RELATIVE
DISTINCTIONS
There were two men and
a woman in the room, one of the men, whom we shall call the first, older than
the other, but the woman younger than he who shall be called the second. "The Christians may acknowledge
Heaven," the first man said, "but they do so sideways on, as it were,
and facing back towards Hell. Their
sense of hierarchy is retrograde, stemming from the Alpha Absolute and
assigning the most importance to that which is closest, on earth, to the Father
- namely a monarch. Hence
their sense of class hierarchy ... with proletarians at the bottom and
aristocrats at the top. Being
upper class corresponds to a closer approximation to the Alpha Absolute."
"This is particularly true of the British," said the
second man, who was only a year younger than the first. "Even though the bourgeoisie are, to all
practical purposes, in charge of society, the aristocracy are still regarded as
socially superior. Which paradoxical
fact accords with the bourgeois' almost boundless capacity for hypocrisy! To believe one thing in
theory, but to do another in practice!"
The first man nodded spontaneous affirmation and remarked:
"Precisely because, being British, they correspond, even in this
predominantly post-atomic age, to the most atomic of societies - the epitome,
as it were, of bourgeois civilization.
Wherever and whenever life is relative, particularly when the relativity
is moderate, hypocrisy will be the order of the day, an inevitable consequence,
one might say, of its dualism. The only
reason why life is paradoxical is that it owes this fact to the inherent
relativity of human existence, a relativity never more conspicuously prominent
than when human evolution attains to a bourgeois, Christian stage of balance
between the two biased extremes, viz. the pagan and the transcendental, and
does so, moreover, without its practitioners being in the least aware of the
situation. They may be Christians, but
they won't have a clue about what it would mean to be transcendental, not even
envisaging any such eventuality. They
take their dualism, their balance, for the norm, one might even say for
granted, even going so far as to elevate it, in their bourgeois imaginations,
to the status of an ideal - indeed, the ideal, sacrosanct for all time! 'The balance is correct, and anyone who
attempts to defy it will be guilty of hubris, and may suffer the nemesis of
divine retribution in consequence!' Thus
reasons the bourgeois, that arch-hypocrite, ironist, and victim of worldly
paradox."
The woman, who had hitherto kept silent, now said:
"Whereas a post-dualistic society presumably knows better, and is
accordingly dedicated to the higher ideal of aspiring towards the Divine Omega
from a transcendental standpoint."
"That's right," the first man said. "And we may be sure that it will be the
least hypocritical, ironical, and paradoxical of societies, because the most
absolute. It will signify a complete transvaluation of values, even to the extent of designating
what, in relative civilization, was woman as a female superman - the
post-sexist lesser equal of male, or genuine, supermen. Thus there will be no feminine/masculine dichotomy;
only a distinction between greater and lesser degrees of superhumanity. For that will accord with a sexual absolutism
no less imperative, in a transcendental civilization, than all the other
absolutes, including the political, religious, scientific, artistic, and
social, as applying to proletarian humanity.
One couldn't possibly tolerate absolute class distinctions in a
transcendental age. Only the relative
distinctions between leaders and led, bureaucrats and proletariat, would be
applicable."
The second man nodded eager agreement, before saying: "The
proletariat being, despite the questionable justification of that term these
days, the class orientated towards the Divine Omega, the ultimate human class,
antithetical, in every respect, to the peasantry. Peasants and proletarians are opposites, just
like aristocrats and bureaucrats. The
two extremes cannot mix."
"Certainly not in an absolute age," the first man
rejoined, "though there have been attempts to mix them, to varying
extents, wherever relativity has held sway, with, by and large, disastrous
consequences! But a peasant cannot be
transformed into a proletarian, any more than an aristocrat, in the strictly
traditional sense of that term, can be transformed into a bureaucrat. They pertain to completely different
environments, not to say epochs."
"Probably it would be mistaken to attempt to impose city
criteria upon the rural areas," the woman opined, briefly casting
deferential glances at both men.
"One can't treat peasants as if they were proletarians in
disguise. That which stems from the
Diabolic Alpha cannot be expected to aspire towards the Divine Omega."
"True enough!" the second man agreed. "So peasants, or their nearest modern
equivalents, should be utilized for what they're worth to the economy, and then
left to get on with their work in the fields.
Some of them will gravitate to the city, and some will be proletarianized in the course of time, as industry and
urbanization increasingly encroach upon the country and suck farm labourers into
a largely artificial lifestyle, transforming them, or their offspring, into
proletarians. The rest, born farmhands
and country-dwellers, must be left to their largely naturalistic lifestyles and
utilized in the name of agricultural and dairy produce. Since agriculture is becoming increasingly
mechanized, it should be possible to regard such country-dwellers as
agricultural proletarians, this entailing a relative distinction between
pseudo-proletarian country-dwellers and genuinely proletarian city-dwellers, or
industrial workers."
The woman smiled smoothly.
"Like the distinction between female supermen and male
supermen," she remarked. "One
evidently designed to overcome sexual discrimination!"
"To be sure," the first man said. "And designed, in this
case, to gloss over the dichotomy between rural- and urban-dwellers, bringing
both classes under a common designation, its being understood, in any case,
that there exists a significant distinction between the modern mechanized
farm-worker and the traditional peasant."
"Rather like the distinction that exists between the
industrial worker and the traditional artisan," said the second man, eager
to follow-up one parallel with another.
"While to some extent the two may co-exist in a relative
civilization, albeit towards the tail-end of it, there could be no possibility
of their simultaneous existence in an absolute civilization, since artisans
would have been entirely superseded by industrial proletarians, just as
peasants would likewise have been entirely superseded by agricultural
proletarians - the lesser brothers, as it were, of their urban-dwelling
counterparts."
The first man smiled delighted confirmation and said:
"Yes, artisans, no less than peasants, would be a thing of the past, which
they're not, incidentally, wherever relativity prevails. And the same of course applies to
aristocrats, who continue to exist in such countries as
"Indeed, and whereas artisans and peasants alike served
the interests of the aristocracy," the second man affirmed, "the
bureaucracy is designed to serve the interests of both agricultural and
industrial proletariats, this corresponding to a transvaluation
of values whereby the roles of service are reversed ... from a majority serving
an aristocratic minority to a minority serving a proletarian majority who,
paradoxically, become the new favoured class."
"Particularly in their urban and
industrial guise," the woman said, smiling, "since they evidently
correspond to a greater degree of superhumanity
vis-à-vis the agricultural proletariat."
The second man coughed ironically and said: "That may be
so, but all proletarians have to be treated pretty much alike. Just as female supermen will be treated pretty
much like their male counterparts.
Certainly not as women, at any rate, since that would entail a
concession to bourgeois relativity, and any such concession, equivalent to a
sexist regression, would be incompatible with the absolute criteria of a transcendental
civilization. And no
less incompatible with the treatment of agricultural proletarians as if they
were peasants."
"Here, here!" responded the first man, who had an ear
for logical consistency. "It would
be no less absurd of the bureaucracy to regard agricultural proletarians as
peasants ... than for the industrial proletariat to regard bureaucrats as
aristocrats, and thus as tyrants or rulers rather than servants. Bureaucrats are, in a sense, secular saints,
who selflessly serve the people's material interests. They don't enter the proletarian 'promised
land' of the spirit themselves, but remain outside it, dedicated to the
betterment of the new favoured class."
The woman coughed gently, in response to this statement, and
remarked: "Woe betide the new favoured class if they resist their
betterment by rebelling against the bureaucrats! For the bureaucratic servants of today can no
more permit reactionary or regressive tendencies among the proletariat ... than
the aristocratic rulers of earlier times could permit revolutionary or
progressive tendencies among the peasantry.
That also corresponds to a transvaluation of
values, does it not?"
"More like an antithetical equivalent," the first man
said, before succumbing to a reflective silence which the second man made no
attempt to disturb, since he was the one who least approved of intellectual
noise.
