LAST-DITCH CONSERVATISM

You cannot be for both nature and

The Supernatural at the same time.

An allegiance to the former

Rules out supernatural allegiance.

You may oppose the anti-natural pollution of nature

By modern industry, but if you side too strongly

With nature against the latter, like an ecologist,

You won't be in the vanguard

Of evolutionary progress, but ...

A kind of modern reactionary,

The new form of conservatism.

Like it or not, ecologists are symptomatic

Of last-ditch conservatism,

A decadent conservatism obliged to champion

An overt concern for nature in

The face of anti-natural opposition,

A kind of bureaucratic conservatism

In allegiance to the lowest-common-denominator

Of natural identification - namely nature-in-the-raw.

Were they to succeed in preventing

The continual pollution/destruction of

The natural world, all aspirations toward

A supernatural one would be considerably undermined,

If not rendered entirely superfluous,

Since people would come to value nature too highly

Ever to wish to abandon it for

The absolute supernature of a free-electron spirituality.

Now whilst antinaturalism doesn't directly

Lead to the millennial Beyond, at least it reduces

Man's dependence on and respect for nature.

For it seems to me that only when

The greater part of the natural world

Is thoroughly uninhabitable

Will man have any real incentive to live

An intensely artificial, interiorized life in

A civilization the antithesis of

The natural one of autocratic antiquity.

Only when he is responsible for the production

Of his own light, heat, oxygen, food, and drink,

In an indoor context, will he come to aspire

More intensely towards the Supernatural,

And thus draw nearer to the first of

The two life forms of the post-human millennium,

A life form whose brain, derived from

Cyborg 'humanity', would be artificially supported

And, more importantly, artificially sustained

By manufactured oxygen mechanically pumped

Through it in indoor collectivized contexts.

Ecologist, you are but nature's last spokesman,

On whom the Supernaturalist

Must disdainfully turn his back!