X Doxa


	SPA NOMA DOXA


Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music, as before. Alfred, Lord Tennyson In Memoriam (1850)
On top of the hour my website has now become full circle, loaded with facts, images and sounds, and organized in triads steered by the four elements of the four quarters:
	A fire B air C water D earth
'The book of nature is written in circles and triangles',which the ancient Greeks have taught us.
It is generally known that dear little bitchy old maestro Stravinsky had an enduring craving for publicity, for the media. Small minds (i.e. minds that make things small) may interpret this as an egomaniac, narcissistic flaw of character. But I don't agree. Because a true creator like Stravinsky is a generous soul who wants to share his amazing new discoveries with as many people as possible; his greatest fear is that the enduring evils of this planet (jealousy, blindness, pettiness) may destroy the communication between these discoveries and a potentially large audience. This has happened many times before: the time wasted between the first and the second performance of the St. Matthew Passion, to give just one example, was more than a century! More than three generations were doomed to live without this indispensable food of love while it was stored in a stupid warehouse! That's why a creator has to cry out loud and ignore the obvious attacks on his character, which so many non-creators are eager to deliver. I therefore fully sympathize with this great master's urge for the floodlights of the media - of course he was right to attract all possible attention!
	But today we live in a completely different world compared to Stravinsky: we have the Internet! We can now avoid the information-sponging of the media in a much better way; we don't have to beg for attention from the media anymore, because a website like this permanently lives in the media, is much more accessible and accurate than any paper. Therefore: Hallelujah! Long may it live in the media!

SPA In 1996 I published an essay about the necessity of a Separation of Spheres in our spiritual habitat - analogous to the 'Separation of Powers' in our political system. See God is Kunst in Het Componeren van de Hemel. Therein I argued that we have to discern three basic areas, three archetypes in our spiritual realm: Science ,Politics and Art (SPA), whereby Religion is a form of Art. This 'trialectic' (rather than a Marxist 'dialectic'-) view, sheds for me new light on the miraculous mixture of chaos and chance we live in. It is, in my opinion (my doxa) like the reign of the three happy goddesses in the Palace of Heraklion which I saw on the isle of Crete. To become really alive, the three sovereign forces, the Three Ladies of SPA, each have to be worshiped separately. Which goes against our grain because we always first like to unify things first. (Preferably under a strong Leader - to feel a little safer in our chaos…) In the last century we've gone through a series of ill-fated overlappings: of Politics and Art ('social realism' and 'agitprop'), of Politics and Science (marxism and stalinism), and of Science and Art (the 'Frankenstein - syndrome'). They all proved to be dead alleys. So let's keep them apart to keep them alive.
	NOMA In his last book (his 'testament' one could say, since he died soon after its publication), called Rocks of Ages (2002), the world- famous evolution-biologist and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould introduces 'the Principle of NOMA, or Non-Overlapping Magisteria'. The cover of this book is an illustration of Athanasius Kircher, called Mundus subterraneus (Underground World), dating from 1664. 'God holds the earth in space, but twelve winds in human form control both motion and climate…' I call it, of course, The Wind Clock. Gould defines a magisterium as 'a domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tool for meaningful discourse and resolution.' He then separates the domains of Religion and Science, because 'I do not see how science and religion could be unified, or even synthesized, under any common scheme of explanation or analysis…' So far so good. The age old conflict between Science and Religion can indeed best be solved by giving each complete sovereignty over its own domain. But magister Gould recognizes only two domains (Science and Religion) as a 'magisterium', which makes his Noma-construction wobbly. He leaves out Politics as such. At this point I must think of the remark Einstein made in what turned out to be his last interview. Asked why the human race was clever enough to split the atom, but couldn't bring the world at peace, he answered: 'But you know, science is so much easier than politics…' I've always admired this answer for its wisdom and humility. Yes, Politics is a magisterium - to overlap Science, or Religion and Art, is truly a taboo (Anyone reading Roy Jenkins magisterial biography of Winston Churchill will recognize Politics as a truly autonomous magisterium.) So I hold the triadic principle of SPA as a more powerful instrument of analysis than the dialectic principle of NOMA.
DOXA A real Coming of Christ on Judgment Day over the clouds of New York 9/11 couldn't have created a bigger shock than did the mega sex-scandal that hit the Church at the beginning of its Third Millennium did. Nothing in its long history of Conclaves and Councils, of collaboration and scandals, could draw so much fascinated and protracted attention of a stunned world, witnessing the recent revelations of the pricelessly expensive Pedophile Secrets of the Church. Why is this so?		('jezus'binladen.jpg monteren op New York 9/11)
	Doubtless because sex, sexual reproduction, is the essence of the life-form we are involved with as mammals.
Other creatures, bacteria for instance, 'choose' a different way, a non-sexual form of reproduction: cloning. The unicellulars choose eternal life - for the price of eternal boredom. We multicellulars get a much more interesting life - for the price of death: We die, because we love! (Ask Darwin or Wagner - The Origin of Species and Tristan und Isolde. both appeared in 1859, for that matter.)
	In afterlife-fantasies of most religions, 'death has no dominion'. Consequently there is no sex in heaven. Only devoutness and obedience. But in real life, in the miraculous heaven of the universe in which we live, there is indeed indispensable death. And therefore, thank God, sex!
The religious way of dealing with death lies at the origin of the sick and criminal way sex is treated in our pious societies. Sex is used to lie, to deceive, and to get money out of your pocket, to make you a hypocrite and a bore. I've lived most of my adult life in the world famous Red Light District of Amsterdam, and I can tell you: nothing is more boring and predictable here than sex. It's all polluted by the dirty hands of Mammon. If only we could kill Him, kill Commercialism, not only in sexualis, but in general, in music, in the visual arts, in public life…! If only we could free the human body/soul of its load of commercial interest (like our best choreographers do) how much more we would then enjoy and worship its incredible beauty!
(gaypride.jpg. opzoeken)	We should go and learn from our most intelligent and lovable cousins, the bonobos. They're the only primates that collectively managed to get rid of hooliganism and social violence, to get even war under control - by replacing aggression with sex. Sex at any time, with anyone, any gender and all ages! How clever, how civilized! Indeed: make love not war! So let's strive for the bonoboization of our societies!
Our individual and collective history is the awakening from the nightmare of tyranny to the daylight of democracy. A sure sign of the dawn of democracy has always been the emancipation of women, gays and lesbians - in the ancient Athens of the Classics, in the Old Amsterdam of the Enlightenment, and in the New-Amsterdam (New York) of Modernity: the three A's of sexual liberation. So we know where to go - hand in hand with dear little bonobo!