CYCLE SIXTEEN
1. Race and culture stand above nation and civilization
like, I guess, fire and air above water and vegetation, or rhythm and pitch
above harmony and melody, or Devils and Gods above women and men, and so on.
2. That is not to say, however, that Social
Transcendentalism is solely about race and culture, even though they would
figure prominently as the noumenal aspects of
'Kingdom Come', but rather that it recognizes the significance of both race and
culture as upper-class parallels to nation and civilization, pretty much as
time and space to mass and volume.
3. One of the great ironies of history on these
islands is that the Celtic Irish, who effectively escaped the Romanization of
Western Europe and its catastrophic effects upon race and culture, subsequently
succumbed to Roman Catholicism and were culturally pegged, in Irish nationhood,
to mass and volume, viz. Mary and Christ, womb and brain.
4. As Celts they traditionally related, more
usually, to Celtic Christianity, with its greater emphasis on personal
attainment of grace through individual effort, but as Irish nationhood
developed from the combination and cross-fertilization of Celtic and
Anglo-Norman traditions or factors, they gradually fell under the influence of
Roman Catholicism and succumbed to nation and civilization, those phenomenal shortfalls
from and oppositions to race and culture such as their less mongrelized Celtic
ancestors, in particular, had escaped, albeit in a largely naturalistic and
even paganistic context.
5. Yet race and culture are higher than nation
and civilization, as percussion and wind are higher, in musical instrument
terms, than keyboards and guitars and/or strings, like fire and air above water
and vegetation.
6. Paradoxically, the classical music of Western
civilization stands on a lower plane or, rather, on lower planes to the best
traditional and folk music of the Celtic fringe, as, in effect, a worldly and
lower-class type of music vis-à-vis an otherworldly and effectively upper-class
type of music, a music not of volume and mass so much as of time and space,
with more rhythm and pitch, particularly in percussion and wind or pipes, than
harmony and melody, particularly in keyboards and strings.
7. Surprisingly, Celtic culture partly survived
the Romanization of Ireland by civilized nationhood and tended to co-exist with
it as a noumenal, or abstract, alternative to
phenomenal, and concrete, Western norms, and pretty much on the paradoxical
terms of a west/east divide on the island of Ireland as a whole.
8. But under the
prevailing influence of Roman Catholicism it ceased to be anything but
peripheral to the worldly norm, which ever tends to a mundane reduction of
life, in mass and volume, to Marian and Christic,
national and civilized, means.
9. To the civilized, the racial/cultural
integrity of the Otherworldly appears as a mark of backwardness and even
barbarism, whereas to the cultured, the national/civil integrity of the Worldly
seems base and even philistine.
10. Yet, in reality, the cultured should not be
judged by civilized standards, any more than the civilized should be judged by
cultural ones!
11. The racial/cultural integrity, or noumenal dichotomy in time and space, is largely divisible
between beauty and truth, whereas the national/civil integrity, or phenomenal
dichotomy in volume and mass, is largely divisible between strength and
knowledge.
12. Beauty without reference to truth is philistine, and philistine are they who emphasize race to
the virtual exclusion of culture.
13. Strength without reference to knowledge is
barbarous, and barbarous are they who emphasize nationhood without reference to
civilization.
14. In 'Kingdom Come', however, beauty would serve
not only the truth of culture but the strength of nationhood and the knowledge
of civilization, since the beauty of race would be akin to the administrative
aside to the triadic Beyond, and the Beyond in question would be composed of
nation, civilization, and culture, viz. strength, knowledge, and truth.
15. Social Transcendentalism
is primarily concerned with race and culture, beauty and truth, and only
secondarily with nation and civilization, strength and knowledge. For the noumenal
must take precedence over the phenomenal if the world is to be overcome and
otherworldly values, germane to 'Kingdom Come', predominantly prevail, in
keeping with the hegemonic positions of time and space over volume and mass.
16. Yet both race and culture, no less than nation
and civilization, will be more artificial than naturalistic, as befitting the
overhaul of naturalistic traditions by artificial modernity, and the almost
infinite transmutability of both environment and society which such
artificiality portends.
17. Western civilization is, by and large, already
artificial, since the naturalistic forms of nation and civilization were
superseded by their artificial counterparts quite some time ago. What will distinguish 'Kingdom Come' from
this will be the addition of artificial manifestations of race and culture to
form a superstructure in which nation and civilization will undergo further
modifications in line with the general advancement of artificial criteria.
18. National Socialism in Hitlerian
19. Social Transcendentalism must ensure that the omega
rather than the alpha of race and culture is emphasized, so that one has less
of an artistic and more of a religious perspective in which culture is big, so
to speak, and race small.
20. Likewise, civilization should be big and
nation, or nationhood, small, and this contrary to the triumph of nationhood at
the expense of civilization which tended to characterize those Western nations
in the twentieth century which fell into barbarism, or fascism.
21. Mature democracies, on the other hand, tended
to remain more civilized than nationalistic, the omega-oriented counterpart to
those theocracies, for want of a better term, which remained more cultural than
racial, if, in Roman Catholicism, with a mainly worldly emphasis.
22. Thus, in general terms, the mature
democracies, being of the State, tended to be more of the Mother than the
Daughter, while their theocratic counterparts, being of the Church, tended to
emphasize the Son rather than the Father.
But this wasn't so much on a noumenal as on a
phenomenal, and therefore lower-class, basis, as befitting the mundane
integrities of both parliamentary liberalism and Roman Catholicism.
23. I speak rather of a new civilization and a new
culture, a new earth and a new heaven, as germane to 'Kingdom Come'.
