellish omega-oriented civilization (naturalist) will place a moral emphasis on beauty and its reward - love.

    iv.  The highest or heavenly omega-oriented civilization (idealist) will place a moral emphasis on truth and its reward - joy.

 

130. Since man is a composite of all four moral spectra, so likewise is each civilization, except that, like individual men, they will have a particular bias for one or another of the moral alternatives.  Strictly speaking, only the highest civilization is or can be truly moral.  For, judged from the standpoint of truth and joy, both beauty and love are comparatively immoral, as are strength and pride, while goodness and pleasure are amoral, since neither hellish nor purgatorial but worldly, and hence relative.  Returning to elemental distinctions on these omega (positive) levels, we find that truth and joy correspond to an electron-wavicle absolute, beauty and love to an electron-particle absolute, strength and pride to an atomic-electron 'absolute', and, finally, goodness and pleasure to an electron-atomic relativity.

 

131i.  Air/light, fire/heat, water/coldness, and earth/darkness.  Thus in relation to the elements and their (noumenal) concomitants, truth is akin to air and joy to light, beauty is akin to fire and love to heat, strength is akin to water and pride to coldness, goodness is akin to earth and pleasure to darkness.

    ii.  Just as air and earth form a phenomenal antithesis, with light and darkness their respective noumenal concomitants, so truth and goodness form a phenomenal antithesis, with joy and pleasure their respective noumenal concomitants.

    iii. Now just as fire and water form a phenomenal antithesis, with heat and coldness their respective noumenal concomitants, so beauty and strength form a phenomenal antithesis, with love and pride their respective noumenal concomitants.

    iv.  Air/light idealism standing above fire/heat naturalism; fire/heat naturalism standing above water/coldness materialism; water/coldness materialism standing above goodness/pleasure realism.  Heaven - Hell - purgatory - world ... at the omega poles of their respective spectra.

 

132i.  The omega-oriented writer who goes to life (will) for his inspiration is a realist, and corresponds to the earth/darkness, goodness/pleasure worldly spectrum.

    ii.  The omega-oriented writer who goes to books (intellect) for his inspiration is a materialist, and corresponds to the water/coldness, strength/pride purgatorial spectrum.

    iii. The omega-oriented writer who goes to emotions (soul) for his inspiration is a naturalist, and corresponds to the fire/heat, beauty/love diabolic spectrum.

    iv.  The omega-oriented writer who goes to awareness (spirit) for his inspiration is an idealist, and corresponds to the air/light, truth/joy divine spectrum.

 

133. Of course, no writer is ever entirely one thing, but all writers can be evaluated according to a bias for one or another of the above spectra.  And such spectra indicate a hierarchy of writers, beginning, at the bottom, with realism, and proceeding, via materialism and naturalism, to an idealistic peak.  Strictly speaking, it is from this idealistic peak of Truth-seeking spirit that all first-rate writing stems.  By comparison to the idealistic writer, the naturalistic writer is second-rate, the materialistic writer third-rate, and the realistic writer fourth-rate.  And what applies to the omega pole of each spectrum applies no less to its alpha antithesis, where negative quantities and qualities obtain, as well as to any middle-ground (bourgeois) cross between the antithetical poles.  In my opinion, the omega-oriented idealistic (truth/joy) writer is as superior, from a truly divine standpoint, to the alpha-stemming idealistic (illusion/sadness) writer as ... the Holy Spirit to the Creator.  And what applies to the divine spectrum applies just as much to each of the lesser spectra, where alpha/omega distinctions can also be found.

 

134i.  Where evil, and hence pain, is the alpha worldly norm, goodness, and hence pleasure, is the omega worldly norm.

    ii.  Where weakness, and hence humiliation, is the alpha purgatorial norm, strength, and hence pride, is the omega purgatorial norm.

    iii. Where ugliness, and hence hatred, is the alpha diabolic norm, beauty, and hence love, is the omega diabolic norm.

    iv.  Where illusion, and hence sadness, is the alpha divine norm, truth, and hence joy, is the omega divine norm.

 

135. Will - intellect - soul - spirit; body - brain - emotional mind - conscious mind; world - purgatory - Hell - Heaven, on both alpha and omega terms.  Earth - water - fire - air; darkness - coldness - heat - light; world - purgatory - Hell - Heaven, on both alpha and omega terms.

 

136. Just as air and earth form a major diametrical antithesis in relation to fire and water, which I have elsewhere described as minor, so wisdom and folly form such an antithesis, with cleverness and stupidity taking the minor position in between.  Wisdom and folly are not antithetical in the manner of illusion and truth, which is to say, as poles of the same spectrum; for there is negative wisdom and positive wisdom, the former pertaining to illusion and the latter to its polar antithesis, truth.  Likewise, there is negative folly and positive folly, and while the former pertains to evil, with particular reference to pain, the latter pertains to goodness and its (noumenal) concomitance, pleasure.  Thus whereas the divine spectrum of illusion-to-truth has to do with wisdom, both negative and positive, the worldly spectrum of evil-to-good has to do with folly, both negative and positive.  Consequently we may speak of the negative (painful) folly of evil, but the positive (pleasurable) folly of good; the negative (sad) wisdom of illusion, but the positive (joyful) wisdom of truth.

 

137. Similarly, in regard to the minor antithesis between fire and water, or Hell and purgatory, we shall find that cleverness and stupidity are the relevant terms of reference, with negative cleverness accruing to ugliness (the negative diabolic pole) and positive cleverness accruing to beauty (the positive diabolic pole); with negative stupidity accruing to weakness (the negative purgatorial pole) and positive stupidity accruing to strength (the positive purgatorial pole), so that cleverness and stupidity are no less diametrical, in their less radical way, than wisdom and folly.  Therefore we can speak of the negative (humble) stupidity of weakness, but the positive (proud) stupidity of strength; the negative (hateful) cleverness of ugliness, but the positive (loving) cleverness of beauty.  One could even say, at the risk of seeming unduly metaphorical, that whereas earth is foolish (dark) and air wise (light), fire is clever (hot) and water stupid (cold).  But we have to distinguish between negative and positive earth, air, water, and fire, bearing in mind the alpha/omega distinctions between the natural and the artificial, the old and the new, theocratic/autocratic and democratic/theocratic, which removes us from the metaphorical to the historical plane.

 

138. Hence the negative folly of alpha realism (democratic autocracy) in contrast to the positive folly of omega realism (autocratic democracy); the negative stupidity of alpha materialism (autocratic autocracy) in contrast to the positive stupidity of omega materialism (democratic democracy); the negative cleverness of alpha naturalism (theocratic autocracy) in contrast to the positive cleverness of omega naturalism (theocratic democracy); the negative wisdom of alpha idealism (autocratic theocracy) in contract to the positive wisdom of omega idealism (democratic theocracy).

 

139i.  From the painfully foolish (the evil) to the pleasurably foolish (the good).

    ii.  From the humbly stupid (the weak) to the proudly stupid (the strong).

    iii. From the hatefully clever (the ugly) to the lovingly clever (the beautiful).

    iv.  From the sadly wise (the false) to the joyfully wise (the true).

 

140. Alpha and omega positions in an ascending hierarchy of elemental spectra, viz. realism (earth), materialism (water), naturalism (fire), idealism (air).

 

141. Broadly speaking, the fulcrum of British society is along the realistic axis of a painfully foolish (Lords autocratic)/pleasurably foolish (Commons democratic) divide.  The fulcrum of American society is along the materialistic axis of a humbly stupid (Quakerish)/proudly stupid (Republican) divide.  The fulcrum of Russian society is along the naturalistic axis of a hatefully clever (Czarist autocratic)/lovingly clever (Socialist bureaucratic) divide.  The fulcrum of Irish society is - or, as far as the omega option applies, hopefully will be - along the idealistic axis of a sadly wise (Roman Catholic)/joyfully wise (Social Transcendentalist) divide.  For each kind of society, be it realist, materialist, naturalist, or idealist, must have a representative axis if it is to retain a specific cultural and/or ideological integrity and not become a mishmash of conflicting and mutually destructive elements - a situation which, judged from an historical point of view, may be for the better or worse, depending on the type of society in question.

 

142. In relations between the sexes, it is traditionally the male who loves the more passionately and the female who, by contrast, derives the greater pleasure from sex.  This is because, as a rule, men are more of the head than of the body, whereas women are more of the body than of the head, and the sexes accordingly relate to each other in terms of a kind of diabolic/worldly divide, which is nothing less than the love/pleasure distinctions described above.  In relation to propagation, copulation is a comparatively centripetal activity, by which I mean that the penis is inserted into the vagina, where it functions on an inward-tending basis towards its goal of orgasmic discharge into the womb.  It is the male who inserts himself into the female while, with pregnancy, the female must be delivered of her baby, which accordingly slides out of her in due centrifugal fashion.  Thus whereas the one sex puts something in, the other gives something out, and this is relative to the atomic natures of the respective sexes - men generally of an electron bias and therefore centripetal, women generally of a proton bias and therefore centrifugal.  A man is in luck when he has a woman sexually, whereas a woman is in luck not when she is being sexually had by a man but, on the contrary, when she gives her baby to the world - at any rate, this is how it has traditionally been between the sexes and, in a majority of cases, continues so to be to this day.  Men take but women give, the former being omega orientated and the latter alpha stemming; centripetal and centrifugal, after the manner of electrons and protons in feminine and masculine distinctions.  In fact, what I have just said explains why, as Schopenhauer well-remarked, the average woman would die of shame from being caught in the act of being made love to by another man, whereas she will carry her pregnancy with pride - the pride of prospective motherhood.  For as Schopenhauer also remarked, copulation is a man's business, propagation a woman's - centripetal and centrifugal, male and female respectively.

 

143. Reading stands to writing as thought to speech - indeed, as a kind of artificial thought vis-à-vis a kind of artificial speech, and if thought and speech are noumenal, and therefore relatively alpha stemming, then reading and writing are comparatively phenomenal, and thus of an omega-oriented status - at any rate, as relative to a worldly, or Christian, integrity.  For the phenomenal is still to a degree naturalistic, not wholly artificial, and therefore more the omega pole of a naturalistic spectrum than of an artificial one, which, by contrast, must begin in superphenomenal artificiality and progress towards a supernoumenal culmination in due course.  Thus if thinking and reading are alpha and omega of an essential naturalistic spectrum, the nature of which is internal, and hence of a wavicle bias, but speaking and writing are alpha and omega of an apparent naturalistic spectrum, the nature of which is external, and hence of a particle bias, it should follow that whereas thinking and speaking are noumenal, reading and writing are phenomenal - the former pair largely preceding the latter in historical time.

 

144. Yet if, as I teach, the superphenomenal precedes the supernoumenal in the ensuing historical period of artificial spectra, then we must begin with an artificial type of reading in the one case and with an artificial type of writing in the other, thereafter progressing from each of the superphenomenal poles to supernoumenal poles of, on the one hand, an artificial type of thinking and, on the other hand, an artificial type of speaking, both of which will stand to the former as superomega to superalpha.  Clearly, artificial writing and reading will pertain to typewriters, printing presses, etc., and to printed material (as opposed to hand-written material), including books, magazines, newspapers, etc., whereas artificial thinking and speaking will pertain to computers, especially to those which can be programmed to compute both internally, as 'thinking machines', and externally, as 'speaking machines' - the former a precondition of the latter (just as we must first be able to think before we can speak).  Indeed, artificial writing, via typewriters, printing presses, etc., is as much a precondition of artificial reading, or the reading of artificial print, as natural writing is a precondition of natural reading, or the reading of hand-written material like letters; for the apparent (writing) precedes the essential (reading) when we are dealing with the phenomenal, whereas the essential (thought) precedes the apparent (speech) when we are dealing with the noumenal, and what applies to the naturalistic spectra (both wavicle and particle) applies no less to the artificial spectra which follow, so to speak, in historical time.  Thus before there can be superphenomenal reading (of books, magazines, etc.), there must firstly be superphenomenal writing (through typewriters, printing presses, etc.); and before there can be supernoumenal speaking (through an artificial voice), there must firstly be supernoumenal thinking (by computation) - the apparent preceding the essential in the one case but succeeding it in the other, the former a 'rise' and the latter a 'fall'.

 

145. Yet, within the same spectrum, we see a progression from essential to essential or apparent to apparent, as the case may be, since reading and thinking, whether natural or artificial, are alike essential, whereas writing and speaking, whether natural or artificial, are alike apparent - the former pair having a wavicle bias and the latter pair a particle bias.  However, we are not dealing with two completely separate spectra here, so much as with two sides or aspects of the same spectrum, that being intellectual and therefore of a materialistic atomic integrity, whether in regard to alpha-stemming intellect (atomic-proton materialism) or, conversely, in regard to omega-oriented intellect (atomic-electron materialism), the one naturalistic and the other artificial, as relative to an old-brain/new-brain distinction.  We are dealing here with a sort of purgatorial rather than hellish or heavenly spectrum, and that is why neither emotions nor visions are the experiences at stake, but solely words and the way they are handled, combined, analysed, etc.  As discussed elsewhere, visions are of the spiritual spectrum, which is idealistic, whether we are referring to natural or to artificial visionary experience, whilst emotions are of the soulful spectrum, which is naturalistic (in the ideological rather than historical sense), whether we are referring to alpha-stemming natural emotions or to omega-oriented artificial (civilized) emotions.  That is why neither television nor radio is applicable to the intellectual spectrum under discussion, since its omega unfolding is a computer, and whether that computer thinks or speaks will determine which side of the spectrum in question is being utilized, and for what purposes.

 

146. Obviously, essential intellect (thought) is closer to spiritual idealism (visions) than would be the apparent intellect (speech).  But it is nevertheless quite distinct from such idealism, as is apparent intellect from the soulful naturalism (emotion) which flanks it below, irrespective of overlappings in practice between each of the three spectra.  Since, in artificial omega terms, radio is the medium par excellence of emotions and television, by contrast, the medium par excellence of awareness, this means that the medium par excellence of artificial intelligence, namely the computer, will be closer to radio when apparent (speaking) but to television when essential (thinking); for radio, despite appearances to the contrary, is an inherently soulful medium, especially suited to music, and therefore one which is of a particle bias, whether for good or bad, positively or negatively; whereas television, despite appearances to the contrary, is an inherently spiritual medium, especially suited to art, and therefore one which is of a wavicle bias, whether for good or bad, positively or negatively.  Emotional and visionary media flanking, on a particle/wavicle basis, the intellectual medium of computers - just as Hell and Heaven may be said to flank purgatory.

 

147. Philosophical awareness, poetical emotion, fictional  description, and theatrical action, with spiritual, soulful, intellectual, and wilful distinctions respectively, corresponding to idealism (air), naturalism (fire), materialism (water), and realism (earth), or, as one could alternatively put it, to Heaven, Hell, purgatory, and the world.  Thus from philosophy at the top, which is par excellence a discipline of the mind, to drama at the bottom, which is inherently a discipline of the will, we have a descending hierarchy of disciplines which should, if properly pursued, differ from one another as much as, say, the elements, with air corresponding to philosophy, which is nothing less than the pursuit of joy through truth; fire corresponding to poetry, which is nothing more than the pursuit of love through beauty; water corresponding to fiction, which is nothing more than the pursuit of pride through strength (generally measured in terms of the length of any given novel); and earth corresponding to drama, which is nothing less than the pursuit of pleasure through goodness or, rather, the good act.... Unless, however, we are primarily concerned with negative and hence alpha-stemming philosophy, poetry, fiction, and drama, in which case the pursuit of illusion through sadness; the pursuit of ugliness through hate; the pursuit of weakness through humiliation; and last and least the pursuit of evil through pain.  This is perhaps the main distinction between the ancients and the moderns (allowing for exceptions), bearing in mind that whereas the phenomenal precedes the noumenal within an omega orientation, it is the noumenal which precedes the phenomenal within an alpha orientation, whether on naturalistic or artificial terms.

 

148. It is not altogether surprising that the English regard Shakespeare as their finest writer; for, as a realistic people, it is only to be expected that they should hold a mere playwright in such high regard.  Yet theatre, being naturalistic in terms of its recourse to actual physical presences on stage, is more autocratic than democratic, a bodily realism which contrasts, rather like the Lords vis-à-vis the Commons, with the more sublimated and artificial realism of television plays - the democratic realism par excellence of an omega-oriented worldliness, of which Dennis Potter is perhaps the best-known and most widely-acclaimed exponent, a sort of democratic Shakespeare and yet, for all his considerable dramatic ability, still no more, when considered in relation to literature, poetry, and philosophy (in that ascending order), than a fourth-rate writer, like Shakespeare.  Certainly I would regard Bacon as his writerly peer - by no less than three rates!

 

149. Concerning philosophy, it should be noted that while the alpha-stemming naturalistic philosophers like Socrates, Plato, etc., were more likely to be found lecturing in the open air or (later) in a lecture theatre, their latter-day artificial counterparts will prefer, as a rule, to be found lecturing in a television studio on the benefits of a more evolved philosophy, such as may well portend a genuine omega orientation.

 

150. Hitherto I have broadly spoken of alpha-stemming (naturalistic) and omega-oriented (artificial) distinctions between those - be they philosophers, poets, novelists, or playwrights - at opposite poles of their respective spectra.  But, from a more correct standpoint, the fact nevertheless remains that the naturalistic and artificial parts or divisions of each spectrum are both alpha stemming and omega orientated, which is to say, negative and positive.  Thus there is the strongly alpha-stemming (Fatheristic) negativity of sadness (noumenal) in relation to falsity (phenomenal) within the naturalistic part of the divine (idealistic) spectrum, in contrast to the comparatively omega-oriented (Christic) positivity of truth (phenomenal) in relation to joy (noumenal) also within the naturalistic part of the same spectrum.  Similarly, with the artificial part of the divine spectrum, the supersadness (supernoumenal) preceding superfalsity (superphenomenal) is, in its negativity, comparatively alpha stemming or, more correctly, superalpha stemming, in relation to the strongly omega-oriented (Superchristic) positivity of supertruth (superphenomenal) as a precondition of superjoy (supernoumenal).  For the negative (noumenal-to-phenomenal) correlations are always alpha stemming in relation to the positive (phenomenal-to-noumenal) correlations of omega-oriented attributes, whether we are alluding to those on the heavenly, hellish, purgatorial, or worldly spectra, as corresponding to  idealism, naturalism, materialism, and realism at both 'naturalistic' and 'artificial' poles.  Thus an alpha-omega naturalism superseded by a superalpha-superomega artificiality or, as one could alternatively term it, supernaturalism.

 

151. I did, I believe, make this point before, but it is a tricky one and well worth illustrating by examples of what I call omega-in-the-alpha on the one hand and alpha-in-the-omega on the other, i.e. positivity in the naturalistic part of any given spectrum and negativity in its artificial part - the former largely centrifugal and the latter mainly centripetal.  Now the illustration I have in mind pertains to umbrellas on the one hand and to hooded zippers on the other - two modes of protection against rain which co-exist as alpha and omega in both naturalistic and artificial contexts, by which I mean within each part of their particular spectrum, be it idealistic, naturalistic, or materialistic, depending on the type of brolly or hooded zipper in question.  However that may be, a full-length brolly will be strongly alpha stemming because inherently centrifugal, whereas a knee-length or even a thigh-length hooded zipper will be comparatively omega orientated, since centripetal, albeit of a length which, in its evident femininity, precludes a truly masculine implication and therefore suggests omega-in-the-alpha, which is nothing less than a kind of Christian middle-ground vis-à-vis the alpha absolute ... as pertaining to a naturalistic omega orientation.  Contrasted to which, we shall discover the alternatives, on the one hand, of a collapsible umbrella, complete with phallic-like sheath (suggestive of a masculine compromise), and, on the other hand, of a short or waist-length hooded zipper, which is closer to a genuine omega or, rather, superomega orientation on account of its highly masculine connotations, and which thereby contrasts not only with hooded zippers of a partly feminine character (knee/thigh-length establishing a skirt-like centrifugal compromise), but with the collapsible umbrella - that alpha-in-the-omega which is nothing more than a kind of superalpha equivalent commensurate with the negative pole, or part, of the artificial spectrum to which (depending on the type) it belongs, the supernegative pole to superpositive waist-length hooded zippers.

 

152. Thus from long brollies and hooded zippers within the largely centrifugal alpha-stemming naturalistic part of any given spectrum ... to the short brollies (collapsibles) and hooded zippers within the largely centripetal omega-oriented artificial part of any given spectrum - the contrast, on the one hand, between omega-(long hooded zippers)in-the-alpha (long umbrellas) and, on the other hand, alpha-(collapsibles)in-the-omega (short hooded zippers).  A small positivity within a large negativity in the one case, and a small negativity within a large positivity in the other, of which dozens of comparable examples could be given, including towns within the country and parks within the city.  For there is as exact a correlation between, say, thigh-length hooded zippers and country towns as between collapsibles and city parks.  The thigh-length hooded zipper is, strictly speaking, a phenomenon-noumenon of country towns, just as the collapsible umbrella is a noumenon-phenomenon of city parks or, if that seems overly rigid, is aligned with the park vis-à-vis the (hooded) city - as, for that matter, are miniskirts.

 

153. Since alpha proceeds from noumenal to phenomenal and omega, by contrast, from phenomenal to noumenal, we can speak, as I have just done, of hooded zippers as phenomenal-noumenal in contrast to umbrellas as noumenal-phenomenal, reading the former from the bottom up, which is to say from body to hood, and the latter from the top down, which is to say from umbrella hood to body stem, including the handle.  The alpha noumenal is centrifugal whereas the omega noumenal is centripetal.  Appearance and essence, protons and electrons, negative and positive.

 

154. Since alpha and omega are polar opposites within any given spectrum, in both naturalistic (overall alpha-stemming) and artificial (overall omega-oriented) manifestations thereof, it follows that drama will be tragic when appertaining, in negativity, to the alpha pole of the realistic spectrum, but comic when appertaining, in positivity, to its omega pole, and this whether we are considering the traditional, naturalistic manifestation of this spectrum or its more contemporary and, hence, artificial counterpart - in short, whether we are referring to autocratic realism or to democratic realism, the former tending to materialize on stage and the latter on film, though particularly within the context of television drama.  For films are not invariably dramatic, or written on an original and quasi-theatrical basis, but are more often, these days, adaptations from novels, in consequence of which they can be regarded as appertaining to the artificial manifestations of a fictional, or materialistic, spectrum, on both negative and positive terms, which is to say as alpha and omega of artificial materialism.  And even original film scripts usually tend to the narrative rather than to the dramatic and are therefore as distinct from plays as novels, the best of them being art films, or films recognized for their narrative and/or aesthetic worth.  Really, it is television plays which are the dramatic counterpart of stage plays; for plays and films are two quite distinct visual media, the one realistic and the other materialistic, which, on balance, is equivalent to a kind of British/American dichotomy - the former worldly and the latter purgatorial.  Will and intellect, body and brain, making for dramatic and narrative distinctions.

 

155. How much is ethnically conditioned and how much sheer rebellion, I don't pretend to know; but I have always avoided either writing or reading plays, which I now perceive as a quintessentially English art-form, and, instead, have concentrated most of my creative energies on philosophy - the discipline at the furthest possible remove from drama, like air from earth or Heaven from the world.  Conversely, it has not escaped my attention that Irish dramatists are usually Anglo-Irish, particularly the world-famous ones like Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, Yeats, Beckett, Synge, who may well have felt as disposed to rebel, consciously or unconsciously, against Irish theology and philosophy as I have rebelled against British drama, scorning Shakespeare like the plague.  The consequences either way are that the Irish in England become more idealistic than they might otherwise have been, while the English in Ireland become, as Anglo-Irish, more realistic than might otherwise have been the case, as the two peoples react against each other and become more adamantly themselves than before.  It was my destiny to bring philosophy to an all-time idealistic peak - a fact all the more remarkable for having taken place in England, the home of drama!

 

156. It makes a lot of difference whether one's starting point is Socialism or Transcendentalism; for if Socialism is the thesis and Transcendentalism the antithesis, as was the case with Lenin, then the synthetic result is Transcendental Socialism, whereas if Transcendentalism is the thesis and Socialism the antithesis, as is the case with me, then the synthetic result is Social Transcendentalism, which stands to Transcendental Socialism as God to the Devil or, what amounts to the same, light to heat.

 

157. A recently-acquired insight that waist-length hooded zippers the hood of which zips into the neck are of a wavicle bias, in contrast to the particle bias suggested by waist-length hooded zippers with a free-standing hood.  Thus a Social Transcendentalist/Transcendental Socialist distinction, with unhooded zippers, whether leather or cloth, having an inferior because bodily status commensurate with Socialism and Liberalism.  Only hoods, it seems, truly confirm a 'head' status, whether Communist or Transcendentalist.  However, it also has to be admitted that crash helmets worn in conjunction with leather jackets, as in the context of motorcycle riding, confer a kind of 'head' status which may well be more socialist (and therefore intellectual) than communist (and soulful) or transcendentalist (and spiritual), by dint of the materialistic as opposed to naturalistic or idealistic construction of crash helmets, which are metallic.

 

158. There doubtless exists a strong connection between matriarchies and polytheistic societies on the one hand, and between patriarchies and monotheistic societies on the other, given that the former are centrifugal, and hence feminine, whereas the latter are centripetal, and hence masculine.  Consequently it is virtually inconceivable that a patriarchy could be polytheistic or a matriarchy monotheistic, bearing in mind the contradictory nature of the two contexts.  The ancient Hebrews were certainly once polytheistic and matriarchal, but became, under Mosaic guidance, monotheistic and patriarchal, thereby abandoning paganism for Judaism, with its Jehovah God, prototype of the Christian Father.  Thus they achieved civilization on an alpha-oriented basis.  For the centrifugal is always comparatively barbarous in relation to the centripetal - the barbarism of cosmic and/or natural polytheism.

 

159. Frankly, it is my belief that modern pluralist societies, with their democratic relativity, are the secular equivalents of the ancient polytheistic societies, since where formerly there were many gods, there are now many parties and, as often as not, such pluralism brings a sort of democratic matriarchy in its train - witness the Thatcher phenomenon in Britain, not to mention the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning British monarch since Queen Victoria - which somehow ties-in with the generally centrifugal nature of pluralist societies.

 

160. Contrasted to which, we may posit as the modern secular equivalent of traditional monotheistic societies those countries which have adopted one-party government, especially within the socialist context, and whose mode of society is consequently rather more patriarchal - as befitting a centripetal orientation, the intrinsic masculine nature of which will logically preclude undue political interference from and leadership by women.  Here, in contrast to pluralist societies, it is the totalitarian ones which reflect the greater degree of civilization, in that they have achieved a degree of centro-complexification commensurate with a more highly-evolved state of political affairs, the modern equivalent, as I say, to the coming of monotheism to the ancient world.  Indeed, it could well transpire that, in relation to this totalitarian absolutism, it is the pluralist societies which are comparatively barbarous - the barbarism of liberal democracy, with its matriarchal naturalism.  Could it be, I wonder, that what Moses was to the ancient Hebrews, Lenin is to the modern Russians?  For he, more than any other, eclipsed the darkness of pluralism by the light or, rather, heat of Bolshevik communism, thereby creating the world's first totalitarian State, a State which may well have been - certainly up until the collapse of the Soviet Union - to the modern world what Israelite monotheism was to the ancient one - a beacon of civilization flaming in the darkness of democratic pluralism.  Democratic 'Judaism' as opposed to democratic 'paganism'.

 

161. Yet while, to return to the ancient world, Israelite monotheism signified a more advanced state-of-affairs than pagan polytheism, it was not, like Christianity, an omega-oriented phenomenon so much as a more exclusive alpha orientation - focusing on the 'One God', regarded as the true God, rather than embracing numerous gods.  Or, what approximately amounts to the same thing, focusing on one star (effectively the central star of the Galaxy), rather than embracing numerous stars throughout the Galaxy, not to mention the Universe as a whole.  There is no question of Jehovah and Christ being equivalent, since Jehovah is a Creator divinity, is God conceived as Creator, whereas Christ is a Saviour divinity, or God conceived in human terms Who offers mankind salvation (from the world) if only they follow His example and cultivate the 'Kingdom of Heaven' within the self.  Jehovah, like the Father, is a divinity to be worshipped and placated, whereas Christ is essentially a divinity to be followed and therefore emulated.  Jehovah is alpha, but Christ omega.  Consequently, Israelite monotheism, with its focus on one Creator, viz. Jehovah, was a very different and in some sense inferior proposition to the later Christian monotheism which primarily focused on Christ, while reserving a lesser, more traditional focus for the Father - that Christian equivalent, so to speak, of Jehovah.  Israelite monotheism was therefore more closely linked to pagan polytheism than ever Christian monotheism could be.  Or whereas, put another way, Israelite monotheism signified a rebellion against pagan polytheism which, nevertheless, maintained an alpha-oriented divine focus, Christian monotheism was more a rebellion, through Christ, against Old Testament monotheism in the name of a new monotheism - the omega-oriented monotheism of the New Testament, which cannot but contrast with the alpha-oriented monotheism of Israelite tradition.

 

162. In just such a fashion, it is my firm belief that whereas Communism embodies, in its totalitarian centrality, a rebellion against democratic pluralism (the 'polytheism' of the modern world), Transcendentalism signifies a rebellion against Communism in the name of a truly omega-oriented ideology which will be the future equivalent of Christianity, or of what Christianity was to the ancient world - namely, an altogether new order of monotheism.  Thus it is as a new and superior order of totalitarianism that Transcendentalism should be seen - one less democratic than theocratic in essence and therefore as distinct from Communism as (was) Christianity from Judaism, or the New Testament from the Old Testament.  It is this theocratic totalitarianism which is truly civilized; for it rises above democratic sovereignty in the name of an ultimate sovereignty, a sovereignty of the People as Holy Spirit, or ultimate Godhead, through the establishment, under Messianic auspices, of the 'Kingdom of Heaven' on earth (Social Transcendentalist Centre) in an unequivocally omega-oriented integrity.  Such a theocratic totalitarianism transcends democratic totalitarianism as Heaven transcends Hell, since it is the light of lights rather than the heat of heats, and long after the latter has burnt itself out it will shine-on in the world and eventually transcend it, becoming, in due process of convergence, the omega absolute.  Transcendental Socialism may be a beautiful world religion or no religion at all, but Social Transcendentalism will be the true world religion, of which all other, earlier religions are but faint shadows.

 

163. Not for the first time in my work, I should like to point up the parallel with Spengler, that great philosopher of history, which the above theories call to mind.  For just as he distinguished between four succeeding periods of time in terms of a) 'Historyless Chaos'; b) 'Culture'; c) 'Civilization'; and d) 'Second Religiousness', so the distinctions I have just drawn between polytheism and monotheism on the one hand and pluralism and totalitarianism on the other fit nicely into the Spenglerian categories, with polytheism symptomatic of 'Historyless Chaos'; monotheism symptomatic of 'Culture'; pluralism symptomatic of 'Civilization' (in reality a kind of modern or second barbarism); and, finally, totalitarianism symptomatic of 'Second Religiousness' (particularly when it is of an unequivocally theocratic nature).  Similarly, these four distinct periods of time could be defined - and already have been by me - in terms of a) materialism; b) naturalism; c) realism; and d) idealism, with 'Historyless Chaos' thereby further defined in terms of polytheistic materialism; 'Culture' in terms of monotheistic naturalism; 'Civilization' in terms of pluralistic realism; and 'Second Religiousness' in terms of totalitarian idealism - a slow and painful ascent from the centrifugal depths of alpha-stemming paganism to the centripetal heights of omega-oriented transcendentalism via the worldly middle-grounds of centripetal Christianity ('Culture') and centrifugal Liberalism ('Civilization'), with feminine and masculine distinctions between the centrifugal and the centripetal, as, in effect, with regard to Temple and Church on the one hand, and to State and (with the Second Coming) Centre on the other, bearing in mind our alpha/omega polarity.  Yes, the liberal State is a sort of superfeminine entity, a second centrifugal reality which, in its inherent pluralism, signifies an historical fall from the centripetal masculinity of the Church, particularly the one true Church ... of Roman Catholic Christianity.  But just as the Church rose above both the pagan and Judaic temples of theocratic precedent, so the Centre will rise above both the pluralist and totalitarian states of democratic precedent, in order to establish, among the 'chosen peoples', the supertheocratic culmination of human evolution, which is nothing less than the omega 'Kingdom of Heaven' - antithetical in every respect to the alpha ones.

 

164. Just as Christian monotheism would not have been possible without a Judaic monotheistic precedent, so Centrist totalitarianism would be impossible to conceive of without a Communist totalitarian precedent.  For Marx (or Lenin) stands to me as Moses to Christ, and while, from an omega standpoint, Communism is as inferior to Transcendentalism as Judaism to Christianity, nevertheless the one is a precondition of the other, since without a centripetal revolt against centrifugal precedent, whether polytheistic or pluralistic, there can be no true omega orientation thereafter and, consequently, no essential transcendentalism to contrast with the apparent transcendentalism which precedes it.  Without Judaism, no Christianity.  Likewise, without Communism - the modern equivalent par excellence of Judaism - there can be no Transcendentalism in the Social Transcendentalist sense, as advocated by me, and therefore nothing approximating to a Second Coming and True World Religion.

 

165. Yet if Communism, like Judaism before it, is not truly or essentially omega orientated, it is nevertheless far from being alpha stemming in the pluralistic tradition, even though, again like Judaism, it makes use of the given - namely the State - and transmutes it in a centripetal and, hence, totalitarian way.  For taking the given and transmuting it, through selection, towards a transcendental, omega-oriented objective is a necessary historical precondition of subsequent ideological progress, even if, in the paradoxical nature of what has been transmuted, it can never be genuinely transcendental, but must always remain tied to its alpha-stemming, fundamentalist roots.  Thus, in the final analysis, Communism, no less than Judaism before it, remains an end-in-itself, incapable of subsequent transmutation into the Centre, which, by contrast, stands in opposition to the concept and reality of the State in the interests of spiritual liberation.

 

166. Hence, just as Judaism and Christianity remained separate ... as two independent religious entities, the one apparently centripetal (Jehovah) and the other essentially centripetal (Christ), so, in the future, Transcendental Socialism and Social Transcendentalism  will remain separate ... as two independent ideological entities, the former apparently centripetal - for even the centralized totalitarian State is still a State and therefore something that has been extrapolated from a given precedent - and the latter essentially so, since primarily concerned with a spiritual convergence to the omega goal of evolution, without which there could be no withering of the State (through the Centre) and therefore no true 'Kingdom of Heaven', but only a perpetual State, after the Communist example.  For the totalitarian Centre differs as much from the totalitarian State of Communist precedent as the monotheistic Church from the monotheistic Temple of Judaic precedent, being a wavicle (essential) fulfilment of a particle (apparent) precondition - in the one case artificial and in the other case natural, as pertaining to parallel points in historical time.

 

167. Thus, taking the natural options first and then proceeding to the artificial (or supernatural) options, we find that there is a sort of overall historical progression, on the one hand, from the polytheistic Temple to the monotheistic Church via the monotheistic Temple, followed by a further progression, on the other hand, from the pluralist State to the totalitarian Centre via the totalitarian State.  Again, to revert to Spengler's fourfold divisions of historical unfolding, which effectively alternate between becoming and being, we should be justified in drawing a direct parallel between pagan polytheism and 'Historyless Chaos', Judaic monotheism and 'Culture' or, rather, pseudo-Culture (for the monotheism in question is not genuinely omega orientated), Christian monotheism and 'Culture', Liberal pluralism and 'Civilization', Communist totalitarianism and 'Second Religiousness' or, rather, pseudo-Second Religiousness (for the totalitarianism in question is not genuinely omega orientated), and, finally, Centrist totalitarianism and 'Second Religiousness', with pagan polytheism corresponding to a materialistic period of historical time, Judaic monotheism corresponding to a materialistic-naturalistic period of such time, Christian monotheism corresponding to a naturalistic period, Liberal pluralism to a realistic period, Communist totalitarianism to a realistic-idealistic period, and, finally, Centrist totalitarianism to an idealistic period - the ultimate period of historical time prior to the post-Human Millennium and, thus, man's final overcoming.  Needless to say, we have not yet attained to the idealistic period of time commensurate with the birth of a genuine Second Religiousness.  Nevertheless we are tending towards it and should be able to date it, in the future, from the coming of Social Transcendentalism, with the correlative democratic establishment of the Centre - a fate reserved, in my estimation, for certain chosen countries that, hopefully, will lead the historical way in this regard.

 

168. Turning from the general to the particular, and thus from a sequential progression of materialist to idealist via naturalist and realist stages of historical time, in the above context, to an hierarchical order of elemental spectra with, from an artificial omega-oriented standpoint, realism at the bottom, idealism at the top, and materialism and naturalism in between (as in the  context of ideological distinctions more recently explored in my work), it seems to me that a kind of alpha/omega distinction can be drawn between, for example, the political parties or ideologies of the Right on the one hand, and those of the Left on the other, with the former inherently centrifugal and the latter inherently centripetal, as follows:-

                     

                Idealistic Alpha                     Air                          Idealistic Omega 

                       Fascism                                 Heaven                   Transcendentalism

 

                       Naturalistic Alpha                 Fire                        Naturalistic Omega

                       Anarchism                             Hell                        Communism

 

                       Materialistic Alpha                Water                     Materialistic Omega

                       Nazism                                  Purgatory               Socialism

 

                       Realistic Alpha                      Earth                     Realistic Omega

                       Conservatism                         World                     Liberalism

 

with a kind of negative/positive polarity between Conservatism and Liberalism (including Liberal Democracy) on the realistic spectrum, between Nazism and Socialism on the materialistic spectrum, between Anarchism and Communism on the naturalistic spectrum, and between Fascism (in the Latin sense) and Transcendentalism on the idealistic spectrum, which, as I understand it, signifies an ideological zenith between right- and left-wing options - in short, a divine spectrum with Superfatheristic  tendencies (fundamentalist) at the alpha pole and Superchristic tendencies (transcendentalist) at the omega pole, each of which rather contrast with the Supersatanic (anarchist) and Super-antichristic (communist) polarities of the diabolic spectrum immediately beneath, the one centrifugal and the other centripetal - Stateless chaos and State centrality, in accordance with antithetical forms of naturalistic ideology.

 

169. Consequently, one could speak of Fascism as right-wing idealism, but of Transcendentalism as left-wing idealism; of Anarchism as right-wing naturalism (although these days it is more usually the Greens who, in their environmental conservatism and conservancy, slot into such a right-wing position), but of Communism as left-wing naturalism; of Nazism as right-wing materialism, but of Socialism (especially in the more militant sense) as left-wing materialism; and of Conservatism as right-wing realism, but of Liberalism (whether Liberal Democratic or Democratic Socialist) as left-wing realism.  Inevitably a sort of ideological tug-of-war or even state-of-war will normally exist between the respective polarities which, as one ascends away from worldly relativity towards the various supraworldly absolutes, becomes increasingly exclusive and, hence, totalitarian.  For there can no more be a true co-existence between Nazism and Socialism on the materialistic spectrum than ... between the more obviously totalitarian ideologies above, even though, in most Western societies, fringe rivalries of the above-mentioned kinds will continue to exist outside the official rivalry (in dialectical realism) of the parliamentary pale and, needless to say, overlapping with a variety of other contending parties or movements in a sort of centrifugal/centripetal dichotomy.

 

170. In my view, there can be no doubt that victory ultimately goes to the omega of things, particularly in the communist and (hopefully) transcendentalist contexts, but even then the shadow of anarchist or fascist reaction will continue to linger long after the Left have institutionalized their triumph and established the ultimate totalitarian societies.  For alpha cannot be entirely vanquished while man is still human and not yet divine - even in the self where, most bitter irony of all, its various political manifestations lie in wait to ambush or sabotage every omega-oriented resolve.  Even when no insititutionalized opposition is apparent, there is a Nazi in the breast of every Socialist, an Anarchist in the breast of every Communist, and a Fascist in the breast of every Transcendentalist, like a dark alter ego, or shadow-self, waiting to dethrone light from its precarious human perch.  Indeed, it is precisely in totalitarian societies that such a shadow-self is most insidious and must accordingly be all the more carefully guarded against, if the ideological purity of those societies is to be maintained.  For the enemy you can't see is more dangerous than the one you can!

 

171. It may not have escaped the reader's attention, during the course of his life, that whereas, in proletarian circles, some English-speaking countries, like Britain and Australia, regularly have recourse to words like 'mate' and 'bloke', others, like America and Canada, prefer words like 'man' and 'guy', which are roughly equivalent - the former as a term of address and the latter as a mode of description, as in 'that bloke' or 'this guy'.  My own interpretation of why, for instance, Americans prefer 'man' to 'mate' ... is that 'man' is more masculine than 'mate' (which suggests a feminine or partly feminine derivation) and therefore has both greater appeal and more applicability to a country which, unlike Britain, prides itself on being macho.  Hence the unequivocal 'man', in preference to the rather ambiguous 'mate'.  As regards 'guy' and 'bloke', it is doubtful that any such gender-based distinction exists here, although I can't help feeling that 'guy' is much the more positive term, underlining the American optimism with respect to a  man's masculine or turned-on credibility.  A 'bloke', on the other hand, is almost someone to be pitied; for he has to be weighed not only against dubious gender but, more concretely, the oppressive realities of life in a constitutional monarchy.

 

172. It ought to be noted that whereas Fascist-style saluting with open hand suggests a centrifugal bias, the closed-fist saluting of, for example, black-power and Communist-type Movements suggests, by contrasts, a centripetal bias, which is nothing less than a feminine/masculine distinction in accordance with their respective alpha-stemming and omega-oriented integrities.  Thus whereas Fascism will favour, in its alpha-stemming integrity, the open-hand raised arm salute, Social Transcendentalist Centrism should favour a closed-fist raised arm salute, in conformity with its omega-oriented integrity ... as the most centripetal of all masculine ideologies.

 

173. The Social Transcendentalist flag should be of centripetal design, with what I have customarily rather colloquially described as the Holy-Y emblem contiguously surrounded by, say, a black circular band, reminiscent of the CND design (which strikes me as a kind of upside-down approach to the right sort of emblem).  Whether the Social Transcendentalist flag will then have a specific colour surround, say purple, outside this band or regional colour variations, depending on the Centre in question, remains to be seen; although a black band, if applicable, would tend to preclude any additional surrounding colour and thereby maintain an overall impression of colourless light ... upon which, or in which, the 'Holy-Y' would have its emblematic place.  Whatever the case, there can be no question of a centrifugal impression being created; for that is alpha stemming and whatever is alpha is antithetical to omega, whether in terms of the nazi swastika or the British Union Jack which, with its vertical, horizontal, and diagonal stripes, strikes me as constituting a centrifugal design appropriate to an inherently alpha-stemming people.   Indeed, I have more than once found myself thinking of the Union Jack as grossly centrifugal and therefore inherently feminine, the sort of flag that could only be acceptable in and applicable to a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarchy at its head.

 

174. The paradoxical thing about Jean-Paul Sartre is that he is, or appears to be, both a playwright and a philosopher when, in reality, drama and philosophy are as mutually exclusive as realism and idealism or earth and air, since pertaining to diametrically antithetical spectra - the one worldly and the other divine.  Consequently we can have no hesitation in concluding either that Sartre is not a genuine dramatist or, alternatively, is less than a genuine philosopher; for it is inconceivable that one can be both, i.e. a wilful realist on the one hand and a spiritual idealist on the other, since exclusive extremes tend to cancel one another out.  So what, then, is Sartre?  Certainly not a genuine philosopher, since an enemy of philosophical idealism and self-proclaimed materialist whose so-called philosophy embraces a phenomenological existentialism in which action, or the way a person acts, becomes the yardstick by which to judge him, while providing the actor with an antidote to the existentialist nightmare of his own contingency!  In short, salvation through purposeful action, especially when political, is the key that unlocks the door of self-imprisonment and temporarily frees one from the apparent futility of one's existence.  But what is this if not a dramatist's solution to the problem of existence, a solution which affirms the will as a way out of the dilemma of human contingency in a seemingly meaningless universe?  To be sure, while Sartre may be a pseudo-philosopher who has rebelled against bourgeois idealism in the name of existentialist materialism, he is by no means a pseudo-dramatist but, if plays like Altona, Nekrassov, and Kean (all of which I read as a youth) are anything to judge by, a very genuine dramatist with a flair for dramatic action based on sound if not always purposeful affirmations of the will, whether in the context of the will to power, to self-destruction, to romantic self-assertion, or whatever.

 

175. Hence it is as a genuine dramatist that Sartre should be regarded; for there can be no doubt about his dramatic credentials, no matter whether or not we approve of them!  And yet, the pseudo-philosopher is unquestionably more famous than the genuine dramatist, is really the Sartre one first thinks of in connection with the age - an age when the genuine philosopher is if not improbable then, at any rate, implausible in view of the overriding materialism which characterizes it, to the detriment not only of bourgeois idealism (which had to be debunked anyway), but to the struggle by post-Marxian idealists like myself to introduce a new, superior idealism with a view to establishing, on the basis of Social Transcendentalism, a future 'Kingdom of Heaven' on earth which, as the post-Human Millennium, will lead mankind out of the materialistic darkness of 'Civilization' (Spengler) into the spiritualistic light of 'Second Religiousness' - the millennial culmination of which will be an unequivocally post-human superconscious absolutism orientated towards omega transcendence, the sort of absolutism which Sartre was unable or unwilling to contemplate, in view of his obsession with the ego and concomitant relativity of human, though particularly bourgeois, consciousness.  As a materialist, Sartre is at least two removes from the possibility of genuine philosophy (which is always idealistic) and thus no more than a reflection of late twentieth-century materialism in the West, a dialectical materialist for whom post-dialectical naturalism and/or idealism were alike beyond his, and by implication the West's, pseudo-philosophical pale - omega Devil and God outside and above the orbit of worldly and anti-worldly (purgatorial?) civilization, which is inherently hostile to philosophy - as, indeed, to anything genuinely divine.  Rest assured, however, that the civilization to come, with its theosophical superphilosophy, will be no less hostile to anything worldly, including drama, which will cease to be either written or performed, as the will is rejected in deference to universal spirituality - the salvation from the body which is intrinsic to the Social Transcendentalist 'Kingdom of Heaven' on earth.

 

176. Having already described Sartre as a genuine dramatist but a pseudo-philosopher, I should now like to describe his great contemporary and in many ways intellectual adversary, Albert Camus, as a pseudo-dramatist but genuine or, at any rate, quasi-genuine philosopher, insofar as two of his four plays were adaptations from novels and accordingly more narrative than dramatic, whereas his philosophy, little though there is of it, tends towards idealism in its almost Burkean revolt against dialectical materialism, or the political implications thereof.  In fact, though coming from a working-class background, Camus was far more interested in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche than in Hegel or Marx, and towards the end of his short life he broke with Communism and gravitated towards the Church without, however, actually embracing Christianity.  He remained to the end a rebel and outsider, inferior to Sartre as a dramatist but in some ways quite superior to him as a philosopher.  Even the Notebooks suggest as much, despite their relative brevity.  For Camus was more spiritual and lyrical than intellectual and logical, and thus a sort of philosophical poet in prose.  Nevertheless, he must remain less important than Sartre as a philosopher; for his idealism was essentially conventional and traditional, whereas Sartre's materialism was highly contemporary and thus, in the rather paradoxical nature of these things, more relevant to the age.  It is the contemporary pseudo-philosopher who comes off best, in Western eyes, in relation to the quasi-genuine traditional philosopher.

 

177. Whereas Lenin was a political transcendentalist who appropriated Marxian socialism to his transcendentalism and thereby created Soviet Communism, i.e. Transcendental Socialism, I am essentially a religious socialist who appropriated Nietzschean transcendentalism to my socialism and thereby created Social Transcendentalism.  Thus the Transcendental Socialist/Social Transcendentalist distinction is nothing less than Marxism-Leninism on the one hand and Nietzsche-Loughlinism, if you will, on the other - two parallel ideological positions which approach freedom from opposite directions.  Certainly, Nietzsche is every bit as important from a transcendentalist point of view as Marx from a socialist one, and while my socialism is no more Marxist than Lenin's transcendentalism was Nietzschean, I realize that without Nietzsche I could no more have arrived at Social Transcendentalism ... than Lenin could have arrived at Soviet Communism without Marx.

 

178. Liberalism-Socialism-Communism-Transcendentalism: these four ascending ideologies of the Left could also be conceived as, in some sense, falling into two pairs; namely Democratic Socialism and Socialism on the one hand, and Democratic Communism (Soviet Communism) and Communism on the other - taking Socialism as a totalitarian alternative to Democratic Socialism, and Communism as a transcendental alternative to Democratic Communism, or Communism with a one-party democratic face.  Thus Democratic Socialism - Socialism - Democratic Communism - Communism, with the latter alone truly indicative of a society in which, thanks to the Social Transcendentalist Centre, the State had 'withered' or, at the very least, was in the process of 'withering'.

 

179. But what about the ideologies of the Right, viz. Conservatism-Nazism-Anarchism-Fascism?  Are not Conservatism and Anarchism (or, for that matter, the Greens) alike democratic, in contrast to the authoritarian or dictatorial nature of Nazism and Fascism respectively?  Thus a similar sort of pairing can be conceived of as existing on the Right, with Conservatism leading to Authoritarian Conservatism, i.e. Nazism and/or a military dictatorship, and Democratic Anarchism leading to Dictatorial Anarchism, i.e. Fascism.  Thus: Democratic Conservatism - Authoritarian Conservatism - Democratic Anarchism - Dictatorial Anarchism, which may be regarded as directly paralleling Democratic Socialism - Totalitarian Socialism - Democratic Communism - Transcendental Communism, or, as I usually prefer to write it, Liberalism-Socialism-Communism-Transcendentalism.

 

180. Where the Right rule, the Left lead.  For the Right, remember, are centrifugal, whereas the Left are centripetal.  Ruling is a centrifugal equivalent; leading a centripetal one.  It is for this reason that I have distinguished the authoritarian and dictatorial on the Right from the totalitarian and transcendental on the Left, since the former terms are appropriate to centrifugal rule, while the latter ones convey a left-wing connotation applicable to centripetal leadership.  Now if we make a diagram of the above-mentioned ideological distinctions, as follows:-

 

                   ALPHA                                                  OMEGA

                               

                       I.     Dictatorial Anarchism                   I.     Transcendental Communism    

                       N.    Democratic Anarchism                  N.    Democratic Communism

                       M.   Authoritarian Conservatism           M.   Totalitarian Socialism 

                       R.    Democratic Conservatism              R.    Democratic Socialism

                         

we shall see that Anarchism and Communism, of whatever sort, are polar in relation to Conservatism and Socialism, again of whatever sort, and that the democratic alternates with the non-democratic as we proceed from the bottom up or, more specifically, from realism (R) to idealism (I) via materialism (M) and naturalism (N).  It could almost be said that Socialism is anarchic in relation to Conservatism, with Communism conservative in relation to Anarchism, but that would be a somewhat fanciful or, at best, an oblique suggestion deriving from the antithetical natures of the polar opposites, which, however, remain fundamentally centrifugal on the one hand and centripetal on the other, as between negative and positive poles of a magnet.

 

181. What I believe these elemental divisions do indicate, however, is a body/mind distinction, with Conservatism and Socialism on both realistic and materialistic spectra paralleling the body (including the brain), but Anarchism and Communism on both naturalistic and idealistic spectra paralleling the mind (in terms of soulful and spiritual distinctions between the democratic and non-democratic options).  Moreover, if we take an atomic breakdown of each of the eight ideological poles, as follows:-

 

                        ALPHA                                                 OMEGA                   

 

                       I.     proton-wavicle absolute                 I.     electron-wavicle absolute        

                       N.    proton-particle absolute                N.    electron-particle absolute    

                       M.   atomic-proton 'absolute'                M . atomic-electron 'absolute'  

                       R.    proton-atomic relativity                 R.   electron-atomic relativity                      

 

it would appear that our sense of two halves or divisions in each case is reinforced, insofar as the lower spectra (R and M) are relatively atomic and therefore 'bodily' (as between will and intellect, whether negative or positive, alpha or omega), whereas the higher spectra (N and I) are either particle or wavicle absolutes and therefore 'psychic' (as between soul and spirit, whether negative or positive, alpha or omega).  Thus the fact that we can speak of proton distinctions on the negative naturalistic and idealistic poles confirms the fundamental correctness of one ideological term, viz. Anarchism, for their political manifestations, just as the electron distinctions on the positive naturalistic and idealistic poles would appear to justify the singular term Communism for each of these, even though we have necessarily divided them into democratic and transcendental manifestations, in accordance with particle and wavicle distinctions.  Similarly, the proton-atomic and atomic-proton distinctions of the negative realistic and materialistic poles confirm the fundamental correctness of one term, viz. Conservatism, for each of their political manifestations, as does the electron-atomic and atomic-electron distinctions of the positive realistic and materialistic poles, where Socialism transpires to being the appropriate political term for each pole.  Consequently a similar atomic structure calls forth and justifies a similar political description, whether or not we then divide, as here, that description into, say, democratic and totalitarian.

 

182. However, now that I have written the above, it seems to me that an alternative logical structure with regard to the right-wing positions is possible and may even be nearer the truth than the Conservative/Anarchist divide to which I have been adhering.  Yet, that said, I could not have arrived at this alternative structure without having initially adhered to the preceding one, since it is in the nature of these writings (with their evaluations and re-evaluations) for one thing to lead to or make possible another, irrespective of how initially frustrating or seemingly contradictory this may at first appear!  Thus it now occurs to me that while the fundamental division between democratic and authoritarian Conservatism is highly plausible, the authoritarian position ought rather to be reserved exclusively for a military dictatorship, which is doubtless more authoritarian than Nazism, and should therefore be regarded as right-wing materialism.  So having got beyond the military dictatorship and/or Nazi option formerly suggested for the negative pole of the materialistic spectrum, we are left with the task of placing Nazism on a separate spectrum, and are accordingly put in the logical situation of either affirming a Fascist identity between Nazism and dictatorial anarchism, i.e. Fascism-proper, or, more plausibly, of reversing our previous contention concerning the nature of right-wing naturalism, by opting to distinguish between Nazism as democratic fascism and Fascism-proper as dictatorial fascism, so that instead of an anarchist divide we have a fascist divide, placing Nazism in the position hitherto reserved for Democratic Anarchism.  And this would be because, unlike Fascism, Nazism had been voted into power and duly upheld the principle of periodic referenda and the possibility of regular, four-yearly elections to confirm its power-base in the People.

 

183. Hence Nazism seems entitled to the description of Democratic Fascism, which would stand, at the negative naturalistic pole, in an antithetical relationship to Democratic Communism, viz. Soviet Communism, in what can be best described as an alpha-stemming, centrifugal mode of naturalism, the sworn enemy of everything centripetal and omega orientated.  Thus, quite apart from the parallel of red flags, it would seem that a sort of Satanic/Antichristic antithesis may be inferred to exist, or to have existed, between Democratic Fascism and Democratic Communism, in contrast to the Fatheristic/Holy-Ghostian antithesis which may be posited as existing (if only in theory at present) between Dictatorial Fascism and Transcendental Communism, which pertains to alpha and omega of the idealistic, or divine, spectrum above - one, so I believe, which will only achieve an omega manifestation with the Second Coming and correlative true world religion of Social Transcendentalism.  For what Mussolini was to the idealistic alpha, the Second Coming will be to the idealistic omega, and if his will is done the People will become divine, thereby bringing Transcendental Communism to pass.

 

184. Thus we should distinguish between two types of Conservatism and two types of Fascism (as opposed to anarchism), with the former antithetical to our Socialist options, and the latter antithetical to our Communist ones, as follows:-

 

                ALPHA                                                                         OMEGA                                       

 

                   I.       Dictatorial Fascism (Fascism proper)                I.       Transcendental Communism (Communism proper)

                   N.      Democratic Fascism (Nazism)                            N.      Democratic Communism (Sovietism)

                   M.     Authoritarian Conservatism (militarism)           M.     Totalitarian Socialism (militant socialism)  

                   R.      Democratic Conservatism (Toryism)                 R.      Democratic Socialism (Labour)

 

Such spectra, besides being distinguishable from one another on the above ideological basis of realism (R), materialism (M), naturalism (N), and idealism (I), can also, of course, be distinguished from one another on the fundamentally more elemental basis of (from the bottom up) earth, water, fire, and air, which should underline the inherent character of each of the four or, rather, eight ideological positions, corresponding to the world, purgatory, Hell, and Heaven respectively, with appropriate negative and positive distinctions between alpha and omega - centrifugal and centripetal antitheses.

 

185. To distinguish jackets with conventional fold-over collars from those with straight collars ... on the basis of a centrifugal/centripetal divide.  For is not a conventional folding collar centrifugal in design and therefore inherently antithetical to the straight collars which feature on the more contemporary or advanced types of jacket?  Doubtless this is so, and because we know that the centrifugal is alpha and the centripetal omega, we are entitled to speak of the former as alpha stemming and the latter as omega orientated, drawing due political conclusions accordingly.  Jackets, then, will (depending on their design) connote with one or other of the alternative political positions, whether right wing and centrifugal or left wing and centripetal.  Interestingly, centrifugal jackets (as one might term those with fold-over collars, or lapels) are not, like their opposite numbers, taken-in at cuffs or waist, but retain a quasi-centrifugal status commensurate with an alpha-stemming integrity.  Only with straight-collared jackets does one find both cuffs and waist taken-in, and this confirms their centripetal standing as truly omega orientated, and therefore suitable for use by left-wing people.  Hopefully, there will be a lot more centripetal jackets being worn in the future ... as the Left gains in ascendancy over the Right and life becomes increasingly omega orientated.

 

186. Of course, what applies to jackets applies just as much to shirts, where we can distinguish between conventional V-collared shirts as centrifugal and T-shirts as centripetal, with correlative alpha-stemming and omega-oriented implications.  That is why conventional shirts go with open-collared jackets, while T-shirts go with close-collared jackets - the former bourgeois and the latter proletarian.

 

187. Recently I have become uncomfortably aware of the extent to which brass instruments like trumpets, trombones, saxophones, and even flutes suggest a centrifugal bias by dint of their open-ended designs, which are arguably more alpha stemming than omega orientated.  Even the quite large sound-hole in the belly of an old acoustic guitar of mine looks uncomfortably centrifugal, although I incline to the belief that, unlike brass instruments, acoustic guitars are essentially centripetal, if rather more in terms of omega-in-the-alpha than genuinely omega, like, for example, the radically centripetal types of electric guitar.  But I have no hesitation in regarding brass instruments as alpha-in-the-omega, and because of their high-profile use by jazz musicians I am obliged to regard jazz, particularly when acoustic, as a sort of modern alpha music, given to strongly centrifugal tendencies, and in some sense right wing in relation to rock.  In fact, regarding jazz in this light suggests to me a sort of musical parallel with Fascism, since I am convinced that if jazz and rock are antithetical, the one generally centrifugal (witness the 'all-over', or sequential drumming) and the other comparatively centripetal (where the drum beat is simpler and more focused), then we have an alpha/omega distinction analogous to that between Fascism and Communism.

 

188. Indeed, can we not divide modern music into four general categories, as with politics, so that jazz and rock are seen to tower above the more down-to-earth, or bodily, antithesis between, say, classical and pop, with the former corresponding to Conservatism and the latter to Socialism?  For if there are four main political options, each of which can be subdivided, surely it is not fanciful to speak in terms of four main musical options, allowing for similar subdivisions in each category ... depending on the type of classical or pop, jazz or rock in question.  Thus classical would stand to jazz as Conservatism to Fascism on the alpha-stemming centrifugal side, while pop would stand to rock as Socialism to Communism on the omega-oriented centripetal side.  There would be two main subdivisions in each case, and doubtless they would parallel the political subdivisions already touched upon, so that a kind of democratic/authoritarian distinction could be inferred to exist between, say, symphonic and concerto compositions in the case of classical, with the former corresponding to Democratic Conservatism (the Tories) and the latter to Authoritarian Conservatism (a military dictatorship), given the much greater emphasis concertos place on one instrument, which towers above the orchestra like an autocratic dictator.

 

189. However that may be, a similar subdivision would have to apply to pop, where we are effectively distinguishing between the democratic and the totalitarian, and again I strongly suspect that whereas 'democratic' pop would be group orientated and musically moderate, the 'totalitarian' variety would have a solo emphasis, whether within the context of a group or, alternatively, with regard to a superstar solo artist performing, in the lead role, in conjunction with other musicians.  Certainly, this kind of pop would be musically more radical and instrumental than the 'democratic' variety, since (if my theory is valid) paralleling the concerto, or authoritarian, form of classical.

 

190. Likewise, we would have to distinguish 'democratic' jazz from 'dictatorial' jazz on the basis of a Fascist divide, as well as 'democratic' rock from 'transcendental' rock on the basis of a Communist divide, reserving for those in the 'democratic' categories a more group-oriented and possibly romantic status, but for those in the 'dictatorial/transcendental' categories a solo-oriented and comparatively spiritual status, with a correspondingly greater emphasis on instrumental brilliance.  Naturally, a centrifugal/centripetal contrast would exist between each of the 'fascistic' and 'communistic' kinds of music, in accordance with the underlying dichotomy which distinguishes alpha from omega, or vice versa.  Judged from an omega standpoint, rock is no less ideologically and morally superior to jazz, of whatever variety, than pop to classical in each of its main manifestations.  Now if jazz is superior to classical, because a more evolved and head-biased music, then rock is no less superior to pop, and for the same reasons.  In fact, rock is the ultimate kind of modern music, just as Communism is the ultimate kind of modern politics, with transcendental rock just as much the ultimate kind of rock as Transcendental Communism (or Social Transcendentalism) is the ultimate kind of Communism.

 

191. From a rock purist's standpoint, any compromise with jazz would be both ideologically and morally unacceptable, just as a jazz purist would prefer not to compromise with rock.  Yet there are and have been fusions between rock and jazz, as also between pop and classical, which suggest a middle-ground situation.  Perhaps this kind of 'fusion music' is analogous, in ideological terms, to Anarchism or Ecological politics with regard to the former, but to Liberalism or Social Democracy with regard to the latter, so that instead of an alpha/omega dichotomy one has a sort of worldly, or atomic, cross between the two extremes?  If so, then we would have no justification in regarding fusion music, of whatever sort, as reflecting progress over purist music (except, perhaps, in the cases of jazz and classical), but would have to acknowledge the musical, not to mention ideological, superiority of the rock or pop purist, whose omega orientation could only stand in the vanguard of musical progress, like Socialism and Communism standing, on their respective levels, in the vanguard of political progress.  For if rock is superior to jazz, as omega to alpha, then it can only be superior to jazz-rock and to rock-jazz as well.  Similarly, if pop is superior to classical, as omega to alpha, then it can only be superior to classical pop and to pop classical as well.  Translated into political terms, this means that any cross between Communism and Fascism, be it anarchic or ecological, will be inferior to Communism (even if superior to Fascism), while any cross between Conservatism and Socialism, be it liberal or social democratic, will be inferior to Socialism (even if superior to Conservatism).

 

192. In an alpha/omega distinction, the alpha, being centrifugal, will always be both ideologically and morally inferior to the omega, which is centripetal, and thus any compromise between alpha and omega, while arguably superior to the alpha alone (as, say, Christ to the Father), will be inferior to the omega (as, say, Christ to the Holy Ghost).  For history tends, willy-nilly, from alpha to omega, from the centrifugal to the centripetal, and ultimate moral judgements can only be made on the basis of the latter, never the former, which, by contrast, is comparatively immoral.  Morality only arises after the alpha has been found out and judged wanting.  It is the omega which is alone moral, and until the omega of things comes to pass, on whatever elemental level, no moral judgement vis-à-vis the alpha is possible.  Even the in-between, or fusion, reality is less moral than amoral, and thus an extrapolation from the alpha rather than its transvaluated antithesis.  Thus in politics, Capitalism is not immoral until Socialism comes to pass as its moral antithesis and judges it accordingly.  In music, jazz is not immoral until rock comes to pass and, attaining to maturity in total independence of jazz, points up a centripetal and, hence, moral antithesis to the centrifugal bias of jazz.  Fusion music, like Liberalism in politics, is merely amoral, since not antithetically ranged against the alpha but stemming from it in diluted compromise, untransvaluated and partly acquiescent in the alpha precedent, unable to judge it immoral and thus morally in the dark compared to the omega.

 

193. Therefore just as Liberalism is not socialist but capitalist in a different, less overtly aggressive way than Conservatism, so pop classical is not popular but classical in a different, less overtly aggressive or centrifugal way.  In fact, taking pop classical as the realistic middle-ground form of fusion music in between classical and pop, and Liberalism as the realistic middle-ground form of democratic politics in between Conservatism and Socialism (at least in their democratic manifestations), we should be able to establish musical and political correlations, as we ascend to higher spectra, between classical pop and Social Democracy in the case of the materialistic middle-ground (in between solo classical/authoritarian Conservatism and solo pop/totalitarian Socialism), rock-jazz and Ecology in the case of the naturalistic middle-ground (in between trad jazz/Democratic Fascism and hard rock/Democratic Communism), and, finally, jazz-rock and Anarchism in the case of the idealistic middle-ground (in between modern jazz/Dictatorial Fascism and soft rock/Transcendental Communism), zigzagging, it would appear, from a right-wing middle-ground bias with pop classical and Liberalism to a left-wing middle-ground bias with classical pop and Social Democracy; and from a right-wing middle-ground bias with rock-jazz and Ecology to a left-wing middle-ground bias with jazz-rock and Anarchism, bearing in mind the alternations between alpha and omega which, for example, pop classical (essentially classical and therefore fundamentally conservative) and classical pop (essentially Pop and therefore socialistic) would seem to indicate - as, on a higher level, do rock-jazz (essentially jazz and therefore fundamentally fascistic) and jazz-rock (essentially rock and therefore communistic).

 

194. Yet, that said, the middle-ground, or fusion, positions remain untransvaluated, no matter how left wing the apparent bias, and thus fundamentally amoral.  For unless one transcends the alpha of things altogether or, at any rate, as far as is reasonably possible, no true omega orientation is possible and, hence, no true morality.  The middle-ground positions remain atomic and thus, in a sense, middle class as opposed to either upper class in the alpha or working class in the omega.  Thus whether we are concerned with Anarchism or jazz-rock, Ecology or rock-jazz, Social Democracy or classical pop, or Liberalism (latterly Liberal Democracy in England) or pop classical, the result is amoral in every case, and such an amoral atomicity stands in-between alpha immorality and omega morality, just as the middle class stand in-between the upper class and the working class or, as I prefer to put it, the older class and the newer class - centrifugal and centripetal, appearance and essence.

 

195. Thus if we are to tabulate our findings for the benefit of enhanced clarification, we shall have, as before, the four spectra ranged as follows:-

 

                     IMMORAL                                       AMORAL                                MORAL

 

                   I.       Dictatorial Fascism                         Anarchism                              Transcendental Communism

                   N.      Democratic Fascism                        Ecology                                  Democratic Communism

                   M.     Autocratic Conservatism                 Social Democracy                  Totalitarian Socialism

                   R.      Democratic Conservatism               Liberalism                              Democratic Socialism

 

with, for the musical parallels, the following:-

 

                          IMMORAL                                       AMORAL                                MORAL

 

                   I.       Modern Jazz                                    Jazz-Rock                               Soft Rock

                   N.      Trad Jazz                                         Rock-Jazz                               Hard Rock

                   M.     Concerto Classical                          Classical Pop                         Solo Pop

                   R.      Symphonic Classical                        Pop Classical                         Group Pop

 

always allowing for subordinate or alternative labels such as funk, punk, blues, soul, etc., which will, I trust, be a variant, traditional or contemporary, on one or another of the above-named musical forms.  (Thus, for example, blues for trad jazz, funk for soft rock, punk for hard rock, soul for pop, and so on.)

 

196. Admittedly, I haven't dealt with the 'naturalistic' alpha/omega antitheses, neither in politics nor music, but only with the 'artificial' alpha/omega antitheses, as especially relevant to the modern age.  I am fairly convinced, however, that older types of music, like folk, chamber, Elizabethan, opera, etc., can also be categorized in a parallel way to the above, as can older types of politics and religion, including royalism and Catholicism.  My chief interest, all along, has been with the modern, in the main late-twentieth-century manifestations of an alpha/omega antithesis, and I am confident that my findings match-up to contemporary reality and go some way towards explaining or, rather, solving the dilemmas and contradictions of the age.

 

197. Now at last it is possible to distinguish alpha from omega, whether in politics, music, or any number of other subjects, on the basis of a centrifugal/centripetal dichotomy, with proton immoral and electron moral implications respectively, while reserving for the middle ground an amoral status commensurate with an atomic cross between each of the elemental absolutes.  The jazz-rocker may prefer a leather zipper to a button-up leather jacket, but it will more than likely be one with a centrifugal collar than with the centripetal collars ordinarily associated with an omega orientation.  For the jazz-rocker, like the Anarchist, is an amoral person in between immoral and moral extremes, and the amoral is nothing if not inherently contradictory.  Only with the soft-rocker or, more usually these days, funkster ... can one expect to see a centripetal collar; for he, if true to his music and sufficiently together to know how to dress, will have no hesitation in appearing moral.  Neither, on a lower omega-oriented level, will the hard-rocker, or punkster, whose more aggressive centripetal rhythms stand to the soft-rocker/funkster as Democratic Communism to Transcendental Communism, or the Antichrist to the Second Coming, or, in atomic terms, electron particles to electron wavicles.  Such moral musicians will instinctively be in revolt against the musical immorality of the parallel alpha positions, which is to say, modern and trad jazz respectively, but they won't be too keen on the amoral middle-ground positions either, since jazz-rock (or funk-jazz) and rock-jazz (or punk-jazz) are less than transvaluated, and will therefore appear morally suspect to anyone with an unequivocally omega orientation, whether towards Heaven or Hell or, indeed, lower down in the purgatorial and worldly omega orientations of pop, for which the parallel middle-ground positions are less jazz-rock or rock-jazz than ... classical pop or pop classical, depending on the spectrum in question.  The true proletarian will always have an omega orientation, and thus despise and loathe everything else - loathing the immoral musical or political antithesis, but despising the amoral middle-ground in between.  For the struggle to bring about a better world, one that is truly moral, depends upon those with an omega orientation, who must take full responsibility, both politically and socially, for their morality.  Only thus can the eventual defeat of both the immoral and the amoral be guaranteed.

 

198. In relation to the centrifugal collar, the clerical collar, or so-called 'dog collar', of the clergy is centripetal and thus omega orientated, albeit within a Christian rather than radically transcendental context, commensurate with the Holy Spirit.  If the average centrifugal collar-and-tie combination is applicable to 'Civilization' (in the Spenglerian sense of that term), then the clerical collar may effectively be said to pre-date it in the context of 'Culture', or the naturalistic omega-oriented period of time and context historically preceding the fall into a second centrifugal age - the democratically secular age we are currently living through.  There is accordingly a sense in which the clerical collar is both morally and historically superior to the centrifugal shirt collar of contemporary bourgeois, capitalist society.

 

199. Yet if 'Culture' precedes 'Civilization' in its full flowering, then 'Second Religiousness' succeeds it, and does so in terms of T-shirts, muscle shirts, sweat shirts, etc., all of which tend to the centripetal in defiance of centrifugal precedent, and may consequently be described as omega orientated and proletarian.  However, worse from a moral standpoint than the centrifugal collar-and-tie combination of bourgeois 'Civilization' is what appears to be the much grosser centrifugal collar of bourgeois decadence and a return, effectively, to 'Historyless Chaos' (Spengler) with open-necks, the more radically centrifugal nature of which can only indicate a correspondingly more immoral status commensurate with an unequivocally alpha-stemming context.  In fact, compared to the open-neck centrifugal collar, the collar that is buttoned-up at the neck suggests a centripetal tendency which is arguably an amoral middle-ground in relation to open-neck collars on the one hand and to, say, T-shirts on the other, conceiving of the former as immoral and the latter as truly moral, given their centripetal implications.  Thus it could be contended that if the centrifugal (fold-back) collar is Liberal Democratic when done-up, it is Conservative when left undone, since the impression created is then more expansively centrifugal.  Now, doubtless, we should distinguish between a more expansively centrifugal impression created in conjunction with a cravat and one created independently of such an item; for if the former is relative, then the latter is comparatively absolute and, to my mind, that suggests a Democratic Conservative/ Authoritarian Conservative distinction - unless, however, one is to interpret an open-neck collar minus cravat in terms of bourgeois or Conservative decadence.

 

200. However that may be, a similar distinction would have to be drawn between a centrifugal collar done-up at the neck and worn in conjunction with a tie, and one done-up but worn without a tie, since what applies to the immoral alpha must also apply to the amoral middle-ground, in consequence of which we could speak of a Liberal/Social Democratic distinction between the two, treating the former as indicative of a relatively right-wing bias and the latter as indicating a relatively left-wing and more absolute bias, while still being inherently middle-ground in relation to, say, T-shirts.

 

201. Certainly I have been discussing centrifugal shirts more in terms of long-sleeved than of short-sleeved varieties ... as pertaining, I would argue, to the realistic (relative) and materialistic ('absolute') 'bodily' spectra in question.  Yet if the naturalistic (particle absolute) and idealistic (wavicle absolute) 'head' spectra are also to be considered, as applying to Fascist alpha positions and to Ecologist and Anarchist middle-ground positions, then whether or not a short-sleeved shirt is worn in conjunction with a cravat (if undone at the neck) or a tie (if done-up at the neck) will determine the ideological status of the shirt (or person) in question, be it Democratic Fascist (with cravat) or Dictatorial Fascist (without one); Ecologist (with tie) or Anarchist (without one), and all in relation to the muscle shirts and vests of the Communist and, hence, moral Left.

 

202. As a sort of footnote to the above, it should be possible to distinguish T-shirts with long sleeves from the short-sleeved variety on the basis of a kind of Democratic Socialist/Totalitarian Socialist division, reserving for muscle shirts and vests (at any rate those of a manifestly centripetal order) a sort of Democratic Communist/Transcendental Communist distinction on the basis that such a division is rather more curvilinear than rectilinear (unlike the Socialist one) and therefore appropriate to a 'head' as opposed to a 'bodily' ideological integrity.  Thus short-sleeved T-shirts are still 'bodily' and, hence, Socialist because rectilinear, whereas muscle shirts and vests suggest, in their comparatively curvilinear design, a 'head' or, more specifically, psychic connotation applicable to communist persuasions.

 

203. Either one is for some form of centralized regulation of the economy or one is against it, whether absolutely, like a Conservative, or partly, like a Liberal, in the interests of private enterprise.  One is either for a centripetal, centralized, and therefore moral society, in which the State or some equivalent institution regulates things, or one is for a centrifugal, decentralized, and consequently immoral society in which, in some degree or another (depending on the prevailing capitalist ideology), private enterprise is encouraged to flourish.  To want the best of both worlds, private enterprise and State regulation, is to be amoral, like a Liberal.  To want only private enterprise is, from an omega centripetal standpoint, to be immoral - in short, an overt capitalist.  Only he who wants a centralized regulation of the economy is truly moral and therefore Socialist or Communist, depending on the degree of his morality and the type of society in question, be it 'bodily' or of the 'head'.

 

204. Yet to want centralized control in only one context is not enough, since it is no use agreeing to centralized regulation of some things but not of others, agreeing, say, to State regulation of the economy but rejecting any notion of centralized interference in the arts, sciences, sexual morality, religion, or whatever.  He who is in favour of a moral order, in which centripetal criteria obtain, must be in favour of it all along the line, if he is not to be an hypocritical amoralist for whom some things are better left decentralized and, hence, private.  Thus the artist, musician, writer - all those who pursue a creative vocation - should submit to centralized regulation of what they may or may not create ... if moral progress is to become manifest in every sphere of life, not just in some.  He who is for a socialist economy but against socialist literature ... is not a moral Socialist but an amoral hypocrite pursuing his own brand of private enterprise, and is thus no better, in effect, than a Liberal.  And what applies to a socialist economy should apply even more to a communist one, particularly to a transcendental communist one, where not the State but the Centre would regulate society in the name of Social Transcendentalist salvation and the divine integrity of the People as Holy Spirit.  A free enterprise in literature or art or music or science or whatever that ran contrary to the will of the Second Coming would be incompatible with the most moral society, which would have a God-given duty to uphold the ultimate morality in the interests of the People's spiritual salvation, thereby safeguarding the omega 'Kingdom of Heaven' from the threat of worldly or other kinds of reaction.

 

 

                       ALPHA                                         OMEGA

 

               1.     //                                           2.     ()

                       /                                                     /

                      /                                                     /

                     /                                                     /

                    /                                                     /

                   /                                                     /

 

 

               3.     ||                                            4.     ()

                       |                                                     |

             _____|                                           _____|

 

205. The above diagrams show the distinctions in saluting between the centrifugal (open hand) idealistic Right and the centripetal (clenched fist) idealistic Left in the one case (1 & 2), and the centrifugal (open hand) naturalistic Right and the centripetal (clenched fist) naturalistic Left in the other case (3 & 4), with feminine and masculine implications, as pertaining to an alpha/omega dichotomy respectively.  It should be remembered that although Hitler, for instance, adopted the wavicle-biased raised arm salute (1) from Mussolini, he also, and rather frequently, resorted to the bent arm salute (3) which, so I contend, indicates a particle equivalent commensurate with the more democratic kind of fascism (nazism).  Thus if the antithetical types of idealistic saluting are effectively Creatoresque and Holy Ghostian in their centrifugal/centripetal contrast, then the antithetical types of naturalistic saluting are Satanic and Antichristic respectively.

 

206. It is perhaps quite logical that Mussolini's Fascism should have preceded Hitler's Nazism in its coming to power; for did not the Creator precede Satan?

 

207. The hand that slaps a face is centrifugal, whereas the hand that, clenched into a fist, punches a face is centripetal.  Alpha and omega of (feminine) gentlemen and (masculine) men.

 

208. If it is moral to drink from a can, as I believe it to be in view of its phallic and therefore centripetal connotations, then it can only be immoral to drink from a bottle (vaginal and, hence, of a centrifugal connotation), and amoral to drink from a glass (which is to a bottle what a skirt is to a dress).  The bottle is alpha, the glass worldly, and the can omega.  Thus whereas it would be logical - indeed desirable - for a Conservative or a Fascist to drink from a bottle, it would be illogical and nothing short of absurd for a Socialist or a Communist to do so.  Socialists and Communists should stick to cans and thus confirm their moral bias.  Similarly, Socialists and Communists should stick to cigarettes (assuming they smoke at all) and leave cigars to the amoral and pipes to the immoral, since cigars and pipes are to smoking what glasses and bottles are to drinking, and should accordingly be left to those who are more politically qualified to smoke them.  A Socialist with a pipe in his mouth would be a contradiction in terms, as would a Conservative or a Fascist with a cigarette.  Pipes are no less centrifugal and, hence, feminine than bottles, whereas cigarettes are centripetal and therefore masculine - as, up to a point, are cigars.

 

209. In relation to chips, jacket potatoes are immoral and baked and/or boiled potatoes amoral.  This is because chips are centripetal and 'phallic', whereas jacket potatoes, particularly when open and stuffed with cheese, onions, a sausage, etc., are centrifugal and, hence, 'vaginal', baked and/or boiled potatoes being a kind of compromise coming in-between the two extremes - the one moral and the other immoral.  Thus whereas the moral man will prefer a diet of chips, the immoral man will be content with a jacket potato and the amoral man with baked and/or boiled potatoes.  One could argue that while, politically speaking, chips are socialist and/or communist (depending on the type), jacket potatoes are fascist and baked and/or boiled potatoes liberal - using that term in a broadly middle-ground sense.  Indeed, we can exactly correlate potato categories with the drinking and smoking categories discussed above, proceeding from the immoral alpha-stemming category to the moral omega-oriented category via the worldly amoral category, as follows:-

 

                        IMMORAL            AMORAL               MORAL

 

                       bottles                    glasses                    cans

                       pipes                      cigars                     cigarettes

                       jacket potatoes        baked potatoes        chips

 

Thus, strictly speaking, the man who drinks from a bottle and smokes a pipe should prefer jacket potatoes to other potato formats; the man who drinks from a glass and smokes cigars should prefer baked and/or boiled potatoes to the alternative potato formats; and, last but in no way morally least, the man who drinks from a can and smokes cigarettes should prefer chips to either of the alternative potato formats.

 

210. In such fashion it will be possible for us to distinguish people across the broad spectrum of alpha-stemming (immoral) and omega-oriented (moral) alternatives.  For the truly integrated man will be morally together in his habits, and the more enlightened he is, the more morally together will he be.  Thus the enlightened chip eater would find potatoes and jacket potatoes no less beneath his moral pale than ... drinks in glasses and bottles would be beneath the moral pale of the can drinker (not necessarily alcohol), or cigars and pipes ... beneath the moral pale of the cigarette smoker (not necessarily tobacco), and would eat, drink, and smoke on the level of chips, cans, and cigarettes.  The test of a moral society is whether it acknowledges such a moral disparity or whether, in open-society fashion, it strives to block notions of moral hierarchy which run contrary to the traditional norms.

 

211. The man who is atomic and an integral part of dualistic civilization will be more or less balanced between the 'I' of the personal self and the 'I' of the impersonal, or transcendent, self - in short, between person and persona.  The fact of his two 'I's' means that he will often confound the one with the other and speak of each as if they were interchangeable or even identical.  In writing, such a man will mix autobiography with art; for his 'ego' is both personal and transcendent (albeit to a limited extent), and he cannot conceive of the one without sooner or later conceiving of the other in identical terms, i.e. as 'I'.

 

212. However, with the man who is not an integral part of dualistic civilization but potentially or actually more attuned to a transcendental civilization, no such ambiguity normally exists; for such a man will relate more to his impersonal 'I' than to the personal one, and to such an extent, in the more evolved cases, that the latter will have been transmuted into a 'he', having become all but eclipsed by the former, so that instead of 'I' standing for both person and persona, or private and professional selves, it will stand for the persona alone, which will tend ever more radically towards the goal of self-transcending awareness in the ultimate 'I' of God.  In fact, one has not started on the path to self-transcendence unless the personal 'I' has become 'he' and, therefore, clearly distinguishable from the impersonal 'I' of the superconscious persona.

 

213. Conversely, the man whose impersonal ego, or superconscious mind, stands to him (his personal 'I') as a 'he' ... is as far removed from the possibility of such salvation as it is humanly possible to be; for he is centred in the personal 'I' and regards that which is not personal as outside himself and effectively as 'he'.  The painter Salvador Dali provides us with a conspicuous example of such a man.  For he often spoke of his artistic self (the impersonal self of the persona) in the third person ... as 'Dali', reserving first priority to the self whose face became synonymous with exaggerated self-importance, as one of the most celebrated poseurs of modern times.  Instead of transcending this self in his art, Dali used his art to aggrandize it, thereby becoming ever more personally egocentric (at any rate up until the time when, with disease-ridden old-age, he was no longer able to work and consequently became one of the world's most deflated persons - devoid of even the faintest traces of personal egocentricity).  But the man for whom the personal self remains more important than the persona is both pagan and immoral.

 

214. Only when the impersonal self is uppermost, and to the extent that the personal self becomes 'he', can it be said of a man that he is moral and, hence, transcendental.  The man balanced between person and persona is simply amoral, oscillating between the 'I' of the subconscious and the 'I' of the superconscious in an egocentric compromise which is akin to Christianity and its doctrine of the 'Three in One'.  Such a man may understand the world, but he will never understand the Holy Spirit.  If he is superior to the immoral man, he is decidedly inferior to the moral one, in whom persona has eclipsed the person to an extent which makes him truly 'born again', or transvaluated (to use a Nietzschean equivalent).

 

215. What particularly distinguishes mankind from the animal kind is its capacity for self-transcendence, its ability to escape from the personal self in an absorption in something perceived as superior to and greater than itself.  A man can lose himself in a painting, but a dog never!  Unlike human beings, dogs are tied to the natural world, and hence to the personal self, to an extent which precludes even an indirect self-transcendence: the sort of transcendence afforded man by art.

 

216. Yet if man is superior to dogs and, by implication, all other animals in this way, he cannot know true self-transcendence while he remains rooted in the personal self, in other words while the impersonal self (the persona) of the artist or professional is effectively a 'he' outside the personal self, or even, albeit to a lesser extent, when the individual is balanced between his two 'I's' in a kind of bourgeois compromise.  For indirect self-transcendence keeps one chained to appearances and is only acceptable and intelligible on the basis that such a self-transcendence, be it through art, literature, music, drama, or whatever, will be the norm so long as the personal self prevails and man has not yet evolved to a transvaluated state, in which such a self has been eclipsed by the transcendent, or impersonal, self.

 

217. All art is thus spiritually false, because conceived on a materialistic basis in response to this basic limitation of untransvaluated humanity.  I am the personal self and therefore the impersonal self is outside me ... as art or music or literature, a 'he' or an 'it' distinct from the personal me, and consequently I can only get lost in this other self on an external basis ... through art, which, if genuine, is a reflection of something greater than myself rather than a reflection of myself, i.e. the personal self.  Such a reflection would no more be genuine art than the reflection of my face in the mirror, since art must transcend the personal self if it is to be fine and not bogus or decadent, like so much contemporary so-called art.

 

218. However, what of the man who has transcended the personal self and is rooted or, rather, centred in the impersonal self of the persona?  Clearly, such a man no longer relates to art, since it is a crutch for those rooted in the personal self and only a mode of indirect self-transcendence in consequence.  This liberated man has no need of such crutches; for he is capable of walking free of them in the interests of a direct self-transcendence achieved through absorption in the impersonal self of the superconscious, whether through mind-expanding drugs like LSD or, more directly, through transcendental meditation.  For him, by contrast, the personal self is outside his true self, a 'he' which must be eclipsed by the impersonal self, the ultimate 'I', if salvation is to come genuinely to pass, no matter how humbly, initially, in relation to a definitive heavenly condition.  This man despises art because he is the freest and most enlightened of men.  His self-transcendence, or transcendence of the personal self, is directly through his spirit rather than indirectly through the materialistic medium of some art form external to himself.  For him, art is bourgeois and therefore unworthy of his attention.  Art, too, must be consigned to the rubbish heap of history, since it is irrelevant to true self-transcendence.  And too often it is not even an indirect reflection of the higher self but a direct reflection of the lower self, and thus doubly irrelevant!  A man is not liberated from the personal self until he is above art.

 

219. We should distinguish between a strictly amoral integrity, which is middle ground, and an oscillation between immoral and moral extremes; for whereas the former corresponds to neutron neutrality, the latter corresponds, by contrast, to proton and electron alternations, and therefore is only loosely amoral.  In fact, compared with neutron amorality, the proton/electron amorality is dynamic rather than static, a positive, or active, amorality as opposed to a negative, or passive, amorality - a mode of amorality one would more closely associate with contemporary America than with Britain, and certainly more with Catholicism than Protestantism.  Indeed, whereas the Protestant Christ is rather neutral in terms of His amoral stance before the world, the Catholic Christ tends to oscillate between immoral (Father) and moral (Holy Spirit) extremes.  For it cannot be denied that our immoral - amoral - moral triad extends to the Trinity, and that, in relation to the Holy Spirit, the Father is immoral and the Son amoral, as pertaining to their respective atomicities (proton-proton reactions, proton/electron compromise, electron-electron attractions).

 

220. Thus while Christ is dynamically amoral in Catholic Christianity, He is statically amoral in Protestant Christianity; the difference, in effect, between romantic and classic, or pre- and post-worldly extremes vis-à-vis a worldly mean.  Doubtless racial factors enter into this distinction, since Protestantism is largely Nordic, whereas Catholicism is mainly Celtic (Latin) and, to a lesser extent, Slavic.  The body is less disposed to a proton/electron oscillation than the head; indeed, it corresponds to the nucleus of the world, and finds its political embodiment in Liberalism, using that word in a loosely pluralistic sense.  On the other hand, within liberal, or parliamentary, politics, it is clear that there are two kinds of amorality, and especially is this so of British politics: namely, the middle-ground 'neutron' amorality of Liberalism in the strict party-political sense (whether called Liberals, Liberal Democrats, or anything else), and the oscillatory 'proton/electron' amorality between capitalist Conservatism on the one hand and socialist Labourism (Fabianism) on the other - hitherto the chief twentieth-century mode of political amorality in Britain.  Only in a socialist society can such amorality be transcended.  For as soon as one does away with capitalism, there is no need of two or more parties, since pluralism is largely a consequence of economic disparities and could not exist where only moral economics, and therefore a moral political order, held sway.  Where you have a free-electron order, there can be no question of amoral compromises with proton equivalents, still less with a 'neutron' middle-ground in between centrifugal (decentralized) and centripetal (centralized) extremes.  The atom is transcended in the political nuclear fission which makes for a free-electron society, and, lo and behold! morality comes absolutely to pass.

 

221. Books are relatively centrifugal phenomena which open-out in a fan-like way, and consequently they are less moral than immoral or, at best, amoral ... on account of their peculiar construction.  The longest and therefore biggest books are obviously the most immoral, whereas the shortest, smallest books are the least immoral.  Doubtless tapes are the most moral (because centripetal) means of conveying verbal information to people, and any writer who values morality will sooner or later want his work transposed to tape.  But, of course, only short works can be fully transposed to tape without there being too many tapes involved, and consequently it is unlikely that the writer of long books would get his work on tape, which is probably just as well, since, morally speaking, it would be illogical for one 'so far gone' in book immorality to seek redemption in such a centripetal fashion.  Only the writer of short books is morally entitled, it seems to me, to have his work transposed to tape and thus morally upgraded for the benefit, in decades to come, of a morally more sensitive and demanding public.  In short, a petty-bourgeois/proletarian overlap as opposed to a grand-bourgeois kind of large book isolation in irredeemable bookishness, the product of a deeply centrifugal mentality, like that of John Cowper Powys - author of some of the longest novels in the English language.

 

222. A white man is only truly above racism on the day he discovers that he would be prepared to take a black or a coloured woman to bed.

 

223. The trouble with woman is that, in consequence of her comparative (in relation to men) physical weakness, she is more disposed to hit a man when he is down than when he is up!

 

224. Yin and Yang, feminine and masculine, appearance and essence, protons and electrons, centrifugal and centripetal, nature and civilization, illusion and truth, fact and fiction - a whole range of polar dichotomies which are in constant friction as the world devolves from the alpha absolute and evolves towards the omega absolute in the unfolding of its destiny.  Comparatively speaking, woman is an illusory fact and man a truthful fiction, since the one is a given and the other a becoming, like nature and civilization.  The given devolves from cosmic doing (proton-proton reactions), whereas the becoming evolves towards supercosmic being (electron-electron attractions), and the world is the devolutionary/evolutionary atomic stage upon which the tragicomedy of human struggle is played out.  Of course, women can and do take part in the becoming and men, by contrast, in the given, but that is rather the exception to the rule within strictly worldly parameters.  Most women, now as before, are more of the given than of the becoming, just as most men are more of the becoming than of the given, and so it will continue until the world comes to an end and all the given gives way to doing in the 'Kingdom of Hell', and all becoming, in turn, makes way for being in the 'Kingdom of Heaven'.  For with the triumph of the masculine ideal, everything feminine will pass from the world and only doing and being remain, a soulful doing and a spiritual being, as germane to Democratic Communism and to Transcendental Communism respectively - fire and light of post-worldly absolutes.

 

225. Just as the best literature is ever fictitious, so the worst literature is ever factual; for fiction pertains to the masculine becoming whereas facts are rooted in the feminine given.  Yet fact and fiction are more a dichotomy of the world, i.e. a relative dichotomy, than a dichotomy outside the world, i.e. an absolute dichotomy, as between that which, as doing, precedes the given and that which, as being, succeeds the becoming - in other words, illusion and truth.  Therefore the absolutely worst writing will be illusory, whereas the absolutely best writing will be truthful, so that illusion and truth may be said to flank fact and fiction as alpha and omega flank the world.  Generally speaking, factual writing is realistic and tends to educate; fictional writing is materialistic and tends to entertain; illusory writing is naturalistic and tends to mystify; and truthful writing is idealistic and tends to enlighten.  Of the literary arts, one might say that drama is comparatively factual, literature (novels and short stories) comparatively fictional, poetry absolutely illusory, and philosophy absolutely truthful.  Though this is by no means always the case in practice!

 

226. However, it would seem that a major elemental antithesis (vertical) can be said to exist between realistic fact (the given) and idealistic truth (being), whereas a minor elemental antithesis (vertical) may be said to exist between materialistic fiction (the becoming) and naturalistic illusion (doing).  Poetry, particularly in its oral manifestation, is the earliest of the literary arts and leads to drama, as doing to the given.  Philosophy, particularly in its theosophical manifestation, is the most recent of the literary arts and stems from literature, as being from the becoming.  Poetry - drama/literature - philosophy: a devolutionary/ evolutionary equation between poetry and drama on the one side (doing - the given), and literature and philosophy on the other side (the becoming - being).  Illusion - fact/fiction - Truth.

 

227. Thus it can be said that one devolves from illusion to fact, but evolves from fiction to truth.  Devolves from poetry to drama, but evolves from literature to philosophy.  The alpha-stemming devolutionary types will prefer poetry and drama to literature and philosophy, whereas the omega-oriented evolutionary types will prefer literature and philosophy to drama and poetry.  Because poetry is, to all intents and purposes, the oldest of the literary arts and philosophy the youngest, drama and literature come in-between, as relevant to a more relative and therefore worldly age.  And this according to an alpha-to-omega, or horizontal, perspective, as opposed to an elemental, or vertical, one, wherein we proceed upwards, as it were, from drama to philosophy via literature and poetry, and therefore can speak of drama as the lowest and philosophy as the highest of the literary arts.

 

228. The very contemporary phenomenon of 'factitious' novel-writing, or novels based on fact rather than conceived in a properly fictional vein, suggests to me a literary decadence wherein true fiction is rendered impossible by dint of the author's overdependence upon fact, whether autobiographical or otherwise.  Instead of progressing towards truth, as the best fictional writing should, such 'factitious' writing indicates a regression to fact, to the given, and often becomes overdramatic. Instead of finding an increasingly masculine emphasis, one finds in these overly realistic novels a strongly feminine element which, whether or not because they are more usually written by women, drags literature back and down towards drama and other kinds of factual writings.  The best and most progressive novels, by contrast, will tend upwards and forwards from fiction to truth, and it would be scant exaggeration to say that, at their most evolved level, they are scarcely distinguishable from philosophy, since more concerned to enlighten than simply to entertain or, worse still, to instruct.

 

229. Between the poet who mystifies and the philosopher who enlightens, there is all the difference in the world between the alpha of illusion and the omega of truth.  But strictly between them is the dramatist who seeks to instruct and the novelist who seeks to entertain.

 

230. Using Spenglerian distinctions in regard to historical epochs, viz. 'Historyless Chaos' (naturalism), 'Culture' (realism), 'Civilization' (materialism), and 'Second Religiousness' (idealism), it could be argued that the poet is par excellence the writer or, at any rate, literary artist of 'Historyless Chaos'; the dramatist  par excellence the writer of 'Culture'; the novelist par excellence the writer of 'Civilization'; and the philosopher par excellence the writer of 'Second Religiousness', even when, as is often the case, poets, dramatists, novelists, and philosophers write out-of-epoch, as it were, albeit within terms roughly corresponding to their rightful epoch - as to a certain extent did the poets Yeats and Pound, who were great mystifiers in an age of entertainment, i.e. fiction.

 

231. Poets and playwrights are often in league together, as, for that matter, are novelists and philosophers.  Indeed, it often transpires that, when the playwright and poet is not one and the same person, the playwright looks up to the poet as to a superior type of writer, just as, when they are not one and the same, the novelist looks up to the philosopher in such fashion.  Yet to look up to an omega-oriented philosopher is one thing; to look up to an alpha-stemming poet quite another!  For in the former instance one must be transvaluated to a degree, whereas in the latter instance one can only be untransvaluated and thus fundamentally alpha stemming oneself, albeit on a more devolved basis.

 

232. In the context of English civilization, the progression or, more correctly, regression/progression from Chaucer to Shakespeare and from Dickens to Russell (Bertrand) is one, corresponding to the Spenglerian epochs, from the most outstanding poet to the most outstanding playwright, and from the most outstanding novelist to the most outstanding philosopher.  For, in its unbroken continuity, English civilization tends to embrace the four epochs in question, viz. 'Historyless Chaos', 'Culture', 'Civilization', and 'Second Religiousness' - from the early Middle Ages through the Elizabethan period to the Victorian era and, with the twentieth century, to the age of Socialism and, consequently, an inceptive or rudimentary mode of 'Second Religiousness'.  (Arguably Communism, and in particular the Transcendental Communism I have described elsewhere, is the more evolved and, hence, truer manifestation of 'Second Religiousness'.)  Thus Chaucer and Shakespeare on the one hand, and Dickens and Russell on the other, with Chaucer and Russell alpha illusion and omega truth respectively of this particular civilization, but Shakespeare and Dickens the 'factual' and fictional worldly giants coming in-between.  Poetic doing, the dramatic given, novelistic becoming, and philosophic being.

 

233. In ancient Greek civilization we have the poetic alpha of Homer and the philosophic omega of Plato, but no real worldly antithesis in between - largely because there were no novelists in ancient Greece, though plenty of dramatists, of whom Sophocles and Aeschylus are among the better known.

 

234. No less than doing extends into the given, being can be found in the becoming.  As doing devolves into the given, so being evolves out of the becoming.  When doing is most itself and alpha stemming, it manifests in speech, that is to say in the oral transmission of poetry; for poetry was spoken long before it was ever written or read, and such speech corresponds, particularly when most passionate, to a strictly alpha-stemming integrity commensurate with cosmic as opposed to worldly parallels, insofar as speech is a thing of the head rather than of the body, and the head - at any rate in its old-brain/subconscious manifestations - corresponds to the cosmos as opposed to the world, i.e. the planet earth.  However, with drama, even when poetic, we have a devolution of doing from the absolute to the relative and its subsequent absorption by the given; for dramatic acting corresponds to the body and thus to the world, and even poetic drama - undoubtedly the highest kind of drama - will be less a thing of the head than poetry-proper, and therefore a diluted or corrupted form of 'poetry' which exists, in relative doing, within the bodily context of the given.  Now the more factual the drama the less poetic it will be and consequently the more purely dramatic, with doing firmly subordinated to the given, which manifests through physical gestures as bodily will.  Poetic drama is thus an accommodation of doing to the world, and the more worldly the drama, i.e. the more it approximates to the given, the less speech there will be and the greater, in consequence, the degree of physical action.  Or, alternatively, the more speech will be subordinated to bodily action, serving merely to explain or justify it.

 

235. Conversely, the being of literary becoming will be firmly subordinated to the becoming, i.e. the narrative, when literature is most true to itself and thus predominantly fictional.  But the more truthful, and hence philosophical, literature becomes, the less subordinate being will be to the becoming until, at the utmost level of philosophical literature, it threatens to break away, as from the relative to the absolute, and so attain to an outright philosophical independence of becoming, which is to say the narrative unfolding of fiction.  Yet even philosophical literature is predominantly literary and thus essentially a manifestation of the becoming rather than a vehicle for being, just as, to take an opposite case, poetic drama (the highest kind of drama) is essentially dramatic and thus a manifestation of the given rather than a vehicle for doing.  Literature cannot transcend the becoming without ceasing to be literary, and so if being is to become manifest in the world it must take an overtly philosophical form, where Truth can be developed to the utmost limits of its intellectual realization, and this being-oriented philosophy will be as much above and beyond philosophical literature as ... doing-oriented poetry was above and before poetic drama.

 

236. Therefore as we pass from fiction to truth with being-in-the-becoming, so we pass beyond fiction to Truth with the become-of-being, which requires a philosophical presentation.  In the philosopher, being attains to its fruition, and he is both the ultimate writer and the end of writing.  Beyond him there can be only the fuller realized being of pure spirit through meditation.  The philosopher is the omega writer, and the ultimate philosopher, or ontological theosophist, most especially so.  His Truth stands in sharp contrast to the Illusion of alpha poets, as being to doing, or the Holy Spirit to the Father.  The omega philosopher is all essence and the alpha poets are all appearance.  He is thought and they are speech.  He is centripetal and they are centrifugal.  He is moral and they are immoral.  He is the End and they are the Beginning.  By contrast, novelists are the-beginning-of-the-end and dramatists the-end-of-the-beginning, bearing in mind the evolutionary and devolutionary distinctions which exist between them.  Now if alpha poets are immoral and omega philosophers moral, then (worldly) dramatists and novelists are alike amoral - the former more usually in a negative (tragic) sense and the latter more often in a positive (comic) sense.  Thus a cosmic immorality to a feminine worldly amorality on the devolutionary side (of poets and dramatists), analogous to the distinction between dresses and skirts, but a masculine worldly amorality to a supercosmic morality on the evolutionary side (of novelists and philosophers), analogous to the distinction between trousers and one-piece zipper suits.

 

237. Poetic naturalism to dramatic realism; novelistic materialism to philosophic idealism.  For naturalism and realism are no less the poetic and dramatic norms ... than materialism and idealism the novelistic and philosophic norms.  The most poetic poetry will be naturalistic and the most dramatic drama realistic.  The most novelistic (narrative) fiction will be materialistic and the most philosophic philosophy idealistic.  The further poetry is from naturalism the less genuinely poetical will it be, whilst, at the opposite extreme, the further philosophy is from idealism the less genuinely philosophical will it be.  In a relatively alpha-stemming (poetic) age, philosophy will be comparatively illusory and thus a sham by any strictly philosophical criterion.  Conversely, in a relatively omega-oriented (philosophic) age, poetry will be comparatively truthful (in the metaphysical sense) and thus a sham by any strictly poetical criterion.  Drama and literature (novels) are only possible in a worldly age or civilization.  For realism and materialism cannot flourish in either naturalistic or idealistic ages, as pertaining to alpha-stemming and omega-oriented extremes.

 

238. To see realism as a revolt against naturalism and idealism as a revolt against materialism, insofar as we are dealing with four broad periods of historical time which correspond to the Spenglerian distinctions between 'Historyless Chaos' and 'Culture' on the one hand, and ... 'Civilization' and 'Second Religiousness' on the other hand.  Clearly the first period is naturalistic because pagan, cosmic, pantheistic, animistic, etc., whereas the second period signifies a humanistic, and hence realistic, revolt against naturalism which takes the form of Christianity and its anthropomorphic associations.  Such a revolt is more marked in Protestantism than in Catholicism, and one could describe Protestantism as an anti-realist realism, in view of its traditional hostility to the Catholic Church.  Certainly it is true that Protestantism indirectly paved the way for the liberal, capitalist materialism to follow, with the development of 'Civilization' (in the Spenglerian sense of that term), and if capitalism is the alpha of this third historical period, then Socialism must assuredly be its omega, a kind of anti-materialist materialism which sets itself up against capitalism much as Protestantism set itself up against Catholicism, and which can only have the effect (so I firmly believe) of indirectly paving the way for the Social Transcendentalist idealism to come - an idealism which will usher in the fourth period, corresponding to 'Second Religiousness', on an appropriately Transcendental Communist note.  Our age is on the verge, it seems to me, of such an idealistic breakthrough, and while Democratic Communism may be more socialist than transcendentalist, nevertheless a truly transcendental type of Communism is in the making and will one day lay claim to its rightful place in the world, in order to usher in the 'Kingdom of Heaven' on earth and the 'reign' of the Second Coming.  Such idealism will be as superior to realism as materialism to naturalism.  For truth is no less superior to fact than fiction to illusion, or, in Spenglerian terms, 'Second Religiousness' is no less superior to 'Culture' than 'Civilization' to 'Historyless Chaos'.  For whilst a parallel certainly exists between being and the given on the one hand and the becoming and doing on the other, being is no less superior to the given than the becoming to doing.  Better the idealistic being which evolves out of the materialistic becoming, than the realistic given which devolves from naturalistic doing.

 

239. With that said, however, all that remains for me to do is to correlate each of the above categories with its corresponding element, i.e. earth, water, fire, air, in order for our elemental spectra to be complete in both a vertical and, as here, an horizontal sense.  Thus as naturalistic doing precedes the realistic given, it should follow that doing correlates with fire and the given with earth, since fire connotes with naturalism and earth with realism.  Similarly we may hold that, as the materialistic becoming precedes idealistic being, the becoming correlates with water and being with air, since water has a materialistic connotation and air an idealistic one.  Hence, to compare the two, we may argue that fire, earth, water, and air is the order of elements corresponding to doing, the given, the becoming, and being, and that, whilst each element co-exists in the world with the others, there is still an overall historical sense in which we have a regression from fire to earth and a progression from water to air, which corresponds to the evolutionary/devolutionary distinction between doing and the given on the one hand, and the becoming and being on the other hand.  Which is no less a regression from heat to darkness in the one context (devolutionary) and a progression from coldness to light in the other context (evolutionary), since heat is to fire and darkness to earth what coldness is to water and light to air - the qualitative aspect of an elemental quantity.

 

240. Therefore whereas naturalistic doing is hot and the realistic given dark, like fire and earth respectively, the materialistic becoming is cold and idealistic being light, like water and air respectively.  Considered in a horizontal sense, heat and light are the qualitative antipodes of life, with darkness and coldness coming in-between.  Heat is illusion and darkness fact.  Coldness is fiction and light truth.  Or, rather, fire is illusion and earth fact.  Water is fiction and air truth.  For heat is agony and darkness fear.  Coldness is hope and light joy.  Quantities connote with quantities and qualities with qualities, and the two should never be confounded!

 

241. Fire is the element of poets, whose doing is illusory.  Earth is the element of playwrights, whose given is factual.  Water is the element of novelists, whose becoming is fictional.  Air is the element of philosophers, whose being is truthful.

 

242. It is ridiculous to equate Socialism with internationalism, as though only Socialism were internationalist.  Countries have been international for centuries ... almost since the beginning of nation-state time, since it is impossible for nations to exist in 'splendid isolation' from one another as so many independent units.  The only difference between now and then was that in the past the relationship between countries was more competitive and violent than it generally tends to be these days, and although wars and other forms of international violence have not ceased to occur, nonetheless we live in an age when international exchanges are normally conducted on a more co-operative and peaceful basis than was formerly the case, with a result that the world is slowly becoming positively as opposed to negatively internationalist, which is to say internationalist in a co-operative or socialist fashion.  Yet competitiveness still exists and will doubtless continue to do so for as long as capitalism and other forms of alpha-stemming immorality prevail, which will probably continue to be the case for some time to come, bearing in mind the relative nature of the world and, indeed, of all human life.  Which is not to say that we can't ever get to a stage when only co-operation prevails (since that would be to rule out all possibility of moral progress), but, rather, that the struggle against centrifugal immorality can only be long and hard, given the facts of atomic existence.  Probably there will always be some degree of capitalism even in the best of (socialist) worlds, though more in the form of low-key private enterprise on or off the 'black market' than in the form of widespread capitalist freedoms in countries as a whole.  For as long as capitalist countries continue to exist, there will be no true co-operative internationalism but only competitive internationalism or, at best, a compromise between co-operative and competitive economics.

 

243. Colour television can only have the effect, after a while, of breaking down and counteracting our dependence on print.  For the more one watches colour television, the less one will want to read a book (with its black characters on a white page).  Only a black-and-white television can be expected to psychologically harmonize with print, and, to reverse the argument, one could maintain that for compulsive bookworms who yet have some time for TV, a black-and-white television is probably a better idea than a colour one - provided one wishes to retain a respect for print!

 

244. However that may be, if it is doubtful that colour television and print go together, there can be no doubt that colour books, i.e. books with colour reproductions, will harmonize with colour television, and probably be the favourite if not the only reading matter of people habituated to watching it.  And, doubtless, such books are as superior to conventional books with black print on white paper as colour television to its black-and-white counterpart.  Doubtless, too, we should associate colour magazines with video, regarding them as a kind of extrapolation from colour books and a suitable form of reading matter for people who prefer video to television.

 

245. I find it difficult not to believe that a man's sexual ego is primarily conditioned by the size of his penis, so that the bigger the penis the bigger the sexual ego and, conversely, the smaller the penis the smaller the sexual ego, with due gradations of what may be termed average sexual ego coming in-between.  Similarly, it seems just as credible to believe that a woman's sexual ego will depend to a quite significant extent on the size of her breasts, so that small breasts will make for a comparatively small sexual ego and large breasts, by contrast, for a comparatively large one.  Doubtless men with small sexual egos will generally prefer the company of women with small sexual egos and, conversely, men with large sexual egos the company of women whose sexual egos are large, since like is attracted to like and it is rather unlikely that a man with a small penis would wish to impose himself upon a woman with large breasts or, alternatively, that a man with a large penis would turn a blind eye to a woman with large breasts in preference for one whose breasts were scarcely perceptible.  Yet, exceptions notwithstanding, it cannot be denied that sexual egos are physically conditioned, since sex is itself physical and like begets like.  Neither need we suppose that a small sexual ego is necessarily a misfortune or that a large one is inevitably fortunate.  The person with a small sexual ego is more likely to have a large intellectual or spiritual one, and to look down upon the sexually egocentric person as a sort of semi-beast incapable of true intellectual or spiritual accomplishment; for it cannot be denied that men with small penises and women with small breasts are usually endowed with big heads, metaphorically speaking, and pride themselves less on being physical than spiritual.  One could even go so far as to say that unless a man has a small penis or a woman small breasts, there is relatively little prospect of his/her achieving anything much in the way of intellectual, cultural, religious, or artistic endeavour, since these things of the spirit presuppose a spiritual predilection, which in turn presupposes a comparatively small sexual ego - else where or how would one find the time or inclination to dedicate oneself to them?  Truly, the highest men are not born to fornicate but to avoid fornication, and, as Baudelaire aptly says: 'The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates'.  Yet, for my part, I say: that man will better cultivate the arts who, for physical reasons, has a small sexual ego to begin with!

 

246. Work stems from doing; play aspires towards being.  Work, as a rule, is centrifugal and objective; play, by contrast, centripetal and subjective.  Work is a curse that has to be escaped from ... through play.  For only in play does one come to know the 'Kingdom of Heaven' which Christ spoke of in connection with little children, who of course play.  The highest play, however, will be the most centripetal and subjective, and the highest civilization that which has the most play (of the highest order) and the least work.  For, eventually, play must completely triumph over work if salvation is to come truly to pass.  An electron absolute as opposed to an atomic relativity between proton work and electron play.  However, such an absolute will only be fully achieved in the Millennium, and then on the basis of post-human evolution.

 

247. Since I have equated work with doing and play with being, I should now like to distinguish between natural work and artificial work on the one hand and natural play and artificial play on the other, reserving for natural work the equation with doing and for artificial play the equation with being, but introducing two new equations in the form of natural play with the given and artificial work with the becoming, so that, from a simple doing/being antithesis between work and play, we progress to the more comprehensive antitheses between doing and the given on the one hand, and the becoming and being on the other, with natural work and play appertaining to the former antithesis, but artificial work and play to the latter one.  Therefore if natural work is alone equated with doing and, hence, an inherently alpha-stemming naturalistic age or society, commensurate with Spengler's 'Historyless Chaos', only artificial play should be equated with being and thus an inherently omega-oriented idealistic age or society such as will correspond to Spengler's (period of) 'Second Religiousness'.  By contrast, natural play should only be equated with the given and, hence, with a realistic age or society corresponding to Spengler's 'Culture', whereas artificial work should be equated with the becoming and therefore with a materialistic age or society commensurate with Spengler's 'Civilization' - the modern age par excellence, in which artificial work is the work and the industrial worker the representative figure.

 

248. Although natural work (manual labour, farm labour, etc.) and natural play (sex, sport, etc.) still of course exist, we live in an increasingly artificial age which has its fulcrum, so to speak, in artificial work (mechanical, industrial, technological, commercial), in accordance with materialistic criteria.  Such an age is akin to a second alpha in that it reflects, on higher terms, the first alpha age (of natural work), and stands in opposition to the first omega age (of natural play) as a kind of historical fall from the given to the becoming or, what amounts to the same, from realism to materialism.  If a second omega age is to emerge it can only do so at the expense of this second alpha age, and in terms of the most artificial play such that being attains to full maturity as idealism supersedes materialism in the interests of universal salvation.  Such artificial play, commensurate, amongst other things, with synthetically-induced visionary experience, will be as superior to the materialistically-compromised artificial play of television and video as essence to appearance or, in natural terms, visions to dreams, and lead towards the ultimate being of a truly divine play, such that no compromise with work of any description would be either desirable or, indeed, possible.  For work is ever immoral in relation to play, which, at its most being-oriented heights, attains to the true morality of God.

 

249. Burial of the dead stands between the alpha-stemming funeral pyre and the omega-oriented cremation as a kind of worldly norm suitable to a bodily (as opposed to a head) people and/or age.  There are two types of burial: on land and at sea, and whereas the former is realistic, the latter is materialistic.  In fact, burial on land, i.e. in the earth, stands to the funeral pyre as realism to naturalism or, in Spenglerian parlance, as 'Culture' to 'Historyless Chaos', while burial at sea stands to cremation as materialism to idealism, or 'Civilization' to 'Second Religiousness'.  Therefore realism and materialism are flanked, here as elsewhere, by naturalism and idealism respectively - doing and being as alpha and omega extremes either side of the given and the becoming, or, in concrete terms, burial on land and burial at sea.  Ours is an age when all kinds of waste, human and non-human, is dumped into the sea - people being, for the most part, either buried on land, i.e. in cemeteries, or cremated.  Doubtless as land becomes increasingly expensive and more sought-after for other purposes, not to mention in shorter supply as the population continues to increase, burial will be totally eclipsed by cremation, and especially would this be the case in a post-worldly and therefore omega-oriented age, when all forms of burial, including the dumping of non-human waste at sea, would be frowned upon as incompatible with the moral requirements of such an idealistic time - a time when waste is for the most part incinerated rather than buried or dumped, and the becoming duly gives way to being.

 

250i.  And they asked him: What is evil? And he replied: That which, as the negative given, engenders or is engendered by pain.

    ii.  So they asked him: What, then, is good? And he replied: That which, as the positive given, engenders or is engendered by pleasure.

    iii. And they asked him: What is weakness? And he replied: That which, as the negative becoming, engenders or is engendered by humiliation.

    iv.  So they asked him: What, then, is strength? And he replied: That which, as the positive becoming, engenders or is engendered by pride.

 

251i.  And they asked him: What is ugly? And he replied: That which, as negative doing, engenders or is engendered by hate.

    ii.  So they asked him: What, then, is beauty? And he replied: That which, as positive doing, engenders or is engendered by love.

    iii. And they asked him: What is illusion? And he replied: That which, as negative being, engenders or is engendered by sorrow.

    iv.  So they asked him: What, then, is truth? And he replied: That which, as positive being, engenders or is engendered by joy.

 

252i.  Truth is the appearance of joy; joy the essence of truth.

    ii.  Beauty is the appearance of love; love the essence of beauty.

    iii. Strength is the appearance of pride; pride the essence of strength.

    iv.  Goodness is the appearance of pleasure; pleasure the essence of goodness.

 

253i. Conversely, evil is the appearance of pain; pain the essence of evil.

    ii.  Weakness is the appearance of humiliation; humiliation the essence of weakness.

    iii. Ugliness is the appearance of hate; hate the essence of ugliness.

    iv.  Illusion is the appearance of sorrow; sorrow the essence of illusion.

 

254. If we do not literally see the world as it is, that is only because the mind superimposes a layer of psychic conditioning upon what we do see, so that it is intelligible in the context of prior understanding.  I see a dictionary on my table because I know, from experience, what a dictionary is and where it stands, practically speaking, in relation to the table.  Were I to see it purely, without prior conditioning, I wouldn't know what to make of it, any more than a cat or a dog would know what to make of something of which it had no prior understanding.  Seeing objects within the world purely, that is to say, without reference to prior knowledge of what they are, would be akin to how an animal generally sees things, would in fact be to lose one's mind and thus be baffled or even horrified by what one saw, simply because one had no idea of its meaning or purpose.  Now if an animal can live with such a state-of-affairs, that is only because it is relatively unintelligent and not unduly curious about man-made objects.  For us, on the other hand, pure seeing is, short of madness, virtually impossible because we have too much mind and could not live in the world without projecting onto what we see our knowledge of it.  Certainly, knowledge does not come to us from objects, but is applied by us to the objects which constitute our daily world.  My pen is only a 'pen' because I know what a pen is and recognize what I am holding in my hand as such.  The subject conditions the object, not vice versa.

 

255. Everything that is alpha stemming and natural is comparatively easy; it is the artificial and omega-oriented tendencies which require some effort, an effort which we define in terms of civilization, with its rules of conduct.  Thus it is easy to hate; any fool can hate because hate is an alpha-stemming tendency.  But to love takes culture and civilization, because love is an omega-oriented tendency which is more the product of evolutionary effort than of natural disposition.  It is harder to 'turn the other cheek' than to strike back, and yet how superior is the person who can do that, in relation to the one who behaves in a natural alpha-stemming, and hence heathen, way!

 

256. The old division, well-known to philosophy, between the deniers of life and the affirmers of life should be settled, once and for all, on the basis of an alpha-stemming/omega-oriented dichotomy.  For denial, being negative, is alpha stemming and thus of a proton bias, whereas affirmation, being positive, is omega orientated and thus of an electron bias.  The alpha-stemming person is therefore as likely to deny life, whether in the philosophic spirit of Schopenhaurian resignation or in some other cruder way, as the omega-oriented person to affirm it, whether in the philosophic spirit of a Nietzschean amor fati or in some other cruder way.  There can be no question, to judge from a transvaluated standpoint, of life affirmation being folly or immoral or in some way contrary to spiritual wellbeing, although there are certainly different ways of affirming it, not all of which would be guaranteed to appeal to an enlightened person!  In fact, the more enlightened the person, the less likelihood there is of his affirming life in terms, say, of 'worldly' pleasure or 'purgatorial' pride or even of 'diabolic' love, since he will prefer the idealistic option of 'divine' joy, achieved or furthered through the agency of truth.

 

257. For here, as elsewhere, there are four main spectra of life affirmation, corresponding to the elements and stretching from realism at the bottom to idealism at the top (with materialism and naturalism lying in-between), and whether one primarily affirms the lowest or the highest or, indeed, either of the intermediate spectra, will depend, to a significant extent, upon the type of person one is and the nature of the age or society in which one happens to live.  Certainly the twentieth century was more an age, particularly in the West, of life affirmation through pleasure and pride than through love or joy, although these higher modes of its affirmation were nevertheless endorsed by a more enlightened minority in the face of majority pressures, even if, in the circumstances, their endorsement necessarily fell short of maximum realization, such as could only materialize in a higher and better age - one more communist than liberal.  Yet not to affirm life in this day and age would be a moral failing, though one could be forgiven for choosing to deny the baser manifestations of life affirmation in favour of a superior, if currently untypical, manifestation of its affirmation, even at the risk of being misunderstood by or ostracized from a society largely dedicated, when not denying life through overwork, to the pursuit of worldly pleasures.

 

258. One such worldly pleasure is undoubtedly sex, and if one chooses, in one's wisdom, to deny sex a central or important role in one's life it is probably because one prefers to affirm some higher ideal than pleasure, rather than because one is a denier of life as such and thus somewhat morally disreputable, i.e. more alpha stemming than omega orientated, and therefore more negative (of a proton bias) than positive (of an electron bias).  I prefer, at any rate, to regard myself as the affirmer of a higher ideal than pleasure, which doubtless owes not a little to the fact that I am more of a truthful man, or man of the truth, than a good man, or man of the good act, on account of my being less a body than a head.  Certainly I am not of the world, in the sense of being a bodily pleasure-seeking insider in such a typically worldly country as Britain, but, like Christ, am more a man of Heaven or God beyond and above the world, who knows that before Heaven can become a fact of the Beyond it must first become a fact of life on earth, and thus eventually supersede or eclipse the world, i.e. the bodily way of life.

 

259. Yet Heaven is quite a long way from coming to earth at present, which is why people like me, who prefer joy to pleasure, and therefore truth to goodness, can only be outsiders in the kind of society they happen to inhabit - secret or open opponents of worldly life as they find it all around them.  For such a society puts a premium on pleasure, which, like it or not, is the lowest form of life affirmation, a form incapable of expansion towards the Infinite by dint of its bodily limitations and/or essence.  Take sexual pleasure, for instance.  However a man may achieve this - and masturbation is avowedly no less a method than copulation - the end result is equally finite; the pleasure is transitory and brings in its train hours if not days of pain - the pain, more usually, of sore pudenda or, speaking more bluntly, achy balls.  Ejaculation engenders a kind of uncomfortable hotness in the testicles which is the physical price one pays for the metaphysical pleasure of ejaculating, and, on balance, it will be found that the ratio of pleasure to pain is not such as to warrant too regular a recourse to ejaculation since, quite apart from the obvious physical impossibility of ejaculating too frequently, the degree of pleasure is comparatively less than the amount of pain, discomfort, etc., resulting from the act.  Now this is primarily because the atomicity of the testicles, as of the flesh generally, is constituted in such a way that the capacity for pain will always be greater than the capacity for pleasure since, in its alpha-stemming (naturalistic) constitution, such an atomicity will be more biased towards protons than electrons, and thus disposed to the negative to a greater extent than to the positive, i.e. to pain to a greater extent than to pleasure, which, by contrast, requires an electron preponderance.  Such a preponderance, it need hardly be said, can only be achieved in the brain, particularly the new brain, and more in consequence of psychic conditioning than from any innate disposition of electrons over protons, so that creating a capacity for greater pleasure or, rather, joy ... is largely an individual matter, dependent upon our ability to develop and expand consciousness to greater heights as we evolve.

 

260. Thus whereas the atomicity of the body is static, the atomicity of the brain can be modified and transmuted towards an electron preponderance which, the more evolved the psyche, will permit of a degree of positivity far in excess of the degree accruing, as pleasure, to the body and, in this particular case, the pleasure obtainable from ejaculation.  Such pleasure is finite, but the joy which can be achieved through careful mental nurturing intimates of the Infinite - indeed, is a foretaste of the heavenly condition, and one, moreover, which will not bring a greater degree of sadness in its wake, since the capacity for negativity is less in the new brain than the capacity for positivity on account of the reduced proton content accruing to that brain and thus, by implication, to superconscious mind.  The old brain may not be so favourably disposed to a positive bias - and rare indeed are dreams which, by dint of a strong positive content, make for happiness - but the new brain is an entirely different proposition, and the more we cultivate the superconscious at the expense not only of the subconscious but of the body in general, the greater becomes its capacity for joy.  At the risk of seeming too futuristic, it could be said that only when the new brain is rendered physically independent of both the body and the old brain in what I like to think of as the second phase of the post-Human Millennium, will the capacity for positivity be increased to a near absolute point - one presaging transcendence and thus the attainment of pure electron spirit to perfect bliss in the heavenly Beyond, where only electron-electron attractions would  exist ... in blessed independence of proton sorrow for all Eternity.

 

261. Of course, all this takes us rather a long way from the present, and thus from the discussion of relative positivities which we have embarked upon.  But, relative creatures though we are, we still aspire towards the absolute and thereby seek salvation from the negative on a variety of levels, some of which, as already remarked, are rather less satisfying than others on account of their dependence on the flesh and its unchanging atomicity.  Certainly, Schopenhauer was right to belittle pleasure in relation to pain, since pain is much stronger than pleasure, and we can even regress to a negative absolute in the event of being burnt to death.  Yet we would not be furthering evolutionary progress and serving ourselves were we to draw the sort of pessimistic conclusions from that fact which Schopenhauer, in his alpha-stemming bias, saw fit to do, and thereby resigned ourselves to defeatism in the face of a preponderating negativity.  For the flesh is not everything, and while we may still have a long way to go before we can completely transcend it, the mind beckons us towards that joyful wisdom which Nietzsche glimpsed in his moments of optimistic enlightenment, when light banished darkness, and happiness came flooding through like an intimation of eternal bliss.  There is no higher positive than the joyful positive, and one day all humanity will come to it as, one by one, the lower positives are eclipsed, and all negativity is accordingly banished.

 

262. The reader will note that I made mention of joyful positive in relation to lower positives rather than of joyful wisdom in relation to lower wisdoms, and this was because, while joy is certainly a wisdom, indeed the highest wisdom, love and pride and less wisdoms than follies, and pleasure is only a worldly wisdom.  In fact, if we remember that wisdom can be both negative and positive, not to mention folly as well, then we won't hesitate to distinguish between the joyful wisdom of a divine omega orientation in relation to the sorrowful wisdom of a divine alpha orientation, equating the former with an electron-wavicle bias and the latter with a proton-wavicle one, as befitting divine idealism.  In this respect both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer were wise philosophers - the only difference being that whereas Schopenhauer was wise in a negative, life-denying way, Nietzsche's wisdom (at least up until he went insane) took a positive, life-affirming stance, so that whereas the former was alpha stemming, the latter was omega orientated.

 

263. Such a polar distinction as accrues to the idealistic spectrum of heavenly wisdom will also accrue to each of the lower spectra, from the naturalistic and materialistic to the realistic, except that the distinction in regard to naturalism and materialism will be between different kinds of folly, while the distinction in regard to realism will be between two kinds of worldly wisdom, broadly definable in terms of stoicism and hedonism respectively, as pertaining to pain at the negative pole and to pleasure at the positive one.  If the idealistic spectrum affords us two kinds of pure wisdom on account of the wavicle absolutism which equally pertains to its proton and electron poles, then the realistic spectrum presents us with two kinds of impure, or worldly, wisdom on account of the atomic relativity accruing to the wavicle bias of both its proton-atomic and electron-atomic poles, i.e. wavicle-biased proton-atomic relativity in the case of the negative, or alpha-stemming, realistic pole; wavicle-biased electron-atomic relativity in the case of the positive, or omega-oriented, realistic pole - the former connoting with pain and the latter with pleasure.  Thus idealism and realism afford us the clash of two modes of wisdom, whether negative or positive, rather than, say, of wisdom on the one hand (idealism) and folly on the other (realism) - the wisdom, one might argue, of air and earth respectively or, translated into political terms, of Ireland and Britain, Catholicism and Liberalism.  For wisdom can only be deduced from a wavicle bias, such as both idealism and realism have in common.

 

264. Where a particle bias is concerned, however, we are in the realm of folly, whether in terms of the pure folly of a particle absolutism, such as accrues to naturalism, or the impure, or purgatorial, folly of a particle-biased atomic relativity, as in the case of materialism.  Thus hate and love are antithetical manifestations of pure folly, the former negative, as pertaining to a proton-particle absolutism, and the latter positive, as pertaining to an electron-particle absolutism within the overall context of a naturalistic (diabolic) spectrum.  Likewise, humiliation and pride are antithetical manifestations of impure folly, the former negative, since accruing to a particle-biased atomic-proton relativity, but the latter positive, since accruing to a particle-biased atomic-electron relativity, each of which pertain, as alpha and omega, to a materialistic spectrum.  Consequently naturalism and materialism afford us the clash of two modes of folly, whether negative or positive, rather than, say, of wisdom on the one hand and folly on the other, the folly, one could argue, of fire and water respectively or, translated into contemporary political terms, the former Soviet Union and the United States - the one state socialist and the other corporate capitalist.

 

265. Now whereas pure folly is diabolic, whether in negative (Satanic) or positive (Antichristic) terms, impure folly is purgatorial, whether in negative or positive terms, and consequently apt to be more intellectual than soulful.  By contrast, pure wisdom is divine and impure wisdom worldly, the one flanking pure folly above and the other flanking impure folly beneath, as air and earth may be said to flank fire and water respectively.  Now whereas divine wisdom is spiritual, worldly wisdom is wilful, using that term in the sense of focusing on bodily will.  Hence we should distinguish not only between the worldly wisdom, say, of the British in relation to the divine wisdom of Catholic Ireland, but also between the lunar folly of the Americans in relation to the diabolic folly of the Russians.  For neither can be described as wise societies, in view of their materialistic and naturalistic bents.  If the Americans conquered the moon, it could well be the Russians who eventually conquer the sun or, at any rate, the planet Venus.  However that may be, the distinction between wisdom and folly derives from a wavicle/particle dichotomy and therefore is not polar, in the sense that alpha and omega are polar.  On the contrary, we can only distinguish between negative wisdom and positive wisdom on a polar basis, as regarding alpha and omega divine or worldly antitheses.  And the same of course applies to folly, albeit with regard to alpha and omega diabolic or purgatorial antitheses, as described above.

 

266. When we come to the distinction between virtue and vice, however, we can and must distinguish the one from the other on a polar basis, because here we are dealing with terms which, having to do with moral and immoral conduct, can be deduced from or equated with a centrifugal/centripetal dichotomy, and this is the alpha and omega of each of our elemental spectra.  Consequently, no less than there is such a thing as vicious pure wisdom in relation to virtuous pure wisdom, or alpha sorrow in relation to omega joy, there is virtuous pure folly in relation to vicious pure folly, or omega love in relation to alpha hate - the first pair of opposites divine and the second pair diabolic, as germane to idealism and naturalism respectively.  Likewise, no less than there is such a thing as vicious impure wisdom in relation to virtuous impure wisdom, or alpha pain (stoicism) in relation to omega pleasure (hedonism), there is virtuous impure folly in relation to vicious impure folly, or omega pride in relation to alpha humiliation - the third pair of opposites worldly and the fourth pair purgatorial, as germane to realism and materialism respectively.  The vicious is alpha stemming and, hence, centrifugal, whereas the virtuous is omega orientated and, hence, centripetal.  Sorrow and joy, hate and love, humiliation and pride, pain and pleasure - each of these alpha and omega options can be regarded in a vicious/virtuous light, although the degree to which vice or virtue may be attributed to the relevant pole of any given pair of opposites will depend on whether we are considering that pole in terms of natural or artificial alternatives, i.e. whether we are dealing with, say, alpha (natural spectrum) or alpha-in-the-omega (artificial spectrum), or, conversely, with omega (artificial spectrum) or omega-in-the-alpha (natural spectrum).  For whereas the alpha will be unequivocally centrifugal and thus absolutely immoral, alpha-in-the-omega will be compromised by the centripetal bias of the omega or, more correctly, the artificial spectrum in relation to omega, and therefore be only relatively immoral.  Likewise, whereas the omega will be unequivocally centripetal and thus absolutely moral, omega-in-the-alpha will be compromised by the centrifugal bias of the natural spectrum in relation to alpha, and therefore be only relatively moral.

 

267. Thus if sorrow corresponds to the negative (vicious) divine pole in contrast to joy at the positive (virtuous) divine pole, then sorrow is immoral and joy moral.  But as immorality and morality can be absolute or relative, one would have to distinguish between sorrow-for-others and sorrow-for-oneself (self-pity) on the basis of an alpha/alpha-in-the-omega division, with the former mode of sorrow being absolutely immoral because unequivocally centrifugal ('others' being an objective focus of one's sorrow), but the latter mode relatively immoral because compromised by the centripetal bias of the artificial spectrum in relation to omega ('oneself' being a subjective focus of one's sorrow), and this would enable us to perceive not only the natural/artificial distinction between sorrow-for-others and sorrow-for-oneself, but, more importantly, that self-pity was a more evolved and therefore less immoral form of negative divine emotion than pity directed toward others.  Conversely, we would have to distinguish between joy-for-others and joy-for-oneself on the basis of an omega-in-the-alpha/omega divide, with the former being relatively moral because compromised by the centrifugal bias of the natural spectrum in relation to alpha ('others' being an objective focus of one's joy), but the latter absolutely moral because unequivocally centripetal ('oneself' being a subjective focus of one's joy) - a distinction which, as with sorrow, enables us to equate the one kind of joy with the natural spectrum and the other kind with the artificial spectrum, and to perceive self-joy as an altogether more purely moral spiritual ideal than joy for others.

 

268. Naturally, what applies to the alpha and omega poles of the divine, or idealistic, spectrum in both its natural and artificial (supernatural) manifestations, applies just as much to each of the other three elemental spectra in like-fashion, since they are also susceptible to an immoral/moral polarity which will be either absolutely or relatively the case, depending on the pole in question.  Thus hatred-for/of-others contrasts as diabolic (naturalistic) alpha with love-of/for-others as diabolic (naturalistic) omega-in-the-alpha of the natural diabolic spectrum, the former absolutely immoral and the latter relatively moral, whereas self-hatred contrasts as diabolic alpha-in-the-omega with self-love as diabolic omega of the artificial diabolic spectrum, the former relatively immoral and the latter absolutely moral.  Both of these poles correspond, as we have seen, to folly rather than to wisdom, but they do so on antithetical terms, with vicious (negative) and virtuous (positive) distinctions respectively.  So do the purgatorial (materialistic) poles of humiliation and pride - humiliation-towards-others contrasting as alpha purgatorial with pride-of-others as omega-in-the-alpha of the natural purgatorial spectrum, while self-humiliation contrasts as alpha-in-the-omega with self-pride as omega of the artificial purgatorial spectrum.  But the worldly poles of pain and pleasure are of course wise, to the extent that we are dealing with a wavicle bias in connection with this (realistic) spectrum, and whilst inflicting pain on others is absolutely immoral on account of its identification with worldly alpha, causing-oneself-pain is relatively immoral on account of its identification with alpha-in-the-omega.  By contrast, causing-others-pleasure is only relatively moral in relation to self-pleasure, insofar as the one has to do with omega-in-the-(worldly)-alpha while the other has to do with the worldly omega as such - the former compromised by the centrifugal bias of the natural realistic spectrum in relation to alpha, the latter unequivocally moral on account of the centripetal bias of the artificial realistic spectrum in relation to omega.  And, in every case, the omega position of positive self-indulgence is morally superior to the omega-in-the-alpha position of positively indulging others, whereas the alpha-in-the-omega position of negative self-indulgence is less immoral than the alpha position of negatively indulging others.  Morality is subjective, immorality objective.  Whether we call the one positive, virtuous, or centripetal, and the other negative, vicious, or centrifugal, the situation remains the same, as between essential and apparent antagonists.

 

269. Having dealt with the immoral and moral poles of each of the elemental spectra, I should briefly like to turn my attention to the comparatively amoral positions in between, and to contend that similar negative and positive distinctions will apply to them in view of their antithetical constitutions either side of a proton/electron divide, constitutions which owe something, though not everything, to the wider polar antitheses which flank them.

 

270. Thus, taking the divine (idealistic) spectrum first, we shall find that guilt and innocence are the two principal amoral positions in between sorrow on the one hand and joy on the other, and that no less than guilt is a consequence of sorrow, innocence is a precondition of joy (Christ's injunction to become as little children), both of which feelings can be either more or less amoral depending on whether they take place within the naturalistic context of being-towards-others, i.e. guilty towards others/innocent towards others, or, alternatively, within the artificial context of being self-centred, i.e. self-guilt/self-innocence, so that we are distinguishing, once again, between absolutely and relatively amoral positions.  Of course, this applies no less to the distinction between contempt and respect in relation to hate and love, respectively, on the diabolic (naturalistic) spectrum, as to that between, say, doubt and confidence in relation to humiliation and pride on the purgatorial (materialistic) spectrum, not to mention fear and hope in relation to pain and pleasure on the worldly (realistic) spectrum.  For these intermediate types of feelings are just as susceptible to a dualistic others/self manifestation as their immoral and moral counterparts, and we can gauge the degree and type of amorality involved according to whether objective or subjective reference-points are at issue in any given context, negative amoral feelings like guilt, contempt, doubt, and fear being either absolute or relative, depending on whether they take place vis-à-vis others or oneself; and the same of course applying to positive amoral feelings such as innocence, respect, confidence, and hope.  Not only are such feelings either post- or pre-conditions of their respective immoral and moral poles; they are to some extent also attenuations of and alternatives to them, and therefore more the psychic norm for people whose feeling spectrum is less extreme than middle ground, or moderate.

 

271. Only a muddled thinker like Dame Vera Alder would make an antithesis, as she does in her book Secrets of the Atomic Age, between involution and evolution, deeming the one commensurate with a fall from God into the cruder atoms of the material world, and the other commensurate with a return to God (not incidentally an advancement to the Holy Spirit so much as a return to the Creator), as man refines upon the atoms of his mind.  Not only is she wrong to use the word 'involution' in relation to evolution in this way, she fails to see that involution and evolution go together as two aspects of the same progressive tendency.  For evolution is involutional to the extent that progress manifests a centro-complexifying tendency in loyalty to its centripetal essence.  You can no more speak of involution and evolution as antithetical ... than of devolution and convolution as such.  For devolution is no less convolutional than evolution is involutional, and consequently the only valid antithesis to involution is convolution.  Had she spoken of a devolutionary/evolutionary antithesis or even of a convolutional/involutional one, all would have been well, logically speaking.  Unfortunately, Vera Alder's 'antithesis' was as paradoxically improbable as it is possible to be ... short of settling for convolution and devolution instead!

 

272. But devolution from the alpha is one thing, evolution towards the omega quite another, and no more resembles a return to the alpha than devolution could possibly resemble a progression towards the omega.  We evolve, as I have elsewhere shown, towards a level of divinity, or supreme condition of being, which is as far removed from the primal level of divinity, in the Creator, as it is possible to be - a level which, as electron-electron attractions, contrasts absolutely with the proton-proton reactions at the roots of the Universe ... from which the majority of stars and all of the planets derive.

 

273. Whereas the proton content of the old brain corresponds to alpha, the electron content of the old brain corresponds to omega-in-the-alpha.  And whereas the electron content of the new brain corresponds to omega, the proton content of the new brain corresponds to alpha-in-the-omega.  In the old brain a preponderating proton content and a subordinate electron content.  In the new brain, by contrast, a preponderating electron content and a subordinate proton content.  Thus the subconscious, which is a psychic substratum of the old brain, can be both negative and positive, biased towards protons or electrons, but, as a rule, it will be more negative than positive, particularly in a young and therefore relatively less-evolved head.  Likewise the superconscious, which is a psychic substratum of the new brain, can be both negative and positive, biased towards protons or electrons, but, as a rule, it will be more positive than negative, particularly in an older and therefore relatively more-evolved head.  Negative subconscious is alpha, positive subconscious omega-in-the-alpha.  Positive superconscious is omega, negative superconscious alpha-in-the-omega.  Negative subconscious is pagan, positive subconscious Christian.  Positive superconscious is communist (transcendental), negative superconscious fascist (neo-pagan).  The Second Coming operates on both negative and positive terms or, more precisely, there is a negative Second Coming (fascist) and a positive Second Coming (communist), and whereas the one is false, the other is true.

 

274. The trouble with smoking is that it obliges one to accept fire as one lights one's cigarette, and thereby compromises one with alpha to the extent that a match or wick has been lit.  There is a kind of open-society, alpha-stemming accommodation of flame involved with smoking which could only prove morally unacceptable to those whose ideological integrity is essentially closed society and omega orientated - in other words, to those who regard flame as beneath their moral pale.  That alone would be a good enough reason why not to smoke, quite apart from considerations of expense, health, social standing, etc.  Yet even if recourse to flame can never be truly moral, we can still distinguish, relatively speaking, between four different modes or levels of striking flame for purposes of smoking, and accord them a separate status either as alpha, omega-in-the-alpha, alpha-in-the-omega, or omega, depending on the means employed.  In other words, we shall have to distinguish between lighting, say, a cigarette with the aid of matches and lighting one with the aid of a lighter, and then further distinguish between a box of matches as alpha (on account of its convolutional construction - the box being effectively a somewhat horizontal, centrifugal phenomenon) and a strip of matches as alpha-in-the-omega (on account of the involutional compromise imposed upon the matches by the strip which, in contrast to a box, is effectively a kind of vertical, centripetal phenomenon), next proceeding to contrast each of these with a distinction between horizontally-biased (usually metallic) lighters as omega-in-the-alpha (on account of the convolutional compromise suggested by their horizontal bias) and vertically-biased (usually plastic) lighters as omega (on account of the involutional connotation of their vertical bias).  Thus if the alpha is immoral and the omega moral, then alpha-in-the-omega and omega-in-the-alpha are each, in this context, comparatively amoral, the one negatively and the other positively, as between centrifugal and centripetal attributes.  Use of a box of matches would therefore be comparatively immoral in relation to use of a strip of matches, which, as alpha-in-the-omega, corresponds to negative amorality, whereas use of a vertically-biased plastic lighter would be comparatively moral in relation to use of a horizontally-biased metallic lighter, which, as omega-in-the-alpha, corresponds to positive amorality.

 

275. Man may broadly be defined as the bad (negative) appearance and the good (positive) essence, whereas woman may likewise broadly be defined as the good (positive) appearance and the bad (negative) essence.  For the masculine is positively essential and the feminine positively apparent, and when a man is true to himself rather than effeminate or 'bovaryized', he will be more good essence than bad appearance, just as a woman, when true to herself, will be more good appearance than bad essence.  The modern age, however, seems to be one, particularly in the West, when the traditional roles of the sexes have been reversed, so that women are becoming more negatively essential and men, by contrast, more negatively apparent, though this is hopefully only a temporary situation and not an indication of things to come!  For positive essence will eventually eclipse negative essence to such an extent that the feminine will all but cease to exist ... as we enter an age of unisexual one-sidedness in anticipation of millennial salvation.

 

276. Negative appearance: naturalism or doing; positive appearance: realism or the given; negative essence: materialism or the becoming; positive essence: idealism or being.

 

277. If we accept that the alpha is immoral and the omega alone moral, then it will be logical for us to define (as, in fact, we already have done) alpha-in-the-omega as negatively amoral and omega-in-the-alpha as positively amoral, so that we have, say, realistic and materialistic positions in-between naturalistic immorality on the one hand and idealistic morality on the other hand.  To revert to our Spenglerian categories of historical epoch, we can equate 'Historyless Chaos' with (naturalistic) immorality, 'Culture' with (realistic) amorality, 'Civilization' with (materialistic) amorality, and, finally, 'Second Religiousness' with (idealistic) morality.  'Culture' and 'Civilization' afford us examples of two kinds of amorality, the former positive (the given), and the latter negative (the becoming) - the one corresponding to the paradoxical relativity of positive appearance, or omega-in-the-alpha, and the other corresponding to the no-less paradoxical relativity of negative essence, or alpha-in-the-omega.  Only the coming epoch of 'Second Religiousness' can be truly moral and, hence, centripetal (in being), and it will contrast absolutely with the centrifugal (doing-oriented) immorality of the epoch of 'Historyless Chaos'.

 

278i.  Dreaming corresponds to the soulful subconscious and can be either negative or positive, biased towards the proton or towards the electron. 

    ii.  Fantasizing corresponds to the intellectual old brain and can be either negative or positive, biased towards the proton or towards the electron. 

    iii. Visionary experience corresponds to the spiritual subconscious and can be either negative or positive, biased towards the proton or towards the electron. 

    iv.  Film viewing corresponds to the soulful superconscious and can be either negative or positive, biased towards the proton or towards the electron. 

    v.  Video making corresponds to the intellectual new brain and can be either negative or positive, biased towards the proton or towards the electron. 

    vi.  Tripping corresponds to the spiritual superconscious and can be either negative or positive, biased towards the proton or towards the electron.

 

279. Thus we have alpha and omega polarities in both the old and the new brains, not to mention in both types of subconscious and superconscious, with soulful, intellectual, and spiritual distinctions corresponding to particle, atomic, and wavicle spectra - the alpha of the old brain and subconscious minds more powerful than the omega-in-the-alpha there, but the omega of the new brain and superconscious minds more powerful than the alpha-in-the-omega there, given the contrasting atomic structures of each brain/pair of minds and their effects or influences upon soulful, intellectual, and spiritual life.  To take a single example, in this case spiritual, the visionary subconscious will traditionally have been more biased towards the possibility of bad visions than good visions (for protons predominate over electrons in the atomic structure of the old brain), whereas - at the risk of anticipating the future - the visionary superconscious will, as a rule, be more biased towards the possibility of good trips, i.e. synthetically-induced visionary experience, than bad ones (since electrons predominate over protons in the atomic structure of the new brain).  Alternatively, one could argue that bad visions would have been stronger than good visions in the visionary subconscious, bearing in mind that the former correspond to alpha and the latter to omega-in-the-alpha of the natural idealistic spectrum, whereas good trips will be stronger or more vivid than bad ones in the visionary superconscious, because the former correspond to omega and the latter to alpha-in-the-omega of the artificial idealistic spectrum.  Moreover, whereas good visions and bad trips are alike amoral, the one positively and the other negatively, bad visions are immoral and good trips moral.  Indeed, whereas good visions correspond to the given and bad trips to the becoming, bad visions correspond to doing and good trips to being.

 

280. Now what applies to the polar opposites of the spiritual psyche, whether subconscious (and natural) or superconscious (and artificial), applies just as much to those of the soulful psyche in both its subconscious and superconscious manifestations, as well as to those of the intellectual brain in both its old and new manifestations. (Bad dreams, or nightmares, are immoral; good dreams ... positively amoral.  Bad films, or horror movies, are negatively amoral; good films ... moral.)

 

281i.  Fire, corresponding to doing, is the immoral element par excellence. 

    ii.  Air, corresponding to being, is the moral element par excellence.

    iii. Earth, corresponding to the given, is the positively amoral element par excellence. 

    iv.  Water, corresponding to the becoming, is the negatively amoral element par excellence. 

    v.  Likewise it stands to reason that whereas Heaven is moral and Hell immoral, granted that the former is the abode of light (spirit) and the latter the abode of heat (soul), both purgatory and the world are amoral, since the former is the abode of coldness (intellect), while the latter is an abode of darkness (will).

 

282. Man endeavours to mitigate the pain and humiliation of death through the concept of a blissful afterlife.  Take away such a concept and there is nothing but the pain and humiliation of death.  But since there is no afterlife and it becomes less easy for people to believe in such a concept, so it is logical that we should strive, instead, to prolong life as much as possible and thus push the pain and humiliation of death - nowadays usually somewhat less intense than formerly, owing to the availability of a variety of analgesics, anaesthetics, etc., which render compensatory concepts of posthumous bliss unnecessary - further into the future.  Now at last we have the right attitude, born of evolutionary progress.  We no longer look forward to death as the gateway to a better life but, in dismissing such an assumption, prefer to devise stratagems for prolonging and enriching life, stratagems which at least have the merit of setting us on course for the eventual possibility of eternal life.  For eternal life can only evolve out of existing life, not be attained to following death.  But, in the meantime, we must learn to live with the emptiness of modern death and die in comparatively painless fashion, without recourse to afterlife compensations!

 

283. Just as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche form negative and positive philosophic poles, so, it seems to me, do Bergson and Sartre, albeit the other way around, since Sartre was rather more pessimistic and life-denying than optimistic and life-affirming, quite unlike his great compatriot, and accordingly qualifies, in my estimation, for comparison with Schopenhauer - as, I would argue, does Arthur Koestler, whose pessimism concerning the future of mankind and near pathological insistence on man's being a biological mistake will hardly serve to ingratiate him to those of us who pursue a more optimistic long-term view of human evolution and of man's eventual salvation through self-overcoming.  Indeed, it could well be that I am to Koestler what Nietzsche was to Schopenhauer - that is to say the positive pole of a philosophical dichotomy which began in pessimism and can only end optimistically.

 

284. However, even if I see myself as a kind of positive antithesis to Koestler, I have to admit my indebtedness to him as a formative influence on my philosophy (as of course was Schopenhauer on Nietzsche's), since it was from books like The Act of Creation and Janus - A Summing Up that I first acquired knowledge of an old-brain/new-brain dichotomy ('old brain' and 'new brain' being the exact terms Koestler favoured, in preference to terms like lower brain and higher brain, or cerebellum and cerebrum), and the reader familiar with my work will doubtless be aware that I have since made ample use of such a distinction, using it in addition to such psychological terms as subconscious and superconscious - indeed, equating the former with the old brain or, more correctly, a location in the old brain, and the latter with a location in the new brain ... in the interests of a more comprehensive and, so I believe, truer perspective.

 

285. To be sure, there are many ways in which I have profited from Koestler's philosophy over the years, including my recourse to diagrams - a not-infrequent explanatory factor in his works - and it would be both dishonest and unfair of me to pretend otherwise.  But, on balance, I do not think he has made a particularly positive contribution to modern philosophy, even if his influence on me has been greater than that of virtually any other modern philosopher ... including Sartre, whose work I find too obscure and whom Koestler regarded, quite rightly in my opinion, as philosophically inferior to himself, since Sartre was largely a materialist whereas Koestler was essentially a naturalist and therefore closer, as heat to light, to myself.  In fact, one could argue that Koestler to some extent derives from Sartre, as Bergson from Nietzsche, except that whereas Bergson and Nietzsche were both optimists, Koestler was fundamentally pessimistic, like Sartre, and thus more alpha stemming than omega orientated.  It seems that only I am truly omega orientated and hence somewhat closer in spirit to Nietzsche and Bergson, not to mention Teilhard de Chardin, who, if not quite a philosopher, was nevertheless of considerable importance in shaping and influencing my own omega-oriented philosophy - perhaps the most important single influence after Nietzsche and ... Spengler, whose monumental tome The Decline of the West taught me more about history and the scope and destiny of civilizations than any other book I know.  Therefore it is only fitting if, at the termination point of this particular philosophical excursion, I draw attention to such men as these, without whose guiding influence little if any of this would have been possible.

      

LONDON 1988–9 (Revised 2012)

 

Elemental Spectra