You may recall
from Euripides The Bacchae (The False Apollo) that king Pentheus
was torn asunder by the vengeful revellers. It may seem a bit unfair since he
was only imposing social order, and they are only the followers of Dionysus who
gyrate and gambol round sacred groves.
Except that a
dance is a creative physical act that establishes shape and pattern in the
world. Pentheus you might say represents the words of politicians that say this
or that is good; the revellers represent the power of ritual as a memory in the
world as it pirouettes in space.
Well do I recall
the barn dances of yore the few years I spent on an organic farm in Wales. The
thing with rituals is they are patterns in space established by
bodies-in-motion. This is a type of physical reality that a political world has
no real conception of. It springs from the work and the activities of people
together on the land.
The more we live
in an order of “script” (DNA and algorithms) the less will we live in a psychic
reality. And yet script without primeval rhythm is meaningless (prev). Those
like Hameroff (of Quantum Consciousness) are all transhumans of one kind or
another, dismissive of the wriggling worm underfoot. And yet the activities of
worms are the bedrock of loose, crumbly organic humus, the black loam that fertilized
the country estates of landed gentry in days of yore.
The physical
perfection of primeval rhythm is the archaic power of Earth, something that no
alternate reality script can comprehend. This is the weakness of the head that
doesn’t understand the physical power that underpins all psyche.
This goes back
to Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Hyborian Bridge 27) which is almost
a template for The Enlightenment. In the battle of solar order versus the Queen
of the Night, Sarastro imposes his authoritarian routine on Pamina – daughter of
the Queen of the Night – to compel obedience.
In the opera it’s
sold as a love-match with prince Tamino, but it also points to a world of
routine and nothing else. Seductive rituals that compel their votaries are all
very well but, over time, rituals can lose their meaning, becoming scripts that
are physically and psychically weak (Alternates 3 If)
Sarastro is a
commanding figure issuing instructions as the figurehead of the sun - exactly
the world we are entering. The likes of Musk, Bezos, Branson, Hameroff, Anissimov
– transhuman all – are establishing via satellite a “smart planet”. That is to
say, an immaterial world of the head. What “they” say – that we live in material
world – is the exact opposite of the truth.
The material
world is the landed gentry of yore, the black loam that fertilizes fields and
crops galore. Hounds that bay, deer that stray, blood that sprays, horses that
neigh. Material reality of the Earth. Of course, “their” reality has the
perspective of light (C5) and so is very convincing. The only problem
is it’s not real.
In Mozart’s day this may not have been known, but now we can all see
Disney’s Pixar animations or MS’s hololenses and realize the unreality of it
all. The reality of the immaterial world of light. Not the archaic physicality
of the Earth as it spins twixt sun and moon, a destiny which is born of decay
and rebirth in the dark loam of Mother Earth.
This is the world of dirt and cleanliness that is strong and pure. Where
the physical activities of the body create shape and patterns in the world.
Because living is a creative act, it can’t be told or recited as a script. To
put it bluntly, urinating is a creative act; the reasons are manifold so I won’t
bother to list them (see Fulling Hyborian Bridge 60)
What you could say is there is a creative aspect to actions of the
unthinking body independent of the immaterial head. The two are completely
separate; one is an animal aspect or spoor. In nature this is free expression
(meaning, gamekeeping Tales of Faith 11) and
represents the freedom of the body in active country pursuits.
This entire universe of wildness and freedom – hunting and Diana – is closed
off by the compulsions of the immaterial head to plan, to cut off free
expression. The spontaneity of communal living is lost but, since the physique
cannot be denied, the result is physical boredom.
It’s the old Bruce Lee mantra of a war between a wild beast and a robot (The
Big Pretence – there’s a gag to that effect near the start of Enter the Dragon).
Classical Greece is neither head nor body but a basic balance between the two
that our transhuman buddies presumably never knew.
Where there is balance there is freedom because the body dances to a
communal beat. It’s the ancient scepticism of Diogenes for all philosophies,
living the simplest of lives in a barrel surrounded by the hurly-burly. Philosophies
which are radical can be dangerous to the freedom of citizens to be what they
are without thought. This was the fate of Socrates, forced to drink hemlock by
the Athenian elders.
Societies that lack thought have the spontaneity of Latin American
favelas (prev). These two aspects to society – bodily freedom and mental planning
– are always there and always different. The idea of planning for a body which
is essentially free always has this sense of compulsion (Grace Slick quote Hyborian
Bridge 62/1) This is the basic physical boredom of a world that is planned with no
consideration for free expression.
The boredom is of the head but, since physique can’t be denied, also of
the body. The universe dances twixt night and day, and the archaic symmetry
gives living a primeval meaning, simple like childhood. Myth has this simple
fascination, a dance of time and space moderns have denied to their future chagrin.
The simplicity of
FIRST THING IN THE
MORNING (the video by Another Tone Production is macabre but not bad)
Conan #24 The House That Rand Built 2
