wotan13

In the development of consciousness, masculinity, and �patriarchy,� Nature sought first to distend dualities to extremes, to maximum polarity, creativity, and individuation, and then to reconcile them. That�s where we are now � at the extreme points of polarity, individuation, and the differentiation of consciousness, the �Me Dance� of the touchdown-scorers. This is how evolution, whether individual or collective, occurs. One might think of it as a spiral around a central axis, a mundi, a Semiotic Tree. The process is as traumatic, and as bloody, on the collective levels as birth is for individuals. Woman and man are the foci of duality in the physical, phenomenal world, the crucible in which all duality manifests, articulates and resolves, one rung higher up the evolutionary spiral each go-round. This is the hidden blessing of Genderwar.

Homo sapiens in its division of gender, and in the novel development of masculinity and ego-consciousness, is the blade that ripped the cosmos in two, and is also the needle that sews it up. We are the instruments and vehicles of conuinctio. �The fundamental duality of existence was observed in the opposition of male and female.... such duality could not be left unresolved. Otherwise the cosmos would break in two." [Boas, George, preface to Bachofen, xviv - xv.]

History and consciousness, like birth, are stages in the violent dynamism of duality, the attracting and repelling forces that slam together like gladiatorial tornados in the mosh pit of the genders. The tension between the opposites drives all creation through its secret fire, the same fire that, when liquefied by sacrifice and love, integrates and transcends the opposites in conuinctio.

Eschatology is the notion, common throughout Western and aboriginal cosmologies, that history has an end, a sacred shockwave that freezes time and reconciles the conflicted opposites, returning wholeness (not perfection) to Creation. This process is the hidden attractor of all technological and artistic genius, and of spiritual experience. The breakneck innovation and evolution born of polarization -- and its toxic detritus, the Wasteland -- have a critical mass of fulfilled purpose past which duality is barred, a point of no return. When the opposites reach an unendurable point � the point at which they no longer respect, affirm, and love one another, but only antagonize and hate � they break down, and the world breaks down with them.

This is the Wasteland. This is our lives, our world. Only then may the process of re-integration on a �higher� level of the spiral begin.

It�s a grave mistake to attempt to reject or prohibit the antagonisms of the opposites in their human containers. A measure of conflict between the opposites is as valuable as their much-ballyhooed complementarity. The human project attempts to construct a vehicle capable of simultaneously holding both the attraction and repulsion of the opposites. Liberation of the opposites is not equivalent to absence of conflict, nor can the opposites be destroyed. Amongst human beings, the primary container of the antagonisms of the opposites is sexuality. Exactly in reverse of feminist cant, the proper � and only � vessel for the inevitable violence between male and female is sexuality.

This is not equivalent to abuse or coercion. It is rather, as Hemingway said, the good destruction.

Seize Them!! Seize Them!!

There�s a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage
there�s a long-time golden-haired stripper onstage
and she winds back the clock, and she turns back the page
of a book no-one can write
Oh! where are you tonight!?

-- Bob Dylan, �Where Are You Tonight?�