WORK VIS-À-VIS PLAY

1. When one contrasts the objectivity of metachemistry and chemistry, fire and water, with the subjectivity of physics and metaphysics, vegetation (earth) and air, it becomes evident that the objective elements, having reference, through noumenal and phenomenal planes, to doing and giving, appertain to work, whereas the subjective elements, whose reference, through phenomenal and noumenal planes, is to taking and being, appertain to play.

2. For work, being objective, primarily appertains to the female side of life and only secondarily to its male side, whereas the subjectivity of play primarily appertains to the male side of life and only secondarily to its female side.

3. Hence there is about work, with its doing and giving, a distinctly libertarian connotation, which contrasts with the conservatism of play, as germane to taking and being. In fact, work is the benchmark of freedom and play, by contrast, the hallmark of thraldom (binding).

4. Societies stressing libertarianism will give priority to work and conceive of play largely in secondary terms - namely, as sport.

5. Societies stressing conservatism, on the other hand, will give priority to play and only conceive of work in secondary terms - namely, as art.

6. For the Arts are in effect a male approach to work, whereas sport is effectively a female approach to play, an approach in which there is more doing and/or giving than taking and/or being.

7. With the Arts, however, there is generally more taking and/or being than giving and/or doing, even though the 'work of play', as one could call art, is never entirely exempt from giving and/or doing - any more than the 'play of work', the play, in effect, of workers, viz. sport, is entirely exempt from taking and/or being, particularly in its more developed or evolved manifestations.

8. Yet if art is not as conservative as play proper, it is still far from libertarian, and the same of course applies, in reverse, to sport, which, though libertarian, is much less so than work proper.

9. For work and play, akin to State and Church, are the antipodes of human endeavour, which blend only imperfectly in the phenomenal realm (lower class) of volume and mass, and hardly at all in the noumenal realm (upper class) of time and space.

10. For the noumenal planes differ from the phenomenal ones in terms of their greater susceptibility to absolutism, with most work vis-à-vis least play characterizing the metachemical axis of space-time devolution, the axis of an extreme left-wing, or ultra-libertarian, orientation, and, conversely, least work and most play characterizing the metaphysical axis of time-space evolution, the axis of an extreme right-wing, or ultra-conservative, orientation.

11. Thus, since these noumenal axes reflect a gender-based contrast between objectivity and subjectivity, straight and curved divergence and/or convergence in absolutist terms, one may hold that metachemical libertarianism will favour the concept, necessarily diabolic, of the 'workgirl', in contrast to the 'playboy' conception typifying the metaphysical conservatism of divinity.

12. However, 'down below', on the phenomenal axes of volume-mass devolution and of mass-volume evolution, no such marked dichotomy will exist, since men and women are alike more disposed, in their masculine and feminine relativity, than their diabolic or divine counterparts 'up above' to both work and play, even though a bias towards work on the chemical axis and a bias towards play on the physical axis will remain the gender-conditioned mean, as between moderate left- and right-wing alternatives.

13. Thus even in literary terms the poet and the philosopher would exemplify the doing/being antithesis between metachemical work and metaphysical play, ultra-libertarianism and ultra-conservatism, while, 'down below', the dramatist and the novelist would exemplify the more relativistic dichotomy between giving and taking, chemical work and physical play, with more scope for alternations or compromises than with their noumenal counterparts in space and time.

14. Whereas both science and politics, being libertarian disciplines, have a 'work ethic', the duty of both economics and religion, on the other hand, is to advance, through conservatism, an ethic of play - the one relatively, in the phenomenal, and the other absolutely, in relation to metaphysics, and hence being.

15. For religion that is true, and not less than true, i.e. knowledgeable (in the physical), strong (in the chemical), or beautiful (in the metachemical), has no other duty than to advance and encourage the ultimate play of being, which requires loyalty to the metaphysical soul, the soul-of-souls, and in that loyalty one becomes more fully a human being even unto the point, beyond metaphysical sensuality, of metaphysical sensibility - the point of the superman and his respiratory divinity.