HUXLEY on PACIFISM.

This article is reproduced from: http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/people/pp-huxley2.html

Ends and Means

The blocked road
If what you want to achieve is good, does it matter if the things you do to achieve it aren't good? That problem - 'do the ends justify the means?' - has been debated by thinking human beings for a very long time. Aldous Huxley used it to provide a title for 'Ends and Means', a collection of essays about us: human beings and their behaviour.

This book was published in 1937, when it was clear to many worried people that the world was heading towards another world war. Aldous Huxley was a lifelong pacifist, but it was in the 1930s that he was a particularly active one. He spoke at public meetings and debates, organised events, wrote pamphlets (you can read one on this website), and joined the PPU's campaign to put an end to war. He was already a famous writer; and 'Ends and Means' sold 6,000 copies within days of publication. It is still respected today.

As Huxley says at the beginning of 'Ends and Means', most people in our civilisation have agreed on what they want: a world of 'liberty, peace, justice and brotherly love'. But what they haven't been able to agree on is how to get it. The rest of his book is about why that is so and what might be done about it.

There is a whole chapter on the subject of war alone. That's not surprising: 'Every road towards a better state of society is blocked, sooner or later, by war, by threats of war, by preparations for war'. Now, in the 21st century, the roads are still blocked. It's time we paid attention to Aldous Huxley's wake-up call.

A great deal of what he says is either still true, or prophetic: he wouldn't be surprised by the state of the world today, though he would certainly be saddened by it. But there's still time to learn from the man called 'one of the great culture-heroes' of his time. 

Here is a summary of what Aldous Huxley wrote about war in 'Ends and Means'.




The nature of war
'War is a purely human phenomenon'. What's more, 'man is unique in organising the mass murder of his own species'. Some people still suggest that war is 'nature's way' of culling our species. The fittest will survive, and so therefore will the human race. Nonsense, says Huxley: 'war tends to eliminate the young and strong'; there's no evidence to show that war-like people are the ones who survive. 'War is not a law of nature, nor even a law of human nature. It exists because men wish it to exist....It is enormously difficult for us to change our wishes in this matter; but the enormously difficult is not the impossible.'

Sadly, all western civilised societies, so far, have been warlike. Huxley suggests that this tendency began when groups of people gathered round leaders, mostly men, who wanted domination and even a kind of life after death: the hero's 'immortal fame'.

But it's interesting, Huxley remarks, to see how differently various civilisations have regarded war. 'Europeans have always worshipped the military hero' and have found 'justifications for national aggression'. Not so the Chinese, who aspired to 'an ordered and harmonious society' for many centuries. 'It is one of the tragedies of history that the Westernisation of China should have meant the progressive militarisation of a culture which, for nearly 3,000 years, preached the pacifist ideal.' In India, however, Buddhists still learn and teach 'ahimsa': 'doing no harm' to living beings. 'Alone of all the great world religions, Buddhism made its way without persecution, censorship or inquisition. Its record is enormously superior to that of Christianity, which made its way among people wedded to militarism.' 




Some causes of war
Huxley suggests a number of reasons why people have wanted war to exist. For some, it has provided a purpose which their lives lacked. Others, tempted by crime, have found the lawlessness of war attractive. For many it has, quite simply, made life more interesting. But these are the reasons of non-combatant civilians; and they belong to the past, when wars were carried out by relatively small professional armies on, mostly, distant battlefields. Armies in the field and non-combatants back home were not yet threatened by the weapon that changed war for good: the bomber aircraft. 

Nowadays the causes of war affect both soldiers and civilians. Nationalism, for one. People 'like to have excuses to feel pride and hatred'; military leaders like to have excuses to use their men and machines. The making and owning of armaments itself leads to war, creating 'fear, suspicion, resentment and hatred' between countries. Such feelings are also aroused by people's desire to spread and defend political - or religious - ideals.

Politically powerful minorities, pursuing their own interests, also take their countries into war. They may be looking for new territory on which to build, or for raw materials (precious stones, minerals, oil, trees) to exploit. But the most dangerous minority interest is, again, the arms trade. To make and increase their profits, arms makers and dealers may be tempted to do whatever they can to ensure that wars take place - and that disarmament never does. 'What is needed,' says Aldous Huxley firmly, 'is the complete abolition of the arms industry'. And, he says, it is possible: simply, 'abolition will come when the majority wish it to come.'

Which means we, the citizens, have to think about our own attitudes. 'The manufacturers of armaments are not the only merchants of death. To some extent we all are.' In western democracies, who votes for governments dependent on arms trade taxes? The people do. Who consents to government's 'economic, political and military imperialism'? The people do. That's not all. 'Even in so far as we behave badly in private life we are all doing our bit to bring the next war nearer.' The rich and powerful among us, of course, do more than a bit: 'the peace of the world has frequently been endangered in order that they might grow a little richer.'



The experiment that failed
The League of Nations was founded in 1919, after the First World War. Its aim was to preserve international peace and security, and it hoped to do that by preventing disputes, or at any rate settling them peaceably, and promoting disarmament. In 1937, Aldous Huxley wrote sadly that the high hopes placed in the League of Nations had been disappointed. He suggests several reasons why the League failed to achieve world peace. One was that the USA refused to join, and Russia and 'enemy' nations (such as Germany) were at first kept out. But its chief fault, in Huxley's view, was that the only eligible members were communities which had their own armies: it was a league of societies which were organised for war, and as such a military league. He also criticised the ways in which the League operated, including providing outside military help to a victim of aggression. 

'No government,' says Huxley, 'has the right gratuitously to involve its subjects in war.' Indeed: 'War is so radically wrong that any international agreement which provides for the extension of hostilities from a limited area to the whole world is manifestly based on unsound principles. Modern war destroys with the maximum of efficiency and the maximum of indiscrimination, and therefore entails the commission of injustices far more numerous and far worse than any it is intended to redress.' 

'Those who prepare for war,' he says grimly, 'in due course get the war they prepare for.'

(The League of Nations was replaced after the Second World War by the United Nations. It could be said that hopes have been disappointed there, too.) 

An international police force? A misleading term, says Huxley. 'The police act with precision; they go out and arrest the guilty person. But nations and groups of nations act through their armed forces, which can only act with the maximum of imprecision, killing, maiming, starving and ruining millions of human beings, of whom the overwhelming majority have committed no crime of any sort.' He, perhaps not consciously, foresees the time when people refer to 'collateral damage' instead of 'civilian deaths', or use such contradictions in terms as 'peace-keeping troops': 'We shall never learn to think correctly unless we call things by their proper names. The international police force would not be a police force. It would be a force for perpetrating indiscriminate massacres.' In any case: 'How is such a force to be recruited? How organised? How armed? Where located? Who is to decide when it is to be used and against whom? To whom will it owe allegiance and how is its loyalty to be guaranteed? How can nations be persuaded to contribute men and materials to it? Should their contributions be equal? If not, and a few great powers supply the major part, what is to prevent those powers from establishing a military tyranny over the whole world?' The idea of such a force, says Huxley with scorn, 'combines all the moral and political vices of militarism with all the hopeless impracticability of a Utopian dream'. (But despite Huxley's warnings, the world's states have chosen to place their faith in international forces, deployed all over the world and in some places for decades. We have also seen the development of poorly-controlled local militias moving in to carry out policing functions with violence. appalling brutality and little respect for human rights. And 'military tyranny'? - for all the talk of good versus evil, and of 'humanitarian' aims, that tyranny is there.) Peaceful settlements that last? Huxley has no doubt: 'War cannot be stopped by more war. All that more war can do is widen the area of destruction and place new obstacles in the way of reaching a just and humane settlement of international disputes.' In Huxley's day, just as in ours, procedures and skills for negotiation, co-operation and reconciliation existed. But, as he says, 'a machine may be exquisitely ingenious and of admirable workmanship, but if people refuse to use it, or use it badly, it will be almost or completely useless. This is the case with the machinery of peaceful change and international co-operation. Wherever "national honour" and "vital interests" were concerned, governments have preferred to threaten or actually make use of violence. Even in cases where they have consented to employ the machinery of peaceful settlement, they have sometimes displayed such bad will that the machine has been unable to function.' 'Wherever we turn we find that the real obstacles to peace are human will and feeling, human convictions, prejudices, opinions. If we want to get rid of war we must get rid first of all of its psychological causes. Only when this has been done will the rulers of the nations even desire to get rid of the economic and political causes.' Nonviolence The chapter of 'Ends and Means' called 'War' ends with a description of how nationalism, communism, religion and other 'idolatries' can give people a misleading sensation of meaning and purpose. People have been ready, as a result, mistakenly 'to make sacrifices, accept hardships, display courage and fortitude - and indeed all the virtues except the primary ones: love and awareness'. Without these crucial qualities - genuine humaneness and caring - we are doomed to stay on the wrong road, the road that leads to violence and war. In his next chapter, 'Individual Work for Reform', Huxley makes it clear that a peaceful future depends on what private individuals - you, me, us - do on our own, or, better still, in groups. He begins with a reminder: 'the only effective methods for carrying out large-scale social reforms are nonviolent methods. Violence produces the results of violence. The attempt to impose reforms by violent methods is doomed to failure'. In fact, 'society cannot become better unless peace can be firmly established and the prevailing obsession with money and power profoundly modified.' Huxley knows that's a tall order. 'Governments are not willing to undertake these tasks', for a start. Nor are many private individuals prepared to tackle them on their own. 'If the work is to be done, it must be done by associations of individuals' with the vision and energy 'to break the new ground that nobody else will break'. To give us some encouragement Huxley goes on to give some examples of what has already been achieved by nonviolent action - you can find examples of these and many more on this website. 'Nonviolence is so often regarded as impractical, or at best a method which only exceptional men and women can use. It is essential to show that - even when used sporadically and unsystematically - the method actually works.' Huxley adds (with some characteristic bite) that nonviolence 'can be used by quite ordinary people and even, on occasion, by those morally sub-human beings, kings, politicians, diplomats and the other representatives of national groups, considered in their professional capacity.... Out of business hours these beings may live up to the most exacting ethical standards.' Huxley was well aware that technology was here to stay. 'The question is whether it is to stay as an instrument of slavery or as a way to freedom.' 'Curing the world of obsession with money and power' needs to be done in the modern world; but even a modern hi-tech world can be humane. So: Huxley's ideal 'associations of individuals' should set about making experiments to solve a number of problems. How can the working population be effectively self-governing? How can they bring a sense of responsibility and commitment to what they do? How can the temperaments and talents of each individual be best used? How can the wealth created in a technological society be best distributed? What is the best kind of communal government? What are the best kinds of local communities? What are the best ways of using leisure? What is the best education for children and self-education for adults, and how may both be got? And how can natural gifts of leadership be used without 'the temptation of ambition or the lust for power'? Another tall order. And other, new, problems have arisen in western society since the 1930s. But the aim - the 'end' - is sincere and true: start with individual people and build a life, a community, a world, in which we want not only peace but also the things which make peace possible. The belief that underpins all that Aldous Huxley has to say is simple: 'It is enormously difficult to change; but the enormously difficult is not the impossible.' Look round this website - there are plenty of ideas and stories to show that achieving a world without war is, without doubt, possible. Difficult, yes; but we're working on it.
Dm.A.A.

The Double Standard as Virtue and Illusion:

Everything appears as a double-standard to the ego because it is only concerned with that which affects it directly. Beyond that there are layers of daunting complexity that would not exist if not by contradiction, and yet from this paradox there has apparently never been shelter in our Universe; it is hardly the invention of a rationalizing mind. But the ego cannot understand this complexity, for to comprehend even a fraction of it beyond the ego’s customary frame of reference would be to totally dissolve the ego.

Dm.A.A.

THE BEAST AND THE PIG:

Salvatore "Salvo" Riina /ˈriːnə/ (born 16 November 1930), called Totò 'u Curtu (Sicilian: '"Totò the Short"'; Totò is another nickname for "Salvatore"), is an Italianmobster and the former chief of the Sicilian Mafia, known for a ruthless murder campaign that reached a peak in the early '90s, when the deaths of Antimafia Commissionprosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino caused widespread public revulsion and led to a major crackdown by the authorities. He was also known by the nicknames la belva ("the beast") and il capo dei capi (Sicilian: 'u capu di 'i capi, "the boss of the bosses").

Riina succeeded Luciano Leggio as foremost boss of the Corleonesi faction of the criminal organization in the early 1980s and achieved dominance by a campaign of violence, which caused police to target his rivals. As a fugitive Riina was less vulnerable to the law enforcement reaction to his methods, and police removed many of the older type of boss, who had operated by influence peddling and bribery. Favoured assassin Giovanni Brusca estimated he murdered 100-200 people on Riina's orders. Riina also advocated, in violation of traditional Mafia codes, the killing of women and children, and killed uninvolved members of the public solely to distract law enforcement. Although his scorched-earth policy neutralized any internal threat to his position, Riina increasingly showed a lack of his earlier guile by bringing his organization into open confrontation with national authorities. After decades living as a fugitive he was captured, which provoked a series of indiscriminate bombings of art galleries and churches. Riina is currently being held on the stringent Article 41-bis prison regime, one of several measures that resulted from his defiant strategy.

Giovanni Brusca (born 20 February 1957 in San Giuseppe Jato) is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia. He murdered the anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone in 1992 and once stated that he had committed between 100 and 200 murders but was unable to remember the exact number. He was sentenced to life in prison in absentia, captured in 1996 and started to cooperate with the authorities.

A pudgy, bearded and unkempt mafioso, Brusca was known in Mafia circles as "U' Verru" (in Sicilian) or Il Porco or Il Maiale, (In Italian: The Pig, The Swine) or "lo scannacristiani" (people-slayer; in Italian dialects the word "christians" often stands for "human beings"). Tommaso Buscetta, the Mafia turncoat who had cooperated with Falcone’s investigations, remembered Giovanni Brusca as "a wild stallion but a great leader."^[1]

Capture and arrest[edit]

Riina reprimanded Balduccio Di Maggio, an ambitious Mafioso who had left his wife and children for a mistress, telling him he would never be made a full boss. Knowing Riina would order the death of subordinates whom he considered unreliable, Di Maggio fled Sicily and collaborated with the authorities. At the entrance to a complex of villas where a wealthy businessman who acted as Riina's driver lived, Di Maggio identified Riina's wife. On 15 January 1993, Carabinieri arrested Totò Riina in Palermo. He had been a fugitive for 23 years.^[19][20][21]

"Personality and profile[edit]

Due to his habits of secrecy and evasiveness, Riina's personality remains enigmatic. An informant, Antonino Calderone, described Riina as being "unbelievably ignorant, but he had an intuition and intelligence and was difficult to fathom ... very hard to predict". He said Riina was soft-spoken and a dedicated father and husband. Riina was highly persuasive and often highly sentimental. He followed the simple codes of the brutal, ancient world of the Sicilian countryside, where force is the only law and there is no contradiction between personal kindness and extreme ferocity. "His philosophy was that if someone's finger hurt, it was better to cut off his whole arm just to make sure", Calderone said.^[35]

One of the more bizarre anecdotes Calderone related was that of Riina giving a tearful eulogy at the funeral of Calderone's murdered brother, even though Riina himself had ordered the killing. Calderone also said that, when Riina set his sights on marrying his sweetheart, Ninetta, the young lady's family objected to the union. Calderone quoted Riina as saying "I don't want any woman other than my Ninetta, and if they [her family] don't let me marry her, I'll have to kill some people." Ninetta's family soon dropped any opposition to Riina's matrimonial plans.

Giovanni Brusca claimed that, during 1991 and early 1992, Riina contemplated acts of terrorism against the state to get it to back off in its crackdown against the Mafia, including acts such as bombing the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In fact, during the months after Riina's arrest, there was a series of bombings by the Corleonesi against several tourist spots on the Italian mainland, resulting in the deaths of ten people, including an entire family. Brusca also quoted Riina as declaring that the children of informants were legitimate targets. Brusca subsequently tortured and killed Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 11-year-old son of Santo Di Matteo, an informant in a failed attempt to silence the boy's father, who had been giving testimony against Riina." 

Riina was a Scorpio. His favoured hitman was on the notorious Cusp of Sensitivity (Pisces and Aquarius).

Baldassare Di Maggio was likewise a Scorpio. It was the same disloyalty that Riina had criticized in him that had acted in accordance with Justice against Riina. The police had been of little help up until this point.

The public's delight at Riina's arrest (one newspaper had the sensationalistic headline "The Devil" pasted over Riina's mugshot) was dampened somewhat when it was revealed that, during his thirty years as a fugitive, Riina had actually been living at home in Palermo all along. He had obtained medical attention for his diabetes and registered all four of his children under their real names at the local hospital. He even went to Venice on honeymoon and was still unspotted. Many cynically declared that the authorities only arrested Riina because they were under public pressure to do so after the Falcone/Borsellino murders, and saw the ease with which Riina had evaded justice for so long as an example of what many regarded as the apathetic – if not actually complicit – attitudes of the Italian authorities to the Mafia.

Giovanni Brusca – one of Riina's hitmen who personally detonated the bomb that killed Falcone, and later became an informant after his 1996 arrest – has offered a controversial version of the capture of Totò Riina: a secret deal between Carabinieri officers, secret agents and Cosa Nostra bosses tired of the dictatorship of the Corleonesi. According to Brusca, Bernardo Provenzano "sold" Riina in exchange for the valuable archive of compromising material that Riina held in his apartment in Via Bernini 52 in Palermo.^[24][25]

Dm.A.A.

MIDDLE CLASS MYSTIC: TORO.

ACT TWO:

5.

[A CHINESE RESTAURANT. Gio appears with Coco. Toro emerges from the kitchen.]

TORO: Just one second!

[Toro makes a phone call. Coco notices that he is bleeding from the left hand.]

COCO: Are you bleeding?

TORO: Naw it’s cool what are you having?

[Enter Dom. He is smoking.]

DOM: GIOVANNI. WELCOME. And is this the wife?

GIO: Friend.

[Coco is totally affronted by everything about Dom, from his cigarette to the presumption that she is any man’s wife.]

DOM: Then she will pardon my rudeness, I’m sure. I must invite you to have a smoke with me. In private. I’m sure the lady understands.

COCO: I would not smoke with you.

DOM: Splendid! Here: let me show you the way to the Patio.

7.

[AN OBSERVATORY.]

DOMO: You see, Toro, a man can run in all the directions of the wind, but he will never escape his enemies until he travels where the winds cannot go. Perhaps you’ll recall your former associate, Guillermo.

TORO: Rest in peace. [He crosses himself.]

DOMO: That I can assure you. For you see, once the body dies the Spirit ascends and transcends. There is a limit to what our scientific instruments can measure. All craft that were ostensibly sent into space returned as a scrap of metal. We never set foot on the moon. We would burn up in the divine radiance of the cosmos.

TORO: Divine radiation.

DOMO: Precisely. We are terrestrials, not celestials. But at long last I have attained transcendence of the human predicament. At long last, via this machine, we shall be able to commune with those Angels that took or friend away in his dire hour. That was why I agreed to take part in his ascendancy.

[Pause.]

TORO: Wait. Come again?

DOMO: You surely inferred it. It was a suicide, but not an unassisted one. He had one wish of me. And that I granted: that he might ascend and cavort with his ancestors on Alpha Centauri. And my dreams of late would evidence that the mission was a success. The years of service to me had not yet so burdened him that he was too heavy for God’s Holy Hand to lift. And I surmised that his occupation to me had been a right livelihood. I am relieved of my own doubts. Where my integrity is concerned, I remain a blameless man. So the Angels shall speak unto me.

[Toro ponders this.]

DOMO: To assuage your doubts: they all ready HAVE.

TORO: You made contact?

DOMO: I am about to. But in a fashion: yes. In a dream one visited me and bestowed upon me a message. He advised me to retune the signal. The Fibonacci track that we kept sending out into the Aether was out of accordance with the Divine Harmony, as is all of our Terrestrial Pop Music in the present day. But by tuning the signal down eight Hertz, I was able to produce a pure needle of sound whose pleasantness shall transcend any cultural conditioning that is peculiar to human beings.

TORO: So when do you think they’ll call back?

DOMO: [Leaning over the control panel.] They shall. Very soon. And I will be ready when they do.

10.

TORO: Stir-fry. On the house.

[Coco opens the box to examine it. It is suffused in red.]

COCO: Is that BLOOD?

TORO: Naw that’s sweet and sour sauce. Don’t trip.

COCO: Is that *YOUR* BLOOD?

TORO: Hey. What did I tell you about tripping?

COCO: Okay, you know what? This is Bullshit. I demand a refund.

TORO: Shit. We usually don’t hook those up.

COCO: Well do it this time then!

TORO: Okay hold up. I’m a see what I can do. Have a seat.

[Coco seats herself.]

TORO: I’ll hook you up with some water in a minute! Pick any entrée you want; it’s on the house!

[She eyes him piercingly and then picks up a menu, as though to spite him. He picks up the telephone. He begins to dial when Santiago enters.]

TORO: Hey! What are you doing here?

SANTIAGO: I am here by appointment.

TORO: The boss isn’t here.

SANTIAGO: He shall wait for me.

TORO: Good luck with that, man.

SANTIAGO: Luck? Perhaps I had better consult the Oracle as would pertain to that.

TORO: Knock yourself out. [Confused.]

[Santiago reaches into a bowl full of fortune cookies. He withdraws one, unwraps it, cracks it, and gingerly withdraws the slip of paper. He reads it and pockets it, unmoving his legs.]

TORO: Any thing good, bro?

[Santiago looks up with an intense gaze.]

SANTIAGO: A haiku.

TORO: Dope. I didn’t know we got those. What did it say?

[Santiago leans in. He waits. Toro leans in as well.]

SANTIAGO:

A maiden appears

Twice before she is noticed.

Only thrice total.

[Santiago leaves. Toro stares after him. Santiago passes Coco, who does not notice him, except out of the corner of her eye. She looks up, after him, but he has past into the Oblivion. Toro stares at her, his eyes wide in shock.]

PART TWO:

12.

[Toro smokes on the Patio. Enter Santiago.]

TORO: You want a cigarette?

SANTIAGO: No.

TORO: Suit yourself.

[Pause.]

TORO: You think that he really did it?

SANTIAGO: What part?

TORO: You know: that he killed Guillermo.

SANTIAGO: I see no reason to doubt it.

TORO: Man. He’s gotta go.

SANTIAGO: He might. But he’s not going alone.

TORO: I want to get out of all of this.

SANTIAGO: So does he. Might I suggest a way?

TORO: For who?

SANTIAGO: For whom? For every one. Like I said: he will find a way to go. He only wants to take the whole world with him.

TORO: So?

SANTIAGO: If things do not go HIS way, they will an other way. The path of least resistance. You need not direct this. You can leave that part to the other players. Simply ensure that his one chance at escape is thwarted. And then no one shall follow him down the path he has chosen.

[Toro thinks. Santiago takes a moment, seeing the impact of his words through to fruition, and as Toro furrows his brow in thought Santiago exits the patio. Comprehension dawns upon Toro.]

ACT FOUR:

13.

TORO: You will receive a phone call in due time. It will contain further instruction.

[Toro exits. Cisco opens the bag. His jaw drops.]

CISCO: COCO. Do you have any idea how much money I have in my hands right now?

[Coco descends from her posture standing atop a toilet. Two heeled feet touch the tile, one following the other. She leans against the door.]

COCO: It better be a lot if it will get me on my knees again.

[Cisco zips up the bag and then approaches the stall. He sets down the duffel bag, kneeling on one knee, and, still on one knee, pushes it under the crack in the stall.]

CISCO: It is in fact enough to make ME get down on MY knees.

[Trembling, Coco opens the bag. A sharp intake of breath on her part communicates volumes to Cisco. She opens the door, wide-eyed, and beholds Cisco upon the floor.]

CISCO: Coco. Love. Will you marry me?

[He is washing lipstick from his face, the duffel-bag beside him. She is absent. He sees a light come on from within the bag. Alarmed, he reaches in. A cell phone lies there. He checks the recent calls. He calls the number of the call that just ended. The other end answers.]

CISCO: Hello?

TORO: [Pointedly.] Your INVESTMENT is not as safe and SECURE as you might THINK.

[The call ends.]

CISCO: [exasperated.] What?

[He looks sideways at himself in the mirror.]

14.

[Gio holds in his hands a Sales Receipt upon which is printed a residential address. He looks about the front porch of the house he came to, checking for clues to see that it matches the address. From the backyard approaches Domo, startling Gio as he emerges from the darkness.]

DOMO: Giovanni. My noble, loyal friend. I am so pleased at your arrival. Come.

[They withdraw into the Observatory.]

DOMO: This is Beatific News, Giovanni. You and I are about to become the first two terrestrials in several millennia to make Contact.

GIO: “Make contact”? [Gio shies away, sexually uncomfortable.]

DOMO: The Angels have heard My Call, comrade. And they have answered.

[Domo opens a Skype call.]

TORO [as Aliens.]: GREETINGS, EARTH.

DOMO [with tears in his eyes.]: Bless the GODS.

TORO: You have done admirably. Your civilization has grown by leaps and bounds. You have welcomed the New Age with open arms, though the rift grows daily wider betwixt the beneficent and the maleficent aspects of your existence. We welcome the recipients of this call to join us in the furthering of our ascent to realm upon realm, following in the Universal Tradition that your True Religions honour as the Expansion and Exploration of progressively Wider, Deeper, and Higher Planes of Consciousness.

[Domo breaks down in tears. Gio is relatively unphased, but very curious.] 

GIO: So, this is sort of a weird question but, do you guys have, like, weird fetishes or something?

TORO: Well, we reproduce asexually.

GIO: Oh, okay.

TORO: However, there is an enormous market in our entire system for videos of video game characters walking into walls.

[Silence. Domo stops crying. He looks up, befuddled.]

TORO: At one point, in fact, it’s funny but we had to fight an entire war actually just to get more of those controllers that stick if you hold them down and hard enough.

[Domo creeps up, propping himself up with two hands against the edge of the control panel.]

It was never figured out why this phenomenon appealed to us so much. Our people don’t have a Theory of Evolution because that’s gay, but we DO have an extremely subtle series of religious explanations for it!

[Silence. Trembling, Domo reaches for the button to cancel the call.]

15.

[Toro lights a clove that he has withdrawn from a majestic box (pilfered from the boss, of course). He smokes it, and as he exhales he uses the tip of the cigarette to light on fire a sheet of paper. Upon this paper is printed a short script, and scribbled upon it are several handwritten notes made by a cumbersome, unsteady hand. Toro shuts his laptop. Then he opens it and puts on some tunes. He chain-smokes until a car pulls up. The window rolls down to reveal Domo.]

TORO: Evening, boss.

DOMO: [with murderous finality.] You. Are. Fired.

TORO: I quit.

DOMO: Clean out your fucking work space. You have five minutes.

TORO: Like time is worth shit to me now.

[Toro exits the patio, pocketing the remaining cloves and continuing to smoke the one all ready pressed between his lips.]

16.

[As Toro loads money from the cash register into his backpack, he grabs a fortune cookie. He snaps it in two, stuffs both halves into his mouth, ignoring his fortune. He then notices Santiago, seated at a distant table, eying him and grinning nebulously. His mouth full, Toro raises two fingers in greeting. Santiago rises and approaches. He bows. Toro swallows.]

TORO: Sup?

SANTIAGO: How fares your fortune?

TORO: Pretty shit, honestly.

SANTIAGO: Perhaps, perhaps. What does the Oracle profess?

[Toro reaches into the basket that he tossed his fortune into. A strange complexion comes over him.]

SANTIAGO: Yes?

[Toro looks up, all most a flicker of a congenial smile running across his face.]

TORO: “Death is not the end.”

ACT FIVE:

17.

[Santiago and Toro bowl. Santiago stands beside Toro as Toro fingers the black ball.]

SANTIAGO: You have done honourably.

TORO: I don’t know. I had a teacher who said never die for a cause; LIVE for one.

SANTIAGO: I meant your rolls. You have come close to mastery of the spin.

TORO: What do you mean? I can’t ever get it straight.

SANTIAGO: And yet you curve it in such a way that you all ways are able to pick up the spare.

TORO: I didn’t last time.

SANTIAGO: Nonetheless: you are able to.

TORO: Fuck. EVERY one is able to.

SANTIAGO: In theory. But Life proves to us otherwise in practice.

Dm.A.A.

SURPASSING THE GURU:

I can’t deny that Alan was my first true guru, and I owe a debt to him that he himself would have been embarrassed to accept. However, I have surpassed the master in my thinking, and part of that transformation was to clamber out of the Relativistic Stage of Kohlberg’s Moral Development into the Universal Stage. There is, in fact, a natural order to the Universe that has Good and Evil at its poles. In THEORY, Good and Evil are relative, but that is only because one’s Love for Beings inspires one to pardon them and to love most the forgiving father (a God-image that Alan himself invokes via his own stage persona). Yet once one has WITNESSED Evil firsthand, via a betrayal that is unbearable to accept without condition, such love is mitigated, for it creates a rift between love for the Other and love for the Self. The Other, in pursuing its own Self, creates this rift by segregating you from its community (which is often, as in the case of Host and Parasite, the community of one’s own invention.). Thus one has to follow the example of self-service because to serve the Other is to serve an arbitrary authority. If the traitor is not simply an arbitrary authority, then he is an example of Self-Interest. But to follow that example one must contend with him. Thus relativism disappears, because it pardons the traitor, and that endangers the Self.

The Self can be transcended by learning again to love Others. In loving Others one finds Solidarity and Compassion that heal the wounds left by the betrayal. This love is not found by accommodating the selfish impulses of others, but by aggrandizing their altruism. So it is that in turn one can love one’s own Self, but not in solitude, by choice, but rather by the Grace of God as seen in Other People. One loses one’s Will to this Love, because it happens INVOLUNTARILY; one cannot help but to see one’s Self in the eyes of the Other, for one has begun again to LOVE the Other more highly than one loves the Self.

So it is that Humanity is divided into two camps: those who serve Others, and who attain Self-Love by that Noble Path, and those who serve their own SELVES. But since the Self of the latter party is illusory, borne out of narcissism rather than compassion, they will all ways find themselves at the Source of their own Sufferings. They have then a choice to admit fault for not only their OWN sufferings, but for those of Others as well. But if their character is weak then they will instead hold the Noble Ones to Narcissistic standards, insisting that the Noble Ones take responsibility for the Nobles’ own conditions whilst the Narcissists take stock of the Narcissists’ own conditions. This perpetuates the Rift, but only to the mind of the Egoist. The Selfless Person KNOWS that he is not at fault for what OTHERS have done TO him, so he absolves himself of that duality. There is only ONE condition to his mind, and its nature is not that of favouring either PARTY in a COMPETITION, but RATHER it is one of either favouring GOD or the DEVIL.

The Devil represents the temptations into sin: to inflict harm and to violate the core principle of Harmlessness that is at the root of Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. He is Matter Without Spirit, a perversion created by the SEGREGATION of Matter and Spirit from their Primordial Whole. The Individual is the reunion of these forces, via the Soul (Spirit) inhabiting the Body (Matter). He is the seed of the Universe’s reunion from its accidental break in two. And he is threatened by Matter Without Spirit (the Devil) who would commit such sins as to sever the Soul from the Body and thereby to create greater disharmony in the Universe. Hence the First Sin is to Kill: to sever the Soul from its Body, permanently.

God is that Union that we are striving to recreate. The German poet Rilke said that we are “Building God”. As time accelerates the Universe becomes more self-aware. So even as Evil grows so does Good. The force of division accelerates, but so does the force of Union that is the Holy Spirit.

The Evil Man suffers because of himself. The Good Man suffers because of Others. Each chooses a path to begin with: one suffers for those that one serves. But the Good Man triumphs when God surmounts the Devil and Balance is restored to the Force. Evil does not need to be INTEGRATED into Good; it is, in itself, the very PROCESS OF DISINTEGRATION, and thus it is the antithesis of Integration that is destroyed by Synthesis.

Good and Evil must only be relative WITHIN THE SOUL, for there they are in fact simply various parts of the psyche that have been arbitrarily segregated. But who segregated them? The NARCISSIST did so, in order to CONTROL the Other! So the internal conflict that Alan and Jung try to resolve was created by an EXTERNAL conflict! Satanism taught us to look INWARDS to find the Source of our sufferings, only because it BEGAN by CREATING SUFFERING through service TO THE SELF. (So NATURALLY the SELF would be at the root of all problems there!) But in fact the INTERNAL PROBLEM was one of DISINTEGRATION, not of Sin, and the EVIL was all ways EXTERNAL, created by the willful DISINTEGRATION of Self and Other via the Betrayal by the Narcissist. If the Narcissist is ALLOWED to continue to betray, then he will continue to damage the Soul by setting it against itself. The Soul must turn its aggression OUTWARDS again, AT the Narcissist, in order to become Whole again. Only then can it save itself and hope to play its part in restoring Harmony to the Universe and to create God.

So even though I disagree with Alan Watts, I all so agree with him. There is no Evil within my Soul, because I have not CHOSEN that path.* But it is only by CONTENDING with Evil EXTERNALLY, fighting those entities that CHOSE Evil (and not the Evil that the Church warns against, but the Evil of the Devil, of which I have been a witness) that I can restore my own Dignity and Balance to my Soul. It is not I that seeks to control people. The Relativist has literally nothing to stop him from turning instantly to an Absolutist, for his Relativism prevents him from accepting accusations of hypocrisy. His will all ways acts in a way to OPPRESS the Will of the Other, but after the fact it looks as though all willing agents were presented with the same freedom. Not all of us can AFFORD to sin, so it cannot be a prerequisite towards Grace, which is available to all who put themselves upon God’s Path (and who thus avoid God’s Wrath when Evil caves in on itself and finds itself to be its own biggest problem).

* May the record show: none of this has been “convenient” to me. Only through immense pain could I produce it.

Dm.A.A.