Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Spanner 26.2: The Country of Old Men

...from previous

Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 26: Youthcrime
Part 2: The Country of Old Men

11 november 2014.
CPMC headquarters.
“That was a clever stunt, Brendan,” Brinkman growls. “Try and find another way of making the Populists even angrier. Try it again, and it’ll cost us even more in damages.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Wally,” says the COPCO CEO on the screen, “the courts’ll dismiss all suits against us with prejudice. The perks of sovereign immunity, you know.”

“You keep underestimating Phil Reston and his spawn, especially our adversary Hope. They keep coming up with ingenious ways to bleed us of money.”

“For great justice, blah blah blah.”

The image of Richard Becket pushes Brendan Sparks’ face to the side of the giant monitor. “Do you men know how the Wilder Foundation managed to defeat you and crash your stock prices?”

Litton says, “Our CEO friends made some idiot moves, and the Foundation took full advantage of ’em.”

“Not so, Mr Litton. The Foundation was able to unite the disgruntled city people against us.”

“Cascadia is a state made up of big cities, Mr Chairman,” says Chairman Sparks, “and cities are notoriously liberal and hard to police. It’s hard to force conservative virtue on five or six Manhattans full of liberal traitors.”

“But this is what human nature aims toward. As social animals, they find themselves strongest when united in crowds. This is the metaphysical secret behind Communism. We must become stronger than them, and to this end we must transcend the human.”

“And what do you mean by that, uncle?” asks Brinkman.

“First, we must transform ourselves into gods.”

“And by that you mean posthuman supermen?”

“Exactly. And as Dragonites, Walter, you and I and our race already have an advantage. But to defeat man, we must not become just supermen. We must make ourselves immortal.”

Downtown Bremerton. As the coffee shop owner arranges a ride for the children, Shira, Jennifer, and the Shelley twins agree to walk with Ariel up Pacific Avenue to the new Bremerton location of her New Age bookstore. Sanitation men and concerned citizens continue to pick up trash and debris left behind by the military marchers and Party faithful. “Looks like the Party don’t believe in keeping city streets clean,” says Leila scornfully.

“They don’t believe in cities, period,” Jennifer replies. “They much prefer small towns and suburban subdivisions. They were designed to be easy to control.”

“Not that it’s doing ’em much good these days,” Rob comments. “People can’t afford to live there anymore, so they’re either stagnating or turning to ghettos. The Party can’t be happy with that.”

Shira smirks. “Like I said, they’ve got a problem with reality.”

“Be glad you have adult accompaniment,” Ariel warns. “The authorities don’t no longer tolerate young people getting together.”

“Hey, we whippersnappers got a nasty habit of thinking for ourselves.”

“Just don’t say it out loud. They might hear you.”

The Sky Dancer Metaphysical Bookstore feels like a separate reality. Incense, meditation music, low lighting, and shimmering crystals combine to induce a trance state in everyone who enters the store. Jennifer says, “Wow! Who needs drugs.”

“Drugs are an artificial way of inducing altered states of consciousness. Hallucinogens especially have been the tool of shamans for millions of years. The danger of drugs is that their abuse can serve as a way of avoiding real spiritual development.”

Jennifer looks through the books and is not at all pleased with what she sees. “Hmm... Astrology, numerology, feng shui... same old claptrap we should have already. Figures.”

Ariel grabs her by the shoulder and leads her to the desk. “If you want something to be skeptical about, I suggest the works of Drusilla Becket and her channelled spirits. I believe they hold the key to the mystery behind the Conservative Revolution itself. Not in what she or her spirits actually say, but in whom they refer to. In fact, maybe you and your cousin should accompany me into the back room, where I’ve collected a not-so-small library of the metaphysical writings that have been the foundation of European conservatism for centuries.”

“I thought Conservative Revolutionaries were all-American conservatives,” says Shira.

“On the exoteric level, yes, their conservatism does derive from Evangelical Christian fundamentalism. But Gnosticism teaches that there is an esoteric meaning to all scripture and doctrine.”

“Like the Sufis?” asks Jennifer.

“Precisely. Sufism is Islamic Gnosticism. But Europe and America are traditionally Christian, and therefore so is their Gnostic tradition. Esoteric Christianity is the rock upon which the Conservative Revolutionaries have built the political system they call Synarchy, and upon which they are trying to rebuild the American Empire.”

“And the form of esoteric Christianity that appeals most to power-hungry Corporates is the Nicolaitanism of the Illuminati, right?”

“That’s what we’re talking about.” Ariel shows them a whole wall of books, some of them old or in languages other than English, particularly French. “Behold! Saint-Martin, Maistre, Saint-Yves, Papus, and many, many others. The Fascist movements that turned the twentieth-century world into a giant battleground were inspired by the ideas of these metaphysicians. And the idea that resonated with them the most was not even Gnostic at all, but Calvinist: the dominion of the elect, as instituted by Calvin himself in the aristocratic form of government he established in Geneva.”

“And in America by the Conservative Revolutionary Party,” says Shira.

“Gnosticism itself has a built-in danger, the self-isolation of a spiritual élite from the outside world. Combine it with Calvinist dominionism, and you get Nicolaitanism and its Synarchist politics, a supremacism of the spiritual élite.”

“Which makes Drusilla Becket the key to the whole Conservative Revolution, right? Gnostic fundamentalism, European conservatism, and the dictatorship of arrogant adepts?”

“Now do you realize what we’re up against?”

Jennifer says, “The Buddhist ten-worlds theory would say that this kind of mentality is lower than the compassion of the bodhisattvas.”

“And the two vehicles, Learning and Realization, are notorious for being prone to arrogance,” adds Shira, “which is why so many sutras claim that voice-hearers can’t become Buddhas.”

“What they mean by ‘Realization,’” Ariel explains, “is pratyekabuddha, which means ‘enlightened for oneself alone.’”

“They sure brag a lot about their ability to stand alone.” In the main store, Leila sighs in disgust.

“The reason why the pratyekabuddha world is lower than the bodhisattva world is that the bodhisattva’s vow is to delay their passing into nirvana until they bring all living beings to enlightenment. The Nicolaitan doctrine is especially pernicious because it teaches that other living beings are māyā, illusion, an obstacle to personal enlightenment. This is the mainspring of the spiritual arrogance that has led them into political tyranny. To them, Corporatist dictatorship is not a means of bringing order to a world without it, but as an absolute spiritual necessity. By this means, they plan to ensure the eternal victory of spirit over matter.”

“No matter how many people they kill.”

“Or how many millions of souls they destroy.”

Shira and Jennifer stand speechless and stunned. Right then, Uma bursts in and pulls at Shira’s skirt. “C’mon, Shira, you need to see this!”

Shira sighs. “Okay, Uma. What is it?”

Uma takes her by the hand and leads her out of the back room to a corner in the back of the store, where the Tibetan tapestry hangs. She points to the nude dancing goddess of the icon. “Look! She looks just like you!”

Leila gasps beside Shira. “Come to think of it, she really does!”

“Her name is Kurukulla,” says Ariel, “and she is a Dākinī, one of the ‘Sky Dancers’ in whose honor I named this store. She was originally the love goddess of a land called Uddiyāna, until the Arabs destroyed it. Since then, she has dedicated herself to the bodhisattva path as a Dharma Dākinī, even though the land where her kingdom once was is now under the tyranny of the Caliphate. Like all Dākinīs, she is nude because she is free of attachments, and her dance is the freedom of emptiness. Her blade cuts away all attachments and karmic debts. Like her mother Kālī, she wears a necklace made from the heads of 108 demons. Like her father Śiva, she dances on the body of a demon representing man’s lower nature, or ‘fundamental darkness’ as your Buddhist friends call it.” She embraces Shira from behind. “You’re almost her living image. You should be more like her.” She kisses Shira’s cheek.

Holy City. They wear hoods with the All-Seeing Eye insignia to hide their identities. But these men are some of the highest-ranking Corporates in the Party hierarchy. They are old men who intend to live forever. They are about to transfer their consciousness into new bodies cloned from them, young and strong. One of them says to Richard Becket, “How come you and your brothers refuse to make yourselves young again?”

The Chairman replies, “We have built up so much power in these bodies over the years, above and beyond our spiritual power, that we are not willing to risk losing it, especially not now. Besides, our father lived nearly a hundred years in his original body. But when he recovered from last month’s Seattle incident, all his power was gone, every bit of it. We can’t risk that now. It’s too urgent.”

Another “Renewer’ says, “There should be a way to transfer your powers into a new body, Mr Chairman.”

“So far, our best scientists have not been able to do it without killing the new body, and potentially the man with it. But right now other scientists are perfecting a way of creating immortality in one’s original body, using nanotechnology.”

A third man says, “But with nanotech, you risk it falling into the hands of our inferiors.”

“That is a risk. But they cannot gain for themselves the superpowers we enjoy without risking madness. Power control needs absolute self-control, and that comes only with decades of intensive spiritual practice. Even so, we must keep strictest control over the means of immortality. If we are to preserve our superiority, we must make sure they remain mortal.”

The first man says, “But what about reincarnation?”

Chairman Becket frowns and strokes his chin. “Hmmm. If our seers’ visions are correct, that may indeed be a problem.” He smiles. “But that is a small problem. Incarnation begins with forgetting of one’s past. The enemy will continue to die young, but we shall live long enough to make Methuselah green with envy. The deserving are those chosen to live forever. To us belongs the universe.”

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Copyright © 2011 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.
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[Revision 1, 12/14/11.]

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