Psychedelia

A universe in motion, like ours, contains no final answers or states.

It contains, instead, evolving answers and states.

Accordingly, psychedelia must be followed by post-psychedelia.

Speaking structurally, psychedelia is the free-flowing, multi-channel interweave of
discrete boundary lines en route to conceptual curvilinearity, thus shaving off the
sharp-edged divisions and categories of classical analysis.

Industrialized humanity, in psychedelic mode, makes a deep dive into existential
curvilinearity.

Our forebears, born into the existential curvilinearity of the jungle wilds of antiquity,
evolving mentally, longed for the straight lines and discrete dimensions of rectilinearity, a product of analytical math. This longing is fueled by the breakthrough miracles of
science, engineering and technology. Hence the cycle of transition from curvilinearity to
rectilinearity was underway.

Eventually, the calculus would reconcile analytical math with the curvilinearity of the
natural world via approximation.

The non-orthodox spiritualities inhabit the gap approximation inserts between the
curvilinear and the rectilinear.

The orthodox spiritualities make a close approach to the grayscale metrics of the gap,
halting just short of diving deeply into the interweave of the irrational_rational_trans-rational. This refusal to embrace the blooming totality of creation, a fulgent reality that backgrounds power in favor of love, gets mandated by the state, which cannot exist without prioritizing power over love.

The priority of power over love is the foundation of establishmentarianism. This priority
gives rise to the state, a social entity buttressed in the modern world by the
military-industrial complex. The power of the state, expressed in basic terms, is the
power to build and then demolish infrastructure. Baked into this equation is the right of
the state to kill, and thus the necessity of prioritizing power over love.

Indoctrination of the fully-privileged citizens of the state, the upper-middle class and above, attains to success when it fixes in their minds by persistent instruction indispensable beliefs and values. The peak of success occurs when these individuals, freshly graduated from college and poised to enter the labor market, embark on the important work of society with beliefs and values so ingrained into their worldviews it never occurs to them to question or critically examine such values.

Italian filmmaker Antonio Antonioni, in his feature, The Passenger, shows the execution of an African revolutionary by firing squad. On film the viewer watches the horrific and momentous transition from sentient man alive to lifeless body.

How does the state effect indoctrination so total it empowers young citizens as trained soldiers and marksmen to shoot dead at close range a total stranger for whom they could feel no personal hostility?

The need for total indoctrination impervious to critical thinking is the point of entry for the established Church. State power can enforce the license to kill, but a meta-narrative relating the ultimate destiny of a sovereign nation is required for putting the baby to bed.

The basic game of war is the establishment of a sovereign territory. Once established,
this sovereign territory proceeds forth into the world, programmed with a stern
determination to annex foreign territories, converting them into satellites of the
motherland.

The gist of the conversion of foreign territories into satellites is the smashing of the
native infrastructure followed by the militarily enforced demand that natives both assist
and pay for its rebuilding under direction of the imperial power.

As the imperial power ages and matures at the top of the power pyramid, its native
population, in possession of the privileges of full citizenship, growing sated and bored
with the prerogatives of power, starts rebelling by maneuvering away from the priority of
power towards the priority of love.

Because the sharp, discrete and linear categories of rectilinearity serve the social
stratification interests of the power establishment, authentic rebellion naturally entails
re-rendering the rigidly straight boundaries of the classes as curvy-groovy lines with
much-increased permeability. The willful coming together of the formerly stratified
classes is free love, organized by love-ins.

Imitation James Joyce: “And then the stool glitchy-gleeched otto me arse.” Long live Molly Bloom! A first, primordial cry from the ancient wilds of sense-memory intones. The old Adam, original man, rouses himself once again. Sense-memory and love rise above the straight lines of proper reason. Joyce launches psychedelia with his forays into stream-of-consciousness, an acid trip without the acid.

If a work of art is merely good and not great, it’s because nobody important ever declared it crap. Great art, being freakish, has a palpable dimension of perversion and mangled truth. For that reason, the establishment, its guardians of manners and morals being a given, must object to this new thing, until the joint turns us onto a new era. Great art forms the turning joints of culture.

With the establishment of psychedelia, now becoming a mass movement, the cycle
reverses and humanity returns to the jungle wilds of antiquity, except that, this time
around, the jungle wilds populate the interiors of the mind. Conceptual curvilinearity,
being unable to fully mimic natural curvilinearity, makes due with an approximation.

The new, conceptual curvilinearity, being the standard-bearer for civilization, must be
something not quite original curvilinearity. The gains of evolution, in order to be
preserved, cannot make a full return to antiquity lest civilization collapse and
disintegrate.

This new gap between existential and conceptual curvilinearity creates an opening for
establishmentarian comeback.

In the wake of the inadvertent terrorism of Woodstock: A Three-Day Festival of Art and Music, alarm! It was a potent version of a nascent return to DIY culture writ large by the masses. Oh, no! Affluent children of Wall Street’s golden demographic: 18 years to 49, upper middle class, with ample, disposable income, are now returning to a natural life on the land?

Wall Street turned white-faced with terror over the exposure of the business boondoggle as expendable middle-men. Psychedelia had moved beyond the larks of the drug-addled. It was the global village threatening to become a real, almost old-fashioned village.

Now the mavens of classical analysis, encouraged by the precepts and imperatives of Wall Street, had a mission via the advertising blitz: bat down conceptual curvilinearity, returning allegiance of the masses to the conservatism of the Academy, with its big five disciplines of social power: the law; the medicine; the technics (engineering); the commerce (business) and the Source (theism_atheism_cosmos) (humanities). Down with hippies! They’re drug-addled layabouts!

Facing the active terrorism of the Viet Nam protest, the government draws its bottom line and declares: “continue pushing this protest and we will kill you.” The government-sponsored killing commenced on the campus of Kent State University.

Post-Psychedelia

The circular cycles of curvilinearity/rectilinearity notwithstanding, linear, forward
evolution continues.

Since the man-woman dance is the basic cell of civilization, linear, forward evolution
cannot continue unless, eventually, it effects a radical reconfiguration all the way down
at the absolute base of things: the basic gender identities that create the basic cell.

Thus, the interweave of post-psychedelia naturally pulls away from simple male, simple
female to… what?

Within the contentious, social phantasmagoria of the early twenty-first century, we’re
getting a first look at the post-male, post-female homo-sapiens categories.

A battle is underway. The new, forward-looking curvilinearity of non-binary advocates
such as Jaden Smith and Chaz Bono, with ethics rooted in love is pitched against the
establishmentarian, conservative-looking rectilinearity of power-prioritizers such as
Dennis Praeger and Jordan Peterson.

As parties on both sides of the aisle cry out passionately with basic questions such as,
“What is man?!” “What is woman?!”, I return to my premise.

A universe in motion, like ours, contains no final answers or states.

It contains, instead, evolving answers and states.