I was on a bus
near Hythe and overheard a conversation between a local and a couple from
London. The guy was obviously quite historical, and was saying things like,
“That’s the Royal Military Canal..it was built as a defence against Napoleon..
There are Martello towers..fortified with heavy pounders.. It was strengthened
in WWII.. Up there’s St Leonard’s church.. It has an ossuary with 500 skulls..
The knights rested there before going to Canterbury to murder Thomas
A’Beckett.”
It was a bit of
a monologue and I just got to thinking that everything – bar nothing – that you
hear or see is information. Usually that’s ok as the information is interesting
enough. A stained glass of Thomas A’Beckett’s murder, say.
Even if
everything is information, that’s almost a negative comment since there are
various aspects or tonalities such as the sensual, the virile, the feminine,
These aspects can be likened to Plato’s idealism ().
From that comes
storytelling, the psychic content of the story (the what), and the style it’s
told in (the how). Idealism almost implies there is something a priori,
which is the shape that things have. None of the information obtained from DNA
has anything to say on shape. So, to be positive, shape and power and the use
made of plants and animals by humans has to be much more than information.
What I really
mean is that, to say that the shape and power of things is not as important as
DNA is to be negative. It’s a pessimistic, defeatist attitude to say that the
power of our own limbs is not sufficient unto itself, and that it needs to be
subordinated to “information”.
In fact, power
and use and shape are far superior and have inherent storytelling. They have
line and movement, content and style. What Man has done through history is
differentiate these various aspects because a culture is so much more than
information.
To say that
everything is information is actually to do without this process of differentiation,
which says exactly the opposite: that there is something a priori and
archetypal. In
a way it’s laziness to reduce everything to
one monologous trait, as Dawkins does in The Selfish Gene, missing out
all the shapes of power and presence in the universe. What it does is confuse
data with physical reality – movement and line.
To take a
concrete example: Elizabeth Taylor had beauty, power and presence. You can be
told, “ET is beautiful”, and that can be classified as data. However, some
things don’t have to be told; they are a priori.
So, a society of
information is really saying something like: information is not something else,
it is just information. We’re being told everything is information, even though
some things DON’T need to be told!
The effect of
this is tautologous – a vicious circle. You are effectively being told – by the
organs of the media – that “information is information” in all sorts of
different ways. Of course, this is attractive to the ego.
Outside of the
ego is the creative-unconscious, or basically the inspiration we gain from the
cosmos at large. Well, this is really the cultural history of Man, from Homer
to the Bible! I know a lot of this sounds like it’s nothing to do with heroic
fantasy and Howard, but fantasy is not as different from reality as “they”
would have us believe.
There is a
mundane reality which has no fantasy, that is cut-off from the cosmic
experience. But Egyptians and Greeks weren’t cut-off from this experience, they
were inspired to invention and philosophy by the heavens.
This is why I
say the cosmic experience is a type of fantasy-land, not unlike our unconscious
pathways (tracing back to ages lost). Life is only mundane if you’re told these
are all different types of information, instead of powerful and fascinating
stories, myths.
But a human
figure, when it forms in the womb, is writing an age-old story of bone and
flesh. It’s all story, narrative sequence of interlocking rhythms, and that is
the cosmic reality a mundane world denies with its facts.
Bone and flesh
are strong. What “they” want to know is how these events happen (the story),
but the answer is some things just happen. It’s called naivety, or just living
in the instant. It’s partly order and partly freedom; the sublime balance.
If – as the ancient
Greeks attested – the universe is very finely balanced and all things are
proportionate, all that is a priori. A society of information is simply
a denial of these ancient truths. Flesh and bone are strong, the underlying
health of organic matter. They are part of physical cycles that are strong and
pure.
So, in other
words, a world of data is weak – in the head – and outside of the physical
cycles of destruction and creation that are emblemised by a serpent. The
undulating spine is our link to this ancient, ancestral reptilian unconscious.
She had a strange feeling, in Mexico, of the old
prehistoric humanity, the dark-eyed humanity of the days, perhaps, before the
glacial period. When the world was colder, and the seas emptier, and all the
land-formation was different. When the waters of the world were piled in
stupendous glaciers on the high places, and high, high upon the poles. When
great plains stretched away to the oceans, like Atlantis, and the lost
continents of Polynesia, so that seas were only great lakes, and the soft,
dark-eyed people of that world could walk around the globe. Then there was a
mysterious, hot-blooded, soft-footed humanity with a strange civilization of
its own.. (The Plumed Serpent Hyborian Bridge 81)
The hero steals
knowledge from the dragon and slays it with his will. A world of power has a
fantastical aspect since the strong lines and shapes have storytelling
potential.
The storytelling
potential is really proof against data (DNA,AI) and it is strong , virile,
feminine. The negative, nihilistic, pessimism of the likes of Dawkins can be
defeated by these aspects. To be made of bone and flesh at least is tangible
exposure to honesty and moral truthfulness.
Bone and flesh
die and become immersed in creative/destructive forces; the dream of the
universe. This sense of destiny that is both gay and melancholy has a meaning
that is manifested in story. Howard’s writing, with its naturalistic
descriptions of dainty fronds, savage events of blood and mayhem, take us into
the dream of the universe. It is a dream which is denied by the spokespeople of
mundanity because they choose to ignore the powerful manifestation of cosmic
forces – the crags that are bones; the earth that is flesh; the seas that are
blood; destiny.
