TWELVE THINKERS

Carmen Daly (secretary)

I have been complimented for dressing in a miniskirt, which is considered to be the chastest of skirts by dint of the fact that it symbolizes shallow vaginal sexuality. I am regarded as a liberated woman, a type peculiar, apparently, to the petty bourgeoisie. But I have also been told that my sartorial status, in this respect, is merely 'the best of a bad job', since even a short skirt indicates femininity and thereby affirms a sexist distinction appropriate to an extreme phase of relative civilization. Although the choice of a short skirt is, from this point of view, preferable to a medium-length or a long one, it's not preferable to a pair of trousers or jeans, whether in denim, cord, or any other material. The woman who regularly wears pants is potentially, if not actually, a female superman - someone, apparently, who is the civilized proletarian equivalent of a liberated female, the successor, as it were, to this petty-bourgeois ideal.

That, by contrast, affirms a post-sexist integrity ... pertinent to an absolute civilization. But, unfortunately, I'm not a female superman, nor even potentially one, but a liberated female, partial to short skirts. I have been told that the flounced ones are preferable to the straight or tight varieties, since by tapering upwards, from the hem to the waist, they defy the earth's gravitational force and thereby suggest a freedom from and independence of diabolic constraint. However that may be, I've only recently taken the advice to wear the shortest possible miniskirts and/or dresses, so as to reduce any feminine symbolism still further. If I cannot bring myself to wear jeans all the time, then, so the lesson runs, I should at least wear the 'higher' type of petty-bourgeois mini, which apparently betokens an aspiration towards the proletariat.

According to this theory, skirts and/or dresses may be classified, in class-evolutionary terms, as follows: aristocratic ankle length; early grand-bourgeois lower calf-muscle length; late grand-bourgeois higher calf-muscle length; bourgeois knee length; early petty-bourgeois lower thigh length; and, finally, late petty-bourgeois higher thigh length. After which evolutionary period the feminine is completely superseded through the wearing, either by potential or actual female supermen, of trouser-like attire, though not necessarily of the same length as their male counterparts.

David Green (tailor)

I would never wear tails, not even if I were offered a sizeable financial incentive. To my mind, they signify too great a concession to the earth's gravitational force, the way they taper downwards to a point. There is something dualistic about tails which suggests a grand-bourgeois class integrity, particularly when compared with the single tail type of frock coat worn, as a rule, by aristocrats, with but a single pre-dualistic, quasi-pagan affirmation of the earth's gravity. If anything, this is morally worse than double tails, since more materialistic and lacking, in consequence, a 'triangular' space between each tail.

Yet I would no more wear tails than a top hat which, effectively tapering upwards from brim to crown, suggests an affirmation of the sun's gravitational force or, at the very least, a concession to it. So with tails and top hat a 'gentleman' betrays a simultaneous allegiance to both earthly and solar gravitational forces, the powerful competing attractions of the Diabolic Alpha, and does so, moreover, in ostentatious fashion. That is something I could never do; for my allegiance is towards the Divine Omega, which is why I make a point of wearing flared trousers, their upwards tapering defying the earth's gravity.

Unfortunately, I don't always wear head-gear, but when I do, as in winter time, it is a Russian-style bearskin hat that tapers downwards, thereby not merely ignoring the sun's gravity but affirming man's spiritual independence of it - like, I might add, my flared cords.

Thus I am quite the antithesis of a gravity-mongering 'tails-and-top-hat' man. There is a late petty-bourgeois/proletarian integrity about my clothing. And not only in terms of style but also in terms of colour, since I prefer to wear dark clothes - indeed, nothing less than black. I dress to affirm truth, not to look beautiful, and so wear the most essential or appearance-denying colour, appropriately transcendental. I have been complimented on my sartorial smartness and, to be sure, that accords with my affirmation of truth. Were I to dress scruffily, in dirty worn workman's clothes, I would regard my appearance as signifying an anti-beauty ugliness - a kind of negative or indirect affirmation of truth.

However, I prefer the positive and direct affirmation of it, as befitting my spiritual bent. But if it came to the crunch, I would rather dress scruffily than in beautiful fashion, like a dandy. I regard ugliness as the lesser of two evils.

Carlo Stropetti (writer)

I don't like people staring at me. I'm not a woman, to take especial pride in my looks. I only take pride, as a rule, in my intelligence, which I use in the service of my spiritual life, with particular reference to my literary interests. I don't strive to attract attention to my appearance, but am anxious, on the contrary, to deflect attention away from it. Was I less essential, less spiritual, I would welcome people staring at me. But, as it is, I do my best to ignore their attentions. My significance is on the inside, not the outside!

Yet not many people realize this, even though I rarely reciprocate their curiosity. Indeed, I don't even pay much attention to beautiful women whenever I encounter any, which, frankly, isn't very often in the predominantly proletarian environment I've grown accustomed to living in. I am too wrapped-up in my thoughts or in contemplation to be much concerned with female beauty! Besides, I would not want to humble myself before it, since I am a man, and one who realizes and daily affirms the superiority of the spiritual life in his concern with truth. Most women take beauty, and their own beauty in particular, for the highest ideal, the most important accomplishment, and accordingly entertain inflated ideas as to their own worth. I shouldn't want to confirm them in that opinion; for, as a man, I have a right to uphold the sovereignty of truth and to lead, in consequence, a more absolute existence. Not being a slave to feminine beauty, I am free to lead an independent life in the name of 'masculine' truth.

I never feel inferior to a woman. On the contrary, I cultivate my detachment from the world with a degree of pride, making sure, however, that such pride doesn't interfere with the development of my spiritual life. I am relatively free, but most women are enslaved to their own beauty, which, in my opinion, they pride themselves on overmuch! This is less true of the petty bourgeoisie than of the bourgeoisie or grand bourgeoisie. Less true again of the proletariat, whose women, for the most part, are neither beautiful nor attractive but if not ugly then ... certainly plain, in accordance with their barbarous status as potentially female supermen. There is no reason why they should ever be anything else. For beauty is not the means to truth!

Connor Cleary (dietician)

I firmly maintain that thinking solely in class terms is not enough. A proletarian civilization wouldn't, admittedly, have any class enemies in it, and neither would there be any tribalists. But proletarian homogeneity on the basis of occupation and/or environment would not, by itself, signify an ultimate sifting of man from reactionary or anachronistic dross. A transcendental civilization would not be true to itself unless it had been purged, in advance, of physical types incommensurable with its post-atomic spiritual integrity. I mean by this that there could be no toleration of endomorphic types, which is to say, of fat men.

Yes, I foresee the day when, like bourgeois oppressors and tribalists, overly fat people will be rounded-up and removed from mainstream society - their physical constitutions deemed incompatible with a society dedicated to an exclusively divine orientation. They would be regarded as pagan types, too fleshy to accord with the radically spiritual bent of a transcendental civilization. Their existence, while permissible within an open-society context, would be no-less impermissible within a closed-society context that was spiritual ... than the existence there of tribalists of one description or another. Anything that smacked of the pre-atomic would automatically be excluded from admittance to a post-atomic society. Many atomists would likewise be excluded, though mesomorphic types, whose muscular physical status places them in-between the fat and the thin, the sensual and the spiritual, would continue to find vocations in a transcendental civilization, as, for example, in the police, certain kinds of industry, agriculture, and (until it was disbanded and/or metamorphosed) the army - that magnet of muscular types.

And yet an absolutely spiritual age would be partial to the cultivation and protection of ectomorphic types, whose slender builds and intellectual predilections would accord with the highest manifestation of the human type, and be especially relevant to the ultimate stage of civilized evolution. As a thin man myself, I can speak with some authority on this matter, and I am confident that, as time progresses, every measure will be taken to ensure the optimum spiritual development of the ectomorph, who will be the human type, par excellence, from whom the Superman of the superhuman millennium will be created.

Katya Gregson (model)

I have always been slender and lightweight. Unlike other women, I have never had to go on a diet in order to slim. My appetite has never been large, in any case, but I haven't kept to a moderate intake of food and drink out of consideration for my weight and shape. Both these factors are very constant with me, which is just as well, I think! My slender body makes only the minimum of concessions to gravitational force, both upwards and downwards, since I am alike small-breasted and narrow-hipped, with but the slenderest of legs. At one time I used to regret this, but, these days, I realize that such an overall slenderness is a moral advantage and confers on one a social distinction, in the eyes of the more intelligent people, appropriate to an affirmation of evolutionary progress in spirituality.

What a contrast between my gravitational neutrality and the conspicuous commitment of most women's bodies to gravitational force! How some of them pride themselves on being shapely, on tapering-down from the hips to the ankles and tapering-up from the breasts to the head! I doubt that such shapeliness would find much encouragement in the final human civilization ... of transcendental man. No more, for that matter, than would the even more radical tapering, either side of the stomach bulge, of fat people, regardless of which sex. Conspicuous physical concessions to gravitational force would be taboo in a post-atomic age, of that I have no doubt! People would be admired for their slenderness, which would be accorded due recognition as the physical ideal. Instead of being regarded as skinny, as I often am by heavyweight boors, people of slender build would be held up as the golden mean for a transcendental civilization - a mean relevant to the proletariat. Efforts would doubtless be made not only to encourage slimming in the medium-built and medium-weight, i.e. in those of approximately mesomorphic constitution, but to orientate genetic engineering towards the breeding, through artificial insemination, of slender physiques, so that ectomorphs, or thin people, would vastly predominate - their physical constitution better suited to a transcendental cultivation of the spiritual life.

Barnaby Evans (manufacturer)

I think sex with a plastic inflatable, a so-called 'sex doll', morally preferable to sex with a woman, insofar as one is dealing with the artificial, indeed with what could be described as the antithetical equivalent of a prostitute, just as a combine harvester is the antithetical equivalent of a peasant wielding a scythe, and a tractor with mechanical hoes at the back antithetically equivalent to a peasant wielding a hoe. Thus from the natural to the artificial, from peasants engaged in manual work to agricultural proletarians manipulating mechanical tools via a farmer/farm-labourer compromise.

Just so, from prostitutes to 'sex dolls' via wives. The prostitute corresponds, one might argue, to the pre-atomic, the 'sex doll' to the post-atomic - a distinction between paganism and transcendentalism. Of course, prostitutes could not be tolerated in a post-atomic civilization, any more than wives. But I believe that 'sex dolls' would be, even if sex with such a doll involves a form of sexual relativity, as with the use (by women) of a vibrator, and is therefore less good than pornographic erotica, which, in appealing primarily to the head, i.e. to eyes and intellect, encourages a more passive relationship between individual and stimulus.

However, not everyone is on the same spiritual wavelength, nor capable of the same degree of sexual sublimation, so I believe that the male proletarian masses should be entitled to avail themselves of 'sex dolls' in addition or as an alternative to certain kinds of absolute pornography, if a more transcendental relationship to sex is beyond their powers. Probably, as the ultimate civilization developed and people became more spiritualized, 'sex dolls' would be phased-out, with pornographic sublimation becoming more widespread and all concessions to bodily sex accordingly minimized. Sex would then be predominantly an affair of the head, to the extent that it existed at all!

As for homosexuals, I don't see why they shouldn't have access, on the proletarian level, to male inflatables, assuming that such inflatables could be manufactured along suitably masculine lines. At least that would enable homosexuals to transcend the flesh, and thus draw a step nearer to pornographic sublimation.

Marcus Black (doctor)

I would have no hesitation in endorsing euthanasia for certain categories of the incurably ill, not only in order to put them out of their misery or pain, but to save other people the burden of looking after them, as well as to save the general public the inconvenience of having to witness their behaviour and/or condition. I refer, in particular, to cretins and imbeciles, to the severely autistic and radically malformed - in short, to those categories of spastic who are of no use to themselves or to anyone else.

A child who is unable to count or speak coherently, who will grow into an adult with the mentality of a young child - such a lamentably unfortunate individual, who besides being imbecile is malformed and unpleasant to behold, should be high on the list of those for whom euthanasia is the only merciful solution. An open society, with its respect for the pagan root, may keep such unfortunates alive on the grounds that they, no less than everyone else, are products of nature and, in some sense, offspring of 'the Creator'. But a closed society, with no such pagan allegiance, should have no qualms in disposing of these wretches in the name of intelligence, spiritual progress, and, not least of all, the wellbeing of the people who, for the most part, are of sound limb and mind ... or, at any rate, would be in a society run in their spiritual interests.

As to cripples, who may require constant attention, the question of introducing euthanasia should not arise if such physically restricted individuals are capable of leading a fairly normal intellectual or spiritual life, since it is more important to be sound in mind than in body, and anyone who can read or watch television or think for himself is not as badly off as may at first appear.

Since human evolution will probably lead, in the course of time, to human brains being artificially supported and sustained in collectivized contexts ... for purposes of synthetically-induced upward self-transcendence, the man who is obliged to spend most of his time in a wheelchair is, in some sense, closer to that eventuality than most of his sound-limbed fellows, and is accordingly entitled to if not more respect ... then certainly to some respect, particularly if he is intelligent and capable, in consequence, of leading a satisfyingly positive spiritual life - not the least aspect of which should be meditation. But the child or adult who is incapable of doing so could have no place in a society exclusively orientated towards the Divine Omega. Cripples may be respected and even admired, but spastics and cretins should not be! They, on the contrary, should take their place beside the incurably insane in the forefront of candidates for euthanasia.

James Steiner (radical politician)

Being essentially meritocratic in my class integrity, I would rather serve the people on dictatorial terms than serve them democratically, in other words as an ideological dictator than as a democratic president. I am no Khruschev or Brezhnev to go around in a suit and adopt the role of the proletarian equivalent of a bourgeois president. I favour the militant pose and would probably spend much of my time in some kind of military or quasi-military uniform, even though I would be anxious to distinguish myself from a military dictator, whose role I have no ambitions to usurp! My choice of clothing has long been dark, and I imagine that the uniform I wore would also be dark, with matching boots. I would wish my personal bodyguard to also dress in dark uniforms, and would encourage both the secret police and army to do likewise.

Being a people's transcendentalist, I would attach special significance to the police, both secret and conventional, since I believe the ideological bias of a regime dedicated to the cultivation of an internal proletariat is towards the security services, whereas in a state-socialist society, by contrast, it is towards the armed forces, who, in theory if not necessarily in practice, are regarded as the means to the international spread of a socialism rooted in dialectical materialism. Not that I would ignore or neglect the army, in either its conventional or revolutionary guises. Yet I regard the conventional army as a necessary evil that must be utilized in the service of historical progress and gradually curtailed, its life-span incapable of extending into an absolute civilization, but drawing to a close following the democratic overcoming of relative civilization, after which time evolutionary progress will demand the establishment of an absolute police state, which it would be the duty of people's transcendentalism to further and take a lead in encouraging.

However, I do not envisage a situation emerging whereby no armed force will exist to tackle counter-revolutionary or external aggression, particularly while the world is still exposed to the possibility of such aggression. Just as women would become female supermen in a post-atomic civilization while still remaining, at bottom, feminine, so the army would become an armed security service while likewise remaining fundamentally military; in other words, so the army would be transformed into an armed police service in order to supplement the unarmed police in the protection of law and order. For it seems to me that, strictly speaking, the police should be an unarmed body and must remain so in fidelity to their status as a peace-keeping organization, in contrast to the armed quasi-police, who may be regarded as a revolutionary metamorphosis of the army, serving to supplement the genuine police in a quasi-electron deference to post-atomic criteria.

Thus a revolutionary armed security service would complement the secret security service in a people's transcendental civilization, existing alongside the conventional police and eventually entirely superseding the conventional army, so that an absolute police state would be created which was composed of conventional, secret service, and armed quasi-police.

Timothy Lee-Jones (philosopher)

I'm an extremely quiet man by design and regard this fact as a mark of my spiritual maturity and cultural nobility. This doesn't prevent me, however, from being the victim of other people's noise and, often enough, the noise of animals and machines, such as dogs and cars, in addition. I have lived so long in a noisy environment that I suffer from cerebral and stomach inflammation in consequence, and am obliged to regularly resort to wax earplugs, if only to reduce the bodily tension that such noise engenders. Noise, I have absolutely no doubt, is my chief torment, and I dare say there are those who would understand me when I maintain that hearing is more often a curse than a blessing! Unfortunately, it cannot be switched on-and-off at will, so the best one can do is to stuff wax into the ears and persevere with any physical inconvenience that may arise, as some will do once the use of earplugs becomes habitual.

And yet, living in an urban environment, I have discovered the value of earplugs and could not conceive of life being possible, in this situation, without them. They're the other side, as it were, of modern life, a means whereby sensitive people may in some degree protect themselves against the base tyranny of noise.

Yet this is negative, and the problem should also be tackled positively, through measures designed to reduce environmental or other noise pollution as much as possible. For noise corresponds to the diabolic side of life, stems, as it were, from the raging of solar energy in the proton-proton reactions of stars. I wouldn't like to hear the sun from a few thousand miles distance - assuming, for the sake of argument, it were possible to get that close. Silence, on the other hand, corresponds to the divine, aspires, one might say, towards the electron-electron attractions of transcendent spirit in some future Beyond.

The relative world is ever torn between diabolic noise and divine silence, never completely silent. But the ultimate human civilization ... of the transcendentalists ... should approximate to the spiritual absolute in a predominantly silent context, an environmental situation where noise of any degree was the exception to the rule rather than - as often seems to be the case in relative civilization - the rule itself.

People will learn to be much quieter in that final civilization than they've ever been in any previous one. There will be no hammering, because hammers will have been placed under ban, their use entailing too great a concession to natural force. Buildings will be prefabricated and any repairs that may prove necessary will be accounted for in a relatively prefabricated way. There will be no shouting or singing or swearing on the streets, for that will be made an offence against the peace, subject to prosecution. There will be no dogs barking or cats wailing, for such animals are likely to be destroyed or at the very least removed from mainstream society as incompatible with a post-atomic civilization. There will be no blaring of record-players, radios, or analogous machines, because the appreciation of music will be confined to headphones, in accordance with absolutely essential criteria. Televisions and similar sound-transmitters will be manufactured with a volume ceiling much below the current one, and users will be required to keep the noise down to a minimum level and/or avail themselves of special headphones connecting with the machine.

There will be numerous other such improvements where noise pollution is concerned, and they will make life in the ultimate human civilization approximate more closely to Heaven, in this respect, than it has ever done before.

Geraldine Harris (social worker)

Youths and adults should not be obliged to share the same house. If a youth doesn't make as much natural noise as a child, he passively, and sometimes actively, acquiesces in artificial noise, not the least manifestation of which involves pop music of one kind or another. Besides having a greater tolerance than adults for noise, youths have more physical energy and are therefore inclined to violent and regular movement to a greater extent than adults. The evolution of man from the cradle to the grave is, in some sense, a progression from the diabolic to the divine on human terms, a progression beginning in maximum noise/energy and gradually evolving away from that into a capacity for silence and contemplation, whether intellectual or spiritual.

Thus human life approximates, at either extreme, to the absolutes, with a kind of balanced relativity coming in-between. Generally, females approximate more closely than males to the diabolic absolute, males more closely than females to the divine absolute, so that while female babies and children are both noisier and more energetic, as a rule, than their male counterparts, male adults, particularly when elderly, are quieter and more contemplative than their female counterparts. From an adult point of view, however, it should be feasible to contend that, if it doesn't come from animals or machines, most noise one hears throughout life comes from babies, children, and youths - noise being the audible manifestation of energy.

Consequently there ought to be some way of ensuring that adults aren't unduly victimized by it. Now one of the best ways would be to ensure that adults were not obliged to live with either children or youths, the two most conspicuous categories of offenders against adult values. For while certain measures could be taken to make life less noisy in the future, measures to change the basic energy-biased constitutions of children and youths would be difficult, if not impossible, to affect, in consequence of which the most that could be done, from an adult standpoint, would be to confine noise-loving creatures to a particular environment, such as nursery, school, college, etc., where they would have less effect on adults.

Thus I foresee a time when, as an aspect of this better social ordering, youths will be obliged to live in different houses or blocs than adults, where, if they cannot be quiet and contemplative, they can at least be themselves to themselves and not (as is all-too-frequently the case at present) to people with radically different values!

Ben Freeman (lawyer)

Of the fact that adults have in the past served what is not in their best interests, but antipathetic towards them, I've absolutely no doubt. They have been too often and long the victims of babies, children, and youths - in that order. Such is the way of things in a relative civilization.

In an absolute civilization, on the other hand, this would not be the case; for post-atomic criteria would ensure that proletarian men, become male supermen, and proletarian women, become female supermen, did not form matrimonial relationships in the name of children. Male supermen would be free of such relationships, while female supermen would not be dependent on their more masculine counterparts for babies, but be free to avail themselves of artificial insemination obtainable, through state regulation, from clinics with sperm-bank facilities. Neither would the babies, once conceived, be dependent on their producers, because their development would be entrusted to the State which, in the future equivalent of kindergartens, would employ qualified professionals to take over the task of nurturing them from traditional private means, like mothers, and thus leave the female supermen free to attend to their various professional or artificial duties, including the cultivation of spirit.

The upbringing of children would consequently take place independently of their producers, both donor and bearer, and wouldn't directly impinge upon the adult world. Female and male supermen would themselves live apart in separate units, each adult being entitled to a small flat of his own which he would not share with anyone, least of all for sexual purposes.

No superman, male or female, would be obliged to acknowledge 'his' children; for propagation would be largely if not entirely an impersonal affair, with no family strings attached. Babies, children, and even youths would be in the care of professionals, and never again would adults be obliged to serve what is not in their best, i.e. spiritual, interests. I look forward to this post-family epoch of human evolution, when children are not raised in parental love or strife but in state service, according to the highest impersonal ideals.

Joseph O'Farrell (teacher)

With my allegiance to transcendental metaphysics, to transcendentalism, conceived in both practical and theoretical terms, I'm not exposed, like a petty bourgeois, to occultism, not even to the highest kind of occultism ... in mediumism. There is none of the Yeatsian or Huxleyite concern with a 'spirit world' about me, since I know that, from our standpoint, no such world exists.

Even if pure spirit exists, which it could well do in the guise of individual spiritual transcendences (assuming there were other planets in the Universe more advanced than our own which had passed through a post-human stage of evolution and attained, via superbeing equivalents, to transcendence), it would not be accessible to mediums for purposes of communication with the living, and for the simple reason that, as an electron-electron attraction, pure spirit could not be contacted by the living, having nothing in common with them and having nothing to impart to them - thought being alien to an absolutely post-atomic mind; though not, of course, to a human mind, least of all to one that claims it can induce pure spirit to part with thoughts or, more ridiculous still, act as a link between the impure and the pure, and so translate the thoughtless into the thoughtful!

No, even given the fact that no-one from this planet has ever literally attained to transcendence (including Christ), since it presupposes new-brain collectivizations in the superbeing millennium, such pure spirit as might exist in the post-millennial Beyond would have no connection, ancestral or otherwise, with the earth. Like it or not, mediumism is but a petty-bourgeois manifestation of the occult, a manifestation not directly dependent on soul, like its more diabolical precursors, but on a false interpretation and projection of spirit, the least despicable kind of occultism, but nonetheless still far from admirable from an absolutist point-of-view!

Unlike a petty-bourgeois metaphysician, a metaphysician of the transcendental civilization won't be exposed to the occult, since no religious relativity will be possible on the absolute plane. I'm not now exposed to it, but anyone who practises relative metaphysics within the wider context of bourgeois/proletarian civilization is almost certain, sooner or later, to succumb to a complementary occultism, a situation which, unconsciously upheld, will be taken for granted, given the relative integrity of such a civilization.

Hence Huxley's relativity between metaphysics (in petty-bourgeois transcendentalism), as applying to yoga and/or oriental mysticism generally, and the occult (in petty-bourgeois mediumism), as applying to an interest in the 'spirit world' and the emotional or, rather, intellectual treatment of spirit, i.e. its identification with and manifestation in thought, as expressed through a medium's voice. This oscillation between the genuine and the pseudo is the relative norm.

By contrast, the transcendental civilization to-come will know only the truth (of transcendentalism), and that truth, as proclaimed by he who in his global universalism corresponds to a True World Messiah, will endure absolutely.