CYCLE TWENTY

1. As creatures of both sensuality and sensibility we are torn between the alpha and the omega of things and should not expect or strive to be too much the one at the expense of the other, else we shall end-up paying the price in terms of ill-health or even death.

2. Our division between sensuality and sensibility is further complicated by the fact that, left to their own devices, females tend to be more sensual than sensible and males, by contrast, more sensible than sensual - at any rate, in relation to the gender interests, so to speak, of each sex.

3. Righteousness for a male, be he man or god, may be in sensibility, but for a female, whether woman or devil, it is very much in sensuality, even though with immoral consequences.

4. Males can and do make a case for moral righteousness based on sensibility, but, frankly, that applies only to them, and will inevitably meet with resistance, sooner or later, from females.

5. Therefore the one gender continues, wittingly or unwittingly, to war on the other, and peace is only established by the temporary capitulation of the one gender to the other.

6. No matter how morally earnest males may happen to be, they are up against a female opposition to morality based on the disadvantages accruing to an unrighteous, or unclear, position and the desirability, in consequence, for females to return, in counter-devolutionary fashion, to a hegemonic advantage in sensuality, which, from their standpoint, is not only righteous in its clearness but blessed (with untrammelled freedom), to boot.

7. Thus the prospects, while gender exists, of undue sensibility for either gender are pretty slim, and even males have something to gain from returning, whether or not under female pressures, to a more sensual position and effectively relaxing from the exigencies of sensibility.

8. For too much sensibility tends to result in uptightness, and uptightness, like too much up-tempo music, is bad not only for the male who is uptight, but for any female who has to endure the consequences, whether she is, as it were, downtight at the time or not.

9. Then again, drinking to help ease the pressure of sensibility and effectively 'get loose' is a pretty drastic solution to the problem of uptightness and can lead to dangerous consequences, both for the individual and for society in general.

10. In this respect, the Irish experience of using drink as an antidote to sensible pressures, often fuelled by religion and climate and/or environment, should remind us that while it may be of some avail it is not the ideal way to relax, and that steps to address the cause or causes of uptightness in the first place would probably be of more benefit in the long term.

11. But we are still under pressure, through life, to evolve, and it seems unlikely that we will ever be able to establish, never mind maintain, a non-evolutionary stasis in life or to backtrack, as it were, from such progress, environmental or otherwise, as we have made and are still vigorously engaged in making, come what may!

12. Evolution will carry on as a consequence or symptom of our life struggles, even with the dichotomy between sensuality and sensibility still very much a factor to be reckoned with and actively embraced for our own good.

13. Doubtless, even in the hypothetically most evolved of contexts there would still be a dichotomy of sorts between sensuality and sensibility, even if with an emphasis upon the latter; for we cannot cease being sensual without paying some heavy price, and, in any case, how could we have sensibility without sensuality, or vice versa.

14. We are, in Fulke Greville's oft-quoted words, 'born under one law, to another bound', and such, I dare say, will remain the case even when and if we depart this planet for some more heavenly realm in space, whereupon the establishment of omega points will effectively signal the culmination of evolution and the end of all earthly striving.

15. But by then, should such a scenario transpire, there will doubtless be recourse to artificial senses, with corresponding inducements to sensual relaxation, and even sensibility will be correspondingly more artificial than it had ever been in the past, given the thrust of progress to superimpose upon the artificial modes of inorganic primacy, which in particular characterize secular modernity, those artificial modes of organic supremacy which will increasingly typify global futurity and the attainment, in consequence, of 'the Garden' on post- rather than pre-modern terms.

16. Willy-nilly, we are locked-in to an artificial and synthetic momentum, and whether our fate is to evolve or to devolve within the parameters of that momentum, advance we no doubt shall, and the consequences will be a whole lot more omega-orientated and artificial than we can, as yet, conceive.