All too often, we tend to ignore what we don’t see in favor of that which we do see. Take space for example. As it hangs unseen we ignore it, but as it becomes fixed under the onslaught of mechanized forces, we suddenly notice huge obstacles debauching our vision and engulfing our lives.
When space first originated it was everywhere, except where it wasn’t–i.e. where objects existed in its place. For space to exist it must be free of objects (for objects utilize space and not vice versa as some would have us believe).
All space is first and foremost a characteristic manifestation of unstructured nothingness–remarkably similar in both form and content to the contemporary illusion of the void: before, during and after. Although a few dissimilarities do exist, they are not worth mentioning at the moment.
Secondly and second-most, space in its totality is qualitatively unquantifiable. This characteristic should not be treated lightly, for unlike air, space is weightless. This quality is not unique to space, many abstract notions are also weightless as are all objects in the absence of gravity. However, space is not an abstract notion, nor, as has already been stated, is it an object.
In its primordial quintessence, space is the non-substantive aspect of the physical. In everyday parlance it is space which determines our presence or absence, whichever comes first. Consider, for example, where one would be in the absence of space. Nowhere is the correct response. Although here or there might strike some people as a possibility, nowhere is more precisely correct for it alone circumcises exactly the existing situation.
The actual origin of space has, as far as I know, never been concretely determined. In fact, whether or not anybody has even tried to deal seriously with the topic is questionable. Although recent history has produced a good number of spacemen, not one has come across with any plausible theory as to the actual origin of space. Admittedly the subject does have its drawbacks; but until the answer is produced, space will forever remain a mystery.
The subject, its immense proportions aside, plays a highly significant, though usually overlooked, role all-around, every day, everywhere. Its peculiar structurelessness lends itself more to general neglect and oversight than actual insight. And yet, from morning to nightfall, and nightfall to morning, every day of every year, space–for all its lack-luster non-appearance–is our most constant and irreproachable companion.
Gratification Barrier
Consider for a moment the phenomenon of space as it relates directly to both you and me, and notice how all space, for better or worse, acts as a barrier to gratification. Although many other barriers are also known to exist (e.g. thought, work, TV, fathers and mothers, religion, politics, schools etc.), space is the original culprit.
In its natural state, space separates all matter, living, dying and dead. (Albeit, it’s the utilization of that separation that ultimately distinguishes the dead and dying from the living. The dead and dying fix space; using boundaries, markers, laws, uniforms, bars, taxes, dogma, lies, courts, walls, numbers, and even living automatons; the dead and dying have so mazed-up space that the living are left to wonder if space isn’t really just for the birds.)
Leaving aside for the moment the dead and dying, difficult as it may be in these harsh times, let us examine how space naturally interacts with the living. Whatever space there be between the living, it is in a sense inversely adjustable to the desires of the living.
According to Plato’s fantastic hypothesis, “living substance at the time of its coming to life was torn into small particles, which have ever since endeavored to reunite through the sexual instincts.”
Space is thus not in and of itself antagonistic to life. It simply provides the room for all of us small particles to reunite. Life itself desires and demands unity, gratification–the whole bit as they say. Unfortunately, space, that ultimate upholder of impartiality, also provides room for the negating forces of life as manifest in the social order under the rule of Thanatos, mercenary of death.
Space thus becomes the impartial battleground where the forces of life face the forces of death. That life naturally leads to death is here immaterial in view of the fact that life today more closely resembles the lifelessness of death confined in fixed space.
The harbingers of death have as a matter of fact already fixed most free space and herded life into deathlike confinement. In many areas life has become a function of routinized conformity, relegated to abysmal loneliness, and even subjugated to the mass production of death’s own institutional tombs.
As life submits to rule by death, or any death-like authority, space in its totality becomes void and meaningless. Should life, however, assert itself negating the forces of death and all its morbid contrivances, space could become a playground–a multi-dimension where pleasure rains and music scents the air.
The Great Space Squeeze
That human beings do not fully comprehend the significance of space is perhaps one of the most serious flaws of human intelligence. Stemming directly, like most human flaws, from sheer ignorance and negligence, the misunderstanding of space has now brought us unto the borders of space-lusion. Even today, masses of human beings are totally unaware that the “great space squeeze,” a precursor to space-lusion, has already been in effect for years.
Ever since, and to a great extent even before, Darwin’s non-formulation of the dictum that ” the origins ‘of space precede the origins of the species,” humanity has simply ignored the correlative proposition whereby: “the decline of space precedes the decline of the species.”
In view of the fact that it is the human being who requires space (the average amount of space used by an active human each day amounts to approximately 345,000 cubic feet), one begins to wonder why so little fuss over space is made by the average individual.
One obvious reason is that, fortunately for us, space has a high degree of recyclability. Another is that the human tolerance for small amounts of space can be efficiently raised via social conditioning and strict law enforcement.
Fortunately again, though most governing bodies would disagree, this tolerance can and does often lead to a higher stage wherein strong resistance to foreign contaminants develops. The implications are obvious.
Recent studies in such far-flung fields as bio-spasics and psycho-space-ology have shown that individuals are becoming increasingly intolerant towards decreasing space, pissed-off at the misuse of space, and violently antagonistic to space-rape (today estimated to be beyond estimable assessment).
Government response to these studies has taken the usual “squeeze ‘m to pay as you go” attitude. And bills are now pending in the legislature for setting higher price limits on limited spaces, for increasing R&D in behavioral modification and social conditioning, and buttressing up all the nefarious branches of local and federal law enforcement agencies.
The immense folly of such stop-gap measures is but typical of the recessive mental capacities prevalent in governing bodies. The only long-term positive aspect of the new legislation is that the increased contamination of society, which will necessarily result upon enactment, will lead to a massive social fever whose very life will be dependent on exorcising the contaminators of space and destroyers of social autonomy.
The place of the play is space.