Pictorial 197

 If modernism is entering or progressing into a parallel reality of illusion, what is supposedly theoretical isn't theoretical atall if it corresponds to the illusory reality.

Einstein's theories are always thought of as theoretical first and experimental second but, in fact, Western science entered the illusory reality with Newton's expts on light - C4-C6.

Light is intrinsically geometrical (Faraday and the magnetic solenoid), and the universe of geometry is one of perspective observation (lenses, P56). In a universe of perspective, one can only expand into other perspective systems, such as Riemannian (General Relativity) or Minkowski (Special Relativity).

Clearly, these systems do not belong to physical reality, they are simply convincing illusions; any perspective system is hyper-realist because that is what perspective observation is.

The hyper-realism is run by machine-intelligence since that is what hyper-realism is; the physical reality is omitted and we have the perspective illusion of GPS arrays (in Riemannian space.)

A perspective system allows logic to be connected, and so appeals to the ego of acolytes of the mirror of illusions. Einstein is simply the theoretical figurehead of what is actually a hyper-realist parallel system of perspective light (electromagnetism). The theories cannot exist outside of the parallel reality.

'The logic OF proportion' (see "White Rabbit") is what exists outside of the parallel system. Or, in other words active body as opposed to the inert head.

If you want a good example of hyper-realism it's Musk's rocket-landers on steroids programmed by algorithms. Parking a rocket in such a vertical mode almost seems too realistic to exist; that's because it exists in a parallel space run by machines. 

Similarly, the GPS arrays have to be calculated and run by machine-intelligence.

ZAPPA, INCA ROADS

Parking a car could be similarly Riemannian if it's run by GPS navigation.

What I'm attempting to do, really, is to de-Einsteinize the situation and reveal it for what it is; a machine universe (see "The Airtight Garage"). Only a machine-intelligence can inhabit Riemannian space, or indeed Minkowski (CERN).

Modernday sorcerers are simply at one with the machine, whether it's a light-box from the 18th century (Newton's Knives, C4-C6) or a mega-watt booster from the 21st. They are very happy in resolved (mathematical) space and the so-called theoretical nature of it is so much hot-air (see also CL Moore "Judgement Night" prev.)

A universe of the logic OF proportion obviously contains logic (see Corneille), but just as obviously contains irregular linework and changing colours, organic shape and coordinated animation. Perspective geometry cannot produce any of that (apart from colour maybe), so basically we exist in a topsy-turvy universe. A universe of machines run by acolytes of machines (sorcerers).

The acolytes need a 'theoretical' figurehead which of course is serpent-tongue.

Without the physical animation of irregular linework, changing colours and organic shape there can be no decadence and revival,no fertile area of growth and strength,no age of ramshackle plenty. Instead, the profane serpent is loose (with viruses in spread-mode.)

Why is nature full of feuds and nastiness? Isn't it obvious? Without balance everything will become nothing.. eventually. Have a look at Linda Perry's video a couple of posts back. The dyke is used to going round the outside (or inside) track. In a world of sameness only the odd virus is left to prosper.

Without the type of ramshackle scenario previously outlined, there can be no psychic calm. With psychic calm must come a guileless type of poetry that is as much to do with song as words.

MELANIE, LOOK WHAT THEY'VE DONE TO MY SONG, MA 

(I found this from Spanish singer Jeanette's cover on "Porqué Te Vas"

Without the guileless, light-hearted spirit it is not possible to rebel since the spirit is crushed. The songs still live on, thank God, but the 60s is but a hazy half-memory.

Harmonious proportions - of singers or poets - are meaningful (epistemology) and inspire higher thoughts (ontology.)

Hyborian Bridge 200 (DA BIG SUMMARY)

 Before ploughing-on to somewhere vaguely Hyborian, the best jest of post-apocalyptic 75 series Survivors occurs in the episode 'Spoil of War'. Greg and the hippy dude are driving back from rescuing Tom at the quarry when Greg suddenly stops at a highway junction.

"Why've you stopped?"

" Highway code. Approaching a major highway always stop for incoming traffic."

Going back to HB199, a highway is s good example of a rule-based system, being straight-line perspective (vanishing point, CC Beck.)

Following Season 1, the homestead-based 'Good Life' plots of Season 2 prompted Ian McCulloch to write the story 'A Friend in Need' about a serial killer. Tellingly, when they try to rein-in Greg's wild west tendencies, he responds:

"Certain values we've lost forever, thank God.. What's the natural, instinctive thing to do?"

The ecological bent is all very well, but there's more to life than tetchy good neighbourliness; there's dance and disagreements and fistfights for a start.

Abby (Seymour), having already been sacked for drinking, only Jen (Fleming) was left of the original triad. As Seymour said in an interview, she was the fire while they provided the stability.

Despite the convivial nature of Season 3, the faux search for Greg proves wearisome, and the climax of electrification uninspiring. For a start, electricity is the straight-line perspective logic reality that has led to the mess in the first place (see 'Pets' P56 on lenses.)

This is a theme I've been following right through rehsongcycle and admittedly is heavily overwritten in places. Nevertheless, if light (Newton C4-C6) is a parallel reality (of perspective logic), electricity is simply the practical application of that, in that both are electromagnetism (sun).

As was covered over on rehsongcycle awhile back, light is the universe of perspective geometry (from Faraday), and Relativity is the way one enters into that universe.

Anything that requires Relativity - GPS navigation, CERN expts - is in the universe of perspective geometry (sun.)

The future has probably two alternatives. One is to head further into an electrical world (of AI), and this is called transhumanism. Spokespeople like Michael Anissimov advocate super-cities, extended life and enhanced brains.

As can be seen from the illo, it's certainly convincing, but couldn't that be because it's a perspective system? AI super-intelligence is something that solves problems - inside a perspective system. In other words, the more perspective logic there is, the more problems there are that can be solved (logically.)

After all, even now supercomputers can beat us at chess; they can engineer genes more efficiently. What is it that makes us human? It's clearly when there are fewer routines and more expression.

Survivors spends some of its time at Hampton Court, the pre-Tudor palace. Their intrigues and patriarchal/matriarchal disputes echo those old days when rules were fewer.

Thee obviously is s place for ecology in that kingdom, even if Season 2 overdid it. Ecology, meaning fertility rituals of the soil and the animals and the plants (see BWS Adastra in Africa, prev.)

These rituals implicate the cycles of life and death that inspire fertility and therefore strength, stability (both.) It is these cycles that transhumanism denies and, in fact, they seem to think in terms of a giant brain, extended life inside a machine, uploaded intellect.

The problem is, this ignores what life is for, which is the expression of the psyche. A brain - machine or human - is various forms of electromagnetism, whether organic or not. All the machine-intellect does is transfer this into ones and zeros.

This is the vanishing-point of technique (see CC Beck, prev) in a universe of perspective geometry. This universe perforce is run by machines - similarly to The Airtight Garage (P192), so is clearly a topsy-turvy universe with no connection to the psyche.

In other words, a machine-intelligence is 100% electric whereas a human intelligence has a connection to the psyche. It's a perspective illusion since all GPS arrays are just an extension of perspective, albeit Riemannian space. CERN is similarly an illusion in Minkowski space.

That may sound weird, but good illusions are always highly convincing; a mirror or the flat surface of a lake are indications of that in nature (see prev on Francis Stevens' Claimed.)

What is omitted from this version of the future is the physical reality that is NOT a product of perspective observation, but a product of balance and proportion (CC Beck, for example, throws down vanishing points as he feels the urge, see prev.)

This implicates moon, sun, planets - see Theosophy and Talbot Mundy. Renaissance proportion makes use of perspective illusion as do BWS prints, it is never the overriding factor since that has to be the narrative (and psyche.)

While a universe of GPS (run by AI, natch) is highly convincing to the ego (of acolytes of the mirror of illusions), it has no physical reality as defined by animals, plants, harmonious landscapes. There is therefore no physical connection to the psyche.

A machine-intelligence converts everything to ones and zeros - the vanishing-point of technique. People are convinced by the precision without realising that the physical reality of harmonious proportion is completely lacking.

This applies to moon, sun, planets and the way we view the cosmos (epistemology, meaning) as well as ontology, clearly. This puts a different spin (see UVS website) on what 'they' call pseudo-science/mysticism if scientific precision is simply entering a mirror of illusions (sorcerous illusion HB20 reflection, lens HB48 The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune HB135). This 60s tune might be apt if the lyric is modified to 'when the logic OF proportion..' (see Corneille, prev.)

WHITE RABBIT

As I've been saying for awhile, ramshackle environments inspire psychic calm. This means environments that are decadent and display a large degree of disorder and decay and regeneration. It could be a 19th century Chinese free-port in Terry and the Pirates, or a fantasy setting in Roxanne (both prev.)

The cycles of life and death that are strong and fertile have religious connotations (see prev.) The rituals of fertility also implicate the underworld (see Noto, 'Red Lace').

All this is rugged strength and without strength what is the point of life? The transhumanists are entering a parallel universe that pleases the mind - all illusory. The cities in Anissimov's blog resemble the Arabs' Neom city planned for the desert. Oases and places of rustic repose have no place in their future.

Desert nomads and caravanserai obviously have no place in that future and the reason is it's an illusion of the convinced brains of acolytes of the mirror of illusions. The inert mind as opposed to the active body. But, as has previously been said, only the bodies of animals and plants in activity can select appropriate genes. Bodies are proportionate, brains are not. The human genome is random logic, like a computer.

The body is built as an antagonistic system of muscles attached to skeleton (see prev.) The balanced pairs of muscles attach to the proportionate bones. Proportion in the medieval/heroic worlds is the ultimate; body as against brain. Action and feuding; disorder and psychic strength.

The medieval ages were also the ages of heroic proportion, as Hampton Court attests. A world without proportion is simply an unbalanced nightmare of rogue computers (shades of Ellison's I Have no Mouth). The mouth and the throat are classically proportioned expressions of humanity (in song, breath).

Their view of the future is in fact a view of the city devoid of the physical reality of country strength (see P71). The theatricality of life has its origins in an Attic wood where satyrs roam and festive maidens prance in rites of rustic vintage. Noto ('Red Lace' prev) is a damn sight more realistic in this regard than the brain-obsessed lunatics of a hyper-realist future of mind-numbing illusion!

Hyborian Bridge 199

 

"A fellow with hate is better help in danger than the most trustworthy friend" (Roxanne book 2, Letendre, Loisel)

HB198 notes towards the end Michelle Roquebrune's favourite draftsman was Dürer, and the role of draftsmanship in storytelling us also very obvious, as here with the flowing grace of Loisel's line depicting the tree-death of a lost land.

Superb draftsmanship often has a ramshackle quality that can hint at sordid debauchery (Egon Schiele, HB198). The body and natural form echo one another in gnarled and twisted shapes; the fertility of shapes that match and fit one another.

While no one is saying Dürer is as debauched as Picasso or Schiele, linework so ramshackle is like the portrayal of fertility in nature. One sees in Dürer both the idealism of the Renaissance and the Gothic underworld of the medieval.

The power of nature comes from feuding, and this liveliness affects the psyche. Since the Renaissance, the scientific order has overwhelmingly crushed what was inspirational to the old-time artists.

This dichotomy of nature is the land of death and revival (see above picture). Without a type of debauched fertility, there can be no revival, only a sterile and lacklustre place fit for zombies (see also Noto's 'Red Lace'.)

The most clear idea of what I mean came this week with the news that Modi had finally caved-in to the demands of small-farmers, and repealed the 'free-market legislation for selling agricultural produce (see prev.)

"I apologize to India and with a true and pure heart we were not able to convince farmers"

Fair dos to him, albeit that several hundred died of the prolonged standoff and harsh ground conditions. The farmers stand for a system that is not just economic, but is strongly ecological as well as supplying economy to the farmholders.

They is to say (as previously expressed), the system is inefficient and there is wastage en route to markets. Waste rots and becomes an ecological product. Modern capitalism is based on sterile monoculture which is efficient but loses fertility of the soil and creates toxic waste-products that cannot be recycled (see Iowa pig farms; sewage runoff in English rivers prev.)

Ecology is a type of economic inefficiency, and this is what the small Indian farmer stands for. As the Minnesota Institute of Environment has said (prev), when ramshackle ecosystems are destabilised by development, pests and viruses are also disturbed from their hosts.

A stable ecosystem is able to harbour pests that do not become toxic generally. India,  compared to China, has vastly more of this stability and, of course, the toxic plague we currently endure cane from the latter.

Stability is ramshackle and has a type of debauched quality of raw fertility (see pulp examples in HB194); this is inimical to the standards of hygiene and efficiency that both East and West now espouse. Modi has come to know wisdom that the like of Belsonaro might eventually follow.

This language of debauchery may jar the ears of some, but it is said with a 'pure heart' to quote the Indian premier. There is no escaping it, and those who attempt it are merely prolonging the agony of a diseases planet.

I recently revisited the 70s TV series Survivors (poss prev), and in the episode'Law and Order' they have a house-party in which Greg and Jen discuss fertility cults.

They say something like blood fertilizes in rituals when satyrs roamed in ancient days, and blood of virgins rained (they were in their cups). Of course, this was to counterpoint the bloody end of Wendy, an English rose who is molested following the party.

Being 70s TV nothing is spelt out, but the hint of debauchery is plainly there. The reason it's there is because these post-apocalyptic survivors are living off the land and relying on the fertility of the land, its animals and plants. In a fertile situation there will be rites of fertility, dancing round maypoles, young kids and sexual symbolism.

Modern societies treat this as taboo while having a dark net. These things can't be hidden because they're out there in nature. It's the Cider With Rosie syndrome, where sheep-shagging and incest aren't unheard of.

A sterile order (of economic efficiency) corrupts these natural rhythms (the profane serpent); it's impossible to deny what is there in the natural order. You only have to look at the linework of Dürer or Egon Schiele (or Loisel.)

This active world of lively linework harbours the expressive psyche they is frequently diminished by modern establishments. I picked-on Survivors because it's a deliberately primitive setting that clearly harks back to ancient traditions and the archaic satyrs of wood and myth.

Where situations are deliberately simplified, the filming is much more fantasy-oriented, even if not to the extent of having zombies (which was what Is McCulloch went on to do in Italian cinema!)

The same I would say is true of Jean-Luc Godard's films (prev): they are simplified and cut to the bone to spell out his personal vision (Carpenter's budget horror too). This parallels Michelle Roquebrune, who said she "draws inside her head."

Perhaps the French are better at this but, in any event, the starkness of primitive fantasy is a counter to the complexity and obfuscation of modernity. I personally don't watch TV, but obviously know of series such as The Wire and so forth. These highly realistic 'procedural' shows can only obfuscate further what is a procedural reality (of talk as opposed to action, or vision.)

What I'm really getting at is one can only rebel in primitive circumstances. The 60s hippies were rebels and were known for debauchery and psychedelia. If they'd also been farmers perhaps history might have been different.

Incidentally, the Survivors party dancing scene is worth commenting on as the casual expression mitigates against routine, whereas dance-shows are now all routine! The point is, only an experienced pro can express a routine because they are so familiar. It's the Bruce Lee syndrome that a learnt routine is not expression in-the-moment. 

It seems like a small point, but it points to the diminished psyche; Survivors is a somewhat courtly variant of barn-dance coupling, expressionist and low-key.

Hyborian Bridge 198

 Since all sword and sorcery ultimately comes form Howard as the originator of the genre, here's a quote from book 2 of graphic series Roxanne by the French pair of Letendre (writer) and Loisel (artist).

Magic is tearing Akbar apart..seducing us..filling us with illusion..only to better enslave us..

Sorcerers seduce, and in so doing befuddle and obfuscate with signs and signals and incantations. is it possible that the more signs and signals and incantations the more likely it is we live inside a sorcerous illusion? Literally just driving down a double-track highway exposes one to more signs and signals than the entire medieval-Christian era! 

Of course, some take less care of these matters than others.

CAN'T GETCHA OUT OF MY MIND

Linda and her mates careering carelessly down the freeway are obviously not that bothered about the modern infrastructure they happen to be using.

This might seem a pop-pugilist's point but is actually of ultimate interest. The infrastructure is all about money (interest rates zzz); capital finances infrastructure and infrastructure is information (algorithm) or ones and zeros. It's clear that the more elaborate the infrastructure becomes (signs and signals), the more it resembles the internet. Next comes 'the internet of things'..then of people.

The problem with that wholesale modern operation is 'the internet of things' graduates to ones and zeros. Everything becomes nothing (the vanishing point of technique) and at the same time convincing to the eye. Capitalism in short, is hyper-realist and full-throttle like the sun beating down on a desert highway down the gay way of modernity.

A car driving down a highway has that vague sense of nothingness owing to the constant presence of the vanishing point. However, it's never more than an illusion that doesn't intrude on your reality - psyche, physique.

The way I'd put it is: money has no value, only things have value (cars, fur coats). Similarly, the internet has no value, but the modern order of severe logic is topsy-turvy: logic and straight-lines rule, while balance and proportion are lost.

The modern order is increasingly made by programmers and made of programs. We may not realize it because, well, the world of logical signals is very convincing to the eye!

A photograph is convincing because after all it's a true observer's eye-view, but if everything is from an observer's perspective there is no balance and proportion.

I was reading of Michelle Roquebrune (the painter/widow of Sean Connery, see P146), who says she is self-taught and in portraits "expresses features with line and colour". Although she can use photographs for ensemble pieces, she simplifies form and crops to fit shapes.

She cited the cloisonné of Gaugain and the arch-draftsman Schiele as major influences. All that you could say is to do with balance and proportion as opposed to perspective observation by an individual. It frees the spirit; it is free-form. 

An analogy is with Raducanu's free-form action that is uninhibited by training/routine (see prev Bruce Lee, Jeet Kune Do.)

A photograph - or any technical artefact like a microscope - is inhibitted by perspective observation. It's true in the logical universe, but has no uninhibited expression of free-form action.

The trouble is, this can only occur outside of a photographic world, inside the world of balance and proportion. DNA is known photographically, not in terms of balance and proportion.

They are only known by the end-poduct since that is physique and the accompanying expressive psyche. The finished product is artistically expressive, while the photographic 'illusions' are not. The information contained in DNA is only relevant in terms of activity of the body-in-motion, as previously noted. 

The notion of DNA as a panacea of cures is an illusion of the inert labs of acolytes. The illusion is really that psyche and action do not count, whereas that is the actual reality of any natural situation. The entire universe of things that are self-activating and expressive psyche is dismissed by modernity.

The real problem with this is that only things that grow and live and die can revive. The entire area of revival from the underworld of decadence is lacking from a modern perspective.

Roquebrune made the offhand comment that paintings are collectible because "they don't rot like tomatoes." It's a truism, yet that whole universe of living action is denied by a science of inert 'facts'. Where there exist foul-smelling waters (of Maetterlinck, prev), there persist natural forces of revival.

This could easily implicate the symmetrical feuding of the medieval era. Dürer, from the end of that era, in fact is Roquebrune's favourite draftsman! The dark aspects of the life of knightly action (Connery?) and the psyche of a priest are the counters to the sorcerous illusion of a logical order.

To every thing a time (the tragedy of the suspended animation of Michael Schumacher), and the timing has to be obeyed in the natural order of events. Hence, psyche and activity are renewed.

Hyborian Bridge 197

The unreal nature of the lyre has the ability to take us to places of darkness that are charmingly upbeat. You hear this in the classic R&B of Lloyd Price ('Stagger Lee', prev), and equally in the one-woman wonder called Joan Armatrading.

HELP YOURSELF 

The night, after all, us not intrinsically dismal since it has the neon of stars.

BACK TO THE NIGHT

On the track 'How Cruel', Armatrading notes that she has no control over the prejudicial views of others over her skin and sex, be they black, white, male or female or a mix of them all ('Rosie').

So far so lesbian, you might say, but it's noteworthy how 'fringe' people are often more keenly afflicted by truth than is the fact-dominated mainstream. They are living nature in-the-raw to a degree, and this is even more true of the fantasy figures like Red Sonja who delve into an underworld of decadence and revival - see Noto's 'Red Lace', prev.

Decadence is almost the missing link in the modern world in that nature in the raw is a ramshackle tapestry of tangled-up-in-green furtive activity.

Whether you take a furtive scene from Terry and the Pirates, or a furtive scene from some Hyborian city-state, much the same holds true. It's not only Darkwood that is furtive in these adventurous stories of the older world.

The tapestry of fairly furtive activity has a freedom of psyche we can only dream of (and do). Where the psyche is free, it can effect action, so the activity of the body comes into play. Could it be, then, that modern straight-line order is a way of inhibiting free psyche? The last psychedelic era was the 60s which of course also had an ethic of brazen bodily expression.

Classically-speaking, when the underwear is on show there are usually hints of the underworld (see HB194). The idea of raw sex or free expression is often linked to dark forces, since the fertile area is the soil where things take root.  

The carbon and nitrogen cycles are nothing if not frenetically active and almost diabolical! Dark forces within fantasy are easy to detect (from the pulp-genesis of Francis Stevens), queasily erotic and laden with pungent jungle aromas.

In short, an active universe - of the body - is bound to encounter the dark forces that circulate the globe . While scientists are busily studying the intimacies of DNA, logic dictates that only the mechanisms of the body-in-motion can select which DNA is ultimately useful in an illogical situation of action (as opposed to an inert situation in a lab - see P193).

DNA is the study of false information that resides in the copies and recopies and miscopies of various sequences. It has the logic of random information, without the illogic of a moving body in action. Action is the product of antagonistic muscle-pairs (see prev.)

If the natural order is antagonistic and tangled-up with the dark underworld of decadence and revival, then the study of DNA is the biggest red herring of them all. It merely invites a logical stance where none exists! Highly hermetic.

Natural law, in other words, has a feudal origin of death and resurrection as is common to the beliefs of pre-industrial societies (see Yaple on the spouses of Ishtar, prev.)

Basically, all this has to do with the innate fertility of Earth and the underworld, whereas inductive science is to do with all that is sterile in a logical order (of DNA etc.)

This world is innately ramshackle; the extent to which order can be applied is strictly limited. In terms of nature this is very obvious in the balance of predator-prey in an environment of active pursuits.

Ian Botham (prev) has recently taken-out a lawsuit against the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) on a document it released on baiting electric fences to fry alive foxes and badgers, which prey on ground-nesters.

Although the document was since taken-down, Botham found the cruelty intolerable.

On top of that, the notion of protecting birds without envisaging also the tangled-up environment that thrives on balance is inimical to natural law. That feudal state of affairs is something the anti-shooting brigade doesn't like to know about, so they take the nuclear option of annihilating what they consider 'pests'.

Protecting species is not necessarily being green, when what counts is protecting the ramshackle environment where predator and prey can exist in a balanced state. This is exactly what gamekeepers with guns are there for; they know the territory; their experience is pure and free of dogma. They have primitive tradition behind them.

Natural law dictates those who advocate unnatural methods of extermination face natural justice. This would be the (feudal) law of the just war, or what one could term a crusade.

This must involve a psychic revival, since that is the whole implication of what has been dubbed 'primitive religion'. The more advanced we become, the more sterile and electrical our methods. This decline is due to lack of strength, which comes from earth - the underworld of revival (see Noto, Red Sonja.)

There are four medieval elements - earth, water, sky, fire - and of these the modern world lives by fire. Forgotten are the ancient symmetries that occur in woods of ochre with shafts of rare sunlight or silent moon against the owlish reverie.

The brilliance of the sun is illusory without the corresponding depths and reflectivity of water, cool blue of sky and revival of earth (see Francis Stevens, Claimed). Without revival, the meaning of facts is eternally illusory.

As has been noted before of that most questioning of Renaissance artists, Dürer, the symmetrical feuding of the medieval era cannot easily be discounted by the straight-line logic of a new order that convinces the ego of acolytes of a sorcerous illusion.

Conversion of Paul

Hyborian Bridge 196

Planetary, Island Zero (prev)

She had seen it many times in her mind's eye as she saw it now from the high hill in the yellow light of sunset that turned every pool of the marshes to shining glass. The long causeway to the castle stretched out narrowly between swamps and reeds up to the gate of that grim and eery fortress set alone among the quicksands. This same castle in the marshes, seen at evening from the high hilltop, had haunted her dreams for many nights now. (Jirel of Joiry, Hellsgarde, CL Moore.)

The dreamland of fertile areas is as ancient as human psyche, which stretches back to the dawn of time ('We are five-billion year old carbon', Woodstock.) Psychic rebellion can only occur in tactile situations of ancient lineage - and these are the ones most at threat from an electric-green future.

In the countryside at large, tactile areas are needed for activity - that is, for animals - low-living and furtive. Man manages the territory and - as cricketer turned countryman Ian Botham has said before,

Nature does best when it is managed by pragmatists who live in the countryside. Every farmer and gamekeeper knows that it is full of unavoidable choices. We either have fewer foxes or fewer curlews. Fewer crows or fewer songbirds. (DT)

Those who abhor hunting also discount the predator-prey relationship which has to balance (the greatest game of all would be a T-Rex, a typical staple of adventure/sci-fi/pulp.)

The feuding of creatures is held in balance within a tangled-up-in-green environment of continual regeneration and decay. This is seen most clearly in peat moor; partially decayed plant matter held in water-logged soil.

Peat retains water, and the sphagnum moss terrain contains centuries-old nutrients. Typical moors will have not just grouse for hunting but sheep for grazing and possibly deer.

The diversity of balanced landscapes is echoed by the traditional mixed farm of livestock - which fertilizes the ground with manure - crops and fallow fields.

Like peat, manure in soil is humus, or rotted organic matter that holds rain and nutrients. This archaic cycle of decay and regeneration is under increasing threat from a political-green agenda that seems to involve planting trees, growing crops hydroponically and feeding cows seaweed (in sterile sheds, natch.)

As I tend to say, this is a monocultural future. Tactile situations of ancient fertile lineage imply feuding because the balance of predator-prey must be maintained. Again, as Botham says,

The press release (of lobbyists) says that driven grouse-shooting should be replaced by 'simulsted shooting' which would be a 'viable' alternative for the rural economy. But why should people travel for hours to the remote uplands to shoot clay pigeons when they could do that on the outskirts of any big city? Why would owners spend millions on he upkeep of our heather-clad hills? 

Hunting is active adventure, and adventure takes place in tactile situations of ancient areas - jungle, swamp, moors.

Nature is engaged in ongoing feuding, and this is what moderns of the likes of Chris Packham (prev) cannot abide. These types are busy creating/sponsoring 'smart-infrastructure' where no one need be different, all eat seaweed-fed Macburgers and drive plug-in autos.

Unfortunately, that future is not green, it's sterile. It would be an adventure-free world in that all adventure - from Enid Blyton up - relies on wilderness areas of ancient and cyclical fertility.

What I really mean to imply is that romance is highly related to decadence in the form of dark alleyways bordering grimy docks with the hint of sleaze.

Decadent areas are highly related to the irregular linework of the fertile and the decaying. It's the rich tapestry of the majority of pulps from the 30s on, obviously including Howard's Hyboria.

This was brought home to me by reading Milton Caniff's Terry's and the Pirates. Set in colonial British China, the main theatres of action are the free-trade ports such as Shanghai, Hong Kong and all places in-between.

British law should not be confused with government as these places were relatively self-governing. Caniff was interested in pirates of all descriptions, from submerged European scallywags to glamorous femme fatales and the notorious Dragon Lady.

The decadent ramshackle of his settings is caught in the irregular and shadowy linework of wood beams and uneven surfaces.

Being blunt, 'infrastructure' is a recent invention in that the Romano-British infrastructure of empire mainly consisted of roads and the odd watchtower! What 'they' mean is something that is run by the head as opposed to the active body.

It's worth investigating this more closely, since without the domination of the head the settings are not arranged so much by thought as by happenstance. This is typically seen in traditional Chinese hutongs and the general higgledy-piggledy appearance.

That state of affairs is economically inefficient but ecologically efficient in that the state of untidiness and general mess is healthy and cyclical. Whereas moderns are told to be sterile, the presence of germs is strengthening.

In other words, the traditional environment is green whereas the 'smart-infrastructure'is merely sterile. This isn't the only difference, since a ramshackle, fairly filthy environment carries not just odors but a psychic sense of calm (similar to the way one goes for a walk in the woods.)

An environment that is the creation not of conscious thought but of active needs is tactile and stimulating to the mind. In a word, the active environment is also home to the adventurer.

Because there is much less order in the sense of government, the interactions between people tend to be much more feudal. The illustration above shows Connie's first meeting with Big Stoop, where a couple of European scallywags are pelting him with stones. Connie quickly puts a stop to this and sends them packing.

The casual nature of 'law and order' is carried throughout the strip and is typical of 30s pulps. The individual has much more power to effect change without any interference from 'above', be they Chinese as with Connie, or European adventurers.

In other words, the psyche is much more independent and free-thinking in a state of decadent ramshackle. That state is more ecological than it is merely economic.

What we face in the modern order is the exact opposite of that; what we are told is green is simply increased efficiency via smart-infrastructure (of the economy.) There is nothing ramshackle or leftover.

The effect on the psyche is inhibiting; one cannot argue with 'them' since the constant repetition of the words 'smart-infrastructure'is like a mantra for the nouveau-green agenda.

Of course, the agenda is purely electrical, since that's what a smart-infrastructure is. This in turn means it becomes numerical via algorithms. The plot is to say that algorithms are bound to promote greenness (since they're smart) when in fact they merely promote sterility.

Pictorial 196

 In terms of pulps, nothing could be cooler than Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. The alternate comic, yes, but also the film as shot by John Carpenter. I'm talking Christine, the nostalgia-rage auto that picked-up Pete Cunningham (Keith Gordon) to the beat of Buddy Holly's

NOT FADE AWAY

Carpenter's drizzle-infested garage wasteland reeks of dinosaurs. It's not that you literally see them, they are everywhere in the sodden, post-industrial landscape of those seeking a return to lost glories. (All Carpenter's films are nostalgic cos he realizes how bad things are.)

Instead of more and more metal (that transmogrifies to plastics) a return to the bone-fields of the Pleistocene and the literal origins of fossil fuel. The landscape, in short, is

BAD TO THE BONE (Thorogood is 80s but harks back to 50s boogie)

Modernists abhor fossils, but remnants are real and harbor real dreams of shadowy love amongst the leafy equatorial lost jungles.

The fact that Christine's love for Pete is nostalgic is the reality that goes against modernist delusions. Nostalgia has the watery infestations of jungle dewdrops and, in a word, the fertility that modernism denies.

Fetid jungles are real - and harbor feral beasts - whereas the plastic-electric future 'they' promise is less than an illusion. It is an evil that has to be hunted down, as Christine hunts down those who would harm her love.

This reality is shown by two ilos that have previously appeared on these unhallowed pages.

Jaime Hernandez Mechanics from Love and Rockets

Tim Conrad The Black Stone from SS 17

Fertility is the province of empirical tradition, where customs and beliefs accrue from practices in-the-field (where ploughing in a line is not the province of GPS software.)

The power of a swamp is that carbon is kept and enabled to cycle in justifiable ways that attract different species and allows them to flourish, each to their own.

Differences flourish when the power of fertility is honoured by lore and empirical tradition. This s is the world of romance that allows feuding to occur through the power of differences.

Joe Manchin on his riverboat is displaying this Fenimore Cooper lost world of greenery that hovers beyond any political manifesto of numbers and carbon-neutrality (see prev.) The wet peat of a wild moor is vastly more productive than any political agenda (let alone the dollar-fixation of Biden.) 

In Christine, 'wet Pete' is given a tough ride by his domineering parents, before his ancient automobile forges him into manhood with true - and deadly - love. Move forward to Musk's sterile electrical delusion, and we see a psychic diminution.

The psyche needs tactile situations - green fronds of ancient vintage - and it can only get this from the fertile areas, the swamps of yore. The problem of the modern scene is that domination of the head is highly convincing to the ego, and it creates a heady delusion (numbers, algorithms.) But only the active forces, the fertile areas, empower the psyche and allow it to dream.

The dream, the unreal, penetrates reality through the fertile swamps of past vistas. The unreal (the animated line) produces an active terrain of putrid growth, while the 'realism'of an electric-green future is a mental infection spread by Greta-Muckeros and their gullible followers.

Tribal or free-form action - song, dance - cannot fall for these mental illusions of the modern order. As in the film, the love of Christine - of the 50s that harboured psychic rebellion - is stronger than the domination of sterile normality that passes for reality.

CHRISTINE SHOWS HER HUMAN SIDE

Pictorial 195

 Talking of hides..

Why should picturesque old-timers with tomahawks be a better breed than modern fashionistas? In short, what makes one person wrong and another one right?

For a start, I'm not writing against any one person so much as modernism, and the things that are said in the name of modernism. I take succour from old-stuff that is pre-modern, of a rebellious spirit, so the question is really, 'What is modernism?

As The Light says, it's the electricalization of reality. The reason for that is that the head (of acolytes) is attracted to ones and zeros as it is satisfying to the ego (algorithm.)

With the ego satisfied, the modernists are naturally inclines to think they're right, even when they're totally wrong. Electricity is the electric-green (clean) future where there is no hassle with dirt.

From beach cleaners in Swansea to food growers producing crops without a scrap of soil, Joanna hopes to prove there is still lots of positive action that can make a real difference to global warming. (Lumley&Co on TV prog)

Clearly that's not green, since the soil is where riches both material and organic come from, the underworld and the great recycling basin of nitrogen and carbon (along with sea and sky, see prev.)

But the cycling of carbon isn't necessarily a global-warming issue. Mixed farms cycle manure into crops and have fallow years for the field to build fertility.

Fertility is a cyclical issue (see prev on Minnesota Institute of Environment) the enemy of which is monoculture. Fertility encompasses dirt, as well as cleanliness or regeneration - as in compost - while a monoculture is just sterile junk that is economically efficient.

As has been noted of the Indian small- farmers, economic inefficiency is the same as ecological efficiency, or fertility (vegetable litter). This is the area that is covered by Minnesota's Institute of Environment.

Ecological stability maintains fertility and also maintains pests within the host population (which has defences.) The basic point is that dirt is inefficient for an economic monoculture, but maintains health and fertility.

The cycles of materials maintain purity and strength, but that's not how moderns think. Only an electric-green future to them is clean. This is the ego talking that is convinced by meta-calculations; the head as opposed to the tactile body.

Within this meta-world exists the profane serpent that is simply the technological corruption of natural rhythms (such as 'clean meat' and gene-editing.) The world of dirty French women - like Claire Bretécher, prev - and old-style hippies in electricity-less farmhouses - see Caza - is the world of natural rhythms and song cycles.

From this world is derived empirical tradition.

I think it's a misrepresentation of the Cherokee people or Native Americans in general. It just depicts them as this kind of caveman-type people who aren't intellectual. (Baseball player Ryan Helmsley of the Cherokee speaking about Atlanta Braves, DT)

That's right because empirical tradition isn't a product of the head only; it's a product of activity in the field amid free-expression of the psyche.

The feudal world of rough justice has no place for modernists who have to talk as if all are one, when in fact only nature is one.

Nature is one because it is composed of differences, and differences have similarities of line. Claire Bretécher speaks this language, but Greta Thunberg doesn't. Despite her inimicism to politicians, she speaks their language.

We say no to more blah blah blah, no more explanation of people and nature and the planet. No more whatever the fuck they are doing inside there. (Greta Thunberg at Glasgow)

That is to say, the language of insults as opposed to the language of actively living with the divisions of nature and gaining the song of life from this experience.

This is the old-style body-positivism represented by Hawk-eye and the Old West. Only nature has the physical presence to activate the psyche with the intensity of experience that is the origin of culture.

Those like Thunberg - or indeed 'Muckeros' (the combined Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos) - are heading into the land of the convinced ego; of ones and zeros or the dual-note of Jirel Meets Magic (prev.)

The Greta-Muckeros will end up with an electrical future that complements the head, which is where they're coming from. Away from this ego- dominated carnival of clowns exists free-form action of the Raducanu variety; excellence of grace, unrestrained coordinated movements.

This is the area of active strength which spokespeople for American Indians seem inclined to forget. If the world of the ego is highly convincing and numerical - spot the percentages in Thunberg's speech - the world of communal action has the unreality of dance and song.

The unreal penetrates the real with the line that connects us to nature (like Pavlova's Dying Swan). An active society has a nascent feudalism, whether it's the historical dances of the Bolshoi or a high school class. Rivalries that are allowed to exist can be creatively explosive.

The basic problem is that a world of the head (ego) occupies the area of empirical reason that tends to convince with numbers. An active society occupies the area of empirical tradition that is convinced only by activities in-the-field, which then influence their behaviour, customs.

This basic dichotomy is pointed-up nicely in the classic 67 film To Sir With Love, where the entire plot comprises feuding- both within the class of unruly delinquents, and between the class and the latest sheep-to-the-slaughter in the new guy, played by Poitier.

Despite the best efforts of the ringleaders, the new guy's rigorous standards of truth in education begin to wear down resistance. The turning point comes when he declares, 

We will talk about life. Love, marriage, death, sex, rebellion.. anything.

Now, what Poitier is really saying here is that education need not be all facts and empirical reason - it can also be empirical tradition..which is just living. The tribal aspects of life are also there, with a baby in a crib.

The gritty traditions are a factor, and when a trouble-maker asks the teacher about some pictures he saw of semi-nude blacks in the jungle, he responds that they are the product of climate, of custom.

He means empirical tradition, which is the way of all active peoples.

In short, western education can be the bane of modernity. Those of the Greta-Muckeros are explicitly bound to empirical reason, because that is the reality of the ego. The percentages they chant, and the carbon-neutral agenda are well-meaning but wrong-headed.

Life in-the-field is not a numerical game. For example, gamekeepers are wont to burn heather on grouse-moors to encourage breeding. This has come under criticism that wet peat - a carbon-sink - is being dried, and calls have been issued for a ban on seasonal burning.

However, grouse-hunting is an active country pursuit and gamekeepers are running the sport, not governments or campaigners. The idea of burning is to maintain a state of balance of populations and gamekeepers are skilled at assessing situations while campaigners are not.

There are two ways of looking at things. One is there are predators and prey and an active state of balance is required. This impacts on the scenery and moors. The other is that Man should leave nature be and at most plant trees.

The first attitude is that of the regeneration of fertility from seasonal cycles, from the mixture of crops and herds and fallow fields. The second attitude is that of a carbon-neutral society where everything is electrical and algorithmic (numbers.)

But, as I've repeatedly said, the carbon-based problems are monocultural, where the emphasis is on sterile efficiency and not fertile cycling. Grass foraging herbivores that are fed hay are not methane-polluters. 

The convictions of carbon-zero folk disregard the fertile area of carbon-cycling that incorporates herbivores, crops and fallow spaces.

The carbon-zero agenda is an ego- centric one and essentially a product of empirical reason. For those in-the-field, none of the technological advantages they accrue can escape the fact that by-and-large their yearly activities are the product of empirical tradition. 

And that is where feuding and tribal origins are to be found. Differences that attract despite everything. The psychic affinity of differences.

TO SIR WITH LOVE (spot the red dinosaurs)