Birth Family Tribe Love Sex Apotheosis - Apotheosis/Addendum

When I originally conceived the layout for this book my plan was that there would be no final chapter, and the book would just end with the word 'APOTHEOSIS' in the centre of an otherwise blank page. However, as people reading this blog may now be expecting some kind of final conclusion I think I should probably post something to fill the space (clicking on an empty blog post wouldn't quite have the same feel or impact as turning a nice crisp book page).

My thinking behind such an ending was two-fold. Firstly, the book starts with 'Birth', but I didn't want to end with a chapter titled 'Death'. Aside from the morbidity I felt death was covered in the first chapter - with birth, death and time all forming part of the same conceptual grouping. At least as far as the things I wanted to discuss were concerned.

Then secondly I wanted to convey the sense that humanity is heading somewhere. Where, I don't know, but some sort of ascendency to some destination. Something divine I guess. In fact, my not knowing is the reason why there would be no chapter. Even with my confidence and arrogance I can't claim to know the future. Or to know if there's some higher meaning or purpose for humanity. I can't describe indescribable God. If indeed there is a God, or something approximating to that notion.

It's simply beyond me.

What I did try to illuminate in the book though is that the many dualities or dichotomies we see in life are things that are equally needed by humanity. That is, that both aspects of these dichotomies are needed. Just as a bird needs its two wings to fly.

Be it left/right politics, cyclic and linear time, tribe vs inter-tribe, or dualities of sex and gender. It's not that one side is good and the other bad, but that both can be explored. We often see ourselves as left wing or right wing, as this or that. However, these spectrums are things that we ourselves can move around on. At least intellectually. We don't have to pin ourselves down to the map, we can explore the whole territory. Taking flight in the process.

In fact, society as a whole, with its arguing factions pushing back and forth, is not unlike a single organism thinking its way through a problem. Contemplating within itself, deciding a course of action. Repeatedly rising and crashing like a phoenix as it gets the balance better or worse.

An Icarus aiming for the Sun of apotheosis, burning its wings. Like me earlier, daring to think I can know the unknowable.

Perhaps if we learn to understand these dichotomies better as individuals we can become better pilots of the bird. Guiding ourselves and wider society towards the light, even if we can't descry the destination.

Birth Family Tribe Love Sex Apotheosis - Chapter V - Sex

Transgender. A transit. To travel between genders. To move across the gender spectrum.

Can a man become a woman, or a woman a man? Either physically or spiritually. Would such a transition be good or bad?

We can imagine a gender spectrum. At one end extreme femininity, at the other, extreme masculinity. In the middle alchemical androgyny. By birth and biology we're all placed somewhere on this spectrum, but can we transmute to a different place upon it?

The answer is probably yes ..but with limits.

We can imagine a man. He's on the male side of the spectrum, but let's say he isn't the most manly man in the world. His voice isn't the deepest. He isn't the most muscly. He perhaps has a tendency towards the effeminate. Maybe on this hypothetical male side of the spectrum he's a three or four out of ten. A male yes, but not quite the stereotypical image of manhood.

Now let's picture that he wants to change this; he wants to be more manly, and wants females to see him as more masculine, and therefore more attractive.

Can he do this?

Well, he can change his lifestyle and behaviour patterns. He can maybe workout more at the gym to build his muscles. He could even utilise steroids and other medication. Or have medical procedures to change his body. He could probably make himself a bit more manly by doing these things. Maybe move himself up to a five out of ten, instead of a four. However, as he was born around the four mark it's unlikely he'll ever be a ten out of ten for masculinity, and to some extent he'll always be the person he was born to be.

If females view the hulking, hairy males that were naturally born out on the extreme edge of masculinity as more manly than him he'll just have to accept this fact. Frustrating though it may be. It's fine for him to try to enhance his own masculinity, likewise it's fine for him to view himself in such a way, but he can't impose this perception onto other people. Nor should he want to. As it would simply result in people giving him false platitudes that deep down they wouldn't really subscribe to.

Contrastingly we can also imagine this situation in the opposite direction. Let's envision that he wants to make himself more feminine. Or to fully become a woman. Again, to some degree he'll be limited by his natural position on the spectrum. He can do things that may move him further towards the feminine aspect, but he'll never be as womanly as a woman that was naturally born as such. With only people born around the androgynous middle of this spectrum: intersex, hermaphrodite, and so forth (let's say a zero or one on the spectrum for argument's sake), being truly able to move across the boundary. Even here though, to some extent those born androgynous will always be androgynous. Or at least closer to this androgynous middle than those born towards the extremes.

As a side note it's worth mentioning that as technology progresses it may be that these limits dissolve somewhat, and even greater fluidity becomes possible. However, even with total fluidity and control over your own body it should never grant you the right to control the perceptions of another.

Take a woman that chooses to get breast implants for example. She does so because she wants to be more feminine. We can all respect this choice and decision. You could even say we have a duty to be kind and supportive of it. However, if the woman in question asks for our honest opinion then it may be our honest opinion that she was perfect just the way she was, and that the change has made her worse not better.

Likewise if a man or woman finds her less attractive because of this bodily choice then that is also just their true and honest preference.

Your fake breasts may be as seamlessly real and organic as any born of a womb, but you can't force another person to view them as natural if they don't think of them as such.

You can't control what others think of you ..and again, why would you want to?

You could even argue that offence taken at not being viewed as specifically male or female itself stems from a form of prejudice. A prejudice against the androgynous. Which sees androgyny as inherently negative, when in fact there are positives and negatives. (Once again we find another dichotomy.)

Distinct male or female is the norm in society, with androgyny, in its extreme sense, being very rare. However, when viewing things through a more spectral lens we can see it's not quite so clear.

At the extreme ends of the gender spectrum we have alpha males and females. What we would call in meme-speak Chads and Stacys, or to use more common stereotypes: jocks and bimbos.

Though stereotypes are often crude and unfair they nevertheless often contain an essence of observable truth. Albeit in a very generalised way. The stereotype of the alpha is that they're attractive, successful with the opposite sex, physically fit (the males athletic, the females fertile) and socially confident. Added to these positive traits though there is also the negative stereotype that they're dumb. Hence the classic ditzy blonde bimbo, or the dunce-like high school jock.

Conversely, if we move further away from these gender extremes we often find the opposite to be the case. The geek or nerd isn't the most athletic or socially outgoing, but he can ace the maths test and program a computer. Again, we're talking in stereotypes here, but generally speaking scientists and academics tend not to be hulking musclebound alpha males, nor dollish wide-hipped females. Likewise in the creative arts people tend to be closer on the spectrum to the androgynous middle. Think people like David Bowie or Lady Gaga.

So we seem to have this trade off. With people that are more androgynous having a harder time socially, especially when it comes to sexual relations, yet being rewarded with a richer intellectual or creative ability. Perhaps in part due to the fact that their personalities aren't as skewed by this pull of sexual dimorphism. Giving rise to a better balance between the female and male traits, and therefore a more nuanced mental capacity.

For the majority of people the balance between such things is no doubt something close to the median for their particular sex. However, for those that are born on or close to the borderline between the sexes the negative aspects are obviously going to be especially impactful, and it's little wonder people would not want to find themselves in this position. Having to navigate a love life and a social life from this undefined vantage point.

Still though, it's not solely negative, and the asexual nature of the androgynous gives rise to a creative spirit that transcends the constraints of sex. Allowing the mind to gaze towards higher things. Art, innovation and perversion blossoming from this detour.

Sex is base. The spirit is greater than the flesh. So to be unbound from sex frees the human soul and allows transcendency. Yet, at the same time, without sex there would be no continuation of life. Nor the elation and heartbreak that comes with pair bonding; or the divine inspiration that is driven by unrequited love.

Therefore we yet again find ourselves with another duality, where each side is necessary - and once again, we see this divide reflected in the political split of left versus right. The highly masculine and feminine people, who find it natural and easy to settle down and have children, tending towards the conservative - family, simple living, traditional values. The androgynous; a revolutionary force - bringing change, complexity and innovation in their wake. Yearning to tailor a natural world that feels so unnatural to them.

This is why I italicised perversion a few paragraphs back. The word perversion generally carries with it a pejorative sense that the thing being described is negative, but in fact it can be either good or bad; and it's often just a case of perspective. The laptop I'm currently typing on is a perversion of nature. Innovation being a transgression from the normal, natural way of doing things.

This is no doubt why Lucifer, or the devil, is often depicted in art and esoteric lore as looking androgynous. Androgyny being a transcendent force, transforming and challenging the established order of things. Of course, sex and gender are much more complex in reality than my simple diagram, so androgyny doesn't always correlate with sexless spirit. Also at times giving rise to what are seen as perverse sexual practices by more traditional society. Hence the evil connotations.

Again though, evil is to cause suffering. Or a desire to cause suffering. Not simply a divergence from the norm. So perversion from normality can be good or bad. Be it sexually or otherwise. Just as preserving tradition can have good and bad consequences. The twin forces of conservatism and innovation being a brake and an accelerator on society's capacity to change.

Birth Family Tribe Love Sex Apotheosis - Chapter IV - Love

Love. Those little glances and moments of eye contact. The odd awkward "hi" or "hello". The unspoken conversations, rehearsed in the mind, but harder to speak when the opportunity arises. The building tension between two people. Both knowing they're on the same wavelength, but fearing they may be mistaken. It hurts so hard because you know how good it could be. The gaze and the heart so focused upon just one person that to be denied makes the stomach sick, and living unbearable. Nothing and no one else registers.

True love is the devil, and the devil is the human heart.

Love. Be it true love, or the love a mother has for her child, or any other love, introduces a bias into the world. That loved person becomes more important than everything else in the eyes of the lover. It might be fair to treat people as equals, but it's also heartless. If ten people are dying and you can only save one it may be fair to simply choose someone at random. However, if one of those ten is a family member it would be somewhat cold and heartless to ignore that bond of love and let them die. Fair though it would be.

So here we have another dichotomy in life.

The desire for fairness and balance in the world

 vs

 The love we have for the people we're bonded with

People may go along with something that's terrible for wider society because they're worried about losing their job and not being able to pay the mortgage. That is, they put their family first. So it's not evil, but love that often spurs people towards bad actions.

As with all these dichotomies there isn't necessarily a right and a wrong. It's another duality where we must embrace both aspects and try in good conscience to strike a balance.

Let's say you're walking down the road and you have £10 in your pocket. You're heading to buy your brother a birthday present. However, along the way you see a homeless person. Now the homeless person needs the £10 much more than your brother needs a birthday present ..but your brother is your brother. You have an emotional bond with your brother that you don't have with the homeless stranger. So what is the right thing to do? Who do you give your last £10 to?

Again, there isn't necessarily a correct answer. Normally as humans we try to balance these things as best we can. We try to give 'what we can afford to give' to charity and strangers, whilst at the same time making sure we have enough to fulfil the responsibility we have towards ourselves and our loved ones. Your brother might be pleased to see his £10 given to a random homeless person. On the other hand it might ruin your relationship with him if you forget his birthday. Plus, you naturally care more about your brother's happiness than you do a complete stranger's. So though it would be heartless to ignore the homeless person, it would be equally heartless to not have a deeper care and affection for someone you're so closely related to.

We can see this dichotomy represented in the political spectrum. With 'the right' focusing on family, stating things like charity begins at home, and 'the left' imploring everyone to forgo all possessions in the pursuit of universal brotherhood. Consequently at the negative extremes the right have a tendency towards selfishness and the left have a tendency towards dehumanising people - i.e. reducing people to numbers.

If we return to the earlier example. If ten people were going to die and only one could be saved the person on the extreme right would save their family member and to hell with all the rest. Whereas the person on the extreme left would callously condemn their own grandmother to 'death by lottery' without a second thought.

What I would do in such a situation I wouldn't like to say - it's much easier to judge other people :) The realisation that we're trapped between these conflicting desires though at least allows us to contextualise things a little better as we wrestle with our conscience.

It also helps us to balance ideals with practicalities.

Ideally we should be generous to strangers, but it isn't always practical to be generous all of the time. If you give away all your possessions then how will you support yourself and your family. This doesn't mean that therefore we should abandon the ideal and give up aiming to be generous. It's just a realisation that things are not so simple. We're balancing many desires.

It's similar with debates about 'open borders'. Ideally a world without borders would be wonderful. It's definitely an ideal to aim for. However, it's not always practical to implement. There are real world costs and consequences, and there's a limit to people's generosity. This isn't because people are evil. It's because they're trying to balance the interests of themselves and their family, with the interests of complete strangers.

Likewise though we may believe in sharing we still lock our doors at night before we go to bed. That hard border at our door or garden gate representing the limits of our willingness to sacrifice our lives and everything we own. None of us are perfect, and it's extremely hard and unappetising to completely lay down ourselves for the benefit of others.

In many ways this brings us to the laws we live by, and a realisation that all laws are practical and not truly ideal. After all, what gives someone the right to erect a border in the first place? Or to declare a home one's property?

Ideally, if we were perfect people in a perfect world, we'd simply turn the other cheek when slighted. This is the ideal that we should be aiming for. However, this isn't always realistic. Again, partly because none of us are so forgiving that we're happy to just lay down and die without defending ourselves. But also ..because we have a care and duty towards others as well.

It might be noble to turn the other cheek if a robber steals from you, but what if that robber then goes on to steal from someone else? Or what if the robber stealing from you now means that your children go hungry? Is it still right to then turn the other cheek?

Once more, there isn't a simple right or wrong answer. Turning the other cheek remains the high ideal. Yet it isn't so simple, and when other practical concerns (such as your hungry children) are taken into consideration it suddenly becomes justifiable to punch the robber. Or to at least arrest him, try him in court, then send him to jail.

Ideally this should never happen, it's not nice of course to forcibly arrest someone then take away their freedom, but the world isn't ideal. So we often take pragmatic action to protect our interests. Hopefully we do this fairly, by establishing basic rights that are universal to everyone - following a general live and let live principle - implemented in a way that's proportional. Yet even fair laws are just necessary evils. Falling short of the ideal of forbearance.

It's easy to deem things like theft and murder as wrong. At least in theory. Still though, prohibitions against such things arrive from a degree of self-interest. We want to protect ourselves and the loved ones that we are close to. So we deem the 'use of force against others' needed to implement the law as just and 'necessary'. Theft is obviously wrong, but if someone is stealing to feed their children is it so cut and dried. Likewise with laws establishing national or personal property rights. What makes something yours and not someone else's? The fact that you were there first? That you took it before they did?

Ultimately it comes back to extolling the right to defend your territory - be it the property you own, or your physical body itself - against the rest of the world. It is self-serving. That's not to say it's bad. The desire is natural and unavoidable. We just risk becoming hypocrites and misunderstanding the world if we don't recognise this natural urge in both ourselves and others. We like to think of ourselves as good and others as bad, but in reality we balance our own interests (and the interests of those we love) with our desire to be generous and to deal fairly with the wider world.

None of us are perfect, and even if we were it would perhaps still remain impossible to balance the interests of those we love with a love for the world as a whole. To view everything equally is to view nothing as special.

The world would be fair without love, but what would the world be without it.

Birth Family Tribe Love Sex Apotheosis - Chapter III - Tribe

If we envision a large island, a random landmass out in the ocean. Then we people it with some blank humans - blank humans as in Chapter One, with no prior culture or history. Then we can imagine what would happen as they populated the island and developed culturally.

Over time, simply due to the geography of the island, the peoples that have multiplied and spread across this land will come to define themselves in relation to the geography. In this hypothetical example we'll keep things very simple and divide the island between north and south.

The tribes or groups living in the north of the island will naturally refer to those further south as southern, and likewise those in the south will label those to the north as northern. We see this of course in our modern world where place names will often begin with words like east, west, north, etc. North and South Dakota for example. Or words in other languages meaning the same. Similarly we'll talk about the east side and west side of places. Or call people southerners and northerners. On a larger scale we talk about Western civilisation, or the Southern Hemisphere, or the Orient (which means east, or more particularly where the Sun rises -- hence words such as orientation).

Again, it's perfectly natural to do this. The earth, and the Sun's passage across the earth, providing us with a frame of reference for where we ourselves are, and where the other people we encounter are (or where they've came from).

If we return to our simple island example we can imagine how after a period of time the people who populated this island - though originally all from the same stock and sharing the same ancestry - may split into two groups along such lines. A northern group and a southern one. Perhaps with slightly different cultures as well.

Still though, in such an example the division would remain quite vague. With the people in the middle of the island seamlessly blending both north and south. Perhaps meaning there would be a gradient of soft cultural change, rather than any hard cultural division. Much like how in Britain everyone shares the same culture and speaks English, but the accents and regional differences gradually shift as you move up or down the country.

However ..what would happen if you placed a hard border between north and south? Let's say a very difficult to pass mountain range.

With a hard border separating the two there would be much less interaction. Meaning over a long period of time the two groups of people would diverge much more. The soft regional differences of earlier now becoming hard cultural differences. With mutually indecipherable languages developing to boot.

In effect, our blank humans, spreading out across such a geography would naturally split into two tribes or nations.

This is all fairly obvious stuff of course, and doesn't really need a chapter in a book explaining it. Humans spread out across the Earth; branching off into various races, tribes and language groups, thanks to distance and geography. We all pretty much had the general gist of this already.

By taking the example further though we can also begin to explain other divisions in human society. Divisions that aren't so readily perceived or understood.

In our example the mountains are very difficult to pass. Meaning not many people make this journey. However, there may be some degree of interaction between these two, now separate nations across the snowy mountains.

So let's fast forward our cultures a little and imagine trade taking place between two cities on either side of the mountains.

With goods flowing between Cities A and B, and traders travelling back and forth.

Suddenly we now have cultural exchange taking place between these two cities, but still little cultural interaction taking place between the two nations as a whole elsewhere.

With this we can then imagine the different lifestyles a city person and a country person would experience due to this. If we look at the south: someone living out in the country - perhaps a farmer or tribesperson - would largely only experience the southern culture. It's possible they might occasionally meet someone from the north of the island, but quite unlikely. Conversely however, someone living in the city may meet quite a lot of people from the north. Traders travelling to the south bringing their goods for example. They may even be a trader themselves, and may have travelled to the north at times. Perhaps even learning the language of the northern people to help facilitate this trade.

So in the cities you will get a cultural blending.

It's unlikely a rural person living in the south would ever meet and marry someone from the north, but in the city it would be different. A southern trader may develop ties with traders in the northern city, and as a consequence might end up marrying one of their daughters. Or they may simply meet a native northern girl whilst travelling to, or living in that city. So familial ties will develop between the two cities. Mixing the two cultures or nations.

As a result of this we find ourselves with a natural dichotomy between the largely homogenous countryside and the much more diverse cities.

This dichotomy is somewhat analogous to the dichotomy we see today between globalism and nationalism.

Of course, in our very simple example it's just two separate nations, now linked by two cities. However, in the real world it's much more complex. With many nations, divided to varying degrees by language, culture and geography, linked by numerous towns, cities and other cultural nodes. All evolving over time. The same basic underlying principles apply though.

This difference between city and country also gives rise to political differences as well.

As those living in the cities are much more likely to have cultural, familial and economic links that cross national or tribal borders they will naturally have a greater tendency towards favouring the things that increase this. Contrastingly those out in the country are more likely to be invested in ideas which protect the nation or tribe they belong to.

This political divide between nation and inter-nation is much like the divide in politics between left and right. It's both natural and unavoidable. Simply being a consequence of different people having different perspectives due to their personal circumstances. So as with left and right it's good to try to view things from both sides.

There are benefits that come with being at the crossroads between nations, but also negative consequences. By having a foot in two different cultures you get access to, and the benefits of, both cultures. However, there's also the danger that you may be viewed as an outsider by both cultures as well. If in our island example the northern nation went to war with the southern nation (difficult though that would be with a huge mountain range holding the line) there's the possibility that those people of mixed heritage in the cities would be shunned by both sides. Each group seeing in the "foreign" ancestry the potential for treachery and disloyalty.

We see countless examples from the real world of this type of interplay. One comparable example is the position of Jewish peoples in European history. Benefitting at times from having ties across national boundaries, but also suffering horrendous consequences because of it. A similar manifestation is multilingual Switzerland, situated like our mountain cities, at the crossroads of Europe, between Italy, Germany and France. Benefitting from this fortunate geography, but also suffering the suspicion that gold and other ill-gotten gains are hidden away in Swiss bank accounts. A slightly different example would be that of global Britain. As an island situated perfectly for sea trade, and in turn founding trading outposts across the seas. Yet garnering suspicions, perhaps at times justified, that perfidious Albion is setting tribe against tribe in the pursuit of empire.

Again, all these divisions - of a humanity ultimately sharing the same blank heritage - come about naturally. As a consequence of geography, and the circumstances arising from humans interacting upon that geography. Understanding this is key to peacefully negotiating our divisions and differences.