Opus Postscriptum

By John O'Loughlin

'Opus Postscriptum' differs from John O'Loughlin's official written oeuvre in that it is comprised of revised and reformatted weblogs by him and is therefore supplementary to the works which came to a head with 'Jesus – A Summing Up' (2005). Most of the essay-like 'supernotes' of the two books that constitute this estimable eBook volume, a kind of 'magnum opus' if you will, were written during 2005–6, and are therefore constitutive of John O'Loughlin's early 'post-Centretruths' projects, supplementing his ideological approach to philosophy with fresh ideas and new logical permutations that, unlike the title, owe little to one of Henry Miller's better-known 'posthumous' publications.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 10, 2007
• ISBN: 9781446685952

Book preview

______________

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE –

A RE-EXAMINATION OF

THE INTERCARDINAL AXES

PREFACE 1

WEBLOGS 1 – 10

Positivity vis-à-vis Negativity in Sensuality and Sensibility

Gender Contrasts in Soma and Psyche

Female Advantage in Worldly Relations

Alpha and Omega of the Metaphysical Self

Nature and Philistinism

Understanding Culture and Civility

Man and God

Traditional and Contemporary Music

Understanding Homosexualit0y

Theory of Sartorial Polarity

WEBLOGS 11 – 20

Re-examining Philistinism and Culture in relation to

Barbarity and Civility

Football’s Violent Traditions

Of Pediments and Domes

Concerning Educated Females

Free Will verses Free Soul

Redefining the Left and the Right

Worldly and Post-Worldly Distinctions

Genuine and Pseudo Axial Antitheses

Comprehensively Non-Humanistic

Overcoming the World

WEBLOGS 21 – 30

Revaluations and Transvaluations

Metaphysics and Anti-Metachemistry

God and Heaven

Secular Freedom vis-à-vis Religious Conformity

A Revaluation of Meritocracy and Plutocracy

A Brief Examination of Religious Freedom

Freedom From vis-à-vis Freedom For

Concerning Noumenal Subatomic Wavicles and Particles

Concerning the Respective Phenomenal Subatomic Positions

On Irish and British Distinctions

WEBLOGS 31 – 40

On the Relationship between Righteousness and Justice

Divine and Other Laws

Space and Time

God out of Man

No ‘Fall of Man’

The Nature of the Age

An Earlier Oversight Corrected

Man’s Yearning for Eternity

Free Cross and Bound Star

Overcoming the Gender War in the Interests of Universal Peace

WEBLOGS 41 – 50

A Metaphysical Rejection of Brass

Across the Socialist Divide

Beyond Nationalist Politics

The Moral Necessity of Gender Discrimination

Falls and Counter-Rises vis-à-vis Rises and Counter-Falls

No Simple Right and Wrong

Re-examining the Axial Compass in relation to Right and Wrong

Getting the Life-Force into Perspective

Exploring the Role of Percussion in Music

The Struggle between opposite types of Sanity

WEBLOGS 51 – 60

Exposing the Anti-Christ Hype

The Alternative Patterns of Salvation and Damnation

Understanding Class

A Reappraisal of Salvation and Counter-Damnation  in relation to Damnation and Counter-Salvation

From Phenomenal Particle Collectivity to

Noumenal Wavicle Individuality

Contrasting Objectivity with Anti-Subjectivity and Subjectivity with Anti-Objectivity in Noumenal and Phenomenal Contexts

Envisioning the Supra-Christian Beyond

Understanding the Contrary Modes of Noumenal Saluting

Examining the Noumenal Antithesis between Space and Time and the Phenomenal Antithesis between Volume and Mass, together with their Concomitant Subordinate Antitheses

More on the Relationship between Culture and Civility in both Noumenal and Phenomenal Contexts

WEBLOGS 61 – 69

The Duties of Social Theocracy

A Critical Look at the Resurrection

An Examination of Faithfulness and Faithlessness

An Investigation of Death in relation to Life, both Temporal and Eternal

Setting the Time/Anti-Space Record Straight

A Common Phrase Corrected

Another Look at Freedom

A Re-examination of Light and Darkness relative to Gender

The Tasks Lying Ahead for the Godly and the Anti-Devilish

BOOK TWO –

INCOMPATIBIITY OF

THE INTERCARDINAL AXES

PREFACE 2

WEBLOGS 1 – 10 (2)

Debunking ‘Motherfucking’

The Typical Manifestations of Each Intercardinal Point

The Representative Somatic and Psychic Antipodes in Each Axial Case

Examining the Relationships between Nature and Genetics and

Nurture and Culture

Primacy and Supremacy Revaluated

An Investigation of Positivity and Negativity in relation to

‘Pro’ and ‘Anti’ Elements

The Struggle against Moral Relativism

How ‘the First’ will be Last and ‘the Last’ First

Revaluating Gaelic Football and Hurling

The Natural and Cultural Alternatives of Sensuality and Sensibility

WEBLOGS 11 – 19 (2)

Antitheses Exclude, Polarities Attract

Contrasting Left- and Right-Wing Values

Why Beauty is not Truth and Truth not Beauty

Heat and Motion vis-à-vis Light and Force

The Incompatibility of Beauty and Truth

A Deeper Analysis of the Relationship between Beauty and Truth

An Analysis of the Relationship between Strength and Knowledge

A More Comprehensive Assessment of Heat, Light, Motion and Force

Contrasting Heat with Light in Sensuality and Sensibility

BIOGRAPHICAL FOOTNOTE

__________

BOOK ONE

A RE-EXAMINATION OF

THE INTERCARDINAL AXES

+ + + +

PREFACE 1

As suggested by the title, this is simply bonus material to my oeuvre-proper, which culminated in Jesus – A Summing Up!, dating from the autumn of 2005 and extending into July 2006 that was drafted in standard word processor and subsequently copied to one of my weblog sites for enlargement or revision, which in turn was fed back into the original drafts.  Less aphoristic and arguably more essayistic in character, as befitting my general approach to weblogs, it is nevertheless highly philosophical in its treatment of a variety of subjects common to the oeuvre proper, and should stand as icing on the cake, so to speak, of my collected writings (1973–2005), published in HTML eScroll format on the Internet under the heading CENTRETRUTHS – Inner Journeys to the Centre of Truth, the 122 titles of which are also available individually and in various permutations as eBooks and/or PDF-derived paperbacks.

John O’Loughlin, London 2006 (Revised 2021)

+ + + +

WEBLOGS 1 – 10

POSITIVITY VIS-À-VIS NEGATIVITY

IN SENSUALITY AND SENSIBILITY

Anyone who reads my mature aphoristic philosophy, which is to say texts written during the past few years, will know that I distinguish between female and male on the basis of free soma/bound psyche in sensuality and free psyche/bound soma in sensibility, so that the genders are forever at loggerheads as somatic/psychic antitheses in which either soma triumphs over psyche, as with sensuality, or psyche triumphs over soma, as with sensibility. And this happens on both phenomenal and noumenal, corporeal and ethereal, terms, as between the planes of Volume and Mass for physics and chemistry, not to mention anti-chemistry and anti-physics, and the planes of Space and Time for metachemistry and metaphysics, not to mention anti-metaphysics and anti-metachemistry.  Hence the genders present us with an axial compass, as it were, which either descends/counter-ascends from metachemistry and anti-metaphysics to physics and anti-chemistry or, conversely, ascends/counter-descends from chemistry and anti-physics to metaphysics and anti-metachemistry, taking the first elemental term in each pairing as hegemonic irrespective of gender and of the modifying effects of inter-axial relativity across the noumenal/phenomenal 'class' divide.  The axes are a good deal more complicated than this, but I have gone into that often enough in my mature philosophical works and need not elaborate on them here.  Suffice it to say that if, when free, females are basically about free soma and bound psyche, free body and bound mind, and males, by contrast, about free psyche and bound soma, free mind and bound body, then females will be naturally more disposed to external, or somatic, calmness and males, by contrast, to internal, or psychic, calmness – at least when they are free to be either sensually hegemonic, as in the female case, or sensibly hegemonic, as in the male case. For the converse of such antithetical hegemonies will of course be subservience or subordination to the prevailing gender, be it female or male (as in the case, for example, of anti-physics to chemistry at the south-west point of the axial compass or, indeed, of anti-chemistry to physics at its south-east point), and in those cases we can expect males to demonstrate more external aggression and females more internal aggression, since the converse of male psychic calmness, or passivity, will be male somatic aggression, while the converse of female somatic passivity will be female psychic aggression.  Hence while females are generally more externally calm than males, they become, under male hegemonic pressure in sensibility, internally, or psychically, more aggressive, whereas males, though generally more internally calm than females, become, under female hegemonic pressure in sensuality, externally, or somatically, more aggressive. Think of the sexual act.  Coitus is generally a context in which the female is sexually passive and the male sexually aggressive, and this is consonant with a female hegemony in sensuality in which somatic passivity is triumphant over somatic aggression, or activity.  Cheerleaders presiding at or, rather, over a male sporting context of a certain sensually-biased stamp are also indicative of this kind of sensual situation in which comparative female passivity is juxtaposed (hegemonically) with male activity of a somatically aggressive nature. On the other hand, females are likely to become more internally, or psychically, aggressive under male hegemonic pressures in sensibility, since mental calmness in the male excites the female to psychic aggression and often serves to facilitate her maternal interests in respect of offspring. The 'nagging wife' syndrome is significant here, and this is the other side of the matrimonial coin, if I can put it like that, which rather contrasts with coitus and male somatic aggression generally. Females, in sum, are more mentally aggressive in sensibility than males but this, paradoxically, is due to male hegemonic pressure in sync with their gender reality of psyche preceding and preponderating over soma in such fashion than psychic calmness is the norm. Males, on the other hand, are more somatically aggressive in sensuality than females, and this, paradoxically, is due to female hegemonic pressure in sync with their gender reality of soma preceding and predominating over psyche in such fashion that somatic calmness is the norm. The psychically aggressive female is no more representative of female gender freedom than is the somatically aggressive male of male gender freedom. Each alike is at cross-purposes with their respective gender realities, but that is only because of hegemonic pressures stemming from the opposite gender. Verily, life is a gender tug-of-war between class and/or axial manifestations of sensuality and sensibility, soma and psyche.

GENDER CONTRASTS IN SOMA AND PSYCHE

If females are generally more externally, or somatically, calm than males and males, by contrast, more internally, or psychically, calm than females, does this mean that females are generally stronger than males in sensuality and males stronger than females in sensibility? In a manner of speaking I guess it does, because somatic passivity is hegemonic over somatic activity, or aggressiveness, in sensuality, whereas psychic passivity is hegemonic over psychic activity, or aggressiveness, in sensibility, and one could argue that the female is accordingly stronger than the male in the one context and the male stronger than the female in the other. But 'strong' is not a word I would care to use here, because of its antithetical association with 'weak', both of which, to my way of thinking, correspond to female realities in competition with a male antithesis, in corporeal phenomenality, between knowledge and ignorance, weakness chemically hegemonic over the anti-physicality of ignorance, knowledge physically hegemonic over the anti-chemistry of strength across the phenomenal divide at the south-west and south-east points of our axial compass (see preceding weblog), both of which positions are subject, however, to inter-axial modification in respect of their north-east and north-west points respectively. Therefore rather than arguing in terms of a strong/weak dichotomy between somatically calm females and somatically aggressive males in sensuality or, conversely, between psychically calm males and psychically aggressive females in sensibility, I shall contend that a sort of positive/negative distinction exists between the genders in both sensuality and sensibility, with females more somatically positive than their male counterparts in the one context, but males more psychically positive than their female counterparts in the other case, neither of whom are 'true to themselves' when negative, or aggressive, because obliged to be negative under positive hegemonic pressures appertaining to the hegemonic gender. Hence females and males can only be 'true to themselves' in opposite fashions, and this is why life remains a kind of gender tug-of-war between those whose positivity appertains to somatic calmness and those, by contrast, whose positivity appertains to psychic calmness, the respective extremes of calmness only possible independently of the opposite sex, whichever sex that may happen to be, since aggressiveness from the subordinate gender in either context takes its toll on the hegemonic gender's positivity, even as that positivity is responsible for conditioning, in no small measure, such negativity as may somatically or psychically accrue in the opposite gender to its hegemonic sway.

FEMALE ADVANTAGE IN WORLDLY RELATIONS

The fact that females are externally calmer than males and internally more aggressive means that, by and large, they have the sexual advantage over males and maintain it throughout life.  For the male is trapped in a kind of vicious circle in which his psychic calm is regularly warred upon by a less psychically calm and altogether more mentally aggressive female at loggerheads with her gender reality of soma preceding and predominating over psyche under male hegemonic pressure in sensibility.  Consequently he will incline to revert to somatic aggression in order to avenge himself in some degree on the female and become trapped in a situation the converse of hers, as he struggles with her external calmness at loggerheads with his gender reality of psyche preceding and preponderating over soma under female hegemonic pressure in sensuality.  Now obviously there are instances of direct retaliatory somatic aggression, whether sexual or otherwise, to female psychic aggressiveness, but, by and large, one can believe that arguments are not resolved in such brutal fashion and that each gender withdraws into its own position to start afresh, usually with a renewed commitment to coitus on the part of the male in consequence of a display of female somatic calmness and togetherness.  For sex, being sensual, more usually follows from a male response to the female position of somatic calmness, rather than in consequence of anger with female psychic aggression.  The male who ‘loses his cool’ with a female in sensibility is in no position to enjoy sex or to properly satisfy his woman’s sexual needs.  He is more likely to simply make a violent fool, if not criminal, of himself.  But because females generally get the better of males in life, it follows that wisdom as a male preserve is keenly aware of this situation and knows that the only way to defeat it is to remain as independent of females as possible, since no male who has regular relations with females, or even a particular female, can possibly avoid having his psychic calm undermined by a creature whose calmness is somatic and therefore contrary to his.  This is what justifies certain enlightened males, like monks and philosophers and great artists, in living independently of females in the interests of enhanced psychic calm, of that calmness which will not be subject to the aggressiveness of females under male hegemonic pressure in sensibility, but be able to maintain itself at or near peak levels of inner sanity, of self-realization and actualization in relation to psychic freedom.  But such psychic freedom is only possible as a metaphysical postulate, and therefore in relation to godliness and, most especially, heavenliness, which is the alpha and omega of the metaphysical self.

ALPHA AND OMEGA OF THE METAPHYSICAL SELF

It has been said that God or godliness is both alpha and omega and, to be sure, there is some truth in this, albeit not necessarily in the way that many people would think.  For this is not the beginning and end of things per se, a cosmic ‘First Mover’ and whatever may be yet to come.  Rather, this alpha and omega should be seen, as hinted at in the weblog above, in relation to the self, and the metaphysical self most especially.  For it is only in the metaphysical self, which is a male preserve, that godliness and, more importantly, heavenliness is possible, and it is in respect of the ego of the one and the soul of the other, of a transposition, as it were, from the one to the other that we should think of the alpha and omega not so much of godliness as of godliness and heavenliness, the formal beginning and contented end of the self in question.  Therefore ego into bound will and bound spirit of the metaphysical not-self, say lungs and breath, is the methodology, mankind-traditionally, by means of which the ego may achieve unity with the soul and, in becoming one with it, lose any sense of otherness, of relativity vis-à-vis the relevant not-self, for the nonce, thereby achieving the bliss that is the sublime reward of self-unity.  God is the metaphysical alpha that finds His redemption in the metaphysical omega of Heaven, ego in soul, form in contentment, the knowledge of truth in the pleasure of joy, of which there is nothing more pleasing to the self.  Therefore do not conceive of this alpha and omega solely in relation to God, still less to anything outside metaphysics, which is always at the north-east hegemonic point of the intercardinal axial compass, whether in cosmos, where it exists to a least evolved degree, in nature, where it exists to a less (compared to least) evolved degree, in mankind, where it exists to a more (compared to most) evolved degree, or, to anticipate the future, in cyborgkind, where it will exist to a most evolved and therefore effectively definitive degree commensurate with ‘Kingdom Come’.  Verily, the truth about religious alpha and omega is that it is both godly and heavenly, and that godly ego is the beginning of the metaphysical self, which has one raison d’être and one raison d’être only: namely to get from ego to soul, godliness to heavenliness, through achieving, via whatever metaphysically not-self means are most appropriate to any given ‘life-stage’ of metaphysics, perfect self-harmony, a perfection, I contend, which is only going to be truly – because most – perfect in relation to the utilization of synthetically artificial procedures as germane neither to the West nor to the East, nor to anything inter-mediate or anterior, but solely to global civilization as it comes into its sensibly cyborg own in the decades and centuries to come.

NATURE AND PHILISTINISM

It has been said that philistinism is undesirable because too naturalistic or insufficiently cultural, and so, up to a point, it is. But philistinism is not naturalism or the same as being too natural, since ‘the philistine’ is, thanks to inter-axial relationships of a church-hegemonic order, one who is fundamentally against nature even as he occasionally or even often indulges it in what he would regard, again under church-hegemonic pressures stemming from the north-east point of the intercardinal axial compass, as sinful conduct, sin being consequent upon an acknowledgement, from a male standpoint, of the folly of freely somatic behaviour from a position that is committed, no matter how imperfectly, to the wisdom and, more importantly, grace of metaphysics, wherein psychic freedom has its blessed throne. Hence ‘the philistine’ is a cut above the merely heathen naturalist, for whom there is no concept of sin because no recognition of an independent cultural principle commensurate with metaphysics at the north-east point of the said axial compass. The heathen is simply naturalistic, whereas the philistine is effectively anti-natural in his rejection of somatic freedom from a standpoint centred on, or at any rate theoretically committed to, psychic freedom of a metaphysical order. Philistinism is the precondition, for the catholic masses, of culture, even though, in priestly vein, culture can – and does – exist independently of nature and, hence, of philistinism when it is truly or even approximately metaphysical. Therefore the church-hegemonic/state-subordinate axis, stretching from the south-west to the north-east point of the intercardinal axial compass, provides us with a polarity between philistinism and culture so far as the male distinction between anti-physics and metaphysics is concerned, with a secondary distinction, on both church and state terms, between what can be called pseudo-barbarity and pseudo-civility so far as the female distinction between chemistry and anti-metachemistry is concerned, chemistry having less to do with sin or folly than with pseudo-crime and pseudo-evil, anti-metachemistry less to do with grace or wisdom than with pseudo-punishment and pseudo-goodness. But all this is the converse, after all, of state-hegemonic/church-subordinate criteria on the axis which stretches from the north-west to the south-east points of the compass in question, where we have every right to speak of the genuine barbarity and civility of metachemistry and anti-chemistry on primary state-hegemonic/church-subordinate terms but, by contrast, of the pseudo-philistinism and pseudo-culture of anti-metaphysics and physics on secondary state-hegemonic/church-subordinate terms, the former polarity largely female in character and the latter one its male counterpart in what, with pseudo-folly and pseudo-wisdom coupled, in church-subordinate vein, to pseudo-sin and pseudo-grace, is a poor cousin to the church-hegemonic/state-subordinate distinction between anti-physics and metaphysics. Yet even here we can speak of a further distinction between pseudo-philistinism, which at least acknowledges the existence and rights of pseudo-culture, and what could be called pseudo-nature in consequence of a rejection of such rights attendant upon a shift in emphasis from state-hegemonic/church-subordinate criteria to state-absolutist totalitarianism. Such pseudo-nature is not even pseudo-meek, but is simply the pseudo-heathen male corollary of a more absolutist approach to vanity as an extrapolation less from anti-metaphysics than from metachemistry in female-orientated state primacy. It is the male equivalent of heathenistic naturalism within an axial context that had once been state hegemonic but was now, informally if not formally, state absolutist and hence overly totalitarian

UNDERSTANDING CULTURE AND CIVILITY

One way or the other culture and civility are always on the sensible side of life, as of our axial divide, and barbarity and philistinism, if not naturalism in one form or another, on its sensual side, the side which combines either metachemistry and anti-metaphysics at the north-west point of the intercardinal axial compass or, alternatively, chemistry and anti-physics at its south-west point.  Culture and civility always appertain, by contrast, to either the south-east or the north-east points of the compass in question, though, once inter-class axial factors are taken into account, the point at which metaphysics is unequivocally hegemonic over anti-metachemistry will be the only point at which culture can be genuine and civility, by contrast, somewhat pseudo in view of its subordinate status on both church and state terms. The south-east point of the axial compass provides us, on the other hand, with the subversion of physics by anti-chemistry acting under the rule of metachemistry over anti-metaphysics ‘back up’ what is, as a rule, a state-hegemonic/church-subordinate axis, and therefore with a shift of emphasis from free psyche to bound soma in typically state-orientated and female-dominated vein, so that the paradoxical outcome has less to do with genuine culture than with pseudo-culture – and hence pseudo-righteousness – in subordination to genuine civility, wherein justice has her throne, even if such a position will normally co-exist with pseudo-righteousness to the exclusion, sensibly, of state-absolutist criteria of an overly social democratic nature.

MAN AND GOD

Strictly speaking, prayer is not as religious, or metaphysical, as meditation from a mankind (as opposed to a natural or cosmic or even cyborgkind) standpoint, though there is certainly a sense in which prayer is more germane to man than to woman, the Devil, or even God, to take the respective alternatives into account.  Which is because prayer is egoistic, or centred in ego as a projection of knowledge, and therefore more germane to a creature for whom ego takes precedence over spirit, will, or soul.  In that sense, prayer, being a form of intellectuality, is not really religious at all, because more ego than soul.  If true religion is metaphysical, then only that type of ego which wishes to escape itself into soul, as from godliness into heavenliness, is commensurate with God.  Any ego which subsumes soul into itself, on the other hand, will be manly – as opposed to godly – in character, and thus an earthly shortfall, in transcendent knowledge expressed through prayer, from godliness.  Man, to be sure, is distinct from God, or godliness, but that only confirms an alternative to godliness which man, as a certain type of male centred in physics rather than metaphysics, wishes to perpetuate at true religion’s expense.  Also, it must be said, at the expense of religions based in chemistry and metachemistry, and therefore contrary to anything physical or metaphysical, being closer, in effect, to philistinism, if not nature, and barbarity than to civility or culture.  Consequently when we say ‘man’, we do not intend to signify the entire human race and all of what generally passes for mankind, but only a certain type of human who is less godly, or for that matter womanly or devilish, than manly in his physical disposition towards what, in previous weblogs, has been characterized as the south-east point of the intercardinal axial compass.  Ego-centred religion in a sense excludes spirit, will, and soul at the south-west, north-west, and north-east points of the said compass.  For it is religion centred on man as opposed to woman, the Devil, or God, and therefore its focus will always be egoistic, after the nature of prayer as a certain type of God-orientated intellectuality of a more subjective stamp.  But the godly individual, even when recognizably human, does not pray; on the contrary, he meditates, and thus uses ego as a starting point for an accommodation, no matter how imperfectly intermittent or cyclical, with soul, which is to say, with a transposition of the focus of self from brain stem to spinal cord.  To the extent that he passes from godliness to heavenliness, he redeems his intellectual or egoistic self and attains, for a moment of perfect self-harmony, to the bliss of Heaven.  This is the raison d’être of true religion, which is always metaphysical, whether at its least evolved manifestation in the Cosmos, its less (compared to least) evolved manifestation in nature, its more (compared to most) evolved manifestation in mankind, or its most – and therefore definitively – evolved manifestation in cyborgkind (to anticipate the future), when, in all probability, even meditation of a transcendental order will be overhauled by a synthetically artificial approach to achieving an enhanced accommodation of the self which will surpass the, shall we say, less complete and more intermittent self-harmony typifying Transcendental Meditation as a mankind, albeit God-centred, approach to metaphysics that, being more rather than most evolved, will always leave something to be desired from a truly definitive religious standpoint.  Hence we come to distinguish what could be called global destiny from both Eastern and Western shortfalls and alternatives to such a destiny, not to mention whatever stands closer, within mankind, to woman and the Devil, to nature and the Cosmos, than to God and man.  For only with the overcoming and, in some sense, transcendence of mankind through the progressive cyborgization of life, as of the world, will godliness independently of mankind come to pass as that which not merely more but most perfectly achieves heavenliness through synthetically artificial means, thereby becoming increasingly heavenly the more godliness is subsumed into Heaven, as ego into soul.  If the beginning of religion signified most God and least Heaven, then its future culmination will most assuredly signify most Heaven and least God.  For God will have become One with Heaven to a degree that was never possible with mankind, nature, or the Cosmos, never mind with shortfalls or alternatives to metaphysics in those life-stage contexts which hyped either man, woman, or the Devil as God, and were consequently less metaphysical than physical, chemical, or metachemical in character – the more prevalent types of civilized religion for contexts dominated by civility, philistinism, or barbarity, as germane to truly representative manifestations of man, woman, or the Devil.  Only when religion is characterized by culture to a metaphysical degree which surpasses anything cosmic, natural, or human will it be definitively true, and thus concerned less with God, whether genuinely or falsely, than with Heaven, God’s sole raison d’être, wherein form is redeemed by and in content(ment), the sublime joy of heavenly bliss in perfect self-harmony with the soul.

TRADITIONAL AND CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

Almost everywhere these days the distinction not only between West and East, Western and Eastern civilization, but between each of those and global civilization rears its challenging head and obliges us to come to terms with it as best we can. Take music. It is common knowledge that there is a difference between Western music and Eastern music, though more of style than of kind, since in both cases we find a dichotomy, traditionally, between folk music and classical music, whether in relation to a distinction between harmony and melody on the one hand or, arguably where the East is concerned, rhythm and pitch on the other hand. For it will not have escaped many people’s attention that the West is, by and large, more given, traditionally, to harmony and melody, those phenomenal, or corporeal, approaches to music, than to rhythm and pitch, their noumenal, or ethereal, counterparts. Yet with all their respective forms of folk music and classical music, the West and the East remain distinct from what could be called the march of global music, which is neither specifically harmonic nor melodic, rhythmic nor pitchful, but a combination, in opposite ways, of all four ingredients to greater or lesser extents, thereby affirming a global dimension in which aspects of what one would have identified with Western music are combined with elements closer to the East in such fashion that the resulting form, whether with a bias for pitch and rhythm, as in the case of Jazz, or for harmony and melody, as in the case of Rock, signifies a marked progression over both folk and classical traditions which would not be intelligible except in relation to globalization. But since globalization can be devolutionary or evolutionary, female or male, and we are as yet still in its devolutionary stage … from fascist totalitarianism to corporate liberalism on state-orientated terms, it is small wonder that global music reflects this regression in the overhauling, by and large, of Jazz by Rock and of the pre-eminence of the latter type of music to the contemporary global scene, a type of music which is