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    Social Transcendentalism - Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End: Social Transcendentalism - Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End
    Social Transcendentalism - Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End: Social Transcendentalism - Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End
    Social Transcendentalism - Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End: Social Transcendentalism - Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End
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    Social Transcendentalism - Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End: Social Transcendentalism - Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End

    By John O'Loughlin

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    This project brings the ideological philosophy of Social Transcendentalism more or less systematically into the open for the first time, and does so from a variety of genre perspectives - essays, dialogues, aphorisms and maxims - with a view to examining and propounding the ideology in question from as many different philosophical angles as possible. As suggested by the title, the end is transcendental, but the means are socialistic (which is not the same as socialism, since transcendentalism remains the fulcrum and therefore determines the form of what is less than transcendent), and therefore aimed at taking the masses of a specific type of society to an entirely new ideological destination by dint of the fact that the impetus for this stems not from below (as in socialism) but from above, in relation to a kind of messianic resolve affiliated with all things transcendent. The cover depicts a white-on-black Social Transcendentalist emblem conceived by the author himself.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateMay 3, 2007
    ISBN9781446656167
    Social Transcendentalism - Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End: Social Transcendentalism - Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End

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      Book preview

      Social Transcendentalism - Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End - John O'Loughlin

      Social Transcendentalism – Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End

      John O'Loughlin

      This edition of Social Transcendentalism first published 2011 and republished 2021 in a revised format by

      John O'Loughlin (of Centretruths) in association with Lulu

      Copyright © 2011, 2021 John O'Loughlin

      All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author/publisher

      ISBN: 978-1-4466-5616-7

      _____________

      CONTENTS

      PREFACE

      PART ONE – ESSAYS

      A Feudal Prototype

      Sexual Evolution

      A Zigzagging Progression

      From the Barbarous to the Civilized

      Towards an Absolutely Free-Electron Literature

      Towards an Absolute Architecture

      Evolutionary Spectra

      New Beginnings and Old Endings

      The Rise of Theocratic Centrism

      PART TWO – DIALOGUES

      Literary Distinctions

      From the Old Brain to the Superconscious

      Developments in the Arts

      Correlations in Sex and Art

      Religious Integrities

      PART THREE – NOTATIONAL APHORISMS

      On Evolution

      On Civilized Evolution

      PART FOUR – NOTATIONAL MAXIMS

      On Ideological Spectra

      On Antithetical Equivalents

      On Art

      On Sex

      On Britain and Ireland

      On Clothes

      On Church and State

      On the Supra-natural

      On Classicism and Romanticism

      On Revolutionary Change

      BIOGRAPHICAL FOOTNOTE

      ____________

      PREFACE

      This substantial volume of essays, dialogues, notational aphorisms and maxims (or aphorisms and maxims composed in a loosely notational way), originally dating from 1983–4, is largely the reverse, in formal terms, of The Will to Truth, its multigenre predecessor, inasmuch as its first section is essayistic and its second section entirely comprised of dialogues, thereby again bringing these two modes of philosophical phenomenality, so to speak, into harmony or, at any rate, close juxtaposition.  Here, as before, the essays and dialogues are conceived within the protective umbrella of a uniform ideology – namely, the Social Transcendentalism which I had been building towards in earlier works, but which here comes to something approaching ideological fruition.  Thus, whatever the subject, it is treated from a uniform standpoint, the standpoint of a socially transcendent outlook on life, and this even when I am not consciously aware of the fact.  Such an outlook is beyond humanism and all other worldly ideologies, having to do with evolutionary striving towards a 'Divine Kingdom', which does not follow death, as we customarily understand it, but presupposes the ordering of society according to certain idealistic principles designed to free mankind from its atomic past.  Hence in each of these essays and dialogues, not to mention the ensuing notational aphorisms and maxims, a Social Transcendentalist concern with Truth, or metaphysical transcendentalism, is what really matters, and it is this which leads us towards the heavenly Millennium to-come.  Whether the subject be art, literature, sex, politics, psychology, drugs, or whatever, the emphasis on Truth from a specific ideological perspective is what lifts Social Transcendentalism – Socialistic Means to a Transcendent End beyond the sterile realm of intellectual speculation and towards the potent challenge of universal freedom.

      John O’Loughlin, London 1984 (Revised 2021)

      ___________

      PART ONE – ESSAYS

      A FEUDAL PROTOTYPE

      It is difficult to see how trees could possibly be popular with Social Transcendentalists, as we may call people with a socially transcendent view of life.  For a tree mirrors, on earth, the galactic-world-order of governing star, minor stars, and planets, which is to say, the tyranny of both major and minor stars over planets.  With a tree, the trunk is equivalent to the governing star of the Galaxy, the branches are equivalent to the peripheral stars there, and the leaves are equivalent to the planets.  The leaves serve both the branches and trunk of a tree by drawing moisture, sunlight, etc., into themselves, which is then transferred to the tree proper.  We need not doubt that this procedure mirrors the galactic arrangement further down the ladder of evolution, whereby the planets serve the stars by keeping them in some kind of galactic order and thereby enabling individual stars to rule over particular solar systems to their own lasting advantage (given that a fixed star is better off than a shooting one, if for no other reason than it isn't likely to collide with other stars and has a recognizable status in its powerful fixity).

      So much for the galactic and natural levels of evolution!  Let us now apply this arrangement to human affairs, where it will be found that the pattern of a tree is imitated whenever human society stems from natural dominion, whether absolutely, as in a pagan age, or relatively, as in a Christian one, when a transcendental dimension necessarily dilutes the commitment of that society to naturalistic criteria.  In the first instance, we find an absolute monarchy presiding over a feudal system.  In the second instance, a constitutional monarchy presiding over a capitalist system.  The monarch is equivalent, in a feudal society, to the trunk of a tree, the nobility are equivalent to its branches, and the peasantry will be equivalent to its leaves.  Now in this natural arrangement the latter serve the former, either directly vis-à-vis the nobility or indirectly vis-à-vis the monarch.  With the extension of feudalism into a capitalist phase of evolution this arrangement to some extent still applies, except that where formerly the nobles and monarch were the sole rulers being served by the peasantry, the rise of the bourgeoisie ensures that they, too, are served in some measure by ... if not a peasantry then their urban equivalents – the industrial proletariat.

      Thus, when all this is taken into account, it is difficult to see how a tree (a plant which served as a blueprint, as it were, for feudal and capitalist societies) could possibly be popular with Socialists, never mind Social Transcendentalists, since they relate to an artificial arrangement of society in which the exploitation of man by man, or peasants by nobles, no longer applies, and the proletariat, that antithetical equivalent of the peasantry, are served by a bureaucracy who, antithetically equivalent to the nobility, take their directives from the reigning president, the antithetical equivalent of the feudal monarch.

      Although, contrary to popular notions, a socialist society is not classless (no more than was the feudal society which preceded the compromise epoch of bourgeois capitalism), it is nevertheless one in which the bulk of humanity are served rather than exploited, and cannot bear any resemblance, in consequence, to that society stemming from the naturalistic pattern of the tyranny of trunk and branches over leaves, which we equate with feudalism.  The distinction between strong and weak, as between a tree and its leaves or a nobility and its peasants, does not apply to a socialist society, where, by contrast, the only distinction is between a more ideologically-motivated bureaucracy and a less ideologically-motivated proletariat, a fact which calls forth not tyranny but the service of the latter by the former.

      Clearly, a day will come when trees, no less than monarchs and nobles, are banished from a society tending towards the supernatural omega from an artificial base.  We see this process in action wherever the city has come to supplant nature, and it can only become more absolute with the passing of time.  Doubtless oxygen will be produced artificially to a much greater extent in the future than at present, thereby enabling man to dispense with trees and spend more time indoors, to the lasting advantage of his spiritual life.  An omega-orientated absolute society can only be interiorized, not partial to a dualistic oscillation between internal and external environments like a relative society.  And a socialist society, properly considered, should be anything but relative!

      There are, however, two types of what may be called post-atomic societies, and we can define them as relative and absolute respectively.  A relatively post-atomic society, such as exists in the United States, will tolerate trees in public places, whereas an absolutely post-atomic society that was also civilized would find trees objectionable, if on none other than ideological grounds, and accordingly seek to curtail their numbers and distribution as much as possible.

      By contrast, a pre-atomic society would be more likely to worship or fear trees, as in fact used to be the case wherever pagan criteria prevailed, and this same tendency would have been refined upon, to a point of respect, with the ensuing development of atomic society, where trees were cultivated as much for their perceived natural beauty as for the various utilitarian uses to which they could be put – industrial, social, environmental, or whatever.  Such respect, while still applying wherever atomic criteria survives, would become transmuted, with the development of post-atomic society, into tolerance, a tolerance probably attaching far more importance to utilitarian than to aesthetic considerations, though falling short of outright antipathy, such as can only be expected from an absolutely post-atomic society moving towards, if not already in, a Social Transcendentalist and, hence, fully civilized status.

      * * * *

      SEXUAL EVOLUTION

      Before men and women acquired a distinct social status with the development of atomic civilization – the sexes balancing each other in a relationship sanctified and legalized by marriage – they were submerged in a kind of pre-sexist society which, in effect, amounted to a relative distinction between Superwomen and quasi-Superwomen respectively – a pagan society that culminated in the city states of the ancient Greeks and Romans, to name but two representative pagan peoples.  In this society the sartorial norm for Superwomen was a long, ankle-length dress or robe, while their inferior counterparts, the quasi-Superwomen, were obliged to wear a short or, more correctly, less lengthy dress or robe, such as accorded with their inferior social status.

      The development of Christianity in the West changed all that, though only very gradually, in line with the progress of civilization away from nature and towards more artificial attainments, so that, by the seventeenth century, a sexist distinction between women on the one hand, and men on the other ... had emerged to replace the old 'lesbian' pre-atomic unisexual society with one partial to properly heterosexual atomic distinctions.  Gradually women came to wear shorter skirts/dresses, and men ... to dress exclusively in trousers, not in stockings partly covered by a skirt-like tunic, such as had prevailed throughout the Middle Ages when, though nominally distinct from women, they continued to think and behave more like quasi-Superwomen vis-à-vis Superwomen or, in relatively more evolved terms, as Submen vis-à-vis pseudo-Superwomen.

      With the twentieth century, however, a trend the converse of the pre-atomic began to develop, in which women increasingly came to dress in still shorter skirts/dresses, indicative of a more modest vaginal status, and even to abandon them altogether for trousers of one description or another, though never or rarely completely so.  We may equate this bourgeois/proletarian age with a transition between the atomic and the post-atomic, Christian and transcendental criteria, in which liberated females (subwomen) and free males (pseudo-supermen) tend to be its chief representatives, particularly in the United States, that relatively post-atomic civilization.  If women haven't entirely negated themselves in trousers, they are at least prepared to wear pants some of the time and to dress in a variety of different-length skirts/dresses, including minis, the rest of the time.  The most logically consistent of liberated females ought, one feels, to alternate between minis and trousers rather than to relapse, after a spell in slacks, into knee-length or even longer skirts/dresses.  Few women are logically consistent!

      However, if the twentieth century signified a transition to a post-atomic transcendental age, we need not doubt that the twenty-first century will witness the beginnings of an actual post-atomic civilization, absolute as opposed to relative, and dedicated, in consequence, to transcending all sexist dichotomies.  Instead of Subwomen and pseudo-Supermen, or liberated females and free males, this transcendental civilization will encourage the emergence of a relative distinction between quasi-Supermen and Supermen, as between what, in earlier works, I have alternatively described as female and male Supermen – the reformed proletarian females and the bona fide proletarian males respectively, each category newly civilized.

      Thus, whereas in the gender relativity of bourgeois civilization an absolute distinction existed between men and women, in the coming proletarian civilization both alike will have been 'overcome' (to use a Nietzschean expression), their evolutionary successors being unisexually superhuman because appertaining to a post-atomic stage of civilization, a stage leading to the ultimate overcoming of human beings in the first phase of the Post-human Millennium, when relatively superhuman Transcendentalists will have been superseded by the absolute Supermen who, as brain collectivizations artificially supported and sustained, will be partial to a contemplation, via synthetic hallucinogens like LSD (lysergic acid diethyamide), of the artificially-induced visions of their new brains – given, in other words, to a kind of pseudo-Supernaturalism preceding the ultimate Supernaturalism of the hypermeditating Superbeings who, as new-brain collectivizations, will constitute the ultimate life form on earth ... prior to the elevation of evolving life to total salvation in the Post-millennial Beyond, with the attainment to transcendence, and consequent escape of electrons from the remaining atomicity of individual new-brain collectivizations.

      Returning to history, we have, then, the suggestion of two sexual extremes either side of a heterosexual balance – the first, or 'lesbian', extreme signifying a pagan stage of human evolution, when men had not really acquired a separate social identity from women but were equivalent to quasi-Superwomen and/or Submen; the second, or 'homosexual', extreme signifying a transcendental stage of human evolution, when women have ceased to retain a separate social identity from men and duly become quasi-Supermen in a post-sexist society.  In between, as already noted, a social balance, Submen having in the meantime become men, to drag Superwomen or, rather, pseudo-Superwomen down to an atomic level, as women, beside themselves.

      If any of this is true – and there seems to be no reason to assume the contrary – how, one may well wonder, is one to explain 'homosexual' behaviour among the ancients, for instance the Greeks and Romans, who apparently lived in a lesbian age?  And how, by a similar token, does one explain the 'lesbian' activity which seems to have developed among women as never before in what appears to be a homosexual if not yet wholly unisexual age?  The situation appears, in each case, to involve a paradox, to constitute an inexplicable enigma, until we look a little closer into each age and come to realize that in pre-atomic civilization men weren't really men but either quasi-Superwomen or Submen, and therefore more disposed than later generations of penis-wielders to regard one another in a quasi-feminine light.

      Consequently, their seemingly homosexual behaviour acquires a lesbian-like character which sets it apart from contemporary homosexual behaviour among free men in an incipiently post-atomic society.  One might describe it as quasi-lesbian, the converse of latter-day seemingly lesbian behaviour among females which, on account of the seemingly ever-increasing masculinization of women and their gradual elevation towards a post-atomic status, we can describe as quasi-homosexual, involving either liberated females or their proletarian counterparts.

      Whereas the character of quasi-lesbian activity among quasi-Superwomen in

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