Op. 47

 

CRITIQUE OF POST-DIALECTICAL IDEALISM

 

Supernotational Philosophy

 

Copyright © 2013 John O'Loughlin

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CONTENTS

 

Aphs. 1–160

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1.   To a person rooted in the old brain, with its dominating proton content, anyone who testifies to a contrary, or new-brain, bias will seem mad; for his view of life will be radically antithetical to the alpha-stemming untransvaluated integrity which accrues to the former.  Indeed, so much will the new-brain person differ from his old-brain rival ... that what is truth to the one will seem like nonsense to the other, and vice versa.  For the electron preponderance of the new brain or, for that matter, of the superconscious mind, will encourage a positive, omega-oriented integrity which has the effect of countering or negating everything the alpha-stemming old-brain person stands for, whether in politics, religion, science, art, society, sex, or whatever.  What is good for the old-brain person will be bad to the new-brain one, and, conversely, what is bad for the old-brain person will be good to the new-brain one.  There will be a kind of Father/Holy Spirit division between them which renders mutual understanding all but impossible.  Either the new-brain person vanquishes his old-brain opponent or the latter will vanquish him.  For neither of them can co-exist on equal, mutually respectful terms - at least not in an age or society which is tending towards the omega 'Kingdom of Heaven' on earth.  Only in the world (of relative values) can alpha and omega co-exist, albeit on relative rather than absolute terms, like the House of Lords with the House of Commons in Britain, where the Tory peers of the one would correspond to 'alpha' and the Labour MPs of the other to 'omega', with Labour peers corresponding to omega-in-the-alpha (like electrons in the old brain), and Tory MPs to alpha-in-the-omega (like protons in the new brain).

 

2.   Because knowledge has to do with memory and retention, we can argue that it is more a factor of the proton side of the atom than of the electron side, since protons retain electrons and thus have an inherently retentive tendency which doubtless applies just as much to the mental universe as to the physical one.  Thus knowledge and memory can be regarded as inherently alpha stemming, in contrast, I would argue, to imagination and faith, both of which are more inherently omega orientated on account of their association with the electron side of the atom, the side which, whether found in the old brain or in the new one, reflects such a centripetal orientation.  One could therefore say that whereas knowledge and memory are objective qualities, imagination and faith are subjective qualities, the former conservative and the latter progressive - alpha and omega qualities which co-exist, in atomic life, as polar opposites.  Memory is recollection of knowledge, of whatever sort, whereas faith is trust in imagination, particularly the idealistic imagination we associate with the Divine.  For just as there can be no memory where there is no knowledge, so it would be impossible to have faith without imagination, since imagination pioneers the way forward, and if we are to follow it we require faith.

 

3.   But there are two kinds of imagination, just as there are two kinds of knowledge (not to mention faith and memory), and we may define them broadly in terms of natural imagination (or faith) and artificial imagination (or superfaith), and whereas the one pertains to the subordinate electron content of the old brain, the other pertains to the preponderant electron content of the new brain, thereby enabling us to speak, once again, of an omega-in-the-alpha/omega division, as between, say, Christianity and Transcendentalism, or Christ and the Second Coming.  Natural imagination is weaker than artificial imagination, and if it requires faith then we can certainly maintain that its omega counterpart requires superfaith, as, for example, in regard to the concept of post-human life forms, as developed by me in successive works via a series of imaginative projections.  By contrast, however, natural knowledge is stronger than artificial knowledge, or knowledge accruing to the subordinate proton content of the new brain, because it pertains to the dominating proton content of the old brain, like an autocratic monarch vis-à-vis a democratic president, and can thus be identified with alpha as opposed to alpha-in-the-omega.  Natural memory is also stronger than artificial memory, at least in people accustomed to an old-brain, alpha-stemming bias, for whom natural knowledge prevails over natural imagination, or knowledge of natural things over natural imaginings.  But if imagination and faith are unlikely to get the better of knowledge and memory in the old brain, this is not so of the new brain where, even in a knowledgeable age, imagination will be straining at the leash, so to speak, and preparing itself to gain the ascendancy over knowledge in the interests of universal salvation, achieved through an unequivocally omega-oriented superfaith.  Only when idealism gets the better of materialism will the 'Kingdom of Heaven' come to pass ... as messianic leaders supersede democratic presidents, and 'Civilization', in the Spenglerian sense of that term, is eclipsed by 'Second Religiousness'.  For artificial knowledge is not enough; there must be artificial imagination, before a true transvaluation comes to pass.

 

4.   Thus to recapitulate briefly: knowledge and imagination are alpha and omega antagonists, with monarchs and presidents on the one side, that of a proton bias, and popes and messianic leaders on the other, that of an electron bias, and whereas monarchs, corresponding to naturalism, are alpha, and presidents, corresponding to materialism, alpha-in-the-omega, popes, corresponding to realism, are omega-in-the-alpha, and messianic leaders, corresponding to idealism, omega.  Just as the monarchical 'Historyless Chaos' was effectively eclipsed by papal 'Culture', so in due course will the presidential 'Civilization' be eclipsed by messianic 'Second Religiousness', as artificial imagination triumphs over artificial knowledge in the name of spiritual salvation.  I have customarily used the terms 'natural' and 'artificial', but such terms as 'irrational' and 'rational' would suffice just as well in order to describe the difference between, say, knowledge in the old brain and knowledge in the new one, not to mention old-brain imagination and its new-brain counterpart.  For whereas the one is conditioned by centrifugal criteria, whether as alpha or omega-in-the-alpha, the other is conditioned by centripetal criteria, whether as alpha-in-the-omega or omega.  Presidents are relatively rational, or constitutional, compared to autocratic monarchs, whereas popes are relatively irrational, or unconstitutional (infallible), compared to messianic leaders, of which we have not yet seen too many - Lenin and Mao notwithstanding.

 

5.   Of course, the basic alpha/omega dichotomy we are adumbrating is not only between political and religious figures, though they are perhaps the most prominent, but is also between, say, scientists and artists.  Now I fancy that whereas knowledge and imagination are the terms which best characterize the scientist/artist distinction, memory and faith are more characteristic of the political/religious distinction, since politics, or the art of statesmanship, requires memory no less than religion requires faith, and it would be difficult to imagine the one without the other, particularly (with politics) in deeply traditional or conservative societies where, arguably, memory, institutionalized as tradition, plays a greater role than knowledge.

 

6.   However that may be, it would seem that whereas science and art deal, through knowledge and imagination respectively, with concrete particulars, politics and religion deal, by contrast, with abstract generalities, of which the State and the Church are the two principal manifestations.  Should art become abstract and general, it will be because it has subordinated itself to religious faith and thus functions as religious art.  Should science become abstract and general, it will be because it has subordinated itself to political memory and thus functions as political science.  Both of these paradoxical tendencies were symptomatic of twentieth-century art and science respectively, and signify a sort of quasi-idealistic redemption of the concrete and particular in the abstract and general.

 

7.   Artificial knowledge may also be regarded in terms of information technology, and doubtless the rise of such technology in the twentieth century was symptomatic of a shift in emphasis from natural to artificial knowledge, as we grow ever-more accustomed, through a new-brain bias, to receiving information artificially ... whether via radio, television, computer, telephone, video, or whatever.  But if the modern age is an age when knowledge largely takes the form of information, it is not on that account a religious age but, on the contrary, a profoundly materialistic age commensurate with Spengler's 'Civilization', in which not omega but alpha predominates, whether as knowledge and science or memory and politics.  The dawn of a religious age, by contrast, will require that artificial imagination and faith supersede the artificial knowledge and memory so characteristic of the contemporary West, and for this to happen the world will doubtless have to pass through a major transformation the likes of which it has never before witnessed, since omega must struggle for its right to exist and cannot expect alpha to hand that right to it on a plate, so to speak, as though alpha led to omega as a matter of historical course!  The sort of artificial imagination I would equate with the highest art will only be possible through recourse to LSD and other such hallucinogenic drugs, and this 'art' will be in the service of a religious faith which embraces, in its omega-oriented intensity, the ultimate abstraction ... of positive pure spirit conceived as the goal of all religious striving.

 

8.   Sense in which messianic leaders correspond to positrons, or positive electrons, vis-à-vis the proletariat, who tend to reflect a more passive electron bias.  Such leaders are truly moral, and they contrast with both the immoral bias of 'proton' rulers and the amoral integrity of 'neutron' representatives, or the majority of democratic politicians, of whom prime ministers are the chief exemplars.  Rulers can be monarchs or presidents, though a titular as opposed to an executive president will approximate more to the amoral than to the immoral.  For an executive president conforms to the category of immoral ruler, albeit in terms of new-brain rationality rather than, like an autocratic monarchy, of old-brain irrationality, and thus on a relative (alpha-in-the-omega) as opposed to an absolute (alpha) basis.

 

9.   To my way of thinking, guitars and pianos are alike bodily instruments, the only difference being that whereas guitars are omega, either absolutely in the case of advanced electric guitars or relatively in the case of acoustic guitars, pianos are alpha, whether relatively in the case of uprights or absolutely in the case of grands.  Thus we can distinguish acoustic guitars from electric guitars in terms of omega-in-the-alpha and omega, reserving for pianos a distinction between alpha-in-the-omega in the case of uprights and alpha in the case of grands.  For the alpha, remember, is centrifugal, whereas the omega is centripetal.  The one is broadly horizontal and the other vertical.  Consequently grand pianos and acoustic guitars may be regarded as forming an alpha/omega-in-the-alpha antithesis, as between naturalism and realism, whilst upright pianos and electric guitars may likewise be regarded as forming an alpha-in-the-omega/omega antithesis, as between materialism and idealism.  The acoustic guitar is no-less compromised by the convolutional nature of the alpha, with its horizontally-biased centrifugal tendencies, than the upright piano by the involutional nature of the omega, with its vertically-biased centripetal tendencies.  Acoustic guitars are relatively moral in relation to electric guitars, which are absolutely moral.  Upright pianos are relatively immoral in relation to grand pianos (including baby grands), which are absolutely immoral.  There is all the difference in the world, which is to say as much difference as in the case of a full-sized umbrella and a waist-length hooded zipper, between grand pianos at one end of the instrumental scale and electric guitars at its other end.  In fact, being absolute, such instruments tend to be mutually exclusive, in contrast to acoustic guitars and upright pianos, which approximate to a worldly and, in particular, bourgeois middle-ground compromise.  For there is contiguity between alpha-in-the-omega and omega-in-the-alpha, but no contiguity between alpha and omega!

 

10.  Doubtless we should also speak of amoral instrumental equivalents in between the immoral and moral ones, and especially in regard to the artificial alpha/omega spectrum which stretches from upright pianos to electric guitars, since we are more familiar, these days, with the artificial than with the natural, and can readily identify middle-ground positions between uprights on the one hand and electric guitars on the other - positions, I mean, in relation to, say, electric pianos and semi-electric guitars, both of which types of instrument have 'androgynous' characteristics, if I may use such an ambiguous term, which distinguish them from the immoral and moral extremes.  For if electric pianos are less centrifugal than acoustic guitars, then semi-electric guitars are less centripetal than electric guitars, the most advanced of which have nothing centrifugal, or ring-like, about them at all.

 

11.  Because the Y-like emblem [An inverted CND sign, to which (in certain later texts) I subsequently suggested the addition of feminine and masculine symbols.] of Social Transcendentalism will be enclosed by a curvilinear band, significant of a theocratically centripetal morality, it is fitting that the emblem be displayed on a curvilinear plaque rather than on a rectilinear flag, since flags are fundamentally worldly phenomena which, as a rule, have a nationalist significance, whereas the emblem in question would be designed to convey a supra-national significance appropriate to its theocratic essence.  To have this emblem on a flag would amount to a contradiction in terms, since it is a refutation of nationalism and indicates an omega 'head' integrity above and beyond all rectilinear 'bodily' norms.  Thus if the ultimate emblem were to be displayed on curvilinear plastic plaques mounted on aluminium poles, it would be beyond flags and allegiances thereof - indeed, as far beyond flags as Heaven is above and beyond the world, since the omega 'Kingdom of Heaven' could not be symbolized in rectilinear form.  Therefore the ideology of 'Kingdom Come' would not be interested in adding yet another flag to the vast number of flags which already exist in the world, but would require that, wherever it obtained, flags be superseded by these curvilinear plaques in indication that the head had triumphed over the body and the 'Kingdom' in question accordingly come to pass.

 

12.  One must be careful to distinguish an alpha curvilinear approach to writing from an omega curvilinear approach to it, since whereas the former tends to be centrifugal and apparent, the latter will be centripetal and essential.  By which I mean that whereas alpha 'head' writings tend to reflect a technical cycling from book to book or part to part and chapter to chapter within each book, as in the case of the most academic philosophy, Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason not excepted, omega 'head' writings will reflect a thematic cycling from subject to subject within the confines of a single book, thereby cycling centripetally rather than centrifugally, as with alpha 'head' writings.  It is effectively the difference between a ring and a badge, between protons and electrons, convolution and involution, and the one mode of cycling necessarily excludes the other, since they are as far apart as alpha and omega.  By contrast, worldly, or 'bodily', writings tend to proceed, as with the novel, in a rectilinear fashion ... from A to Z, or in successive chapters from a beginning to an end, with neither apparent (centrifugal) nor essential (centripetal) cycling very much in evidence.  Where, however, there are divisions of a novel into separate books or parts, each of which begins afresh at a first chapter, as in The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien or both Man of Nazareth and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, we are dealing, I believe, with decadent 'bodily' writings - writings which are neo-alpha without being genuinely 'of the head', like most traditional philosophy.  (In this respect they correspond to a sort of Mosleyite order of Fascism).  On the other hand, a thematic cycling within the novel context would amount to a 'bodily' intimation of omega-oriented philosophy - the ultimate 'head' writings which, eschewing apparent divisions, concentrate the reader's attention on essential cycles in the interests of a post-worldly theocratic integrity.  For unless a work cycles thematically, it will not be curvilinear and centripetal but either rectilinear and neutral or - assuming a division into several books, parts, chapters, etc., - curvilinear and centrifugal, like a fascist or neo-pagan reaction to transcendental communist liberation.

 

13.  Fascist autocracy, liberal democracy, communist theocracy.  Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of ideological distinctions, with pre-atomic (proton), atomic (proton & electron and/or neutron), and post-atomic (electron) implications, as pertaining to alpha, the world, and omega.  Liberal democracy sits on a neutron fence in between the proton reaction of fascist autocracy and the electron attraction of communist theocracy - a worldly middle-ground in between alpha and omega extremes.

 

14.  Cycle books, parts, chapters, etc. (in an apparent, or centrifugal, manner) and there will be a fascist implication of neo-alpha criteria.  Cycle subject-matter (in an essential, or centripetal, manner) and there will be a communist implication of omega-oriented criteria.  Do neither and you have the world ... with its rectilinear, or 'bodily', indifference to curvilinear, or 'head', alternatives.

 

15.  In relation to the internal trip ... of LSD, the external trip ... of space exploration is like a return to the alpha, a return to the Creator rather than an advancement towards the Holy Spirit, and can therefore be regarded in a negative, or immoral, light - a light, so I believe, rather more fascist than communist, insofar as stars (including planets) are the alpha roots of the Universe as opposed to its hypothetical future culmination in positive pure spirit.  To trip in the internal sense is to approach the omega; the opposite of what it means to trip externally ... through the medium of space exploration.  This is not to say that Communists have no business in space, but that the stars can never be the goal of evolving humanity.  Its goal, on the contrary, is salvation from the flesh.  And one of the ways of achieving such a salvation is through internal trips.

 

16.  The whole point about a skyline in architecture is that it symbolizes an alpha-stemming centrifugal state-of-affairs, which, whilst acceptable for a given period of time within an open-society context, can only be judged unacceptable, and hence as something to avoid, from a closed-society standpoint ... where not the horizontal but the vertical is what architects would wish to emphasize, in conformity with the centripetal bias of such a standpoint - one suitable to an omega-oriented age, in which skylines were taboo.  Obviously, to avoid a skyline one must design buildings in such a way that they tower up at different heights from those in the immediate vicinity, like different-sized penises, and thereby refrain from creating a horizontal and, hence, centrifugal impression.  An alpha-stemming person, whether male or female, will doubtless find such architectural arrangements unattractive, if not downright repugnant.  But for anyone with an omega-oriented disposition, there could be no other arrangements, if the vertical is to receive due emphasis and be respected as an integral principle in itself, independently of others and with a view to the advancement of a centripetally-biased state-of-(architectural)-affairs.

 

17.  The being of philosophy is subjective being, not existence or objective being, but the being of spiritual enlightenment.  Objective being, by contrast, corresponds to the given and is a field of reality more congenial to science.  In fact, objective being proclaims its physicality and has nothing metaphysical about it.  It stands to subjective being as realism to idealism, and could only be made the subject of philosophical inquiry by a bogus or degenerate philosopher like Sartre, who was really a playwright and thus a man more disposed to the given than to being.  It may be that Existentialism was more a French revolt against German metaphysics, including Jaspers, than a symptom of Western decadence or a brazen attempt to accommodate philosophy to a materialistic age.  Probably it was a combination of all three.  Yet if philosophy is not to languish beneath the shadow of French Existentialism, it must proclaim itself afresh as the one true intellectual light which shines in the name of subjective being and the future salvation of humanity from the World, including the world of physical existence, or objective being.  For philosophy should not dilute itself with either dramatic or scientific concerns, but must proceed on its self-appointed course towards total enlightenment.

 

18.  As stupid for literature to become poetic as for philosophy to become dramatic, that is to say for subjective doing (the becoming) to seek an accommodation with objective doing ('doing' as I have hitherto defined it, as, for example, in Elemental Spectra).  Either the literature in question is decadent or it's really no literature at all but poetry in disguise - a sort of poetic prose which seeks to mystify rather than to entertain or, more correctly, to entertain through mystification.  Subjective doing should go its own way as alpha-in-the-omega and leave poetry to those for whom the objective doing of alpha is the creative norm, that is to say to poets-proper.  Literature does not enhance itself through poetry but only through philosophy, where, paradoxically, it seeks to entertain through enlightenment, as with Aldous Huxley.

 

19.  The objective doing (action) of my walking across the room.  The objective being (existence) of my sitting still in a chair.  The subjective doing of my thought processes.  The subjective being of my consciousness.  Alpha/omega-in-the-alpha/alpha-in-the-omega/omega.  I act, I exist, I think, I am.

 

20.  A Protestant can have no true sense of the Second Coming because, in adhering to a neutron mode of Christianity, he will only relate to a middle-ground 'bodily' Christ who, unlike the Catholic Christ, does not oscillate between proton and electron extremes, or alpha and omega, but remains stable in a specifically worldly fashion.  Such a man can only oppose or belittle the concept of a Second Coming, which corresponds to an electron bias, because true morality is beyond the sphere of his amoral neutron allegiance, being intelligible only within an oscillatory framework (though solely with regard to the electron omega as opposed to the proton alpha).  Having a moral dimension, the Catholic will relate to the prospect of an electron absolute, a Second Coming who, in his unequivocally transcendental integrity, will correspond to the post-Resurrectional Christ rather than to a Christ who is both alpha and omega by turns within the necessarily relative, and ambiguous, context of (dualistic) Christianity.

 

21.  Like Protestantism, liberal democracy sits on a neutron fence in between the proton reactions of fascist autocracy and the electron attractions of communist theocracy - a worldly middle-ground in between alpha and omega extremes.

 

22.  If one is to distinguish between objective being, subjective being, and being-in-itself, as Jaspers does, then one should also distinguish between objective doing, subjective doing, and, for want of a better term, doing-outside-itself, since otherwise one may give the impression that being-in-itself comes between objective being and subjective being as a sort of neutron middle-ground corresponding to basic consciousness, when, in point of fact, objective being and subjective being do not form an antithesis on the basis of an alpha/omega distinction but are parallel omega postulates - the one as omega-in-the-alpha and the other as omega per se.  Thus if being-in-itself comes in-between anything at all, it will be in between subjective doing on the one hand and subjective being on the other, as a positive amoral postulate in between immoral and moral extremes.  Likewise doing-outside-itself can be regarded as a negative amoral postulate in between objective doing and objective being, which is to say immoral alpha and a (relatively) moral omega-in-the-alpha, however we choose to identify this doing-outside-itself: presumably as intestinal action or possibly even the processes of digestion.  Thus an omega-oriented mode of amorality in the case of being-in-itself, an alpha-stemming mode of amorality in the case of doing-outside-itself.  The subjective conditioning a centripetal and, hence, being-oriented tendency; the objective, by contrast, conditioning a centrifugal and, hence, doing-oriented one - as germane to moral and immoral attributes.

 

23.  Certainly I have no hesitation in equating doing with protons and being with electrons, though the distinction between objective and subjective, which is centrifugal and centripetal respectively, would seem to entail an additional consideration ... of particle and wavicle options which, taken in conjunction with doing and being, will allow for a further distinction between, say, the proton-particle bias of objective doing and the proton-wavicle bias of subjective doing on the one hand, and the electron-particle bias of objective being and the electron-wavicle bias of subjective being on the other, with doing-outside-itself and being-in-itself corresponding to particle-neutron and to wavicle-neutron middle grounds vis-à-vis the objective and subjective polarities respectively.  If consciousness corresponds, in its positive neutrality, to being-in-itself, then thought must correspond to subjective doing and feelings, by contrast, to subjective being.  If instinctive action corresponds, in its negative neutrality, to doing-outside-itself, then calculated action must correspond to objective doing and existence, by contrast, to objective being.

 

24.  Yet one must of course distinguish between the alpha and omega, or negative and positive, poles of each mode of doing and being, whether objective or subjective.  There is a positive objective doing no less than a negative objective doing, a positive subjective doing no less than a negative subjective doing, and so on ... with regard to each category of doing and being.  Feelings can be negative or positive, thoughts likewise, and we can no more subsume all feelings under an electron-wavicle bias than ... all thoughts under a proton-wavicle one, even if the majority of thoughts and feelings can be so subsumed or, at any rate, those which are most characteristic of a true subjective doing or being, as the case may be.

 

25.  Rather than saying, with Descartes: 'I think, therefore I am', we should say: 'I am, therefore I think', since without subjective being, there could be no subjective doing.  Likewise we should not say, à la Descartes: 'I act, therefore I exist', but, rather: 'I exist, therefore I act', since existence is a precondition of action in human affairs.

 

26.  The art of objective doing is dance; the art of doing-outside-itself is acting; the art of objective being is sculpture; the art of subjective doing is literature (including poetry); the art of being-in-itself is painting; the art of subjective being is music.  Dance corresponds to alpha, whereas music, with its emotional emphasis, corresponds to omega.  Sculpture, with its emphasis on phenomenal existence, corresponds to omega-in-the-alpha, whereas literature, the emphasis of which is intellectual, corresponds to alpha-in-the-omega.  Both acting and painting are amoral, or neutron, arts - the former objectively so in between dance and sculpture, the latter subjectively so in between literature and music.  Not that all literature or dance is immoral and all sculpture or music moral, since each art is itself divisible into alpha and omega extremes, as well as into a neutron middle-ground, but that, when most true to itself, any given art will more reflect its essential nature - for instance, subjective being in the case of music - than the nature of any of the other arts, aiming at the highest and most positive manifestation of its peculiar essence.  Thus the best music will aim to convey the most positive feelings, such as love, joy, etc., while the worst music will convey - assuming it hasn't abandoned subjective being altogether and effectively become some other art in disguise - the most negative feelings, such as hate, sadness, etc.  The best will be absolutely moral and the worst relatively immoral (music being a moral, or omega, art-form essentially), though intermediate degrees of musical quality will also exist ... as an amoral middle-ground in between the negative and positive extremes of subjective being.  Yet subjective being has the capacity to become absolutely moral, whereas subjective doing, for example, can only become at best relatively moral on account of its fundamentally immoral nature as alpha-in-the-omega.

 

27.  Further to the above-mentioned amoral distinctions between doing-outside-itself and being-in-itself, I should like to add two subordinate modes of amoral neutrality in the forms of doing-in-itself and being-outside-itself, conceiving of the one as an omega-oriented mode of objective doing (contiguous with objective being) and the other as an alpha-stemming mode of subjective being (contiguous with subjective doing).  Thus doing-in-itself will be a relatively positive mode of objective amorality, and being-outside-itself a relatively negative mode of subjective amorality - the former subordinate to doing-outside-itself and the latter subordinate to being-in-itself.  Possibly, digesting would be a manifestation of doing-in-itself, dreaming a manifestation of being-outside-itself; though if we are to take art forms which appear to correspond to each of these subordinate modes of neutron amorality, then it seems to me that singing is the art of doing-in-itself, modelling the art of being-outside-itself.

 

28.  Thus, further to our earlier contentions, we can maintain: The art of objective doing is dance; the art of doing-outside-itself is acting; the art of doing-in-itself is singing; the art of objective being is sculpture; the art of subjective doing is literature; the art of being-outside-itself is modelling; the art of being-in-itself is painting; the art of subjective being is music.  And it seems to me that an appropriate closeness, or qualitative contiguity, can be inferred to exist between, for example, acting and singing on the one hand and modelling and painting on the other, not just in terms of their sharing a common neutral status in between objective and subjective modes of doing and being but, more concretely, in terms of their interdependence and even interchangeability as two sides of the same (amoral) coin, one of which is phenomenal and the other noumenal, as relative to particle (objective) and wavicle (subjective) distinctions.  Certainly actors can be singers and singers be actors, and more than a few painters have also been models, both for themselves and for others.  However, in general, actors and singers remain separate categories, as of course do models and painters.

 

29.  The computer is a medium of artificial thought, the television a medium of artificial consciousness, the radio a medium of artificial emotion (particularly when used in conjunction with music).  Thus from computers to radios via televisions - a triadic distinction between subjective doing, being-in-itself, and subjective being.  To which one could add video as a medium of artificial dreaming and/or fantasizing (home-made videos) corresponding to being-outside-itself, which therefore takes a position in between subjective doing and being-in-itself as a form of negative subjective amorality.

 

30.  The philosopher stands to the scientist as the writer (novelist, essayist) to the poet; that is to say as a freer, more imaginative person who, when true to his vocation, has an omega-oriented as opposed to an alpha-stemming disposition.  Of course, philosophers can be alpha or omega, obscure or enlightening, though the best and most genuine of them will be enlightening, whereas the worst and least genuine tend to obscure, like poets who mystify.  In fact, genuine poets tend rather to mystify than to enlighten, and thus it could be contended that the obscure or mystifying philosopher is really a poet-in-disguise, just as, conversely, the clear and enlightening poet is really a philosopher-in-disguise: a man who should have worked in philosophy instead of in poetry.

 

31.  As for the paradoxical notion that poetry should only be a vehicle for conveying feelings, emotions, passions, etc., it has to be admitted that even the most emotive poetry or literature will be inferior to music in this regard, by dint of its dependence on thought and projection, through words, as subjective doing.  In fact, words are as good or, depending on your viewpoint, useless at conveying emotions as (musical) notes at conveying thoughts, and for this reason will seldom succeed in an emotive endeavour except when spoken or, more appropriately, sung in conjunction with music, where, thanks to rhythmical accompaniment, a greater approximation to subjective being can be achieved.  However, such an approximation can only fall short of pure subjective being, for which music alone will suffice.  For notes are the voice of the emotions, whereas words are the voice of the intellect, which compels to subjective doing.

 

32.  Justice, or the concept of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth', pertains to the proton side of the atom, which is inherently reactive.  It is a mode of alpha-stemming behaviour which will remain valid only as long as humanity is in its heathen youth and has not yet grown to the Christian maturity of 'turning the other cheek'.  For to turn the other cheek is to refrain from exacting revenge, and only that man who is sufficiently mature and, hence, more disposed to the electron side of the atom, which is inherently attractive, will be capable of such an achievement.  In other words, unless a man is omega orientated, and therefore 'born again', [Or 'transvaluated', in Nietzschean parlance.] he will be unable to 'turn the other cheek' but always be seeking justice, or revenge, in the manner of a youthful heathen.  Unfortunately, when whole societies are largely composed of such men there is no escaping justice or the need for revenge.  Obviously, where most people are bad, 'turning the other cheek' could prove a time-consuming, not to say hazardous, venture, resulting in injury or even death.  Only in societies where most people are good can one reasonably make a virtue of 'turning the other cheek', since violence will then be the exception to the rule.  Yet such societies cannot exist on an open-society, alpha-stemming basis, where justice continues to be the norm, but only on a closed-society, omega-oriented basis where, in contrast, heavenly criteria become the (electron) norm, and man ceases to exploit man in either a heathen or semi-heathen fashion.  Only then will the 'Kingdom of Heaven' come to pass, as mankind enter into the wisdom of full moral adulthood and are saved from all justice.

 

33.  A society which prides itself on being just is fundamentally a foolish one, which does not or cannot 'turn the other cheek', because it is insufficiently evolved to be truly Christian.  Yet being truly Christian is not enough.  For, as often as not, the true Christian is a victim of violence and may even occasionally feel the need for a degree of justice.  Better if, living in a transcendental society, one doesn't have to 'turn the other cheek' because there is no wrongdoing but only righteousness.  'Turning the other cheek' is really the electron side of an atomic integrity.  In a free-electron society, on the other hand, where protons or proton equivalents had effectively ceased to exist, no-one need 'turn the other cheek' because there would be little or no wrongdoing.  Neither would there be any justice, only blessedness.  Probably such a perfect society could only truly emerge on a post-human basis, and by then there would be no 'cheeks' to turn, or hit, anyway.  Only brain collectivizations artificially supported and sustained.

 

34.  Of course, 'turning the other cheek' is really a metaphor, not something to be taken literally.  I 'turn the other cheek' when, instead of slamming my door because a neighbour or fellow-tenant has just slammed his, I continue to sit still in my room and resign myself to the noise.  Likewise I 'turn the other cheek' when, instead of using my stereo speakers when someone elsewhere in the house or next-door is playing music rather too loudly through his stereo speakers, I turn to my headphones and listen to music through them.  For there is also a sense in which 'turning the other cheek' enables one to keep to one's own (head) level rather than descend to the (bodily) level of someone else - for example, a commonplace person who always plays music through speakers (which are a bodily equivalent vis-à-vis headphones).  Moreover, I may not wish to play music just because some neighbour is playing it rather too loudly for my liking.  It may not be my usual time for listening to music and I may well prefer to carry-on with what I am doing - say, reading a book or watching television - rather than adjust my habits just to suit someone else or, more correctly, in order to block out someone else's noise.  No, if I cannot put up with it, I can always resort to wax earplugs, which will enable me to carry-on with what I am doing and thus effectively 'turn the other cheek'.  For if I go out, I will be altering my habits or preferences because of him, and if I resort to playing music as loudly as him and on similar terms, i.e. through speakers rather than headphones, I will (besides possibly altering my habits against my deepest wish) be behaving on the same low (bodily) level, and thus be no better, morally speaking, than my noisy neighbour.

 

35.  Alternatively I can impose directly upon him, if his music is too loud, by complaining about the noise.  But while that may not be 'an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth', like a stereo-speaker response from me, it will be an imposition of my own sense of moral acceptability and/or outrage upon another, and although it may produce desirable results for me, such as his apologizing for the noise and agreeing to turn the music down, it will fall short of the ideal solution, being a mode of action somewhere in between 'an eye for an eye ...' and 'turning the other cheek', which is not always guaranteed of positive results, particularly when there is a significant age or temperamental or even ethnic distinction between us, with a corresponding moral disparity.  One might describe it as a form of amoral justice-seeking as opposed to the immoral justice-seeking of 'an eye for an eye', a neutron middle-ground in between the proton reaction of pagan justice and the electron attraction of transcendental quietism, and I fancy that it is more congenial to a Protestant or bourgeois temperament than to a Catholic or proletarian one.  In fact, Catholics are more apt, in the paradoxical nature of their temperaments, to oscillate between pagan justice and transcendental quietism, whereas Protestants will normally tend to favour justice seeking through complaint.  Yet only he who is intermittently capable of 'turning the other cheek' will be in favour of a transcendental society, since he alone has intimations of moral sanctity and can thereby relate to the need for and desirability of such a society.  The amoral man will remain a slave of his justice seeking, forever indisposed to the moral high-ground, forever - worldly.

 

36.  Finger rolls, fish fingers, microlight headphones all correspond to an electron-wavicle equivalent, in contrast to round rolls, fish cakes, and conventional headphones, which correspond to an electron-particle equivalent.  On the one hand, a transcendental communist parallel, on the other hand a democratic communist parallel.  Idealism and naturalism of an omega-oriented order.

 

37.  To distinguish scooters from motorbikes on the basis of an alpha/omega dichotomy, with scooters alpha stemming because of the ring-like impression created by the space between the seating section and the steering column, but motorbikes omega orientated on account of the more centralized impression created by the centrally-positioned engine within a continuous frame - in short, a kind of centrifugal/centripetal distinction with, on the one hand, fascist and, on the other, communist implications.  In fact, one should also distinguish between 'fascist' scooters and 'nazi' scooters on the basis of a wavicle/particle dichotomy, with Lambretta-type scooters suggesting a wavicle equivalent but Vespa-type scooters a particle one ... on account of the distinction between, in the one case, narrow and, in the other case, bubble-shaped panelling - a distinction which corresponds to alpha divine (Fatheristic) and alpha diabolic (Satanic) alternatives, the one more applicable, as I have contended elsewhere, to Fascism and the other to Nazism.  Thus whereas one could imagine Mussolini on a Lambretta, one would have to reserve for Hitler the possibility of a particle-suggesting Vespa.

 

38.  However that may be, a particle/wavicle dichotomy should also be borne in mind for motorbikes at the omega-oriented, or communist, poles of their respective (idealistic and naturalistic) spectra, with lightweight motorbikes, especially when highly streamlined, suggestive of a wavicle equivalent, but heavyweight motorbikes, particularly when comparatively unstreamlined, suggestive of a particle equivalent - transcendental and democratic alternatives within a communist framework, which, as with their alpha counterparts, implies a divine/diabolic dichotomy, as between the Second Coming and the Antichrist.  However, whereas the alpha dichotomy is negative, the omega one is positive - electrons rather than protons, centripetal as opposed to centrifugal idealism and naturalism.

 

39.  Taking our fourfold earth, water, fire, and air distinctions (in that order), one should be able to find military correlates for each of the elements, starting, so I shall contend, with the infantry (earth), progressing to the marines (water), progressing up to the artillery (fire), and culminating with the paras (air).  Thus there are military divisions, as it were, which correspond to each of the elements, and it is my belief that such divisions can be conceived in terms of an hierarchy stretching from infantry at the bottom (earth) to paratroops at the top (air) via marines (water) and artillery (fire) in-between, with realistic, materialistic, naturalistic, and idealistic implications respectively, given the correlation between realism and earth, materialism and water, naturalism and fire, and idealism and air.

 

40.  Consequently we should have no hesitation in contending that countries will excel or specialize in one or other of our military divisions according to whether there is an overall elemental correspondence between the country in question and the type of division we have in mind, i.e. that realistic countries will excel or specialize in the infantry, materialistic countries in the marines, naturalistic countries in the artillery, and idealistic countries in the paras.  This can be confirmed, I believe, by the prestige and dependability accruing to the infantry in Britain (long a realistic State), the marines in the USA (the world's foremost materialistic State), the artillery in Russia (until the collapse of the Soviet Union the world's foremost naturalistic State), and the paras in ... well, all predominantly idealistic States, including Israel, Ireland, and (I would guess) Germany.  Accordingly, one should have no hesitation in equating the marines with the main or most characteristic American military division par excellence.  Now if America connotes with water and Russia with fire, then Russian artillery strength, established on the fearsome basis of tanks, multiple rocket-launchers, missiles, etc., would have to be accorded a paramount status within the overall military hierarchy of socialist naturalism.  Hence in the water/fire struggle (as between America and Russia traditionally), a marines/artillery clash, whilst in the earth/air struggle (as between Britain and Germany) an infantry/para clash, or so elemental logic may lead one to assume.

 

41.  Thus one could describe the infantry as worldly, the marines as purgatorial, the artillery as diabolic, and the paras as divine, and whereas a worldly (earth) army would be overwhelmingly composed of infantry battalions, a divine (air) army would be no-less overwhelmingly composed of parachute battalions, whilst in between would come the purgatorial and diabolic armies of a predominantly marine and artillery composition respectively.  Of course, no country is or ever can be entirely one thing, i.e. totally corresponding to a single elemental spectrum.  But a bias will normally be perceptible, and such a bias is both a key to the country in question and - who knows? - an indication of what to expect from it and how best to handle it in the event of hostilities.

 

42.  It has to be admitted that whereas woman is subjective about appearances but objective about essences, man is objective about appearances but subjective about essences.

 

43.  Better to be unwell and free than well and unfree.

 

44.  An elemental distinction between camp beds, water beds, sun beds, and air beds, with earth-water-fire-air correlations respectively.  Doubtless ordinary mattresses correlate with earth, given their mundane construction.

 

45.  Even now there are people who are foolish and unimaginative enough to persist in believing that, one day, Christ will literally return to the world in order to set up His 'heavenly kingdom' there.  But where, one wonders, would He go, in the event of such a return?  Israel?  Highly unlikely in view of the Jews' traditional rejection of Christianity and refusal to acknowledge Christ as their messiah, not to mention the fact that it was their ancestors who were partly responsible for having Him put to death in the first place.  Rome?  Even more unlikely, given the fact that Rome was the imperial oppressor of the Jews during Christ's lifetime and hardly the sort of place Christ would contemplate visiting in order, presumably, to save His true followers.  (Doubtless, it is one of the great ironies of history that Rome should be the acknowledged religious centre of the civilization which takes its name from Christ, and that true Christianity should be Roman!)  So where else does that leave us - England?  No more than a barbarous outpost of the Roman Empire in the time of Christ.  Ireland?  Scarcely a Christian country during Christ's lifetime!  America?  Still to be discovered and thus not even a part of the known world at that time.... No, one has only to think a moment or two about this subject to realize how utterly ridiculous is the notion of Christ's literally returning to earth.  Christ will never return for the simple reason that - quite apart from the fact that He would have nowhere to return from - there would be nowhere to which He could personally return.  There can only be what I call an equivalent of the Second Coming, a man who, roughly corresponding to the Jewish concept of a True World Messiah, should never be mistaken for Christ, and for the simple reason that he is uniquely himself.

 

46.  Just as we distinguish between barbarism and civilization, so we should distinguish between a barbarous civilization and a civilized barbarism, reserving for the former an equation with omega-in-the-alpha and for the latter an equation with alpha-in-the-omega, barbarism per se of course corresponding to alpha and civilization (in the non-Spenglerian sense of that term) to omega.  Thus in between the historical extremes of barbarism and civilization (the latter of which has still to come) one will find the barbarous civilization, for example, of the Catholic Middle Ages, and the civilized barbarism of the modern Industrial/Technological Age, particularly as applying to the capitalist West.  For it has to be admitted that we live in a barbarous age, when material values and the economic competition underlying them are paramount, to the detriment of any true spirituality such that alone accords with civilization in the most genuine sense of that term.  The West is less a civilization than a civilized barbarity, and only with its future eclipse will the light of true civilization be able to shine in the spirits of a superhumanity orientated towards the omega goal of evolution in pure transcendence.  Certainly we are not yet - except in comparatively rare instances - truly civilized.  Only when the centripetal triumphs over the centrifugal will true civilization, and thus ultimate morality, finally come to pass.

 

47.  On a parallel basis to the above, one could argue that whereas a three-quarter length hooded zipper corresponds to barbarous civilization, a collapsible umbrella corresponds, especially when sheathed, to civilized barbarism.  Full-sized umbrellas, by contrast, would correspond to the barbarous, and waist-length hooded zippers to the civilized.  Many other parallels could be cited, including that between acoustic guitars and upright pianos on the one hand (barbarous civilization and civilized barbarism), or grand pianos and electric guitars on the other hand (barbarism and civilization).  For in the one case we are dealing with an omega-in-the-alpha/alpha-in-the-omega dichotomy, whereas in the other case we have a straight alpha/omega dichotomy, as regarding the absolutely centrifugal (immoral) and the absolutely centripetal (moral).

 

48.  Since my work is largely based on elemental spectra or, at any rate, the four basic elements and their correlations on Earth, I should like to return to the subject by positing a connection between each of the Seasons and the elements in question, beginning with what I perceive as a connection between Spring and earth, proceeding to the connection between Summer and fire, proceeding still further to the connection between Autumn and air, and concluding with the connection between Winter and water.  Thus in conjunction with my previous theories outlining correlations between earth and realism, water and materialism, fire and naturalism, and air and idealism, I should like to define Spring as the realistic season (earth), Winter as the materialistic season (water), Summer as the naturalistic season (fire), and Autumn as the idealistic season (air), bearing in mind the correspondence between earth and plants, water and snow and/or ice, fire and the sun, and air and wind, which correspond to each of the Seasons.

 

49.  However, the progression of the Seasons is not on an hierarchical basis from realism to idealism, as from Spring to Autumn, with Winter and Summer coming in-between, but follows a non-hierarchical ascent from Spring to Summer, as from realism (earth) to naturalism (fire), and thereafter a descent from Autumn to Winter, as from idealism (air) to materialism (water), Winter being no less the antithesis of Summer (as water of fire), than Autumn is the antithesis of Spring (as air of earth).  One could contend, in reverting to a former analogy, that whereas Winter is an American season and Summer a Russian one, Autumn is an Irish season and Spring a British one, bearing in mind our equation of America with materialism (water), Russia with naturalism (fire), Ireland with idealism (air), and Britain with realism (earth), so that, exceptions notwithstanding, each of the peoples cited would be happiest and most 'in their element', so to speak, during the season which appeared to correspond to their respective elemental biases.  Perhaps it is more than mere coincidence to the above contentions that whereas the climax to the English football season is in late spring, i.e. with the F.A. Cup Final, the climax to the Irish, or Gaelic, football season is in early autumn, i.e. with the Maguire Cup.  Certainly the evidence would suggest as much!

 

50.  If scooters are absolutely centrifugal (ring-like) on account of their alpha-stemming 'head' status, then it seems to me that open-topped two-seater sports cars are relatively centrifugal on account of their 'bodily' status as cars, and that one can therefore plot a descent from alpha divine and/or diabolic parallels (depending on the type of scooter) to alpha worldly and/or purgatorial parallels (depending on the type of sports car in question), after which point a link with conventional four-seaters will lead to enclosed two-seaters of an omega worldly and/or purgatorial parallel (depending on the type of sports car in question) which, by dint of their 'bodily' status, we can designate as relatively centripetal (badge-like) in relation to the absolutely centripetal 'head' status of motorbikes, whether of an omega divine or diabolic parallel (again depending on the type of motorbike).  Thus from scooters to open-topped two-seaters on the one hand, and from enclosed two-seaters to motorbikes on the other, with four-seaters coming in-between as a kind of Liberal middle-ground vis-à-vis Conservative and Labour extremes in relation to two-seaters, and Fascist and Communist extremes in relation to scooters and motorbikes respectively.  Hence alpha and omega flanking the World (including its purgatorial partner), as two-wheel vehicles flank four-wheel ones.  If scooters are absolutely immoral, then open-topped sports cars are relatively immoral.  If motorbikes are absolutely moral, then enclosed two-seaters are relatively moral.  Four-seaters, situated in between, are simply amoral, like Liberalism - that neutron equivalent vis-à-vis proton and electron extremes.

 

51.  In returning to Spengler's historical divisions in regard to 'Historyless Chaos', 'Culture', 'Civilization', and 'Second Religiousness' (in that order), I would deem 'Historyless Chaos' the age of bad doing (naturalism), 'Culture' the age of bad being (realism), 'Civilization' (the present age) the age of good doing (materialism), and 'Second Religiousness' the age of good being (idealism).  Bad doing, which includes physical strife, I categorize as a proton-particle equivalent; bad being, which includes prayer (a 'worldly' form of meditation), I categorize as a proton-wavicle equivalent; good doing, which includes socialistic progress, I categorize as an electron-particle equivalent; and, finally, good being, which involves pure meditation, I categorize as an electron-wavicle equivalent.  Doubtless good doing is preferable, from an evolutionary standpoint, to bad being, if only because, like all theological falls from a higher precedent, it indirectly paves the way for a superior mode of being, without which there could be no true salvation.

 

52.  If Fascism is neo-alpha and Communism omega, then it need not surprise us that whereas Fascism will have a military bias, Communism will give due priority to the police, who, in relation to the army, correspond to an omega affiliation.  Fascism is militarist on account of its neo-pagan and fundamentally autocratic integrity.  Communism, on the other hand, is what might be termed 'policist' on account of its transcendental and essentially theocratic integrity.  Protons and electrons across a neutron divide.  Similarly, although 'Final Solutions' accrue to both fascist and communist integrities, it will be found that, as a rule, the fascist form of Final Solution takes on a destructive character in line with its proton essence, whereas the communist form of Final Solution is more likely to be constructive, in accordance with the electron essence of Communism.  Hence where the one ideology seeks to liquidate people(s) perceived as hostile or irrelevant to its integrity, the other seeks to transport such people(s) to places, preferably abroad, where they can start a new life under different conditions.  Transportation rather than liquidation is the essence of a communist Final Solution.

 

53.  Bourgeois republics are less free-electron societies than societies of compromise between neutron (capitalist) and electron (worker) equivalents, with the former dominating the latter.  People's republics, on the other hand, can and do achieve a free-electron standing, albeit of a particle rather than a wavicle bias (such as would accrue to the Centre).  Constitutional monarchies, by contrast, are fully atomic, with proton (aristocratic) as well as neutron (capitalist) and electron (worker) equivalents, and therefore are not even relatively free societies (from proton roots or constraints) but societies in which the great majority, both neutron and electron, are bound, as subjects, to the proton root ... of the reigning monarch.  Even bourgeois republics are relatively free in relation to such constitutional monarchies, although somewhat short of the absolute freedom of People's republics, which are of course above neutron compromise in free-electron absolutism.  Yet such absolute freedom, germane to a particle bias, is not an end-in-itself but the precondition of a new binding, the ultimate binding of a religiously sovereign People to their own divinity, as Holy Spirit, in the electron-wavicle cohesion of a Social Transcendentalist Centre.

 

54.  Interesting how a given subject or context, such as swimming, can be subdivided into what appear to be elemental equivalents, as when we equate backstroke with earth on account of its fundamentally water-denying nature (face up), front crawl with water on account of its water-affirming nature (face down), breaststroke with fire on account of its breast-centred, short-breathed, and altogether more elevated nature (head well above the water), and butterfly with air on account of its air-affirming gulps as arms and chest heave out of the water in an almost gravity-defying resolve which suggests not so much swimming as flying.  In my elemental view, using the term philosophically, backstroke is the lowest and most basic stroke, corresponding to earth, while butterfly is the highest and most complicated stroke, corresponding to air - the one having realistic (British) implications and the other idealistic (Irish) implications.  By contrast, front crawl and breaststroke, corresponding to water and fire respectively, suggest intermediate stages analogous to materialism (Americans) and naturalism (Russians), though front crawl must remain the swimming stroke par excellence, given its correlation with water and water-affirming integrity.  For swimming is essentially a materialistic activity, and therefore the stroke which is most correlative with materialism will have the speed advantage over all the others, which will stand as realistic, naturalistic, and idealistic asides, or subdivisions, within the overall context of water materialism.  One could also argue, in seeking sexual parallels with each stroke, that whereas backstroke is a heterosexual stroke, front crawl is a homosexual one, given the realistic/materialistic distinctions which exist between the two lowest (bodily) modes of swimming.  By contrast, breaststroke would correlate with plastic-inflatable and/or vibrator sexuality (depending on the swimmer's gender, although, in point of fact, women are more given to breaststroke than men as a rule, which is partly attributable to their heart-affirming, or emotional, essence), and butterfly with masturbatory pornographic sexuality, given the naturalistic/idealistic distinctions which exist between the two highest (head) modes of swimming.

 

55.  While on the subject of subdivisions, it should be possible to detect a kind of earth-water-fire-air parallel to the above in the context of artificial heating, which extends, it seems to me, from electric fires with artificial coal impressions (earth) to fan heaters (air) via central heating (water) and plain electric fires (fire).  Similarly, I believe an antithetical parallel to such elemental spectra, in the context of naturalistic heating, can be posited on the basis of an extension of coal fires (earth) to gas fires (air) via oil stoves (water) and log fires (fire), so that, placing the two elemental quartets in an alpha/omega antithesis, we shall have:-

 

                       ALPHA                  OMEGA

 

                       gas stoves               fan heaters

                       log fires                  electric bar fires

                       oil stoves                 central heating

                       coal fires                electric coal fires

 

with, by and large, centrifugal implications on the one hand, that of the alpha naturalistic, and centripetal implications on the other hand, that of the omega artificial, the former relatively immoral and the latter relatively or, rather (within certain limits), absolutely moral, depending on the spectrum in question.  Certainly, if we can distinguish between alpha and omega heating extremes in this way, then logic would suggest the likelihood of a sort of amoral middle-ground in between, corresponding to each of the elemental spectra, and doubtless we would do well, as experience has shown, to divide such a middle ground into alpha-stemming and omega-oriented alternatives, so that each spectrum would afford us two amoral possibilities, were we to rack our brains for modes of heating which appear to stand in between the above-listed antitheses, like, for example, fires that combine both natural and artificial alternatives or use coke (smokeless fuel) instead of coal - definitely alpha-stemming (earth) amoral in relation to electric/coal option fires; or bundles of chopped wood instead of logs - doubtless alpha-stemming (fire) amoral in relation to multi-filament electric fires; or paraffin instead of oil - doubtless alpha-stemming (water) amoral in relation to the older and bulkier forms of central heating, and so on.

 

56.  However that may be, heating no less than swimming provides us with elemental correspondences and, knowing this, we should strive to heat our rooms in accordance with the elemental spectrum with which we most identify and, if possible, on the highest, most moral terms.  No-one who is left wing, or who considers himself such, should use any of the alpha, or naturalistic, modes of heating; for they more accord, depending on the spectrum, with either a conservative (bottom two) or a fascist (top two) bias than with either a socialist or a communist one.  Philosophy can help us divide the wood from the trees, as it were, and live in the light of our better knowledge.

 

57.  The natural comes in between two forms of the supernatural, viz. alpha and omega.  The natural is inherently worldly and, in human terms, democratic, whereas the supernatural is either hellish or heavenly, that is to say autocratic in the alpha context, but theocratic in the omega one.  A distinction, as it were, between the Father and the Holy Ghost (or, in the strictly diabolic case, Satan and the Antichrist), with Christ coming in-between as worldly naturalism, and never more so than as a neutron equivalent (Protestant) vis-à-vis proton and electron extremes.  The worldly natural stems from the autocratic supernatural but, unbeknown to itself, will in turn be superseded by the theocratic supernatural, which stems from it as surely as it stemmed from the alpha supernatural.  Neutrons stemming from protons and electrons stemming from neutrons, as age supersedes age in the struggle which is historically unfolding.

 

58.  On the basis that I distinguished between open-topped two-seaters as Conservative and enclosed two-seaters as Labourite either side of a four-seater middle ground (Liberal), it should be logically consistent to contend that novels will be flanked by poetic novellas (novelettes) on the alpha-stemming Right, and by philosophic novellas (novelettes) on the omega-oriented Left - indeed, that poetic fiction, corresponding to open-topped two-seaters, and philosophic fiction, corresponding to enclosed two-seaters, should only be conceived of in novella form, given their relatively alpha-stemming and omega-oriented significance either side of a Liberal middle-ground, in this case that of general fiction, which is rather more narrative and even dramatic than poetic or philosophic.  Similarly, we should have no hesitation in ascribing an alpha-stemming bodily significance to cigarettes smoked in or via cigarette-holders, on account of the ring-like constitution of the latter, which, corresponding to poetic novellas and open-topped two-seaters, would contrast with cigarette smoking of a more conventional or, at any rate, independent order, that equivalent of the philosophical novella and enclosed two-seater to which, on account of its uniquely centripetal character, we may ascribe an omega-oriented bodily significance analogous to the parliamentary Left.  In between each mode of cigarette smoking, however, come cigars, paralleling novels and four-seaters, and if smoking cigarettes in holders is Tory, then cigar smoking is comparatively Liberal, an amoral middle-ground in between relatively immoral alpha and absolutely moral omega bodily extremes.

 

59.  Further to our distinctions between scooters as fascistic and motorbikes as communistic either side of the liberal middle-ground ... of cars, I should like to distinguish between scooters and motorbikes with sidecars and particle-suggesting sports cars (to which we may ascribe a materialistic significance vis-à-vis naturalistic scooters and motorbikes on the one hand, and realistic sports cars on the other hand, the former particle suggesting and the latter wavicle suggesting), reserving to the sidecar combinations a head (brain) materialistic status, so that we can speak of two kinds of materialism, viz. purgatorial and worldly, depending on whether we are referring to sidecar combinations or to sports cars, with alpha and omega distinctions between scooters with sidecars on the one hand, and motorbikes with sidecars on the other hand.  Unlike realism, materialism cannot be conceived solely in terms of the bodily, since it also embraces the head, with particular reference to the brain, both in its old-brain and new-brain manifestations.  Now while sidecar combinations are ideologically lower than independent scooters or motorbikes, they are nonetheless ideologically higher than particle-suggesting sports cars, a superior mode of materialism which, as I have contended, has purgatorial rather than worldly implications.

 

60.  As we descend from protons to neutrons and ascend from neutrons to electrons, we ought to distinguish between negative and positive neutrons, as well as allow for a strictly neutral middle-ground position in between, since neutron equivalents are more complex than at first meets the eye.  Take cars in relation to scooters and motorbikes.  A descent, as I have contended, from a proton absolutism (scooter) to a neutron relativity (open-topped two-seaters) leading via a more neutral relativity (four-seaters) to an ascent from a neutron relativity (enclosed two-seaters) to an electron absolutism (motorbikes).  Now since the neutron relativities are not homogeneous but decidedly heterogeneous, stretching from open-topped two-seaters to enclosed two-seaters via conventional four-seaters, it must follow that open-topped two-seaters correspond to a negative neutron relativity, enclosed two-seaters to a positive neutron relativity, and conventional four-seaters to a neutral neutron relativity, since they stretch across a bodily spectrum, from alpha to omega via a strictly liberal middle-ground and are not, like scooters and motorbikes, akin to either proton or electron extremes.  The most we can say for the worldly alpha is that it has a strong proton bias, that negative neutron relativity is commensurate with a proton bias, just as positive neutron relativity, its omega-oriented antithesis, has an electron bias, a bias which yet falls short (as cars vis-à-vis motorbikes) of a true electron status.

 

61.  But if we can successfully apply such a theory to cars vis-à-vis scooters and motorbikes, then what is to prevent us from applying it just as successfully, say, to parliament vis-à-vis fascist and communist extremes, and thus from seeing in the Conservative-Liberal-Labour parliamentary trinity not a proton-neutron-electron parallel but, on the contrary, a neutron heterogeneity stretching from negative neutron relativity on the Right to positive neutron relativity on the Left via a neutral neutron relativity in the (Liberal) centre?  For, certainly, parliament is no less an integral genre or context than, say, cars in relation to scooters or motorbikes, and if all cars are of a neutron equivalent vis-à-vis proton and electron extremes, then it must follow that all parliamentarians are likewise neutron equivalents vis-à-vis fascist (proton) and communist (electron) extremes, in which case we would have no right to hype-up the parliamentary Right or Left into some kind of proton/electron antagonism, but would be constrained to admit that such antagonism as exists is strictly within neutron bounds (as between negative and positive manifestations thereof), and therefore will never correspond to the ferocious 'us or them' antagonism which must necessarily exist - and has long existed - between Fascists and Communists or, for that matter, the analogous antagonism of Mods and Rockers, the former proton equivalents (since pertaining to scooters) and the latter electron equivalents (since pertaining to motorbikes).  A parliamentary democracy is, precisely by dint of its neutron integrity, a bourgeois democracy; for the bourgeois is nothing if not a neutron equivalent in between proton (aristocratic) and electron (proletarian) extremes, a truly democratic and, hence, amoral animal who fights shy of both immoral autocratic and moral theocratic alternatives, a neutron Christian for whom both proton paganism and electron transcendentalism are alike anathema.  Only where the electron proletariat are sovereign can one speak of a People's democracy, but such a democracy will only be possible where the People are truly electron equivalents and not, as is usually the case in bourgeois democracies, either proton peasants or neutron artisans, for whom life under a parliamentary thumb is if not ideal then, at an rate, far from intolerable.  Needless to say, this does not apply to that electron minority of hard-boiled proletarians for whom parliamentary democracy is at best a sick joke, at worst an unbearable yoke.  (I am especially thinking of those who habitually dress in leather jackets and ride around on motorbikes.)

 

62.  Two further tripartite (proton-neutron-electron) parallels to the above, as to our scooter-car-motorbike parallel, would be magazines - books - tapes (literature), and scores - records - tapes (music), noting that we proceed from alpha appearances to omega essences, from the centrifugal to the centripetal via a neutron middle-ground which combines appearances with essences in a synthesis that could be described as either essential appearances (negative neutrons), apparent essences (positive neutrons), or, with regard to a strictly neutron integrity in between, a combination of essential appearances and apparent essences (neutral neutrons).  Certainly magazines are usually more apparent (photographic) than essential (literary), and the more purely photographic a magazine is, the more will it approximate to an alpha absolutism, as it were, of far-right ideological implications.  Of course, there are what might be described as contiguous overlappings between magazines with a relatively high percentage of words and books with a relatively high percentage of drawings and/or photographs, the latter of which would, however, be right wing in relation to purely literary books, especially those of a philosophic order, which are less essential appearances (photographs, drawings, etc., annotated upon) than apparent essences, essence being 'apparent' when in print or conveyed through the medium of print, but becoming purely essential when elevated, through cassette recordings, beyond print to a wholly aural status.  (It is this fact which precludes me from regarding cassettes in a fascistic light, as scooter-equivalent ring-like phenomena antithetical, on an alpha/omega basis, to compact discs, with records, viz. LPs, singles, coming in-between.  Now tapes cannot be one thing, i.e. omega, in a literary context and be a completely different thing, i.e. alpha, in a musical one.  That privilege is reserved, it seems to me, for scores, both in the 'head' context of jazz and in the comparatively 'bodily' context of classical, as concerning fascist and conservative right-wing alternatives.  For music becomes absolutely essential when confined to cassette and even to record, whereas on scores it is apparent, i.e. can be read, and thus approximates to an alpha status.)  When books and tapes are combined, as with some language courses, one has a parallel to motorbikes with sidecar, which I would regard as a bound-electron equivalent, in contrast to either a positive neutron equivalent, i.e. philosophic paperback and/or enclosed two-seater, or a free-electron equivalent, i.e. philosophic tape and/or free-standing motorbike.  For such book/tape combinations are transitional, it seems to me, between left-wing books and philosophic tapes - the ultimate, because truly essential, mode of philosophical presentation.

 

63.  Concerning the subject of our scooter-car-motorbike triad, it seems to me that mopeds should be regarded as a sort of cross between scooters and motorbikes, since they are both alpha stemming and omega orientated at the same time, having a scooter-like gap in between the seat and the steering column, but otherwise resembling a motorbike to the extent that the overall design is usually more essential than apparent, with particular regard to the engine being largely 'on view' rather than hidden behind scooter-like panelling.  Thus with mopeds, in both wavicle- and particle-suggesting kinds, we have a sort of paradoxical proton/electron integrity which, whilst indubitably middle ground in relation to proton (scooter) and electron (motorbike) extremes, is nevertheless distinct from the neutron middle-ground status of cars - indeed, as distinct from such a status, I would argue, as melody from harmony in music, both of which are comparatively middle ground in relation to rhythm on the one hand and to pitch on the other hand.  In fact, with such a proton/electron middle-ground one has, it seems to me, a parallel with anarchism, which is surely a head-level middle-ground in between Fascism on the one hand and Communism on the other, while being in an analogous position vis-à-vis bodily Liberalism as mopeds to cars or, for that matter, melody to harmony.  However that may be, a proton/electron middle-ground is certainly amoral in relation to immoral alpha and moral omega extremes - only it is dynamically as opposed to statically amoral, like neutron cars, harmony, Liberalism, etc.

 

64.  On the subject of alternative middle-ground parallels flanked by alpha and omega extremes, it seems to me that Catholicism is a proton/electron 'dynamic' form of middle-ground Christianity in between paganism and transcendentalism, that is to say proton alpha and electron omega extremes, while Protestantism corresponds to a neutron 'static' form of middle-ground Christianity directly under the Catholic variety, rather like harmony to melody in music, or cars to mopeds in road transportation, or liberalism to anarchism in politics.  Thus whereas Catholicism is a 'head' level form of middle-ground religion, Protestantism is decidedly 'bodily', germane to a more democratic and, hence, worldly type of humanity.  Certainly we are less concerned, in Protestantism, with an 'abraxas' Christ who alternates between alpha and omega extremes, damning and saving as the context demands, than with a mundane and, on the whole, democratic Christ, rooted in worldly wisdom and fighting shy of both autocratic (Father) and theocratic (Holy Spirit) extremes - the extremes of alpha and omega supernaturalism.  The Protestant Christ, like Protestantism itself, is comparatively natural and humanistic, and therefore a neutron equivalent.

 

65.  As regards the pagan and transcendental absolutes which would appear to flank anarchism (to be sure, Catholicism is an anarchic mode of Christianity, alternating between alpha and omega, protons and electrons, sins and graces, though relatively stabilized through the Confessional, that focal-point, outside Christ, of Catholic paradox), I tend to regard Ecology as probably the most striking form of contemporary 'paganism', bearing in mind that, strictly speaking, Ecology is not politics or a political movement so much as a religious movement concerned less with human beings than with their relationship to and survival in the natural environment - in other words, a supra-human context which transcends politics through its concern with the more-than-human or, more correctly in this case, the less-than-human, namely nature.  No, Ecologists are not politicians but unconscious proponents of a highly topical form of neo-paganism, and against them, as motorbikes against scooters, I posit omega-oriented Transcendentalists, more specifically such Social Transcendentalists as myself, whose concern with the more-than-human places them in a diametrically antithetical relationship to those who, for alpha-stemming reasons best known to themselves, would have us reverse the trend of evolution towards the transcendent Beyond in the name of an earthly paradise in which men live, like contented animals, in harmony with and enslaved to nature.  Ecologists are to religion what Fascists are to politics: neo-alpha reactionaries who strive to defend nature from those who would transcend it in pursuit of artificial and spiritual progress towards the omega supernatural, those truly moral men for whom the electron internal is more important than the proton external, and who, whether as Communists or Transcendentalists, whether, that is to say, in relation to man or to that which transcends him, strive to bring about a truly moral society on earth, one which negates nature in both its human and pre-human manifestations.

 

66.  From computer appearances (keyed-in words/graphics) to radio essences (spoken words/music) via television essential appearances/apparent essences (actions/speech) - a triadic parallel to our proton-proton/electron-electron distinctions, with, in all probability, record players corresponding to the neutron middle-ground underneath the proton/electron middle-ground of television.  For record players, with their rectilinear speakers, are certainly bodily in relation to televisions, not to mention computers and radios.

 

67.  If the proton alpha position is naturalistic (fire) and the electron omega position idealistic (air), then the proton/electron position in between is materialistic (water) and the neutron position underneath realistic (earth).  Consequently whereas extreme right-wing politics is naturalistic, extreme left-wing politics is idealistic, whereas middle ground 'head' politics is materialistic and middle ground 'bodily' politics realistic.  Fascism corresponds to fire but Communism to air.  Anarchism corresponds to water but Liberalism to earth.  In fact, we could alternatively choose to say that fire is a fascist element but air a communist one, or that water is anarchic but earth liberal.

 

68.  However that may be, the same applies to religion, with paganism (Ecology) corresponding to fire (soul) and transcendentalism (Social Transcendentalism) to air (spirit), but Catholicism corresponding to water (intellect) and Protestantism to earth (will), fire and air no less horizontally antithetical than water and earth are vertically antithetical, if we bear in mind the overall T-shape of our contentions, with fire, water, and air at the top but earth at the bottom or, more specifically, corresponding to the lower end of the vertical sign.  Atomic Truth, it seems, is a T-like arrangement of protons, neutrons, and electrons in such fashion, with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost implications - the Father a proton absolute, the Son either a neutron middle-ground, as in Protestantism, or an oscillation between (Virgin Mary) protons and (Second Coming) electrons, as in Catholicism, and the Holy Ghost an electron absolute - the omega goal of spiritual striving.  Verily, the truth about atomic Truth is that only when the Holy Ghost is triumphant ... will mankind be saved, saved from both protons and neutrons for an electron heaven - the coming post-Human(ist) Millennium of proletarian peace!

 

69.  Words like 'individualism' and 'collectivism' are relative and, therefore, neither indicative of a good nor of a bad state-of-affairs per se.  Individualism, like collectivism, can be either good (essential) or bad (apparent), depending on the context.  There is good individualism and bad individualism, good collectivism and bad collectivism.  Reverting, once again, to the Spenglerian distinctions between 'Historyless Chaos', 'Culture', 'Civilization', and 'Second Religiousness', one could contend that 'Historyless Chaos' was commensurate with bad individualism, i.e. autocratic rule (apparent); that 'the Culture' (broadly corresponding to the Catholic Middle Ages) was commensurate with good collectivism, i.e. Christian fellowship in a 'brotherhood of man' (essential); that 'the Civilization' (the contemporary democratic age par excellence) is commensurate with bad collectivism, i.e. democratic sovereignty (apparent); and that 'Second Religiousness' will be commensurate with good individualism, i.e. spiritual self-realization (essential).  Thus it would seem that individualism flanks collectivism on both alpha and omega terms, corresponding to apparent and essential extremes, while collectivism is divisible, within bodily or worldly terms, between Church and State, 'Culture' and 'Civilization' - the former essential (wavicle) and the latter apparent (particle), with religious and secular implications respectively.  From proton particles (alpha bad individualism) to proton wavicles (omega-in-the-alpha good collectivism), and from electron particles (alpha-in-the-omega bad collectivism) to electron wavicles (omega good individualism) - the metaphysical distinctions, if you like, which underlie the more concrete manifestations of individualism and collectivism, both good (catholic/transcendental) and bad (feudal/democratic).

 

70.  Truly, individualism can be both morally inferior and superior to collectivism, depending on the type of individualism in question.  From the autocratic One to the theocratic Many, and from the democratic Many to the transcendental One - a devolution from bad individualism (autocracy) to good collectivism (theocracy) on the one hand, and an evolution from bad collectivism (democracy) to good individualism (supertheocracy) on the other hand, as regards the Father and Christ where the devolutionary polarity is concerned, but with regard to the Antichrist and the Holy Spirit in relation to the evolutionary polarity.  In between the Father and Christ we have the Blessed Virgin, and in between the Antichrist and the Holy Spirit we shall find the Second Coming, both of whom are rather akin to neutron equivalents vis-à-vis alpha and omega extremes, serving as a link between Christ (electrons) and the Father (protons) in the one case, i.e. that of the Blessed Virgin, but between the Antichrist (protons) and the Holy Spirit (electrons) in the other, i.e. that of the Second Coming.  For just as no outer communion with the Father is possible for Catholics except through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, so no inner communion with the Holy Spirit will be possible for Transcendentalists except through the intermediary medium of the Second Coming.

 

71.  Modern music, with particular regard to jazz and rock, provides us with the paradoxical phenomenon of acoustic instruments (saxophone, trumpet, flute, trombone, etc.) often played in a pitch- and, by implication, omega-oriented way, in contrast to the rhythmic and, by implication, alpha-stemming way in which electric instruments (guitars, keyboards, synthesizers, etc.) are often played, the former largely pertaining to jazz and the latter to rock, the instruments usually employed in the one context (jazz) being of a largely centrifugal and hence alpha-stemming design, those usually employed in the other context (rock) being of a largely centripetal and hence omega-oriented design, the contradictions between instruments and methods of performance in each context all the more paradoxical for the above-mentioned reasons.  Yet such an apparent paradox doubtless conforms to the atomic, open-society pressure which contemporary musicians live under in their resolve not to be too absolute, and thus idealistic or extremist, but to achieve a 'realistic' compromise between the moral nature of their respective instruments, whether of a centripetal or a centrifugal bias, and a contrary way of performing on them - jazz apparently immoral (from the instrumental point-of-view) but essentially moral (from the musical point-of-view), rock apparently moral (from the instrumental point-of-view) but essentially immoral (from the musical point-of-view); the one predominantly pitch orientated and the other predominantly rhythmic.  Exceptions to the general rule notwithstanding, the age of a truly pitch-oriented music played on centripetally-biased electric instruments has still to come, and then only, in my opinion, following the eclipse of worldly atomicity by free-electron absolutism.  Such an age, besides transcending the paradoxical atomicities between omega-oriented instruments, like electric guitars, and alpha-stemming musical integrities, would also transcend centrifugally-biased instruments like trumpets and saxophones, and thus get beyond jazz.  It would be communistic through and through.

 

72.  Consciousness is a neutron equivalent flanked by negative and positive will, proton and electron emotions.  By itself, consciousness is not will, neither in its subconscious nor its superconscious manifestations.  A man does not act at the sight of a woman unless she is extremely attractive and arouses positive feelings in him which can then be acted upon.  He kisses a woman he is in love with, but does not usually act in such a fashion towards women if he is not in love.  Love is a powerful positive emotion, and hence a manifestation of electron will.  Hate, by contrast, is a powerful negative emotion, and hence a manifestation of proton will.  Hatred can lead to violence, but violence will not arise from consciousness alone, which, as already noted, is neutral in its stance before life.  It is precisely the soul and the spirit that are not neutral, since pertaining to both proton and electron substrata of the brain on either negative or positive terms ... with wavicle and particle distinctions, spirit being a wavicle substratum, whether negative (proton) or positive (electron), soul being a particle substratum, whether negative (proton) or positive (electron) - the difference, in effect, between light and heat at both alpha and omega poles.  The best and most courageous people do not, like the Buddha, seek no pleasure (or pride or love or joy) in order to avoid pain (or humiliation or hate or sadness), since that merely entails a neutral, neutron stance in between negative and positive extremes of will.  On the contrary, they pursue the positive principle in a spirit of electron defiance, and take such proton drawbacks as may arise from their behaviour with stoical perseverance.  For there can be no Heaven where there is no will to Heaven, even if your Heaven be less than truly divine (say, worldly), and the will to Heaven is our most noble aspiration, without which we would either be moored to Hell, as to some negative resolve (which, unfortunately, a minority always are), or stuck in a Buddhist middle-ground of neutron neutrality, condemned to a perpetual stasis of bourgeois mediocrity.  Better the will to Heaven than no will at all!

 

73.  The passive eye of neutron neutrality, the reactive eye of proton negativity, and the attractive eye of electron positivity x 4, which is to say, interpreted in regard to elemental spectra.  For example, the hateful eye of naturalistic (fiery) negativity vis-à-vis the loving eye of naturalistic (fiery) positivity.  Or the sad eye of idealistic (airy) negativity vis-à-vis the joyful eye of idealistic (airy) positivity.  Hells and heavens flanking neutral eyes of neutron passivity.

 

74.  We should learn to associate the way a man walks or, more correctly, the direction of his feet, with a moral stance in life.  For it seems to me that a man gives himself away as much by the style of his footsteps as by the position of his hands in relation to how he is dressed.  Thus we can distinguish between feet turned outwards (centrifugal), feet turned inwards (centripetal), and feet pointing straight ahead (neutral), which will give us immoral, moral, and amoral alternatives or, if you prefer, parallels.  To my mind, outwards-turned feet would confirm an immoral bias appropriate to a hand-out-of-trouser pockets, open-collar stance before the world; inwards-turned feet would confirm a moral bias appropriate to a hand-in-(zipper-jacket)-pockets, T-shirt stance before the world; and straight feet would confirm an amoral bias appropriate to a hand-in-(trouser)-pockets, buttoned-collar stance before the world.  The man with out-turned feet would suggest a proton bias applicable to an extrovert temperament.  The man with in-turned feet would suggest an electron bias applicable to an introvert temperament.  And the man with straight feet would suggest a neutron bias applicable to a neutral, or bourgeois, temperament.  Wills and consciousness.

 

75.  To be bourgeois is to have a bias for the conscious mind.  To be grand bourgeois is to have a bias for the subconscious mind.  To be petty bourgeois is to have a bias for the superconscious mind.  To be other than bourgeois is to have a bias for will, whether negatively or positively, good or ill, heaven or hell.  Only the world is conscious (or subconscious and superconscious).  Autocratic negative will, democratic consciousness, and theocratic positive will - Fathers, Sons, and Holy Ghosts.

 

76.  The subnatural Father, the natural Christ, and the supernatural Holy Ghost, with the pro-natural Blessed Virgin and the anti-natural Antichrist flanking alpha and omega respectively.

 

77.  Poetry treats of the appearances, particularly when beautiful, of life; philosophy, by contrast, treats of its essences ... truthfully.  It is for this reason that, where computers are concerned, Word-Processor Operators are akin to poets, whereas Computer Programmers are akin to philosophers.  More accurately, one could describe Word Processing as 'poetical' but Computer Programming as 'philosophical', since the one is primarily concerned with appearances and the other with essences.  Alpha and omega of the computer.

 

78.  Only an androgynous muddlehead would say, à la Keats: 'Truth is beauty, beauty truth'.  For the one is not the (inner or outer) equivalent of the other, since they are effectively opposite.  Truth is the outer manifestation of joy, beauty the outer manifestation of love, and consequently it would be no less foolish to say: 'Joy is love, love joy' than what the Romantic poet, who evidently understood little of essences, said or, rather, wrote.

 

79.  If true to itself philosophy is so profound (essential) that it will be hidden to all but the deepest penetration.  On the other hand, poetry is so superficial (apparent) that it can only be 'seen through' by the philosophical mind.

 

80.  Musically speaking, one is not saved until dead to rhythm and alive to pitch.

 

81.  Art and music are no less antithetical than poetry and philosophy - indeed, it is the attraction of opposites which makes bedfellows of art and philosophy on the one hand, and of music and poetry on the other hand.  For poetry and art would be no less 'lesbian' than philosophy and music ... 'homosexual' - relationships which, in sex as in culture, are rather the exception to the general rule, unattractive if not repellent.

 

82.  Art - and here I use that word in its broadest sense - is the spirituality of materialism.  For all art, whether musical, pictorial, literary, or sculptural, is materialistic, i.e. dependent on and produced by material means.  Where such means were taboo because infra dignum, there could be no art but only pure spirituality, as befitting divinity.

 

83.  To some extent it could be argued, in elemental fashion, that music is the art form of air (waves), painting the art form of fire (paint), literature the art form of water (ink), and sculpture the art form of earth (clay), since there is evidently a connotation, in each case, with one of the four main elements and thus, by implication, with (in descending order) idealism (air), naturalism (fire), materialism (water), and realism (earth), the air/idealism connotation of music having spiritual implications, the fire/naturalism connotation of painting having emotional implications, the water/materialism connotation of literature having intellectual implications, and the earth/realism connotation of sculpture having wilful implications, i.e. attesting to the defeat or triumph of will.  It could therefore be argued that music is the heavenly art form par excellence, painting the hellish art form par excellence, literature the purgatorial art form par excellence, and sculpture the worldly art form par excellence.

 

84.  It was only comparatively recently, in fact towards the end of the nineteenth century, that Western art became partly subjective and thus centripetal, as though subject to the influence of oriental mysticism.  Prior to the Impressionists and, subsequently, the Expressionists, Western art had been either objective in a classical manner or subjectively objective in a romantic one, which is to say, either concerned with the objective depiction of external phenomena, as in Classicism, or with the objective depiction of the self conceived externally as phenomenon, as in much Romanticism where, in contrast to the classical concern with others, self-portraiture becomes the focal-point of objectivity, a paradoxical procedure which I have termed subjective objectivity.  However, if the objectivity of the self reflects a progression over that of the other, a progression commensurate with omega-in-the-alpha as opposed to the alpha as such, then it was not until artists began to concentrate their energies on the other from a subjective viewpoint that what I shall term the objective subjectivity of alpha-in-the-omega came to pass, commensurate with a progression from Romanticism (essentially a thing of 'the Culture') to Impressionism/Expressionism (more germane to 'the Civilization'), and a sort of alternative paradox wherein the other is coloured by or depicted through the feelings and/or impressions of the subjective self.  If the subjective objectivity of Romanticism was a kind of masculinized femininity, then the objective subjectivity, for example, of Expressionism was a sort of feminized masculinity, truly a transvaluated and anti-Western tendency which paved the way, in due abstract time, for the unequivocally subjective art of the abstractionists, whether impressionist or expressionist, which was to shift the focus back to the self conceived subjectively as feelings, emotions, impressions, etc., and thus bring art to a centripetal climax, a climax no less moral than its inception and continuance in 'aristocratic' Classicism was fundamentally immoral - which is to say objective, and hence feminine.  From being 'aristocratic' (more correctly grand bourgeois) and absolute, art had become first 'bourgeois' and relative (whether from a Romantic or, subsequently, an Impressionist/Expressionist point-of-view) and then 'proletarian' (more correctly petty bourgeois) and absolute.  It had progressed from the autocratic to the theocratic via the democratic, from the Father to the Holy Ghost via the Son, from protons to electrons via neutrons, from the centrifugal to the centripetal via a paradoxical and wholly worldly cross between the two.  No less than objectivity was the alpha of art, subjectivity was its omega.  After which, art could only be transcended by the truly proletarian superart ... of light art of one kind or another.

 

85.  In relation to hardbacks, which reflect a realistic relativity between (soft) paper and (hard) cover, paperbacks suggest a materialistic relativity commensurate with their (soft) cover and (soft) paper, which places them in a position, vis-à-vis hardbacks, analogous to water (coldness) vis-à-vis earth (darkness) or, alternatively, purgatory vis-à-vis the world, neither of which truly transcend the body ... except to the extent that tapes are used as a supplement to paperbacks, as in some language courses at present.  However, if books are either worldly or purgatorial, then, to extend our analogue, tapes are diabolic and thus of an essence more emotional than either wilful (as with hardbacks) or intellectual (as with paperbacks) by dint of their dependence on and association with the aural transmission of words.  Superior, however, to tapes (as paperbacks to hardbacks) are computer discs and the correlative optical appreciation of words as light on a VDU, in which words are redeemed and brought to a quasi-divine standing, a spiritual equation which stands to tapes as air (light) to fire (heat), or as heaven to hell.  Speaking less analogically, one could argue that whereas tapes are naturalistic by dint of their correlation with emotions, computer discs are idealistic by dint of their correlation with awareness, and consequently we have a correspondence with soulful and spiritual substrata of the superconscious psyche - in complete contrast to the intellectual and wilful correspondence with the new brain and the body elicited by paperbacks and hardbacks respectively, the former materialistic by dint of their correlation with thoughts, and the latter realistic by dint of their correlation with sensations, as well, of course, as in the rather more concrete sense we discovered with regard to each medium of literary presentation at the beginning of this entry.

 

86.  However, whatever the parallel we choose, whether analogical or literal, it has to be concluded that the computer disc is the highest medium of literary or, more specifically, philosophical presentation, as superior to cassettes as paperbacks to hardbacks, and that proper justice cannot be done to divine Truth until it has been presented via computer for VDU appreciation, wherein its intrinsic illumination will have the appearance of light (centripetal) and thus best serve the Divine.  When it finally comes to pass, the 'Kingdom of Heaven' will require that computer discs supersede not only books but, to a lesser extent, tapes as well, since the latter will be a sort of diabolic shortfall from its own divine integrity, standing to discs as heat to light, or red to white, and thereby constituting a kind of sin.

 

87.  'Liberal' hardbacks, 'Socialist' softbacks, 'Communist' cassettes, 'Transcendentalist' computer discs - an ideological progression from realism to idealism via materialism and naturalism.

 

88.  From the objectivity of fools to the subjectivity of the wise.  From the folly of birth to the wisdom of rebirth.  (Fools are born but wise men are 'born again', i.e. transvaluated from an alpha-stemming to an omega-oriented disposition.)

 

89.  In the distinction between LPs, compact discs, cassettes, and music videos ... we have elemental parallels to earth, water, fire, and air, with realistic, materialistic, naturalistic, and idealistic implications respectively, which, transposed to a theological key, suggest the probability that LPs are worldly, compact discs purgatorial, cassettes diabolic, and music videos divine ... as we ascend from darkness to light via cold and heat equivalents.  Thus LPs - earth/darkness, realism/world; compact discs - water/coldness, materialism/purgatory; cassettes - fire/heat, naturalism/hell; music videos - air/light, idealism/heaven.

 

90.  Pornography is the appearance of sex; sexual gadgets ... its essence.  Both of these modern sexual extremes flank natural sex and, for that matter, antinatural sex, or homosexuality, as Fascism and Communism flank Liberalism/Socialism.  For pornography is no less an alpha-stemming phenomenon than sexual gadgets are omega orientated, and if the one is largely immoral by dint of the centrifugal nature of legs spread wide apart, then the other is comparatively moral by dint of the centripetal nature of the gadgets in question, and may be said to transcend the largely amoral nature of heterosexuality as such.  An omega-oriented society could only be anti-appearance and pro-essence (for which read: against pornography but for sexual gadgets), since it would be highly moral.

 

91.  Pornography stands to sexual gadgets as music scores to compact discs, tapes, etc., which is to say, as appearance to essence, or the immoral to the moral.  Now just as heterosexuality is an amoral middle-ground in between the fascistic immorality of pornography on the one hand and the communistic morality of sex gadgets on the other, so musical concerts are an amoral middle-ground, analogous to heterosexual relations, in between music scores and recorded music, particularly on disc or tape.  In fact, musical concerts are no-less worldly, and hence liberal, than heterosexuality, each of which is flanked by alpha and omega extremes.

 

92.  Just as music is classical when compact and romantic when free to expand in a variety of not necessarily related musical directions, so it can be contended of pornography that it is 'classical' when the model and/or models are modestly displayed, but 'romantic' when limbs, and particularly legs, are spread wide apart in an unequivocally centrifugal fashion.  From which it can be deduced that whereas pornographic 'romanticism' is immoral, pornographic 'classicism' is comparatively amoral, if from an alpha-stemming point of view.

 

93.  We should distinguish between particle and wavicle equivalents in pornography no less than with regard to sexual gadgets.  For it seems to me that whereas the one focuses attention upon the sexual organs alone, the other maintains a more general, and thus comprehensive, perspective which should be described as idealistic rather than naturalistic.  Hence sex dolls, as opposed to vaginal and/or phallic gadgets, for the omega-oriented wavicle equivalent, but discretely displayed models, as opposed to highly erotic ones, for the alpha-stemming wavicle equivalent, both of which would accord with divine (immoral and moral) as opposed to diabolic (likewise immoral and moral) parallels.

 

94.  Compact discs and computer discs are alike materialistic in relation to the realism of LPs and books (paperbacks not excepted), the naturalism of cassettes (whether verbal or musical), and the idealism of videos (whether verbal or musical).  In other words, they assume a brain equivalent in between the bodily equivalent of books and/or LPs on the one hand and the psychic equivalent of (soulful) cassettes and (spiritual) videos on the other hand, standing in a kind of purgatorial light to worldly, hellish, and heavenly options.  Probably computer discs are not - contrary to what I thought earlier - the ultimate mode of literary presentation but, rather, one coming in-between books and tapes (both audio and video), since such discs suggest a new-brain equivalent which, by dint of its atomic nature, can only be ideologically inferior to the superconscious particle (soulful) equivalent of cassettes and the superconscious wavicle (spiritual) equivalent of videos, while yet being ideologically superior to the bodily equivalent of books.  Thus it would seem that spoken videos are the truly spiritual mode of literary presentation, an air/light equivalent above the fire/heat equivalent of cassettes, the water/coldness equivalent of computer discs, and the earth/darkness equivalent of books.  Therefore whereas books are a worldly medium of literary presentation, computer discs would be a purgatorial, cassettes a diabolic, and videos a divine medium of literary presentation.  And this corresponds to the media of musical presentation ... beginning with LPs and culminating, via compact discs and cassettes, with videos.

 

95.  Paperbacks, divisible into those with wraps and those without, are an alpha-stemming worldly equivalent in the former context and an omega-oriented worldly equivalent in the latter one, and may be said to flank hardbacks, with or without wrap, much as cigarettes (with or without the use of a cigarette holder) flank cigars, and two-seater cars (enclosed or open-topped) flank four-seaters.  Indeed, paperbacks stand to hardbacks as homosexuals to heterosexuals, with a lesbian parallel accruing to those with wrap and a gay parallel to those without it, the very parallels which apply no less to cigarettes and two-seaters (depending on the type), as well as to a host of other worldly phenomena which, in contrast to proton and electron extremes, assume a neutron significance with either a proton or an electron bias ... depending on the type of extreme worldly phenomenon in question.  Thus whereas hardbacks are a neutron middle-ground, softbacks are a proton-biased neutron equivalent with wrap and an electron-biased neutron equivalent without it, falling short of the proton extremism of magazines (both literary and photographic) on the one hand, and the electron extremism of tapes (both audio and video) on the other, just as two-seater cars fall short, as extreme worldly phenomena, of scooters and motorbikes - those alpha and omega 'head' equivalents above, with proton and electron implications ... corresponding, in sexual terms, to pornography and to sex dolls and/or gadgets respectively.  Doubtless computer discs signify a proton/electron oscillation, as opposed to either a neutron middle-ground (as with books) or an extremism of proton (magazine) or electron (tape) equation, and may be regarded as paralleling mopeds vis-à-vis scooters on the proton Right and motorbikes on the electron Left - in other words, as a sort of atomic equivalent, corresponding to the new brain, in between the elemental extremes of new-brain subconscious and superconscious parallels.

 

96.  Politically speaking, books are liberal, either literally in the case of hardbacks or in terms of a radical Tory/Labour opposition in the case of paperbacks, with, so I contend, a radical Tory parallel applying to those with wrap but, by contrast, a Labour parallel applying to those without one.  Magazines are fascistic and tapes communistic, whereas computer discs may well be anarchistic, since assuming a middle-ground 'head' standing in between the 'psychic' absolutes of magazines and tapes respectively, while yet being ideologically superior (as the brain vis-à-vis the body) to books, just as mopeds are in a sense ideologically superior to cars, given their atomic (proton/electron) oscillations as opposed to neutron standing in between (proton) scooters and (electron) motorbikes.  Of course, where magazines and tapes are concerned we have to allow for a particle/wavicle dichotomy corresponding to naturalistic and idealistic, or diabolic and divine distinctions, so that word-biased magazines and audio tapes are perceived to be in the particle category and image-biased magazines and video tapes in the wavicle one, with alpha and omega implications respectively, that is to say  between print-biased magazines and audio tapes on the one hand (naturalistic/diabolic spectrum), and photographic magazines and video tapes on the other hand (idealistic/divine spectrum), the former a proton-particle/electron-particle antithesis, the latter a proton-wavicle/electron-wavicle antithesis, with subconscious and superconscious implications to each antithesis, albeit within the framework of the new brain as opposed to the old brain.

 

97.  Returning to the subject of sex, it could be argued that oral sex corresponds to an atomic (proton/electron) middle-ground in between (proton) pornography and (electron) plastic inflatables and/or gadgets, so that its relationship to conventional heterosexuality is rather akin to that of the brain to the body or, speaking analogically, of mopeds to cars, compact discs to LPs, and computer discs to books, with an amoral status somewhat more oscillatory (as between the vagina and the penis) than one-sided (as with conventional coitus, which corresponds to a neutron middle-ground, as befitting a bodily equation).  'Giving head' is thus a lunar or purgatorial mode of sex above the worldly mode, which is probably more congenial to Catholics and intellectuals than to (bodily) Protestants and men of action, and it is flanked, on a psychic basis, by the immoral and moral sexual extremes referred to above.

 

98.  The more peace or the less war there is in the world, the less sex or the more celibacy there will be.  For war and sex are two sides of the same naturalistic coin, and if you transcend war you can't reasonably expect to perpetuate or increase sex.  Thus a peaceful world would necessarily be one which was also above sex, and therefore dependent upon artificial means of reproduction.  As to sport, which some regard as a substitute for war, it could be argued that sport is no less a sort of playing at war than dance a sort of playing at sex, both of which are as complementary as war and sex, and neither of which is therefore a substitute for war or sex.  By which I mean that sport won't necessarily lead to or facilitate sex (unlike war), any more than dance lead to or facilitate war (unlike sex), but, on the contrary, that they will facilitate each other in keeping with the criteria of a more artificial and supernatural age.  Thus an age without sport would also be one without dancing, since the former is largely dependent on the latter, and as soon as you transcend the one the other will also be transcended.  An unaggressive male is not only above sex, he is above dancing as well, since the reduction or elimination of male aggression through war and sport makes for a passive attitude vis-à-vis the female, thereby cancelling-out sex and dance.  Such a male is still rather the exception to the rule.  Yet there may come a time, I venture to speculate, when not only war and sport, but sex and dance will be a thing of the past.

 

99.  Not for the first time logic compels me to re-evaluate a former position and to question whether, in fact, sex dolls and/or gadgets could be regarded as forming an omega pole to pornography, bearing in mind the bodily as opposed to head nature of such phenomena, their use by and on the penis or vagina, depending on the gender (male or female) in question and the appropriate aid.  Rather, it now seems to me that, just as music cassettes and videos form an omega pole or, more correctly, poles to music scores, so, by a like-token, it can be argued that sex videos form an omega pole to pornographic magazines, bearing in mind the obvious 'head' status which must accrue to something watched as opposed to physically experienced as an artificial substitute for coitus, i.e. a sex gadget.  Thus if music videos are antithetical to music scores, as the artificial to the natural, so sex videos must be antithetical to sex magazines on an analogous basis, with sex gadgets and/or dolls taking a comparatively bodily status analogous to LPs and compact discs vis-à-vis cassettes and videos.  In fact, the sex gadget, be it artificial penis or vagina, would stand to sex dolls pretty much as compact discs to LPs, with sex cassettes (pre-recorded phone sex) and sex videos standing as an obvious parallel to music cassettes and videos ... to name but one alternative, albeit analogous, context.  Here we arrive at the seemingly paradoxical but nonetheless credible conclusion that whereas sex magazines are fascistic, sex videos are communistic, alpha and omega approaches to 'head' sex which flank, on an immoral/moral basis, oral sex - that amoral 'head' sex above conventional heterosexuality.

 

100.  Further to the above, we should be able to posit an antithesis, or even antithetical poles, on an alpha basis to sex dolls and/or gadgets, since we have done so with regard to sex cassettes and videos - namely, sex magazines.  But to do so it seems to me that one would have to divide pornography more comprehensively between 'bodily' and 'head' modes, i.e. 'soft' and 'hard' options, in order to have sufficient alpha poles to cover for such an antithesis, so that, contrary to the above, soft-core pornography would be antithetical to sex dolls and/or gadgets, and hard-core pornography antithetical to sex cassettes and/or videos, each of which would again be divisible into wavicle and particle alternatives ... in order to do proper justice to the full-gamut of elemental poles, with, so I contend, a wavicle equivalent for soft-core pornography which takes a comprehensively bodily perspective (antithetical to sex dolls), and a particle equivalent for that which, by contrast, focuses photographic attention upon the sex organ of the participating model (antithetical to sex gadgets).  Above this one would find the 'head' level particle equivalent of sexually explicit and/or narrative hard-core pornography (antithetical to sexual cassettes) on the one hand, and the 'head' level wavicle equivalent of a more comprehensively representative hard-core pornography (antithetical to sex videos) on the other hand, each of which would be comparatively fascistic in relation to the authoritarian/arch-Conservative nature of the soft-core varieties.

 

101. Having dealt with the above in a more or less satisfactory manner, I now find that I must do the same with regard to the other context we have been discussing, namely music, and thus broadly divide music scores into two categories in order to have antithetical alpha poles to music videos and audio cassettes.  These two categories, corresponding to idealistic and naturalistic parallels, will be solely treble staff in the case of an antithesis to music videos, and treble-and-bass staffs combined in the case of an antithesis to audio cassettes, since it stands to reason that a music score with only treble staff will be more idealistic and, hence, light equivalent ... than one with bass and harmony also, the totality of which may well add-up to something more naturalistic and, hence, heat equivalent - the very equivalent we have reserved for audio tapes in contrast to video ones.  However, if music scores of one kind or another suffice to cover the antithetical poles to video and audio tapes of a musical persuasion, then it seems to me that we are in want of equivalent antithetical poles to compact discs and LPs, since the latter are no less deserving of something antithetical which is as much apparent and immoral as they are essential and moral.  Now what is this something if not Pianola rolls of one size or another which, unlike music scores, suggest a more physical and, hence, bodily equation, broadly antithetical to compact discs and LPs.  Thus if my theories are correct, the antithesis to an LP will be a large pianola roll, whereas the antithesis to a compact disc will be a small pianola roll, perhaps even one dependent upon some relatively superior technology which would elevate it as far above conventional pianola rolls as ... compact discs above LPs, not forgetting that neither pianola rolls nor discs are anywhere near the psychic elevation of scores and tapes respectively - those subconscious and superconscious new-brain antitheses divisible, as I have shown, into soulful and spiritual, or naturalistic and idealistic, alternatives roughly corresponding to hell and to heaven at both alpha and omega poles.

 

102. The proper subject of sculpture is will.  The proper subject of literature is intellect.  The proper subject of music is soul.  The proper subject of art is spirit.  Thus earth-water-fire-air or, rather, darkness-coldness-heat-light, whether for good or bad, positively or negatively, alpha or omega, apparent or essential, etc., depending on the type of sculpture, literature, music, or art in question.

 

103. Since earth corresponds to the world, water to purgatory, fire to hell, and air to heaven, it could also be said of the above that sculpture is the worldly art form par excellence, literature the purgatorial art form par excellence, music the diabolic art form par excellence, and art (painting) the divine art form par excellence, with realistic, materialistic, naturalistic, and idealistic implications respectively.  Of course, each of the main branches of the arts is subdivisible into approximately four categories, corresponding to the elements and thus, by implication, to every one of the above (theological) positions, with, for example, literature - the purgatorial/materialistic art form par excellence - subdivisible into dramatic, narrative, poetic, and philosophic categories, the first of which, viz. drama, corresponds to the world and is thus the most wilful of the literary arts; the second of which, viz. fiction, corresponds to purgatory and is thus the most intellectual of the literary arts; the third of which, viz. poetry, corresponds to hell and is thus the most emotional of the literary arts; and the fourth of which, viz. philosophy, corresponds to heaven and is thus the most spiritually aware of the literary arts.  Doubtless the same divisions, with similar implications, could be applied to music within a broadly classical framework, so that we would have, say, ballet in the position of drama as the worldly form of music by dint of its bodily bias; the symphony in the position of fiction as the purgatorial form of music by dint of its intellectualized approach to relationships between the various instruments (analogous, in a way, to literature's reference, via the intellect, to social relations); opera in the position of poetry as the diabolic form of music by dint of its strong emotional bias; and, finally, the concerto in the position of philosophy as the divine form of music by dint of its spiritual idealism, which, taking the guise of preponderant pitch, appertains to awareness.  Of course, what applies to classical music applies no less to modern electric music, or supermusic (as I usually prefer to call it), with fourfold divisions between pop, rock, soul, and jazz, the divisions thereof having worldly, purgatorial, diabolic, and divine implications respectively, such that likewise pertain to its 'superliterary' counterpart which, taking the forms of cinema, video, radio, and television, has rather more reference to artificial visionary and audio experience than to verbal concepts of the sort usually encountered between the pages of a book.

 

104. Since we have dealt with literature and music (not to mention 'superliterature' and 'supermusic') in a fourfold manner deriving from our basic elemental/theological divisions, it behoves us to do the same with regard to art and sculpture, the 'divine' and 'worldly' arts par excellence, and thus to divide art into four basic categories, viz. ceramics, painting, etching, and drawing, with worldly, purgatorial, diabolic, and divine implications respectively which, in elemental terms, correspond to earth, water, fire, and air - the very terms applying no less to the division of sculpture into figure (the worldly form of sculpture par excellence); busts (the purgatorial form of sculpture par excellence); relief (the diabolic form of sculpture par excellence); and, finally, carving (the divine form of sculpture par excellence).  Obviously there is a realistic parallel, in both elemental and theological terms, between ceramics and figure sculptures, a materialistic parallel between paintings and busts, a naturalistic parallel between engravings and reliefs, and an idealistic parallel between drawings and carvings.  Now what applies to the division of 'art' and 'sculpture' in this fourfold manner must surely apply just as much to 'superart' and 'supersculpture', which exist rather more in terms of light art and holography, respectively, than of any 'naturalistic' distinctions between, say, clay and paint or stone and wood, although plastics cannot be ruled out - at any rate, not in the context of 'supersculpture', where they would take the worldly or, rather, superworldly position occupied by figure sculptures in sculpture-proper, and thus have a bodily connotation beneath purgatorial abstract sculpture, the latter of which would be flanked by 'light' sculpture on the one hand and by holograms on the other, as between diabolic and divine, fire and air equivalents.  As regards 'superart', one is obviously thinking in terms of light art, though only the alpha and omega poles of our diabolic and divine equations would truly be of light, doubtless in the form of a neon-tube/laser-beam divide, while the worldly and purgatorial equations would suggest the likelihood of Op and Kinetics respectively, the former standing to the latter as body to brain or, what amounts to the same, earth to water, and having its 'supersculptural' parallel in those plastic inventions which stand in an analogous relationship to abstract sculptures, i.e. the purgatorial middle-ground in between the 'light' sculptural extremes.

 

105.  Of course, I have been generalizing and sketching far more than particularizing and filling-in the details as to why I believe such-and-such an art form or subdivision thereof should be regarded in one or another of our elemental/theological categories, and doubtless this is desirable if one is to acquire a more wide-ranging perspective and avoid getting bogged down in pedantic details such as would detract, in any case, from the reader's use of his own imagination - something by which I have always set great store!  Certainly the T-like impression created by the fourfold divisions of each of the arts (and 'superarts') does not do justice to the fact that the alpha and omega poles are divisible into diabolic and divine options in each case, so that there is an alpha divine/diabolic distinction no less than an omega divine/diabolic distinction, with wavicle and particle implications.  In consequence of which, alpha arts, whether literary (poetry), musical (opera), visual (etching), or sculptural (reliefs), can be divine or diabolic, Fatheristic or Satanic, depending on the type of alpha art-form in question, i.e. whether of a wavicle or a particle bias, as can omega arts, albeit on a diametrically antithetical basis ... as befitting their Christic/Antichristic implications.  And the same of course applies to the 'superarts', where the division is rather more extreme in each case ... as befitting their 'super' status.  Even the purgatorial middle-ground is to some extent divisible in such fashion, as between 'soft' rock and 'hard' rock, although the latter is often rather more physical, and hence muscular, than intellectual or cranial, and therefore pertinent not so much to a divine/diabolic dichotomy as to two types of purgatorial dichotomy, of which it is the lesser.  For the real divine/diabolic dichotomy in 'supermusic' will be between 'light' soul and 'heavy' soul on the alpha poles, and between 'light' jazz and 'heavy' jazz on the omega poles, with rock, whether 'soft' or 'hard', as a sort of amoral middle-ground in between essentially immoral (emotional) and moral (spiritual) extremes.  Probably, to further complicate the picture, funk and punk come in-between soul and rock, whereas blues and rhythm 'n' blues come in-between rock and jazz, the former type of music in each category pertaining to the divine spectrum and the latter type to the diabolic one, funk and blues flanking soft rock, punk and rhythm 'n' blues flanking hard rock, the latter of which towers above pop as the head (in both its cranial and intellectual manifestations) above the body, including the muscle body of pop/rock.

 

106.  Here, for the sake of diagrammatic clarity, are some relevant correlations, necessarily generalized, with regard to the 'T' design, viz:-

  

MORAL

 

IMMORAL/DYNAMIC AMORAL/MORAL

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STATIC AMORAL

 

 

 

IDEOLOGICAL

 

NATURALISM/MATERIALISM/IDEALISM

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REALISM

 

 

 

ATOMIC

 

PROTONS/ATOMS/ELECTRONS

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NEUTRONS

 

 

 

ELEMENTAL QUANTITIES

 

FIRE/WATER/AIR

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EARTH

 

 

 

ELEMENTAL QUALITIES

 

HEAT/COLDNESS/LIGHT

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DARKNESS

 

 

 

THEOLOGICAL

 

HELL/PURGATORY/HEAVEN

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THE WORLD

 

 

 

ARTS

 

MUSIC/LITERATURE/ART

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SCULPTURE

 

 

 

LITERATURE

 

POETRY/FICTION/PHILOSOPHY

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DRAMA

 

 

 

MUSIC

 

OPERAS/SYMPHONIES/CONCERTOS

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BALLET

 

 

 

ART

 

ETCHINGS/PAINTINGS/DRAWINGS

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CERAMICS

 

 

 

SCULPTURE

 

RELIEFS/BUSTS/CARVINGS

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FIGURE

 

 

 

'SUPERLITERATURE'

 

RADIO/VIDEO/TELEVISION

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CINEMA

 

 

 

'SUPERMUSIC'

 

SOUL/ROCK/JAZZ

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POP

 

 

 

'SUPERART'

 

NEONS/KINETICS/LASERS

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OP ART

 

 

 

'SUPERSCULPTURE'

 

LIGHT SCULPTURES/BIOMORPHICS/HOLOGRAMS

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PLASTICS

 

 

 

PHYSICAL

 

SUBCONSCIOUS/BRAIN/SUPERCONSCIOUS

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BODY

 

 

 

METAPHYSICAL

 

SOUL/INTELLECT/SPIRIT

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WILL

 

 

 

COSMIC

 

SOLAR/LUNAR/STELLAR

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PLANETARY

 

 

 

HUMAN

 

SUBMAN/MAN/SUPERMAN

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WOMAN

 

 

 

THE TRINITY

 

THE FATHER/THE SON/THE HOLY SPIRIT

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THE BLESSED VIRGIN

 

 

 

POLITICAL

 

ROYALISM/REPUBLICANISM/TOTALITARIANISM

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LIBERALISM

 

 

 

CHRISTIAN

 

EASTERN ORTHODOXY/PURITANISM/ROMAN CATHOLICISM

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ANGLICANISM

 

 

 

SARTORIAL

 

LEATHER PANTS/DENIM JEANS/PVC PANTS

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CORD JEANS

 

 

 

RECORDED MUSIC

 

AUDIO CASSETTES/COMPACT DISCS/VIDEO CASSETTES

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LPs

 

 

 

INSTITUTIONAL

 

TEMPLE/CHURCH/CENTRE

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STATE

 

 

 

'SUPERPOLITICAL'

 

FASCISM/ANARCHISM/COMMUNISM

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SOCIALISM

 

 

 

MILITARY

 

ARTILLERY/MARINES/PARAS

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INFANTRY

 

 

 

LIBERALISM

 

CONSERVATIVES/LIBERAL DEMOCRATS/LABOUR

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GREENS

 

 

 

‘SUPERLITERARY’ FORMATS

 

CASSETTES/COMPUTER DISCS/VIDEOS

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PAPERBACKS

 

 

 

FREIGHT

 

RAIL/SEA/AIR

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ROAD

 

 

 

PEOPLE'S TRANSPORTATION

 

SCOOTERS/MOPEDS/MOTORBIKES

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CARS

 

 

 

TYPEWRITERS

 

ELECTRONIC/ELECTRIC/WORD PROCESSORS

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PORTABLES

 

 

 

GUITARS/KEYBOARDS

 

ELECTRONIC/ELECTRIC/SYNTHESIZED

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ACOUSTIC

 

 

 

SPENGLER

 

HISTORYLESS CHAOS/CULTURE/SECOND RELIGIOUSNESS

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CIVILIZATION

 

 

 

SENSES

 

HEARING/SMELL-TASTE/SIGHT

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TOUCH

 

 

 

SELF-INDULGENCE

 

SMOKING/DRINKING/SNIFFING

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EATING

 

 

 

SELF-TRANSCENDENCE

 

TRIPPING/SINGING/MEDITATING

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DANCING

 

 

 

SELF-EXPRESSION

 

DREAMING/TALKING/THINKING

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WRITING

 

 

 

SELF-IMPRESSION

 

LISTENING/LEARNING/VIEWING

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READING

 

 

 

SYNTHESIS

 

SELF-EXPRESSION/SELF-IMPRESSION/SELF-TRANSCENDENCE

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SELF-INDULGENCE

 

107. In relation to man, woman is a neutron equivalent upon whom man either descends or falls ... if he is of a disposition to, which is to say if he is of either an autocratic proton bias or a democratic atomic (proton/electron) bias, and thereby perpetuates the world.  However, in the future there should be neither descending nor falling upon the world, since only electron equivalents, viz. supermen, and quasi-electron equivalents, viz. quasi-supermen, will exist, and in such an omega-oriented 'head' society, commensurate with the 'Kingdom of Heaven', all propagation will be conducted on a post-worldly, and hence artificial, basis, with spermbank facilities and artificial insemination available to the quasi-superhuman 'equals' of the supermen-proper.  Saved from both the neutron world and the proton hell and atomic purgatory alike, the supermen will partake of the electron heaven in an omega-oriented spirituality (of self-realization) which will be beyond all such previous realities.

 

108. Strength is the virtue of the Father (Almighty); goodness (an ethical choice between good and evil, or truth and strength) the virtue of the Son; truth the virtue of the Holy Spirit; beauty the virtue of the Blessed Virgin.  Expressed in terms of our T-like design (diagram 1), we shall find:-

        

1.

QUANTITATIVE VIRTUES

 

STRENGTH/GOODNESS/TRUTH

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BEAUTY

 

Thus strength is the quantity of the alpha Divine (the Father); goodness the quantity of the purgatorial Divine (the Son); truth the quantity of the omega Divine (the Holy Spirit); and beauty the quantity of the worldly Divine (the Blessed Virgin).  Conversely, weakness is the quantity of the alpha Diabolic (the Antifather, i.e. Satan); evil the quantity of the purgatorial Diabolic (the Antichrist); illusion the quantity of the omega Diabolic (the Antispirit); and ugliness the quantity of the worldly Diabolic (the Antivirgin), as in diagram 2:-

      

         2.

QUANTITATIVE VICES

 

WEAKNESS/EVIL/ILLUSION

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UGLINESS

 

Turning, however, from quantities to qualities, as from appearance to essence, we shall find that pride is the quality of the alpha Divine; love the quality of the purgatorial Divine; joy the quality of the omega Divine; and pleasure the quality of the worldly Divine (see diagram 3).

      

         3.

QUALITATIVE VIRTUES

 

PRIDE/LOVE/JOY

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PLEASURE

 

Conversely, humiliation is the quality of the alpha Diabolic; hate the quality of the purgatorial Diabolic; woe the quality of the omega Diabolic; and pain the quality of the worldly Diabolic (see diagram 4).

      

       4.

QUALITATIVE VICES

 

HUMILIATION/HATRED/WOE

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PAIN

 

109. Consequently, whereas strength and pride are the quantitative and qualitative concomitants of the Father (Almighty), the quantitative and qualitative concomitants of the Devil (Satan) are weakness and humiliation.  Similarly, whereas goodness and love are the quantitative and qualitative concomitants of the Son (Christ), the quantitative and qualitative concomitants of the Antichrist (for which read: Republicanism in relation to Puritanism) are badness and hate.  Likewise, whereas truth and joy are the quantitative and qualitative concomitants of the Holy Spirit, the quantitative and qualitative concomitants of the Antispirit (for which read: Marxism, with its anti-Transcendentalism) are illusion and woe.  And, finally, whereas beauty and pleasure are the quantitative and qualitative concomitants of the Blessed Virgin, the quantitative and qualitative concomitants of the Antivirgin (for which read: Liberalism or, in the American context, the Democrats in relation to Catholicism) are ugliness and pain.

 

110. Furthermore, it would seem that whereas the Divine has a wavicle connotation, the Diabolic has a particle one, and that while wavicles connote with the individual (especially in an internal, or spiritual, sense), particles connote with the collectivity, as regards society in general, so that we have a kind of religious/political distinction between the two contexts which obliges us to perceive God in the one camp and the Devil in the other, or, at any rate, to perceive a divine/diabolic dichotomy in regard to positive and negative alternatives, viz. Judaism and Monarchism, Puritanism and Republicanism, Transcendentalism and Communism, Catholicism and Liberalism, the first and third of which are alpha and omega (as of the Trinity), the second and fourth ... purgatorial and worldly, as befitting their comparatively middle-ground standings.  Thus for the divine, or wavicle-biased, positions, we shall find (see diagram 1):-

 

       1.

JUDAISM/PURITANISM/TRANSCENDENTALISM

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CATHOLICISM

 

Whereas the diabolic, or particle-biased, positions will be as follows (see diagram 2):-

 

       2.

MONARCHISM/REPUBLICANISM/COMMUNISM

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LIBERALISM

 

with appropriate quantities and qualities in each case.

 

111. It would be wrong to suppose, as one could so easily do, that religion and science truly extend from alpha to omega, as from the Father to the Holy Ghost when, in point of fact, they are rather more alpha and worldly than purgatorial and omega.  By which I mean that religion has been eclipsed by ideology no less than science by politics, and that while religious and scientific terminology may still have some applicability in the contexts of Puritanism and Republicanism on the one hand (purgatorial), and of Transcendentalism and Communism on the other hand (omega), we are really talking about ideological and political distinctions between the options in question, distinctions which indicate that whereas Puritanism and Transcendentalism are ideological (the former relatively so and the latter to an absolute degree), Republicanism and Communism are political (again the former relatively so and the latter to an absolute degree), and thus not strictly classifiable as religion or science.  In contrast, therefore, to a more generalized pattern of thought, it could be said that religion is alpha, science worldly, politics purgatorial, and ideology omega, with naturalistic, realistic, materialistic, and idealistic implications in each case, as below (see diagram 1):-

 

       1.

RELIGION/POLITICS/IDEOLOGY

(naturalism)(materialism)(idealism)

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SCIENCE

(realism)

 

where we have four quantities corresponding to fire, earth, water, and air respectively, with religion and ideology horizontally antithetical (as regarding naturalism and idealism), but science and politics vertically antithetical (as regarding realism and materialism).  However, such quantities (appearances) are of little interest or significance without their qualities (essences), and I have no hesitation in correlating religion with art, science with jurisprudence, politics with economics, and ideology with psychology, as follows (see diagram 2):-

      

         2.

ART/ECONOMICS/PSYCHOLOGY

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JURISPRUDENCE

 

Clearly, art is the qualitative concomitance of religion no less than psychology the qualitative concomitance of ideology, and it is difficult to see, for example, how ideology could be furthered without recourse to psychological techniques which act upon the inner world the way art once acted, on behalf of religion, upon the outer one.  Similarly economics is the qualitative concomitance of politics no less than jurisprudence the qualitative concomitance of the science of law, and it is equally difficult to see how politics could be furthered or advanced without recourse to economic changes which act upon the collective the way jurisprudence once acted, on behalf of the science of law, upon the individual.

 

112. Whereas politics and science are 'truer' to themselves in the relative than in the absolute, i.e. as Republicanism and Liberalism as opposed to Monarchism and Communism, religion and ideology are 'truer' to themselves in the absolute than in the relative, i.e. as Judaism and Transcendentalism as opposed to Catholicism and Puritanism.  This is because whereas in the former case politics is under the shadow of ideology and science under the shadow of religion, in the latter case, by contrast, religion is under the shadow of science and ideology under the shadow of politics.

 

113. The twentieth century having been a political age par excellence, ideology was no less under the shadow of politics than ... religion had been under the shadow of science in the nineteenth century - the scientific age par excellence.

 

114. From what we have discovered regarding the theocratic/democratic distinctions which exist between Puritanism and Republicanism on the one hand and between Catholicism and Liberalism on the other, it should be apparent that, in Ireland, Republicanism will be as abhorrent from a Puritan point of view ... as Liberalism from a Catholic one, the reason being that in the former case we have a Christ/Antichrist dichotomy, whereas in the latter case we have a Blessed Virgin/Antivirgin dichotomy, neither democratic manifestation of which, viz. Republicanism and Liberalism, could be acceptable to those who uphold their respective theocratic counterparts.  However, while this is evidently true of Ireland, it is by no means the case in America where, by contrast, Puritans are usually Republicans and Catholics ... Democrats, the reason being that, contrary to Ireland, democracy takes precedence over theocracy and is, in a very real sense, the prime mover there.  Hence Americans are more likely to be Republicans or Democrats first and foremost than Puritans or Catholics, in contrast to Ireland where, in James Joyce's immortal words, 'God and the Church come first'.

 

115. Since I am disposed, in the light of new theories and discoveries, to re-evaluate my position from time to time (and take an especial pride in doing so, since it confirms that I am mentally alive and still prepared to try out a variety of alternative theories ... with a long-term view to discovering what is the most credible one overall), I should like to put forward a fresh theory, based on our strength-goodness-truth trinity, that poetry and drama should be regarded less in an alpha and worldly light than in an order the converse of what they were perceived to be before, so that we would have drama in the alpha position and poetry in the worldly one, and this on account of the fact that, philosophy being equated with truth and fiction with goodness (or the good act), logic compels one to associate drama with strength and poetry with beauty, which stand to truth and goodness (the other two virtues) as alpha and world to omega and purgatory, as in the following diagrams:-

 

DRAMA/FICTION/PHILOSOPHY

(alpha)(purgatory)(omega)

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POETRY

(the world)

 

 

STRENGTH/GOODNESS/TRUTH

(alpha)(purgatory)(omega)

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BEAUTY

(the world)

 

where it is evident that poetry, being associated with beauty, is a thing of the world and, hence, a worldly form of literature, in contrast to drama ... as the alpha form of literature par excellence, on account of its association with strength, the alpha virtue.  Consequently it could be said that, in theological parlance, drama is of the Father, narrative literature of the Son, philosophy of the Holy Ghost, and poetry of the Blessed Virgin or, at any rate, each of these forms of literary production should be such if pursued on a virtuous as opposed to a vicious basis (in which case one would be talking rather more in terms of weakness, evil, illusion, and ugliness respectively, as befitting the 'anti' manifestations of each genre).

 

116. However, it has to be admitted that if drama is not always associated with strength, and hence pride, it is more likely to be because it has been associated, rightly or wrongly, with weakness, and hence humiliation, and is therefore less a thing of the alpha Divine (the Father) than of the alpha Diabolic (Satan).  The distinction between tragedy and comedy is largely, it seems to me, one in which the roles of strength and weakness, or the strong and the weak, have been reversed, so that, in the first case (that of tragedy) the strong are beset by great failings and rendered weak, whereas in the second case (that of comedy) the weak are elevated to positions of apparent strength by sheer accident or in consequence of a fortuitous circumstance.  The misfortunes of the strong are only amusing to us when they are in consequence of the incidental acts of the weak, as when a strong man is knocked over by a revolving plank being carried by a comparatively weak man who has no knowledge of the effect of his actions.  But if the strong man is knocked over as a consequence of the premeditated acts of other strong men or even of several weak men acting in conjunction, we are in the realm of tragedy, about which there is nothing funny.  One could argue that if the Devil unwittingly gets the better of God, we are in the realm of comedy.  But if God gets the better of Himself or is consciously worsted by the Devil, then we are in the realm of tragedy, from which comedy is a diabolical fall.

 

117. Whether one chooses to speak or write in religious terminology, viz. hell, purgatory, heaven, and the world, or in scientific terminology, viz. naturalism, materialism, idealism, and realism, or in political terminology, viz. right, centre, left, and moderate, or in ideological terminology, viz. fascism, anarchism, communism, and transcendentalism, will to some extent obviously depend upon the personal or professional bent of the individual and to some extent upon the suitability of whatever terminology to the context in question, be it religious, political, ideological, or scientific.  However, it would be wrong to suppose, as some writers have done, that the use of terms like naturalism, materialism, and idealism (which are scientific) is more applicable to contemporary life than terms such as hell, purgatory, and heaven (which are religious), given that, quite apart from the fact that we do not live in a scientific age but in a political one, both sets of terms stretch from alpha to omega, and if, for example, 'heaven' is less good or relevant than 'idealism' from a contemporary - though in point of fact scientific - standpoint, then so must 'naturalism' be less relevant than 'hell' from a traditional - though in point of fact religious - standpoint, bearing in mind the greater applicability of religious terminology to alpha contexts.  Yet we can no more limit scientific terminology to omega contexts than limit religious terminology to alpha ones, without falling into a logical contradiction such that makes 'idealism' more acceptable in the one context and 'hell' more acceptable in the other, granted that 'heaven' is inferior to 'idealism' in the omega context and 'naturalism' to 'hell' in the alpha one.

 

118. However, notwithstanding the fact that scientific terminology has less applicability to omega contexts than ideological terminology like communism, transcendentalism, socialism, etc., we have to concede that, by and large, each of the terminological frameworks is interchangeable, and that we can no more limit ideology to 'communism' than, say, science to 'realism', politics to 'centrism', or religion to 'hell'.  Ideological terminology is obviously more applicable to an ideological context (omega) than religious terminology would be, but this does not mean that religious terms like heaven should be confined solely to religious contexts (alpha) and not extend into an ideological age, else there would be no point in regarding the Trinity as successive in an alpha-to-omega sense, and therefore no justification for conceiving of heaven in an omega as opposed to a purely alpha context.  However, I am obliged to confess that, even given my own fairly liberal use of religious terminology in the past, an ideological terminology is indubitably more applicable to an ideological age than ... religious or scientific or political terminologies, and should accordingly be used in preference to them.  Certainly it is better to speak in terms of the post-Human Millennium than of 'Heaven on Earth' or 'Kingdom Come' or 'Kingdom of Heaven', where the future ideological society is concerned; though, alas, old habits die hard and few of us can lay claim to total immunity in this respect!  Even terms like 'salvation', 'paradise', and 'divine' are essentially religious.... Personally, my own view of religious terminology is that, while largely alpha orientated, it has also been used (by proto-ideologues) to intimate of ideological possibility and has therefore assumed, in the course of evolutionary time, an omega connotation whether or not we approve of the fact.  However, such a connotation can only pale to insignificance beside the burgeoning sense of ideology which the age has engendered, behoving us to speak ideologically rather than religiously, and to regard terminological excesses of the religious order as a mode of Western decadence.

 

119. It is wrong to assume, as I was formerly inclined to, that doing and being are antithetical, as between alpha and omega, when, in point of fact, doing is both alpha and omega, depending on the type of doing in question, and being, contrary to appearances, is of the world, which is to say a bodily condition of sentient beings which may be positive or negative, as when we speak of wellbeing on the one hand and of being ill or sick on the other hand.  Fundamentally, being has no other reality than that, and to ascribe to it some kind of divine or omega-oriented significance is to confound the real with the ideal and mistake the world for the Beyond.  If being has an antithesis, it is not doing but existence, which stands to being as the moon to the earth, or materialism to realism.  For existence is without sentience, a mechanical or otherwise technological phenomenon which can be either positive or negative, depending on its condition, whether for good or bad, functioning or malfunctioning, and existence is flanked, as it were, by negative doing on the one side and by positive doing on the other, as in the following by-now familiar T-like diagram:-

 

NEGATIVE DOING/EXISTENCE/POSITIVE DOING

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BEING

 

where existence is shown in a kind of middle-ground light in between the alpha of negative doing and the omega of positive doing, each of which, like existence and being, is divisible into divine and diabolic or, as I should say, idealistic and naturalistic alternatives, corresponding to wavicles and particles on both proton (alpha) and electron (omega) terms.  Thus idealistic negative doing (proton wavicles) will be a doing-against-oneself, an introverted form of self-assertion, whereas naturalistic negative doing (proton particles) will be a doing-against-others, an extroverted form of self-assertion.  By contrast, idealistic positive doing (electron wavicles) will be a doing-for-oneself, an introverted form of self-realization, whereas naturalistic positive doing (electron particles) will be a doing-for-others, an extroverted form of self-realization.

 

120. Speaking in religious terms, one could say that idealistic negative doing is of the Father and naturalistic negative doing of the Devil, whilst idealistic positive doing is of the Holy Spirit and naturalistic positive doing of the Antispirit (Marxism), in contrast to the positive existence of the Son and the negative existence of the Antichrist, the positive being (wellbeing) of the Blessed Virgin and the negative being (malbeing) of the Antivirgin (condition of pregnancy).  However that may be, it should be clear that the 'heavenly' condition, conceived in regard to the omega absolute, would be a condition of idealistic positive doing, of electrons in perpetual attraction, and thus the introverted form of self-realization taken to its ultimate point.  Rather than a condition of being, like sentient phenomena, the most idealistic condition would be profoundly doing orientated, a centripetal dance of electrons in perpetual motion - the ultimate flame.

 

121. Being and existence are the positive and negative poles of a 'Christian' antithesis between the Blessed Virgin and Christ - Catholicism and Puritanism.  Being and existence are alike phenomenal, except that whereas being has associations with the sentient, existence is purely phenomenal and, hence, largely if not entirely materialistic.  This helps to explain the difference between the Catholic crucifix, which has the figure of Christ, and the Protestant crucifix which, by contrast, is purely existential, that is to say, without even expiring sentience (in the form of the dying Christ), but wholly phenomenal and thus, by implication, materialistic.  One could even argue that whereas being has associations with death-in-life, existence is the life-in-death, the mechanistic life of phenomena, in contrast to the organic life of sentient beings, of which the Blessed Virgin is the principal traditional religious symbol in the West.  For being is indeed feminine, like 'Mother Earth', and correlates with time, whereas existence, having no gender, is timeless.

 

122. No more than it could be said that doing is the antithesis of being, can it be said that eternity is the antithesis of time.  For eternity is the essence of doing and therefore not antithetical to time but divisible into negative and positive antitheses on both a divine and a diabolic basis, which is to say as alpha and omega, the Father/Satan and the Holy Spirit/Antispirit.  As I have already intimated, timelessness, the essence of existence, is the antithesis of time, whereas time is the essence of being and thus, by implication, the world.  The antithesis of worldly time is accordingly purgatorial timelessness, not the heavenly or hellish eternities which, by contrast, are their own antitheses - properly theological in the case of alpha heaven (central star) and hell (sun), ideological in the case of the omega millennia (communist and transcendentalist).

 

123. Although film is essentially a divine, or idealistic (light), mode of communication by dint of its wavicle essence, it is more usually a superalpha and therefore immoral equivalent, especially when taking place within the context of cinema, where we are conscious of its projection (from a film projector) onto the screen in front.  For such a projection is centrifugal and, consequently, it pertains to the immoral alpha as opposed to the moral omega pole of life.  Indeed, even when film is 'redeemed' through transmission via television and/or video, which are less centrifugal than centripetal phenomena by dint of shining inwardly, as it were, in independence of an external projector of the type germane to cinema, it is still fundamentally alpha stemming and thus less than truly moral.  One could say, in colloquial parlance, that it is then merely 'the best of a bad job', since such a 'redemption' is far from a transvaluation along the lines of an LSD trip, whereby artificially-induced visionary experience is internalized and effectively becomes the Superchristic precondition of true essence thereafter, that is to say of a superspiritual meditative experience.  Even video is still essentially superalpha, though (in relation to cinema film) in a somewhat attenuated and even apparently omega-oriented way, so that we could be forgiven for positing a trinitarian analogue on the basis of cinema - television - video, reserving to radio an analogue with the Blessed Virgin on account of its seemingly feminine essence as a beautiful darkness (without light) which pertains to the worldly realm underneath the heavenly realms of masculine light in the contexts of strength (cinema), goodness (television), and truth (video), as in the following diagram:-

 

CINEMA/TELEVISION/VIDEO

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RADIO

 

124. However that may be, film is incapable of true redemption, and film actors remain 'stars' and thus, by implication, superalpha equivalents in a largely immoral world.  If there is a distinction between divine and diabolic films, as, for example, in regard to romance and horror, it is more likely to be on the basis of the former being light (within an alpha strength context) and the latter the light-aside of heat, which is to say something analogous to the light from an electric fire as opposed to an electric-light bulb as such, and therefore subordinate or, depending on your standpoint, inferior to music in the purely diabolic context.  Certainly, negative music like hard rock will be more genuinely diabolic than negative film, like a horror movie, and thus the heat (emotional) essence of the context in question.  Conversely, alpha divine music like trad jazz will be inferior to film in the divine context, since only the heat-aside of the light essence of the context in question, like the heat from a light bulb. (Strictly speaking, the literal heat-aside to film light is of course film music, while the literal light-aside to music heat - at any rate where rock concerts and the like are concerned - is a light show, though for analogical and academic reasons I have distinguished 'light' music from heat music, and 'heat' film from light film on the above basis, in order to clarify the basic moral differences which I believe do in fact exist between them.)

 

125. However, neither film nor music can attain to or be extended into the truly divine realm of internal essence, which is omega as opposed to alpha and therefore beyond the phenomenal reach of each.  The Superchristic revolution to come will be neither filmic nor musical but pharmaceutical, availing itself of artificially-induced visionary (and auditory) experience as a precondition of truly supernoumenal essence in the superspiritual Beyond.  If film-viewing is of the State, then LSD-tripping can only pertain to the Centre, and there will be as much difference between the two as with regard to Christ and the Father or, transposed into institutional terminology, the Church and the Temple.  The centrifugal immorality of 'film stars' will be eclipsed by the centripetal morality or, at any rate, positive amorality of hallucinogenic supermen ... preparatory to the eclipse of all appearances, even internalized ones, by the centripetal morality of the meditating supra-men, whose omega orientation will be as unequivocal as it is possible to be on such terms ... before cyborg-to-millennial progressions repeat the process and 'up the stakes' to a degree beyond human comprehension.

 

126. Although, like rock, jazz is fundamentally alpha stemming and therefore immoral, it can be redeemed to the extent that solo playing takes over from and replaces ensemble playing.  For in relation to the latter, solo playing is individualistic and therefore centralist as opposed (like the collectivism of ensemble playing) to decentralist and, hence, immoral.  No art form can become truly omega orientated and thus essential, but it can be made less alpha stemming and apparent ... to the extent that individual tendencies eclipse collective ones and pitch accordingly predominates over rhythm - that alpha of contemporary music.

 

127. In music, the juxtaposition of decadent bourgeois (more specifically petty-bourgeois) trends with barbarous proletarian trends usually takes the form of overly rhythmic classical music on the one hand and overly rhythmic rock music on the other - the former acoustic and the latter electric.  In economics, this juxtaposition of bourgeois and proletarian alternatives takes the form of popular capitalism, or a wider distribution of shares on the one hand, and popular socialism, or literal ownership of the means of production at any given factory by the workers themselves on the other hand.  However, just as the 'redemption' of rock music can only come via pitch-oriented solos of a jazzy nature (and thus effectively on the basis of jazz-rock), so the 'redemption' of popular socialism can only be achieved on the basis of State Socialism, which centralizes the proletarian ownership of the means of production and accordingly replaces Marxian anarchy - or the chaos that would ensue in the wake of too literal an interpretation of worker ownership of the means of production - with a sort of Leninist control.  Yet this, like jazz-rock (its musical equivalent), is no more than 'the best of a bad job' and, hence, a redeemed barbarism.  For until a transvaluation is established on the basis of Centre trusteeship, the People will continue to be burdened, if only in theory, with economic sovereignty and thus fall short of being saved from the State ... to a religious sovereignty which will transcend all lower sovereignties, including the political and judicial, and so bring about the 'Kingdom of Heaven' on a Superchristic and, hence, positive amoral basis - the basis of institutionalized tripping as a precondition of institutionalized meditating in the purely moral phase thereafter, analogous to a switch from rock-jazz (not to be confounded with jazz-rock) to pure jazz, as amoral synthesizer absolutism is superseded by moral synthesizer absolutism, and the rhythmic element hitherto integral to the rock-jazz context is effectively consigned to the rubbish heap of musical history, there to languish alongside LSD and Social Transcendentalism.  For of course the amoral transvaluation commensurate with Centre trusteeship and rock-jazz is Social Transcendentalist, and this Superchristic ideology should be transcended by its supertheocratic successor in the purely moral, and hence superspiritual, phase of the 'Kingdom of Heaven', when the Holy Spirit, as it were, will be the presiding norm, and truly essential criteria accordingly prevail.

 

128. But long before Social Transcendentalism is superseded by Supertranscendentalism, Transcendental Socialism, or the centralized and hence 'civilized' barbarism of Marxism-Leninism (and its jazz-rock counterpart), will have to be consigned to the rubbish heap of ideological history, since a redeemed immorality, whether filmic, musical, economic, political, or whatever, is still an obstacle to Superchristic progress, and must be overcome if civilization is finally to emerge in a positive amoral guise.  Verily, ‘the best of a bad job', namely Transcendental Socialism, will have to be consigned to the rubbish heap of history before progress from 'the worst of a good job', namely Social Transcendentalism, towards 'the best of a good job', namely Super-transcendentalism, can be anticipated.  That is the dialectical struggle to come, and if omega is to achieve a victory over alpha, state socialism, jazz-rock, and televideos will have to be eclipsed by centre trusteeship, rock-jazz, and LSD tripping.  For such is the Superchristic precondition of true morality in the purely essential phase of the omega 'Kingdom of Heaven'.

 

129. Just as we can speak, on an elemental basis, of contemporary music or, if you will, supermusic ascending from pop to jazz via rock and soul ... as from earth to air via water and fire or, alternatively, from realism to idealism via materialism and naturalism, so it should be possible to speak of such an ascension in connection with the division of musical instruments into string, keyboard, percussion, and wind families, beginning with strings as the earth/realistic equivalent, continuing up the elemental spectra to keyboards as the water/materialistic equivalent, continuing still further to percussion instruments as the fire/naturalistic equivalent, and culminating with wind as the air/idealistic equivalent, so that our ascension in some sense parallels the pop-rock-soul-jazz progression referred to above, and should likewise correlate with wilful, intellectual, soulful, and spiritual options, depending on the instrument family/type of supermusic in question.

 

130. Furthermore, it should be no less possible to distinguish between an alpha-stemming and an omega-oriented subdivision of each instrument family on the basis of a reactive/attractive dichotomy, so that the string family, for instance, will be divisible not simply in terms of violin, viola, 'cello, and double bass, but, more comprehensively, in terms of plucked instruments of one kind or another on the one hand, i.e. the alpha-stemming reactive subdivision, and bowed instruments of one kind or another on the other hand, i.e. the omega-oriented attractive subdivision, given the reactive/attractive distinction which unquestionably exists between plucking and bowing.  Thus guitars will pertain to the former category and violins, violas, 'cellos, and double basses to the latter, though both categories would be alike wilful, or biased towards the will, granted the earthly and realistic nature of stringed instruments vis-à-vis the other instrument families, a nature which accords with a worldly and, hence, bodily status as opposed, say, to a purgatorial and, hence, cranial one - as applicable to the keyboard family.

 

131. For keyboards are encased, as a rule, and thereby resemble the brain and its skull.  Although, once again, we have to distinguish between reactive and attractive alternatives (almost on the basis of an old-brain/new-brain dichotomy), if we are to do adequate justice to the alpha-stemming/omega-oriented subdivisions of this instrument family.  Now it is my belief that those keyboard instruments which, like the xylophone and vibraphone, require to be played with sticks ... appertain to the former category, while those which, like the piano and organ, are played with fingers ... appertain to the latter one, and never more so than when played with the sustain pedal, which creates a legato sound the essence of which should be rather more attractive - and watery - than reactive.  Indeed, it seems to me that the piano is less omega orientated than balanced between alpha-stemming reactive and omega-oriented attractive options, given the damper-pedal alternative which, as anyone familiar with piano music will know, creates a staccato sound that, on account of its brittle nature, is rather more reactive than attractive - in fact, almost percussive when used in conjunction with rhythmic playing.

 

132. However that may be, we can and, I believe, should distinguish between keyboard instruments on the above basis, while reserving for each category, whether reactive or attractive, a correlation with water and materialism, the very correlation which would indicate an intellectual (as opposed to a wilful) standing, in accordance with the purgatorial, and hence cranial, nature of this particular instrument family, a family especially congenial to intellectuals.

 

133. Likewise, the division of percussion instruments into alpha-stemming reactive and omega-oriented attractive categories can be achieved less on the basis of a sticks/brush dichotomy - though that obviously has some relevance - than with regard to distinctions between one type of percussion instrument and another, especially in relation to what could be termed traditional drum-like instruments, or drums, and the more recent block-like electronic instruments.  Now it is my belief that while the former are alpha stemming and reactive, the latter will be omega orientated and attractive, as though indicative of a centrifugal/centripetal distinction.  However, both categories of percussion instrument warrant a correlation with fire and naturalism, the very correlation which will indicate a soulful (as opposed to an intellectual) standing, in accordance with the diabolic,  and hence particle-mind, nature of percussion.

 

134. But if the percussion family is usually congenial to 'soul devils', then the wind family above will have especial appeal to 'spirit gods', and it is my belief that the division of this family into brass and woodwind categories is largely symptomatic of the kind of alpha/omega dichotomy we have been discussing, with, for instance, saxophones especially significant of the reactive category and, by contrast, clarinets no less significant of the attractive one, since the former have a centrifugal design whereas the latter are more centripetal, as befitting an omega orientation.  However, irrespective of their shape and material construction, all wind instruments should be correlated with air and idealism, which would indicate a spiritual (as opposed to a soulful) standing, in accordance with the divine,  and hence wavicle-mind, nature of wind, the ultimate instrument family in the ascension of musical instruments from earth to air, and one having especial applicability to jazz - that divinely-biased type of contemporary music or, rather, supermusic, whether with regard to alpha or omega, the Father or the Holy Spirit or, indeed, to some Christ-like compromise in between the two absolute extremes, for which the flute might well be the most appropriate wind instrument.

 

135. However that may be, it will not have escaped the reader that virtually all instruments and instrument families can be synthesized and thereby lifted above their individual standings towards a more uniformly collective and homogeneous status.  One could argue that such a procedure parallels the drift from nationalism towards internationalism in politics, and that, whilst it is preferable to the unsynthesized, there is accordingly still scope for a further convergence from the Many to the One, as it were, and thus towards a supra-national parallel which, in music, should take the form of an ultimate synthesizer - a synthesizer that is no mere adjunct to a given instrument, but a totally transcendent phenomenon which eclipses the traditional instrument families in the interests of a unitary perfection the ultimate aim of which is the most omega-oriented and attractive mode of divinely-biased supermusic.

 

136. Where formerly I thought of synthesized guitars and violins as somehow more omega orientated than their unsynthesized counterparts, I now believe that the addition of a synthesizer dimension to each instrument makes it rather more middle ground than would otherwise be the case, since the dimension in question is a common denominator which, in a manner of speaking, can only bring both types of instruments closer together on a largely amoral basis - the synthesized guitar from alpha immoral (electric guitar) to alpha-stemming amoral, the synthesized violin from omega moral (electric violin) to omega-oriented amoral.  In fact, it seems to me that a parallel exists between the above and television on the one hand and LSD trips on the other, with television (or video) paralleling the electric guitar and 'trippy' TV (or video) paralleling the synthesized guitar, but LSD trips paralleling the synthesized violin and transcendental meditation paralleling the electric violin, so that 'trippy' TV and LSD trips are no-less amorally contiguous in relation to straight television and transcendental meditation respectively, than the aforementioned synthesized guitars and violins in relation to their purely electric counterparts, straight television (or video) being no less immoral in relation to 'trippy' TV ... than electric guitars in relation to synthesized ones, and, conversely, transcendental meditation being no less moral in relation to LSD trips than electric violins in relation to synthesized ones - theories which lead me to the conclusion that whereas the most appropriate instrument to listen to when tripping would be the synthesized violin, the most appropriate instrument to listen to when meditating would be the electric violin (although it has to be restated that neither guitars nor violins, whether synthesized or not, are strictly 'head' instruments, but largely bodily in relation to wind instruments on the one hand, and to wind-emulating synthesizers on the other hand).

 

137. Further to the above, one should distinguish between acoustic guitars and violins as naturalistic alpha and omega 'bodily' instruments, and electric guitars and violins as artificial alpha and omega 'bodily' instruments.  For the acoustic/electric distinction is nothing less than that between naturalistic tradition and artificial modernity, and instruments suitable for one type of music are emphatically not suitable for another!  It would be - and, indeed, is - no less illogical to use acoustic instruments in, say, pop or rock music than to use electric ones in, say, folk or classical music.

 

138. War is to autocracy what sport is to democracy - modes of competition in the one case lethal and in the other case non-lethal.  For whereas war corresponds to a proton absolute of death and destruction, sport, its democratic extrapolation, corresponds to an atomic relativity wherein the competitive essence of protons is mitigated and to some extent transmuted by the co-operative essence of electrons.  The more autocratic the society, the more prone it will be to war, and, conversely, the more democratic the society, the more partial it will be to sport.  War is immoral and sport amoral, and in a truly closed society orientated towards the goal of omega transcendence ... neither war nor sport would exist.  Eclipse autocracy, in both natural (monarchic) and artificial (presidential) contexts, and you transcend war.  Eclipse democracy, in both natural (parliamentary) and artificial (republican) contexts, and you transcend sport.  A society which has been saved from both war and sport is truly theocratic or, rather, supertheocratic ... to the extent that it is concerned not with worship (of the alpha), but with self-realization (in the omega).

 

139. It could be said that in the twentieth century the star eclipsed the cross, though the star in question was not the alpha star of an unequivocally centrifugal character, but what (in relation to my philosophy) could be called the alpha-in-the-omega star of centripetal compromise, which differs from the absolutely immoral star to the degree and in much the same way that new-brain rulers (presidents) differ from old-brain ones (monarchs).  That said, we need be in no doubt that the contemporary star is not an end-in-itself but the final manifestation, barring amoral compromises, of an immoral tendency which must some day be challenged by the omega cross, which will bring the moral to a head in an unequivocally centripetal way, contrasting with the omega-in-the-alpha cross of Christian precedent ... to the extent and in much the same way that new-brain spiritual leaders (transcendentalists) contrast with old-brain spiritual leaders (priests).  Thus not only will the Y-like emblem of this unequivocally centripetal cross supersede the contemporary star, it will replace the traditional cross in the name of ultimate morality and the coming to pass of the omega 'Kingdom of Heaven'.

 

140. The modern bottle, with its centripetal tapering and ribbed cap, corresponds to the modern star, as a relatively immoral phenomenon equivalent to alpha-in-the-omega, in contrast to the (modern) can which, given its largely phallic connotations, effectively corresponds to the supercross as an absolutely moral phenomenon equivalent to the omega of centripetal-tending idealism.  Over against the alpha-stemming immorality of drinking straight from the bottle or the omega-oriented morality of drinking straight from the can, one can posit as alpha-stemming amorality the drinking of liquid refreshment from a bottle via a glass, but as omega-oriented amorality the drinking of liquid refreshment from a can via a glass, so that we have here, as in other contexts, two types of amorality in between the contemporary immoral and moral extremes.  Now if, as I firmly believe, immorality is naturalistic and morality idealistic, then the alpha-stemming amorality will be realistic and the omega-oriented amorality materialistic, given the fact that realism succeeds naturalism in devolutionary terms, while materialism precedes idealism in evolutionary terms, as in the following diagram, which, true to the T-like structure used hitherto, should adequately illustrate this point:-

 

BOTTLE/GLASS-CAN/CAN

(naturalism)(materialism)(idealism)

|

|

|

|

|

|

BOTTLE-GLASS

(realism)

 

and on the basis of a parallel with, say, Father - Son - Holy Ghost above and the Blessed Virgin below, or, alternatively, Hell - Purgatory - Heaven above and the World below.

 

141. However that may be, the fact of artificial alpha immorality - omega morality/alpha amorality - omega amorality confirms and transcends the tradition of a naturalistic parallel to the above, with, for example, decanters and kegs in the alpha and omega positions, but large or more relative glasses (with handle) in the amoral positions in between.  Now it is my view that whereas drinking from a decanter, or large corked bottle, corresponds to alpha immorality, the use of a keg will correspond to omega-in-the-alpha, and thus to a relatively moral tendency.  Liquid poured into a glass from either extreme will, of course, confirm an amoral standing relative to naturalistic tradition as opposed to artificial modernity.  Thus whereas the amorality associated with cans has a pop connotation, the amorality associated with kegs can only have a folk connotation, as germane to the traditional pub.  Similar, albeit alpha-stemming, distinctions will also apply to the naturalistic and artificial types of amorality in relation to their associations with bottles or decanters.

 

142. They speak of 'the sin of Onan', but masturbation is only 'sinful', or immoral, when conducted on the centrifugal basis of ejaculation into 'thin air', with or without - though these days usually with - the aid of a sex magazine.  Such masturbation is fascistic and contrasts absolutely with what may be termed moral masturbation (more specifically, stimulation), or recourse to a vaginal sex gadget such that establishes a centripetal context suitable for use with a sex video, a no-less centripetal medium of photographic reproduction, and one that, given an ideologically correct subject-matter, will permit of a communistic alternative to the blatantly centrifugal, and hence immoral, mode of masturbation.  Therefore since masturbation conducted in conjunction with photographic stimuli is idealistic in relation to other and lower types of sexuality, including heterosexual realism and homosexual materialism, we have alpha and omega absolutes in the above-mentioned antithesis, absolutes which flank the relativities of bodily sex on both immorally fascistic and morally communistic terms, and if the world is destined to be eclipsed, and everything alpha stemming be consigned to the rubbish heap of history, then only moral sex will prevail ... on both idealistic (video) and naturalistic (inflatable) terms, though especially with regard to the former in the divine contexts of a supertheocratic resolve.

 

143. One should distinguish between flounced dresses (which are effectively centrifugal) and tapered dresses (which are effectively centripetal) as alpha and alpha-in-the-omega, which is to say, as paralleling or appertaining to two types of autocracy - the monarchic autocracy of royalist tradition and the presidential autocracy of hard-line republican modernity, while reserving for both flounced and tapered skirts an alpha-stemming amoral status relative to the alpha and alpha-in-the-omega distinctions described above.  Thus it should be apparent, if this theory is valid, that whereas skirts are amoral, dresses will be immoral, whether absolutely or relatively (depending on the type of dress in question, i.e. flounced or tapered), and that dresses can no more be limited to the traditional alpha context than skirts ... to the contemporary worldly one.  Both dresses and skirts can be either traditional or contemporary, which is to say absolutely immoral/amoral on the one hand, that of the alpha, and relatively immoral/amoral on the other hand, that of the alpha-in-the-omega, with centrifugal and centripetal distinctions, irrespective of their lengths.  For we can no more regard a short flounced dress as strictly contemporary, in the relatively immoral sense I have attached to that term, than regard a long tapered dress as traditional, in the absolutely immoral sense of a centrifugal implication appropriate to naturalistic autocracy.  To revert to our monarchic/presidential analogue, which is applicable to the traditional and contemporary (or naturalistic and artificial) distinctions in question, the short flounced dress will parallel an autocratic devolution on the monarchic side, whereas the long tapered dress will parallel the most undevolved, and hence dictatorial, of presidential autocracies.  It is not length but style which is the clue to the moral nature of any given dress or skirt, and although naturalistic tradition will generally favour long dresses and/or skirts and, by contrast, artificial modernity their shorter counterparts, the crucial moral determinant is whether we have a centrifugal or a centripetal distinction between them such that reflects the different immoral and amoral natures of alpha and alpha-in-the-omega.

 

144. It is my belief that the existence in Israel at the time of writing of but one television channel signifies a contemporary parallel to the historical traditions of Judaic monotheism, and that such one-channel TV is as morally superior - albeit within the necessarily circumscribed context of 'external heavens' - to the multichannel TV, for example, of the Western world ... as Judaic monotheism vis-à-vis the pagan polytheism of the ancient world, to which the superalpha idealism of television channels would appear to offer a contemporary parallel.  Thus whereas America, the most 'superpolytheistic' nation on earth, stands at one extreme, with its multichannel TV, Israel, the most 'supermonotheistic' nation on earth, stands at the other - an exponent of single-channel TV and, hence, moral exemplar within the framework of superalpha idealism.  However, should superomega idealism eventually come to pass, if only on the comparatively amoral basis of a Superchristic 'internal heaven' initially, there can be little doubt that its insistence on the one drug, viz. LSD, will follow from a deeply-held conviction regarding the moral sanctity of 'supermonotheistic' idealism.

 

145. Whereas the open-neck shirt is alpha when of the short-sleeved variety and alpha-in-the-omega when of the more contemporary long-sleeved variety, the former shirt worn with a cravat is of a negative amoral status in the alpha (naturalistic) context, and the latter one worn with a T-shirt underneath (in the American manner) is of a negative amoral status in the alpha-in-the-omega (artificial) context, so that we have a parallel, emblematically speaking, with contiguously encircled stars as opposed to stars which stand alone in either absolutely (naturalistic) immoral or relatively (artificial) immoral fashion, and which therefore parallel the purely open-neck types of shirt.  Now, doubtless, whilst it is morally preferable for collar shirts to be done-up at the neck in a strictly middle-ground amoral fashion, the collar shirt worn in conjunction with a T-shirt is no-less morally preferable, from a contemporary standpoint, to the bare open-collar shirt ... than contiguously encircled stars to plain ones, and is thus less immoral to the extent that it is relatively amoral, or of an alpha-stemming amoral standing.

 

146. Now what applies to shirts in the contemporary 'presidential' context should apply no less to those of a more traditional, or 'monarchic', nature, where we will be distinguishing between the presence or absence of cravats in relation, strictly speaking, to short-sleeved collar shirts, though also effectively in relation to long-sleeved shirts the sleeves of which have been rolled up.  In contrast to the immoral and negative amoral contexts cited above, we can posit as positively amoral those collarless, and hence implicitly centripetal, T-shirts which have buttons, and the buttons of which will be left underdone by their wearers ... in a sort of sartorial parallel to what could be termed the military supercross, the supercross which is not contiguously encircled but free-standing - Y - in amoral opposition to the star, and from this to the moral or contiguously encircled supercross is but a short step, one paralleling that from button T-shirts to their more centripetal, and hence buttonless, counterparts.

 

147. In fact, taking both alpha and omega alternatives into account, it is clear that we have three options either side of the moral divide, viz. bare open-necked collar shirt, open-necked collar shirt worn in conjunction with a T-shirt, and collar shirt done-up at the neck on the one hand, effectively that of the star, but open-necked button T-shirt, button T-shirt done-up at the neck, and buttonless T-shirt on the other hand, effectively that of the supercross.  Thus in between the immoral and moral extremes of the open-necked collar shirt and the buttonless T-shirt come two opposing types of amoral middle-ground, viz. militant and civil, and while the open-necked collar shirt worn in conjunction with a T-shirt and the open-necked button T-shirt will be of the militant varieties of amoral middle-ground, the collar shirt done-up at the neck and the button T-shirt also done-up at the neck can only be of the civil varieties of amoral middle-ground, varieties which have their emblematic parallels no less than each of the extreme moral positions.

 

148. Generally I speak of supercross and star rather than of supercross and superstar, and this is because, to my mind (which is finely attuned to the distinction between devolutionary and evolutionary extremes ... as pertaining to alpha and omega respectively), the contemporary star corresponds to alpha-in-the-omega as opposed to alpha and is thus a more devolved type of star than cosmic stars, which of course are primal, and hence 'super', in relation to their 'humanized' lesser brothers, much as traditional absolute monarchs would appear 'super' in relation to latter-day presidents, with their comparatively mundane and constitutional status.  Thus because I see the primal star as 'super', it behoves me to regard the contemporary and, in some sense, relative star in a more down-to-earth light, such that contrasts with the absolute status of 'superstars'.  Likewise, the cross is morally relative in relation to the projected 'supercross' of my ideological integrity, since it corresponds to omega-in-the-alpha as opposed to omega, and therefore is not only more down-to-earth, and hence mundane, but weaker vis-à-vis the star, since the star to which it forms an antithesis is less the contemporary star (which, in any case, has overhauled it in a great many countries) than the traditional, or primal, star, the 'superstar' of pagan precedent, and the Son is forever enslaved to the Father.  Such enslavement will not apply, however, to the supercross vis-à-vis the star; for the supercross is effectively of the Holy Spirit, which is absolute, whereas the contemporary star, with its tapering relativity, is of an antichristic 'Father' (Marx) much less pure and certain of himself than the primal Father from which worldly devolution sprang.  This contemporary star may have the appearance of great power, but its essence is twisted, and the pure essence that will be brought to bear on it will have all the potential for certainty of the ultimate absolute behind it, the omega absolute which alone can overcome and eventually consign to the rubbish heap of history all alpha-in-the-omega stars and their relatively immoral/amoral autocratic offspring.

 

149. No less than we can distinguish between centrifugal and centripetal attire, whether male or female, on the basis of a naturalistic/artificial dichotomy, so a distinction can be drawn between those who have sex in a horizontal position and those, by contrast, who have it vertically, with corresponding correlations between the way a person dresses and the most appropriate mode of heterosexual intercourse.  In other words, not only will a certain type of feminine or masculine attire - a dress, say, in the case of females and an open-neck shirt in the case of males - be correlative, on a moral or ideological basis, with either an horizontal or a vertical approach to sex (depending whether a centrifugal or a centripetal bias is preponderant), but each kind of correlative attire will have a corresponding type of intercourse, as I hope to demonstrate in the following pages.  Take, for example, short-sleeved open-neck shirts and flounced dresses, the alpha kinds of masculine and feminine attire par excellence.  Not only am I prepared to contend that a female in a flounced dress is more likely to be fancied or found acceptable by a man in a short-sleeved open-collar shirt than by one in, say, a T-shirt, but that only such a man is logically entitled to fancy or find her acceptable, and that, being effectively autocratic, and hence absolutist in a centrifugal way, he will be entitled and, indeed, morally required to mount the woman in question from behind in a context of horizontal copulation.  For a man who regularly dresses in such a fashion but either does not like or respond to women who wear flounced dresses ... is sartorially illogical, and if, in addition to this, he does not regularly mount women or, at any rate, his particular woman from behind in a horizontal position, he is sexually illogical or, at the very least, inconsistent.  For that is precisely the way in which a woman who dresses in a flounced dress should be mounted, and logic compels me to affirm that the man most entitled to have sex in such a way with such a woman is precisely the one who dresses in a short-sleeved open-collar shirt.  Thus, strictly speaking, it could be argued that the man who doesn't dress in such a manner but in some other more civilized fashion ... has absolutely no business mounting a woman from behind, unless, of course, he happens to be more an alpha-in-the-omega type than an alpha type of shirt-wearer, in which case his long-sleeved open-collar shirt should logically dispose him to women in tapered dresses who both require and deserve to be vertically mounted from behind, in accordance with the more contemporary, and hence artificial, criteria of alpha-in-the-omega.  That said, I must progress to the relativity of 'democratic' as opposed to 'autocratic' heterosexual intercourse, where we are less concerned with the absolutism of unidirectional copulation (stomach-to-back of male and female partners) than with the relativity of bidirectional copulation (stomach-to-stomach of male and female partners), and it is my firm contention that whereas women who dress in flounced skirts should be mounted on a stomach-to-stomach basis by men who wear cravats, those, by contrast, who wear tapered skirts deserve to be mounted in an upright stomach-to-stomach posture by men whose sartorial norm is rather more T-shirt under long-sleeved open-neck shirt.  Conversely, it could be argued from a positive amoral point-of-view that women who wear trousers (not jeans) should be on top in a stomach-to-stomach heterosexual relativity, and on top of males the collars of whose short-sleeved shirts will  normally be done-up at the neck, whereas women who wear cord jeans deserve to be sexually assertive in an upright stomach-to-stomach posture with males the collars of whose long-sleeved shirts are normally buttoned-up at the neck, since such shirts, both in the naturalistic and artificial contexts, are specifically neutral and effectively sexless.

 

150. However, from democratic relativity of both right- and left-wing persuasions to far-left 'democratic' or, more correctly, 'anti-democratic' absolutism ... is but a logical step in both horizontal (traditional) and vertical (contemporary) contexts, with women in slacks or otherwise tight-fitting trousers requiring, in the logical unfolding of my thesis, to be horizontally penetrated from behind in a stomach-to-back heterosexual relationship in which the male is underneath and the female on top, the latter of whom will be more sexually assertive within the necessarily indeterminate (and possibly anal-biased) context of this extreme mode of heterosexual copulation, a mode for which males who dress in gown-like collarless shirts would logically seem to be the most appropriate sartorial candidates.  However that may be, the vertical equivalent of this inevitably pertains not to omega-in-the-alpha, as with the foregoing extreme, but to the omega of heterosexual relations, and would suggest the likelihood that the female will be sitting on the male and effectively being penetrated from behind or, rather, underneath in a stomach-to-back vertical relationship in which, once again, sexual indeterminacy (with a possible bias towards anal penetration) is the prevailing norm, a norm expressly suited to females who wear tight-fitting denims and to males whose sartorial norm happens to be a T-shirt.  (I limit myself to denims and T-shirts because, quite frankly, they have a bodily correspondence and are thus suitable for extreme heterosexual activity, whereas leather pants and muscle shirts, PVC pants and vests, are ideologically more extreme and therefore implicitly transcend, on their respective ideological terms, the heterosexual contexts of bodily sex.)  Now if my overall theories are correct, then it must follow that a person's usual mode of dressing will correlate, as I have endeavoured to show, with a particular mode of sexuality or approach to heterosexual relations, and that as a person dresses ... so can he/she fuck/be fucked.  It would be as illogical for a woman who wears a flounced dress to object to being horizontally penetrated from behind (in predatory fashion) by a male whose sartorial norm is a short-sleeved open-neck shirt ... as for such a male not to approach sex from an autocratic, and hence absolutist, point of view.  Indeed, it would be no less illogical, and perhaps even more so, for people whose sartorial norms were markedly different from the above to approach or demand sex from that autocratic point of view, one which, judged from the omega, is absolutely immoral in the naturalistic, or centrifugal, context, and relatively immoral in the artificial, or centripetal, context, as between monarchic and presidential extremes ... in psychologies conditioned by the old brain and the new brain respectively.  A truly omega-oriented man will no more be capable of penetrating a woman from behind, in predatory fashion, than of either fancying a woman in a dress (flounced or tapered) or dressing in an open-collar shirt.  He will have his own closed-society moral integrity and stick by it, come what may!

 

151. For most people, life is either hell or purgatory during the day (depending on whether they are employed by others or self-employed), and either the world or heaven at night (depending on whether they are playing with another's body or with their mind).

 

152. With regard to the T-like design of Truth (which we shall continue to hold in imagination throughout the following entries), it seems to me that newspapers can broadly be classified as bodily in relation to magazines, so that they effectively pertain to the foot of the design in question rather than to its head, and can thus be regarded as of the World ... as opposed to the diabolic-purgatorial-divine options above it.  Newspapers, then, are the wordy 'darkness' under the photographic 'light' of magazines.  The 'Virgin' under the 'Trinity', and are divisible into three basic categories, viz. a large quality middle-ground, a tabloid right wing, and a small quality left wing, much as we earlier distinguished between cars on the basis of a four-seater middle ground, an open-topped two-seater right wing, and an enclosed two-seater left wing.  For it seems to me that a correlation can be inferred to exist between large quality newspapers and four-seater cars, tabloids and open-topped two-seaters, and small quality newspapers and enclosed two-seaters, with similar political or moral implications in each case, that is to say, with regard to the broadly amoral, worldly nature of cars and newspapers, and their subdivisions into relatively immoral and moral extremes.  However, from the relative immorality (within the broadly amoral framework) of open-topped two-seaters and tabloids to the absolute immorality of scooters and photographic magazines is no less a step backwards and upwards into Fascism ... than the absolute morality of motorbikes and textural magazines is a step forwards and upwards into Communism from the relative morality (within the broadly amoral framework) of enclosed two-seaters and small quality newspapers, since newspapers are flanked by magazines of one kind or another no less than cars by scooters and motorbikes, i.e. two-wheeled vehicles of one kind or another, both of which extremes (and the magazine ones as well) are of the 'head' rather than of the 'body'.  In fact, being of the 'head' as opposed to the 'body', it could be said of magazines no less than of scooters and motorbikes that they are 'masculine' rather than 'feminine' phenomena, albeit on diametrically antithetical terms, as between autocratic and theocratic extremes.

 

153. However that may be, we can no more omit the 'democratic' middle-ground in between the 'head' extremes than we can omit Christ from the Blessed Trinity, and in relation to magazines the type of magazine which most seems to accord with such an existence will be the one finely balanced between photographic and textural extremes in such a way as to suggest an analogue with a moped, the type of 'head' mode of two-wheeled road transportation which holds a parallel position, philosophically speaking, in between the centrifugal and centripetal extremes of scooters and motorbikes respectively, and which may therefore be regarded as pertaining to the upper pole of the vertical bar of our T-like design in a sort of Christic or purgatorial antithesis to its lower pole which, taking the form of cars (and especially four-seaters in the strictly neutron middle-ground), has a worldly, and hence bodily, status commensurate with the Blessed Virgin.  Indeed, no less than Christ arose from the Virgin, as Son from Mother, so certain magazines of the type we are discussing 'arise' from and gain popularity in conjunction with newspapers, particularly those of the large quality middle-ground, and it will be these above all others which most accord, it seems to me, with the kind of 'head' amorality (in between proton and electron extremes, as opposed to within a neutron context which may lean in either a proton or an electron direction, as it were, depending on whether right- or left-wing bodily options are at issue) under consideration in this entry.

 

154. Now that I have written the above, I find that whilst I am relatively happy with the notion of certain types of magazine 'arising from' and being published in conjunction with large quality newspapers, not to mention Christ from the 'Mother of God', I find that I am less happy with the notion, say, of mopeds 'arising from' cars, which is the implication of our current analogue.  Quite frankly, mopeds are rarely sold in conjunction with cars, and if they could be said to have arisen from anywhere ... it would surely have to be from bicycles, which would therefore be the mode of road transportation that ties-in not only with mopeds above but, no less importantly, with scooters and motorbikes as well, given that they are all two-wheeled vehicles.  In which case, we would have to substitute bicycles for cars and accord them a more exact parallel with newspapers, dividing bicycles, like cars, into three broad categories, viz. tourers, racers, and tracksters, with touring bikes in the strictly cycling middle-ground position, racing bikes in the right-wing position (analogous to tabloids), and track bikes in the left-wing position (analogous to small quality newspapers), and this on account of the fact that whereas racing bikes suggest a centrifugal bias ... relative to their large wheels and low curved handlebars, track bikes, by contrast, suggest a centripetal one ... relative to their more compact wheels and high, gently curving handlebars - the former emphasizing a horizontally-biased riding posture and the latter a vertically-biased one, as germane to centrifugal and centripetal alternatives.  Well, if our new theory is more credible than the one concerning cars in this context, then newspapers and bicycles would form a parallel analogue no less than scooters-mopeds-motorbikes and magazines of one type of another, an analogue applicable to our T-like design and having the political and moral implications already discussed.  Now in this regard, we could no more equate newspapers with cars than, say, books with bicycles, assuming that a similar parallel may be inferred to exist between books and cars as we now argue exists between newspapers and bicycles.  But what kind of books?  And should the division between paperbacks and hardbacks be regarded as paralleling the division between newspapers and magazines, or would that be an oversimplification?  Are there, in fact, 'bodily' paperbacks no less than 'head' hardbacks, and does the size of a book determine its status as either 'bodily' or of the 'head', quite apart from the presence or absence of photographs and the ratio of words to pictures, or vice versa?  Doubtless some of these questions could be answered in the affirmative, and I, for one, have no trouble in equating word books with the 'body' and picture books with the 'head', although the ratio of words to pictures, or vice versa, will vary according to whether we are describing the 'fascist' Far Right or the 'communist' Far Left, not to mention some in-between compromise between words and pictures which may well signify a sort of 'anarchist' middle-ground head position over the bodily 'liberalism' of the textual middle-ground, a middle ground that, like newspapers, is no less divisible into relative left- and right-wing positions (as described elsewhere) either side of itself, so that an analogue with two-seater cars of one kind or another can be inferred which, however approximate, will do relative justice to the statically amoral nature of the context in question.  Certainly hardbacks can have just as many or as few pictures as paperbacks, so that we can no more limit pictures, say, to paperbacks than photos to magazines, bearing in mind the photographic bias of the tabloid press.  In general, however, it will be found that the more photographic and the less textual, the more effectively right wing the publication, and if pictorial hardbacks are extreme right wing, and hence fascistic, then pictorial paperbacks (analogous to tabloids) will be relatively right wing, and hence Conservative or Low Tory.  For it seems to me that large hardbacks and magazines are just as parallel in their respective contexts ... as paperbacks and newspapers in theirs, with the implication that whereas the former are by and large of the 'head', the latter are 'bodily', and that an analogue between large hardbacks of one kind or another and vans would no more be out-of-place, in this context, than the one between magazines and scooters-mopeds-motorbikes in the other, whilst a parallel analogue between paperbacks and cars of one kind or another would no more be out-of-place here than that between newspapers and bicycles, as already discussed.

 

155. But if hardbacks and vans are no less parallel than paperbacks and cars, we have only to decide upon the respective types of hardbacks and vans, or paperbacks and cars, to have a credible argument to place alongside the one concerning the respective kinds of newspapers/magazines in their relation to two-wheeled modes of road transportation.  Now, in this regard, it seems to me that open-topped vans will be extreme Right in contrast to enclosed vans, whereas vans or, rather, Land Rovers will be the 'head' middle-ground in between the van extremes, and therefore signify a sort of dynamic amoral phenomenon that could be said to have 'arisen from' four-seater cars no less than, say, mopeds from touring bikes or the Sunday magazine from its quality newspaper.  At any rate, I have no doubt that Land Rovers are to cars in general what mopeds are to bicycles, and that the type of hardback which parallels this will be finely balanced between the fascistic and communistic extremes of pictorial and textual alternatives, much as the paperback directly beneath it in the worldly middle-ground of a 'Catholic' softness will be finely balanced between the same extremes within the more relative context of a 'bodily' amorality, one paralleling that of newspapers vis-à-vis the magazine 'head'.

 

156. Having distinguished between newspapers/magazines and paperbacks/hardbacks on the above T-like basis, it behoves us to ask the question: What are the relative metaphysical, or elemental, standings of the two contexts, and do they pertain to the old brain or to the new brain or, indeed, to a combination of both?  Taking the second part of this question first, it could be argued that books, being historically older than newspapers/magazines, pertain to the old brain and are thus effectively naturalistic or traditional vis-à-vis the artificial or contemporary status of newspapers/magazines.  But this would be a rather facile argument, in view of the fact that neither the one nor the other context is ultimate, since both contexts have been superseded by radio/television and computers which, so I shall argue, are germane to the new brain rather than to the old one.  Therefore it seems to me that both contexts are essentially pertinent to the old brain and thus naturalistic or traditional, as opposed to artificial or contemporary.  The only difference between them is that whereas newspapers/magazines, being journalistic, are collective and intensive (informative), paperbacks/hardbacks, being literary, are individualistic and extensive (narrative), with the implication of a particle/wavicle dichotomy between the two contexts.  Hence the paperback/hardback context is morally superior to the newspaper/magazine one, and on the basis of a world/heaven or earth/air as opposed to a purgatory/hell or water/fire polarity, since the paperback/hardback T-like distinctions pertain to realistic and idealistic wavicles, while the newspaper/magazine T-like distinctions pertain to materialistic and naturalistic particles, as befitting the respective natures, for example, of literature and journalism.  To descend from the abstract metaphysical realm to the concrete physical realm, it could be said that if one finds the idea of a woman reading a book, particularly a paperback, easier to accommodate than that of one reading a newspaper, it is probably because the former is effectively more germane to the feminine than the latter, even if, in its own context, the newspaper is also worldly and therefore germane to the feminine, albeit in a particle and, hence, fallen sort of way, such that would appeal more to Liberals than to Catholics.

 

157. However that may be, I have no doubt that while the paperback/hardback context is inherently superior to the newspaper/magazine one, both alike are of the old brain and therefore naturalistic in relation to the more contemporary contexts of radio/television and computers, which are their new-brain counterparts, and counterparts which, likewise, can be divided, from one another, on a T-like basis - in other words, with a sort of worldly and, hence, 'bodily' middle-ground (analogous to the Blessed Virgin) and a diabolic-purgatorial-divine trinity (analogous to the Blessed Trinity) of competing 'head' alternatives above it.  Taking the radio/television context first, I should like to argue that radio pertains to the 'bodily' middle-ground in a sort of new-brain parallel to paperbacks, whereas the 'head' trinity above will be represented by video-television-teletext (in that order), given the more apparent (action-packed) nature of video in relation to the essential (textual) nature of teletext; television itself being a sort of pictorial/textual and/or verbal compromise in between the two visual extremes.  Of course, the 'bodily' middle-ground down below is also, as with paperbacks, relatively divisible into three alternatives, albeit more in terms of an audiovisual appendage (right-wing apparent) and an audio-tape appendage (left-wing essential) to radio in a sort of midi or cassette-recorder context than in regard to the actual radio itself, even given intrinsic distinctions between, say, sports commentary and news bulletins.  For while such programme distinctions are not without significance in this respect, the crucial distinction is not the content but the way in which it is conveyed, i.e. through pictures, words alone, or a combination of both, and this applies no less to the 'head' media above than to the 'bodily' medium in question.  Even satellite television is less an omega equivalent (of the Holy Ghost) than a higher type of 'head'-level middle-ground, analogous, one could argue, to a sort of resurrectional purgatory above conventional television.

 

158. However, in turning from the radio/television context to the computer context, we shall find it convenient to draw similar distinctions between a 'head' trinity and a 'bodily' middle-ground underneath, and if I am not seriously mistaken then the trinity, to reverse the order this time, will be represented by games computers at the pictorial alpha, word processors at the textual omega, and graphics/textual computers in the purgatorial, or Christic, middle-ground, whereas in the 'bodily' middle-ground underneath we shall find microfilm machines, which, in their ability to store and present data, whether graphic or textual, resemble computers without actually having their memory facilities ... as germane to the 'brain'.  Thus it is my contention that microfilm machines are to computers what, on this same new-brain level, radios are to televisions, and what, on the old-brain level paralleling it, newspapers are to magazines - namely, the feminine middle-ground under a trinity of masculine 'divinities' stretching (relative to its own specific context) from alpha to omega via a purgatorial compromise coming in between.  Now just as we argued that paperbacks/hardbacks were metaphysically superior to newspapers/magazines, so it can be argued that the radio/television context is metaphysically superior to the microfilm/computer one, since the former is more susceptible to a narrative continuum, as germane to film, whereas the latter is usually designed to accommodate a number of unrelated documents or programmes which, in their respective brevities, are fundamentally more 'journalistic' than 'literary', and thus, like newspapers/magazines, more suited to business than to the arts.  It is not for nothing that computers are generally regarded as 'business machines', whereas, despite its capacity for serious content, we tend to regard television primarily as a source of entertainment.

 

159. Now that I have sorted out the relative metaphysical and physical standings of all four contexts under discussion, beginning with paperbacks/hardbacks and newspapers/magazines, and proceeding to radio/television and microfilm/computers, I am no longer any more free to draw analogies between, say, newspapers and bicycles than between paperbacks and cars, for the simple reason that analogies involving naturalistic and artificial phenomena are no more strictly correlative than would be those between, say, television and carts or computers and horses.  Clearly, if newspapers/magazines and paperbacks/hardbacks are respectively old-brain naturalistic phenomena in relation to microfilm/computers and radio/television, whereas bicycles/motorbikes and cars/vans are respectively new-brain artificial phenomena in relation to ponies/horses and carriages/carts, then we can no more correlate newspapers with bicycles than, say, computers with horses.  Old-brain equivalents should be correlated with old-brain equivalents and new-brain equivalents with new-brain equivalents; else we shall find ourselves at cross-purposes in a world torn between naturalistic and artificial criteria.  Obviously, if cars/vans are artificial in relation to carriages/carts, then cars/vans will pertain to the new brain no less than carriages/carts to the old one, and we shall have to correlate the former with radio/television and the latter with paperbacks/hardbacks.  Likewise, if bicycles/motorbikes (or, more fully, bicycles/scooters-mopeds-motorbikes) are artificial in relation to, say, ponies/horses (or, more fully, ponies/donkeys-mules-horses), then bicycles/motorbikes will pertain to the new brain no less than ponies/horses to the old one, and we shall have to correlate the former with microfilm/computers and the latter with newspapers/magazines.  Too bad if, in doing so, one finds that the correlations arrived at are not as flattering to one's sense of personal integrity or impersonal history as one would have liked!  For instance, that paperbacks/hardbacks are acceptable to one but not carriages/carts, or that newspapers/magazines have a part in one's life but horsy quadrupeds don't.  It is only with the help of logically credible correlations of this nature that the true status or worth of paperbacks/hardbacks and newspapers/magazines can be gauged, since they are effectively on the level of carriages/carts and ponies/horses respectively, and anyone who prefers four-wheeled mechanical vehicles to their horse-drawn counterparts, or two-wheeled mechanical vehicles to horsy quadrupeds, should logically prefer televisions to hardbacks and computers to magazines ... if he is not to confound the artificial with the naturalistic and thereby remain at cross-purposes with himself in an open-society chaos of old- and new-brain alternatives.

 

160. Logic does not come easy, as my work should amply demonstrate, but it is possible to be logically consistent and to live one's life accordingly, and that, after all, is the test of true greatness, or perhaps I should say philosophical togetherness.  If my work helps people to become more logically consistent in both their thinking and their living, then it won't have been entirely in vain!  Whether they are naturalists and newspaper/magazine readers or realists and paperback/hardback readers, materialists and microfilm/computer users or idealists and radio/ television addicts, or indeed whether, in addition to all of this, they are fiery quadruped riders or earthy carriage/cart drivers, watery riders of two-wheeled mechanical vehicles or airy drivers of four-wheeled mechanical vehicles, they should hopefully become more adept in the art of drawing credible correlations between one subject and another, and acquire a deeper understanding of themselves in consequence!

                          

 

LONDON 1989–91 (Revised 2012)

 

Critique of Post-Dialectical Idealism