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Due
Back
on
the
Planet
Earth:


Toward
a
Definition
of
Spaciness


It
is
likely
that
the
off‐worlders
will
develop
their
own
gestures,

mannerisms,
and
speech
characteristics.
During
the
two
world
wars,

counterespionage
agents
could
often
spot
a
spy
by
the
manner
in

which
he
smoked
a
cigarette
or
held
a
fork.
Such
telltale
signs
will
pop

up
in
space
natures.
Their
gestures
might
be
slightly
exaggerated.
.
.
.

they
may
not
be
aware
of
the
oddness
of
their
facial
expressions
since

they
are
accustomed
to
their
own
facial
messaging.
.
.
.
The
way
they

cut
their
meat,
spoon
up
their
soup,
hold
tools,
write
with
a
pen,
and

all
the
other
unconscious
motions
will
be
points
of
difference.

James
E.
and
Alcestis
R.
Oberg,
Pioneering
Space


I

In
Woody
Allen's
Annie
Hall
(1977),
during
Alvy
Singer's

Easter
weekend
visit
to
Chippewa
Falls,
Wisconsin,
and
Annie
Hall's

home,
and
after
an
uneasy
dinner
with
Annie's
waspish
parents
and

anti‐Semitic
grandmother,
Alvy
finds
himself
summoned
into
the

bedroom
of
Annie's
peculiar
brother,
Duane.

As
Alvy
(Woody
Allen)
listens,
uneasily,
Duane
(Christopher
Walken)
describes

for
him
a
secret
desire:
"Can
I
confess
something?
.
.
.
Sometimes
when
I'm
driving
.
.

.
on
the
road
at
night
.
.
.
I
see
two
headlights
coming
toward
me.
Fast.
I
have
this

sudden
impulse
to
turn
the
wheel
quickly,
head‐on
into
the
oncoming
car.
I
can

anticipate
the
explosion.
The
sound
of
shattering
glass.
The
.
.
.
flames
rising
out
of

the
glowing
gasoline."
Though
he
is
trying
to
be
polite,
the
look
on
Alvy's
face

betrays
his
sudden
realization
that
he
is

in
the
presence
of
the
deranged.
He

rises
quickly
from
his
chair
and
inches

his
way
out
of
the
room,
excusing
his

flight
with
the
explanation
that
he
has
a

prior
obligation
elsewhere:
"Right.
Tsch,

well,
I
have
to—I
have
to
go
now,
Duane,

because
I‐I'm
due
back
on
the
planet
Earth"
(Four
Films,
57‐58;
my
emphasis).
To

remove
oneself
from
an
awkward
situation
by
lying
about
a
supposed
prior

The Collected Works of David Lavery 2

commitment
is
natural
enough,
of
course,
but
Alvy's
excuse
is
no
mere
pretense:
it
is

the
recognition
of
a
counterespionage
agent
of
the
presence
of
an
"off‐world"
spy.
In

the
Space
Age,
such
an
acknowledgment
of
the
alien
could
well
become

commonplace.


II


"Earthbound,"
for
Freeman
[Dyson]
and
those
of

his
persuasion,
is
a
common,
sad
pejorative.
For

me
the
word
has
a
snug
and
comfortable
sound.

Kenneth
Brower,
The
Starship
and
the
Canoe


"Spacy"—the
word
first
appeared,
according
to
the

Dictionary
of
Slang
and
Unconventional
English,
in
the
late
1970s
and
originally
was

1
used
to
describe
the
mentality
of
someone
under
the
influence
of
narcotics. 

In
Fear
and
Trembling,
Soren
Kierkegaard,
writing
in

the
middle
of
the
nineteenth
century,
imagined
a
heroic

2
individual
he
called
the
"knight
of
faith." 
Filled
with

"infinite
resignation"
to
the
conditions
of
this
world,

Kierkegaard's
knight
aspires
toward
the
infinite
but

ultimately
learns
the
way
of
the
finite.
He
makes
"the

movements
of
infinity
.
.
.
with
such
correctness
.
.
.
that
he

constantly
gets
the
finite
out
of
it."
In
doing
so,
the
knight

of
faith,
Kierkegaard
explains,
becomes
like
a
dancer
able
to

"leap
into
a
definite
posture
in
such
a
way
that
there
is
not
a
second
when
he
is


1

According
to
the
eighth
edition
of
Eric
Partridge's
classic
lexicon
(edited
by
Paul

Beale),
the
word
spacy
is
a
variation
on
the
original
"spaced
out,"
which
appeared
for
the

first
time
in
the
late
1960s
and
meant
"very
high
on
a
hallucinogen
or
psychedelic,"

"exhilarated
on
any
drug,"
or
"unrealistic,
tending
to
theoretical
analysis
and
exposition
but

based
upon
insufficient
data
and
lack
of
understanding
or
sympathy."
An
Australian

dictionary
(the
Macijuarie
Dictionary)
spells
the
word
"spacey"
and
defines
il
as
meaning

"dreamy,
hallucinatory."

2

As
Kierkegaard
explains,
he
had
never
seen
such
an
individual
in
the
flesh.
"I

candidly
admit
that
in
my
practice
I
have
not
yet
found
any
reliable
example.”
Yet
he
knew,

too,
that
he
could
be
in
error,
for
he
admits
thepossibility
that
“every
second
man
may
be

such
an
example.”
And
if
all
men
may
be
knights
of
faith,
to
encounter
one
might
prove
a

shock
to
a
man
of
genius
like
Kierkegaard:
“Acquaintance
made,
I
am
introduced
to
him.
The

moment
I
set
eyes
on
him
I
instantly
push
him
away
from
me.
I
myself
leap
backward,

I

clasp
my
hands
and
say
aloud,
‘Good
Lord,
is
this
the
man?
Is
it
really
he?
Why,
he
looks
like

a
tax
collector!’
However,
it
is
the
man
after
all”
(119).

The Collected Works of David Lavery 3

grasping
after
the
posture,
but
by
the
leap
itself
he
stands
fixed
in
that
posture."
He

can
leap
into
the
air,
after
the
infinite,
and
"fall
down
to
Earth
in
such
a
way
that
the

same
second
it
looks
as
if
[he]
were
standing
and
walking,"
and
thus
he
is
able
to

"transform
the
leap
of
life
into
a
walk,
absolutely
to
express
the
sublime
in
the

pedestrian."
To
the
knight
of
faith,
Kierkegaard
thinks,
"finiteness
tastes
.
.
.
just
as

good
as
to
one
who
has
never
known
anything
higher"
(121‐23).
To
achieve
such

3
knighthood,
the
Danish
philosopher
believed,
is
the
legitimate
project
of
modernity. 

The
antipedestrian
language
of
the
Space
Age,
however,
would
seem
to

suggest
that
it
is
certainly
no
longer
the
human
project.
Increasingly
spacy,
we
no

longer
seek
to
integrate
the
leap
into
a
walk,
the
vertical
into
the
horizontal.
It
is

"infinite
presumption,"
not
infinite
resignation,
the
desire
to
fly
and
not
to
walk,
the

dream
of
soaring
above
human
and
earthly
conditions,
not
mastery
of
repetition
and

consistency,
which
govern
our
sensibility,
as
the
spaciness
of
our
language
reveals.

In
the
colloquial
speech
of
a
people
in
any
given
era
we
find
mirrored
often

unconscious
changes
in
worldview.
Why,
for
example,
should
it
be
the
case
that

pedestrian—a
word
central
to
Kierkegaard's
philosophy—which
simply
denotes
one

who
walks
on
the
ground,
has
come
to
connote,
through
metaphoric
extension,

"boring,
commonplace,
ordinary,"
as
it
does
today?
After
all,
we
pass
our
lives
today

in
urban
environments
meant
to
exclude
the
pedestrian;
we
move
along
highway

landscapes
purposely
constructed
to
be
seen
and
understood
only
at
the
speed
of
a

passenger
in
an
automobile;
we
live
in
buildings
designed
by
postmodernist

architects
who
have
come
to
think
of
"the
ground"
as
merely
"the
traffic‐flow‐
4
support
nexus
for
the
vertical
whole." 

Almost
from
its
origin
and
nearly
universally
mankind
has
fallen
prey
to

"ascensionism,"
the
"general
psychic
orientation
toward
brightness,
levitation,

flying,
climbing,
upward
pointing
and
moving"
(Henry
Murray,
cited
in
Mumford
34‐

3

The
aspirations
of
Western
dance,
which
Kierkegaard
draws
on
as
the
vehicle
for

his
metaphor,
are,
we
should
note,
hardly
universal.
Horizontal
and
vertical
have
entirely

different
meanings
for
Africans
and
Euro‐Americans.
While
the
"otherworldly"
cultural

heritage
of
the
West
teaches
vertical
aspiration
and
the
defiance
of
gravity,
epitomized
by

the
leap
of
the
ballet
dancer
so
instructive
to
Kierkegaard,
African
gesture,
posture,
and

dance
are
decidedly
"downbeat,"
receptive
to
gravity
and
its
demands
(R.
Thompson
13‐14).


4


Richard
Sennett,
in
his
investigation
into
"the
fall
of
public
man,"
suggests
that

"the
erasure
of
alive
public
space"
in
the
modern
city
has
resulted
in
the
general

devaluation
of
the
horizontal.
As
evidence
he
cites
an
urb
an
planner's
characterization
of

the
ground
(at
a
Paris
site)
as
"the
traffic
flow‐support
nexus
for
the
vertical
whole."

"Translated,"
he
explains,
"this
means
that
the
public
space
has
become
a
derivative
of

movement"
(14).


The Collected Works of David Lavery 4

35).
In
the
Space
Age,
the
language
of
ascensionism
has
come
into
its
ascendancy.

Now
it
is
only
the
leap
that
matters.

And
now
beings
dwell
among
us
known
as
space
cadets,
a
term
in
wide
use
by

5
those
forty
and
under
and
yet
a
concept
with
a
very
imprecise
meaning. 
Originally

(circa
1960s),
a
space
cadet
was
someone
(customarily

played
in
later
cinematic
incarnations
by
a
Sean
Penn
or
a

Crispin
Glover),
whose
excessive
use
of
drugs
had
severely

impaired
the
ability
to
function
normally
in
a
pedestrian

world:
one
whose
common
sense
had
been
largely

eradicated
along
with
a
great
deal
of
gray
matter.
Later,

the
term
was
extended
to
describe
"Me
Decade,"

psychobabbling
Marin
County
residents,
or
the
galleria‐
obsessed
"awesome"
mentality
of
vacuous
valley
girls.
But

space
cadets
(like
Body
Snatchers)
escaped
their
native
state
of
California
and
began

to
spread
across
America.
Just
as
the
slang
of
hippies
and
valley
girls,
once
scorned

in
Dubuque
or
Cincinnati,
became,
with
the
aid
of
the
media,
the
common
coin
for

youth
across
the
nation,
space
cadets
likewise
colonized
other
states
and
cities—and

Madison
Avenue—as
they
spread
beyond
the
bay
area.

Experiences
that
promised
a
high
degree
of
hedonistic
pleasure
for
the

participant—a
day
at
the
beach,
a
good
movie,
a
night
of
beer
drinking—were
judged

to
be
"far‐out."
Sometimes,
when
the
mood
seemed
appropriate,
such
experiences

were
deemed
"out
of
this
world."

People,
it
should
be
noted,
were
also
said
to
be
"far‐out"
and
"out
of
sight."

For
example,
an
attractive
body,
male
or
female,
might
be
said
to
be
"out
of
sight,"

as
if
the
tendency
to
disappear
over
the
horizon
were
worthy
of
the
highest
praise,

and
an
individual
who
thought
in
an
abstract
or
even
in
an
unusual
way—indeed
one

who
even
thought
at
all—might
be
termed
"far‐out."
Indeed,
I
have
myself
been

deemed
"far
out"
and
"spacy"
by
my
students,
not,
I
have
discovered,
because
of
the

usual
absent‐minded‐professor
eccentricities,
but
because
of
the
way
I
think.
As
I

have
learned
through
interrogation
of
their
looks
of
disbelief,
I
am
most
likely
to
be

branded
spacy
when
I
am
in
fact
most
earthy,
or
when
I
am
attempting,
as
I
do
in
this

chapter,
to
describe
and
define
spaciness
itself.


5

The
painter
Jack
Levine
has
staked
his
claim
as
the
originator
of
the
term
space

cadet
in
"Modern
Artists
on
Artists
of
the
Past,"
a
speech
given
at
the
Museum
of
Modern

Art
in
New
York,
22
April
1952.


The Collected Works of David Lavery 5

The
desire
to
"get
high"
became
for
a
time
a
Space
Age
obsession.
To
"come

down"
after
a
high
could
be
a
real
bummer.
A
movie
or
a
book
which
provoked
deep

thought,
which
made
a
reader
or
viewer
contemplate
his
or
her
own
mortality,
for

example,
or
seriously
consider
a
social
or
political
issue
might
threaten
to
"bring
you

down."
And
the
work
in
question
might
be
judged
"heavy,
very
heavy."

In
a
revealing
study
of
"words
and
values,"
Peggy

Rosenthal
has
studied
such
"leading
words"
as
"self,"
"growth,"

"systems,"
and
"relativity"
and
speculatated
about
"where
they

lead
us."
It
seems
quite
clear
where
"spaciness"
and
its
adjunct

meanings
lead
us.
With
characteristic
audacity
and
insight
that

6
could
only
be
described
as
Space
Age, 
Timothy
Leary—once
a

research
psychologist
at
Harvard,
then
"high
priest"
of
LSD
in
the

1960s,
and,
in
a
later,
1980s
incarnation,
founder
of
an
advocacy

2
group
(SMI LE:
Space
Migration,
Intelligence
Increase,
Life

Extension)
extolling
the
evolutionary
necessity
of
space
colonization
for
the

species—acknowledges
this
lead:


It
is
no
accident
that
the
pot‐head
generally
refers
to
his

neural
state
as
"high"
or
"spaced‐out."
The
transcendence

of
gravitational,
digital,
linear,
either‐or,
Aristotelian,

Newtonian,
Euclidean,
planetary
orientations
.
.
.
is,
in

evolutionary
perspective,
part
of
our
neurological

preparation
for
the
inevitable
migrations
off
the
home

planet,
now
beginning.
This
is
why
so
many
pot‐heads
are

Star
Trek
freaks
and
Sci‐Fi
adepts.
(88)


But
we
need
not
resort
to
Leary's
antigravity
evolutionary
metaphysics
to
explain
the

birth
of
space
language
and
spaciness
in
general.

Behind
our
contemporary
cultural
style,
Peter
Marin
has
observed,
speaking

more
literally
than
he
perhaps
realized,
lies
"the
unrealized
shame
of
having
failed

the
world
and
not
knowing
what
to
do
about
it"
(48).
But
"the
real
horror
of
our

present
condition,"
Marin
goes
on
to
say
in
"The
New
Narcissism,"
"is
not
merely
the


6

At
the
close
of
a
speech
at
the
University
of
Alabama
in
Huntsvile
in
1980,
in
which

he
proclaimed
the
evolutionary
gospel
of
space
migration.
Leary,
in
his
best
evangelical

style,
asked,
"How
many
of
you
are
going
with
me
to
space?"
Reportedly,
a
good
80
percent

of
the
audience
jumped
to
its
feet
in
support
of
his
far‐out
ideas.


The Collected Works of David Lavery 6

absence
of
community
or
the
isolation
of
the
self—those,
after
all,
have
been
part
of

the
American
condition
for
a
long
time."
Our
true
terror,
Marin
insists,
is
rather
"the

loss
of
the
ability
to
remember
what
is
missing,
the
diminishment
of
our
vision
of

what
is
humanly
possible
or
desirable."
We
are
afflicted
now
by
a
kind
of
spiritual

amnesia.

It
is
this
cultural
style—a
sensibility
Marin
deems
"elsewhere"
(56)—which
I

call
spaciness,
the
psyche,
the
state
of
soul,
which
life
in
the
Space
Age
engenders.


III


The
rational
Jeffersonian
pursuit
of
happiness
embarked
upon
in
the

American
Revolution
translates
into
the
flaky
euphoria
of
the
late

twentieth
century.
Every
advance
in
an
objective
understanding
of

the
Cosmos
and
in
its
technological
control
further
distances
the
self

from
the
Cosmos
precisely
in
the
degree
of
the
advance—so
that
in

the
end
the
self
becomes
a
space‐bound
ghost
which
roams
the
very

Cosmos
it
understands
perfectly.

Walker
Percy,
Lost
in
the
Cosmos


As
the
title
of
this
chapter
suggests,
"spaciness"
is
not
easily
comprehended,

and
I
will
offer
here
no
clear‐cut
definition
but
only
"notes
toward"
a
definition.
At

this
time
in
the
Space
Age,
however,
the
parameters
of
spaciness
may
be
identified.

Though
I
do
not
claim
to
be
able
as
a
"counterespionage
agent"
to
pinpoint
the
spacy

way
to
hold
a
cigarette
or
lift
a
fork,
I
can
delineate
with
some
clarity
the
key

features
of
the
Space
Age's
episteme.


Spaciness
is
placeless.
In
a
book
on
the
"invention

of
the
future"
at
M.I.T.'s
"Media
Lab,"
Stewart

Brand
decries,
in
a
telling
phrase,
"the
tyranny
of

place"
(Media
Lab
24).
In
the
Space
Age,
as
Brand

himself
recognizes,
such
tyranny
is
about
to
be

overthrown,
though
the
price
we
pay
for
freedom

is
likely
to
be
an
increase
in
spaciness.

Architect
and
urban
planner
Christian

Nieuwenhuis
once
imagined
a
postmodernist
utopia
he
would
call
"New
Babylon."
In

The Collected Works of David Lavery 7

New
Babylon
all
ordinary
sense
of
locale
would
disappear;
it
would
be
a
placeless

city.
"In
New
Babylon
people
would
be
constantly
travelling.
There
would
be
no
need

for
them
to
return
to
their
point
of
departure
as
this
in
any
case
would
be

transformed."
On
the
opposite
end
of
the
scale
from
a
Levittown,
New
Babylon
would

be
a
totally
ideal
metropolis,
as
Nieuwenhuis
admits:
"It
follows
that
New
Babylon

could
not
have
a
determined
plan.
On
the
contrary
every
element
would
be
left

undetermined,
mobile
and
flexible"
(quoted
in
Norberg‐Schulz
35).
In
the
process
of

perfecting
our
simulations,
we
have
come
surprisingly
close
to
realizing

Nieuwenhuis's
mad
vision.
Depersonalized,
disincarnated,
in
truth
we
now
have
no

place
to
stand,
having
pulled
the
rug
(indeed
the
ground,
the
Earth)
out
from
under

ourselves.
Our
spaciness
is
placeless.

Two
examples
of
Space
Age
placelessness
come
to
mind.


Placelessness
and
architecture.
In
Body,
Memory,
Architecture,
Kent
Bloomer

demonstrates
the
loss
of
qualitative
values
in
our
phenomenological
orientation
in

the
world
and
their
replacement
by
space
as
a
Cartesian
coordinate
system:

At
the
very
beginning
of
our
individual
lives
we
measure
and
order
the
world

out
from
our
own
bodies:
the
world
opens
up
in
front
of
us
and
closes
behind.

Front
thus
becomes
quite
different
from
back,
and
we
give
an
attention
to
our

fronts,
as
we
face
the
world,
which
is
quite
different
from
the
care
we
give
to

our
back
and
what
lies
behind
us.
We
struggle,
as
soon
as
we
are
able,
to

stand
upright,
with
our
heads
atop
our
spines,
in
a
way
different
from
any

other
creatures
in
the
world,
and
up
derives
a
set
of
connotations
(including

moral
ones)
opposite
from
down.
In
our
minds
left
and

right
soon
become
distinguished
from
each
other
in

quality
as
well
as
in
direction,
as
words
like
"sinister"
and

"dextrous"
record.
(1)

Such
distinctions,
subjectively,
"Ptolemaically"

derived,transform
space
into
place,
make
the
external
world

7
lived‐in
and
personalized. 
In
this
measuring
and
ordering,
the

"tacit
dimension"
(as
Michael
Polanyi
calls
it)
of
the
individual

and
the
species
is
created.
We
develop
a
vast,
nonrational,
embodied
intelligence,
a


7


In
her
"ecology
of
imagination
in
childhood,"
Edith
Cobb
describes
the
"Ptolemaic"

and
"Copernican"
stages
of
development
in
a
child's
awareness
of
the
world.
For
each
of
us,

Cobb
notes,
ontogeny
recapitulates
phylogeny:
every
human
being
is
born
Ptolemaic
and

only
grows
into
the
Copernican
outlook.


The Collected Works of David Lavery 8

genius
that
"always
knows
more
than
it
can
tell"about
the
actual
world
in
which
we

dwell.

But
in
the
modern
world
the
tacit
dimension
is
"implicitly
called
into

question"
by
formal
education's
inculcation
of
the
Copernican,
Cartesian
world
view.

This
new
system
enhances
the
precision
with
which
spatial
relationships
are

understood,
but
at
a
high
cost,
as
Bloomer
describes:

The
quality
of
location
is
safely
ignored.
This
system
can
locate
precisely
a

point
along
x,
y,
and
z
axes
even
as
it
renders
all
the
possible
points
somehow

the
same.
Our
cities
are
stacked
up
in
layers
which
bear
testimony
to
the

skills
of
the
surveyor
and
the
engineer
in
manipulating
precise
Cartesian

coordinates,
but
they
exhibit
no
connection
with
the
body‐centered,

value
charged
sense
of
space
we
started
with.
(1)


Placelessness
and
the
media.
According
to
Joshua
Meyrowitz's
No
Sense

of
Place,
another
kind
of
Space
Age
placelessness
has
likewise
resulted

from
the
impact
of
electronic
media
on
social
behavior.
Radio,

television,
telephone,
and
computer
are
in
the
process
of
destroying

traditional
and
unique
environments,
Meyrowitz's
impressive
study

shows,
radically
altering
the
tacit
"situational
geography"
(6)
that
has

long
governed
normal
behavior.
(As
an
epigraph
to
his
book,
Meyrowitz
quotes,

appropriately,
Marshall
McLuhan's
observation
that
"nothing
can
be
further
from
the

spirit
of
the
new
technology
than
'a
place
for
everything
and
everything
in
its

place.'")

"It
is
extremely
rare,"
Meyrowitz
writes,
"for
there
to
be
a
sudden
widespread

change
in
walls,
doors,
the
layout
of
a
city,
or
in
other
architectural
and
geographical

structures.
But
the
change
in
situations
and
behaviors
that
occurs
when
doors
are

opened
or
closed
and
when
walls
are
constructed
or
removed
is
paralleled
in
our

time
by
the
flick
of
a
microphone
switch,
the
turning
on
of
a
television
set,
or
the

answering
of
a
telephone"
(39‐40).
(Nieuwenhuis'
New
Bablyon,
Meyrowitz's
analysis

would
suggest,
is
already
being
forged
not
with
bricks
and
mortar
but
via
new

channels
of
communication.)

Once
how
we
behaved
depended
largely
on
where
we
were
and
who
we
were

with.
Public
and
private
places,
men
and
women,
superiors
and
inferiors,
children

and
adults—all
required
us
to
behave
in
particular
ways.
But
now
these
distinctions

are
becoming
blurred.
Now
"Many
Americans
may
no
longer
seem
to
'know
their

The Collected Works of David Lavery 9

place'
because
the
traditionally
interlocking
components
of
'place'
have
been
split

apart
by
electronic
media.
Wherever
one
is
now—at
home,
at
work,
or
in
a
car—one

may
be
in
touch
and
tuned‐in"
(308).


Spaciness
is
ageographical
and
ahistorical.
"Lost
on
the
Planet
Earth"
reads
the
title

of
a
Newsweek
story
(Leslie
31)
on
the
results
of
a
National
Geographic
Society‐
sponsored
Gallup
Organization
survey
of
geographical
knowledge
in
industrialized

countries
(the
United
States,
Sweden,
West
Germany,
Japan,
Canada,
the
United

Kingdom,
France,
Italy,
Mexico),
which
discovered
surprising
ignorance—especially
in

American
young
adults
(age
eighteen
to
twenty
four,
who
finished
dead
last.
In
this

country,
knowledge
of
world
geography
has
sunk
to
an
all‐time
low.
Almost
a
quarter

of
high
school
seniors,
for
example,
cannot
find
the
United
States
on
a
map,
and
the

overwhelming
majority
cannot
say
where
Australia
or
Japan
are
located.
(See
"Which

Way
Is
the
Pacific
Ocean?")

In
A
Study
in
Scarlet,
Dr.
Watson
is
astonished
to
learn
that
Sherlock
Holmes

is
not
aware
that
the
Copernican
revolution
has
taken
place.
Holmes
defends
his

Ptolemaic
ignorance
by
explaining
that
the
knowledge
that
the
Earth
goes
around
the

sun
and
not
the
other
way
around
has
no
possible
relevance
to
his
daily
life
and

work.
As
a
manifestation
of
our
spaciness,
geographical
obliviousness
could
be

explained
away
by
an
opposite
post‐Copernican

excuse.
For
those
whose
displaced
minds
are

elsewhere,
no
longer
on
the
Earth,
there
is
little
need

any
longer
to
know
"where
it's
at."
As
Arendt

endeavored
to
remind
us,
it
is
world
alienation
and

not
alienation
from
the
self
that
truly
characterize
the

modern
(The
Human
Condition
254).
(Revealingly,

psychologist
William
Niederlander
now
projects
the

need
for
a
new
branch
of
psychology—
"psychogeography"
he
calls
it—dedicated
to
the
study
of
"the
psychological

separation
of
the
species
from
Earth"
[quoted
in
Oberg
and
Oberg
261].)

Our
obliviousness
to
the
past
reflects
our
unqualified
acceptance
of
the

simulations
of
the
present.
It
is
as
if,
in
this
age
in
which
capitalism
(as
Sontag
shows

in
On
Photography)
has
reduced
the
past
to
outmoded
styles
of
consumption,
we
can

barely
imagine
a
time
before
our
own.
"How
did
people
live
in
the
old
days,
how
did

they
eat,
how
did
they
drink,
how
did
they
sleep?"
J.
H.
van
den
Berg
asks
in
The

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 10

Changing
Nature
of
Man,
and
the
answer
is
that,
for
twentieth
century
men
and

women
the
past
is
almost
inconceivable.


We
have
no
idea
how
our
parents
lived.
When
they
tell
us

about
it,
when
they
take
us
with
them
into
the
past,
we
are

amazed;
we
hear
of
a
world
in
which
everything
was

different.
.
.
.
What
our
grandparents
tell
us
is
even
stranger,

at
least
if
we
try
to
understand
what
their
story
contains.

"There
were
no
cars";
that
is
all
right;
but
let
us
not
have
the

idea
that
we
understand
what
this
simple
information,
this

facts,
implies.
A
city
without
cars
is
radically
foreign
to
us
.
.

.
the
past
cannot
come
to
us
because
there
are
no
points
of
contact,
no

similarities.
Discontinuity
permits
no
communication.
(Berg
38)


"Those
who
know
history
are
doomed
to
repeat
it,"
artificial

intelligence
(AI)
expert
Marvin
Minsky
proclaims,
attacking

reactionary
resistance
to
new
technologies
in
a
misquotation
of

Santayana
that
is
distinctively
Space
Age
in
its
logic
(in
Brand,
Media

Lab
103).
Indeed,
under
the
"cultural
logic
of
late
capitalism,"
we

encounter—as
Fredric
Jameson
has
explained—"a
new
and
original

historical
situation
in
which
we
are
condemned
to
seek
history
by

way
of
our
own
pop
images
and
simulacra
of
that
history,
which
remains
forever
out

of
reach"
(71).


Spaciness
is
Archimedean.
In
the
Space
Age—according
to
Hannah
Arendt—an
age‐
old
ambition
has
finally
been
realized.
Since
the
Copernican
revolution,
Arendt

observes,
it
has
been
the
great
dream
of
the
West
to
attain
a
detached,
out‐of‐this‐
world
perspective—to
find
the
"Archimedean
point."
Indeed
many
of
the
supreme

achievements
of
the
last
five
hundred
years,
as
Arendt
shows,
have
been
the
result

of
"having
looked
upon
and
treated
Earth‐bound
nature
from
a
truly
universal

perspective."
Now
this
intellectual
quest
has
culminated
in
technological
realization;

we
have
indeed
"found
a
way
to
act
on
the
Earth
as
though
we
disposed
of
terrestrial

nature
from
outside,
from
the
point
of
Einstein's
'observer
freely
poised
in
space'"

("Man's
Conquest"
539‐40).
Drawing
inspiration
from
this
achievement,
the
dream

has
spread
throughout
Space
Age
culture.
Colonization
of
the
Archimedean
point
in

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 11

the
Space
Age
is
no
longer
restricted
to
scientists.
We
can
and
do
journey
there
on
a

daily
basis.
To
hear
us
talk,
some
minds
have
already
set
up
housekeeping.

In
the
Space
Age,
a
photojournalist's
eight‐year‐long
investigative
journey

over
the
North
American
continent,
from
the
American
Southwest
to
the
Canadian

Far
North,
studying
"what
people
think
of
outer
space,"
can
result
in
the
conclusion

that
there
exists,
at
least
at
the
level
of
folk
culture,
a
widespread
and
growing

"nostalgia
for
the
future."
Douglas
Curran's
In
Advance
of
the
Landing:
Folk
Concepts

of
Outer
Space
provides
a
visual,
anthropological
record
of
the
"daydream[s]
of

technology,"
"the
symbols
of
transcendence

and
freedom,"
which
dot
the
North
American

landscape:
a
rocket
on
a
launching
pad
outside

a
general
store
in
Quebec;
a
flying
saucer‐
shaped
gas
station
in
Saskatchewan;
a
Ford

compact
rebuilt
into
a
rocket‐powered

"Billenium
Falcon"
in
Venice,
California;
a

"Space
Age
Lodge"
in
Gila
Bend,
Arizona;
a
UFO

house
in
Pensacola
Beach,
Florida;
a
flying

saucer
house
in
Signal
Mountain,
Tennessee.

In
the
Space
Age,
the
twenty‐story
Earth

Sciences
Building
at
the
Massachusetts

Institute
of
Technology,
designed
by
architect
(and
MIT
graduate)
I.
M.
Pei,
a

building
exhibitionistically
mounted
on
four,
narrow,
two‐story‐tall
pylons,
suffers

from
all
sorts
of
structural
problems.
Its
windows
crack
periodically,
and
because

Pei's
design
for
a
building
to
house
the
academic
study
of
the
planet
absurdly

neglected
to
take
into
account
that
it
would
actually
exist
on
the

Earth,
the
wind
sweeping
down
the
building's
sides
and
through

its
legs
makes
the
doors
almost
impossible
to
open.

In
the
Space
Age,
Roland
Barthes
notices
the
advent
of
a

new
kind
of
being
he
calls
"jet‐man":
a
creature,
"nearer
to
the

robot
than
to
the
hero,"
who,
turning
"speed
into
repose,"

surrenders
all
sense
of
adventure
or
destiny,
all
the
"romantic

and
individualistic
elements
of
the
sacred
role
[of
aviator],"

indeed
all
humanity,
in
order
to
colonize
the
vertical
plane,
affecting
a
"kind
of

anthropological
compromise
between
humans
and
Martians"
(71‐72).

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 12

In
the
Space
Age,
a
book
on
"Space
Exploration
and
Human
Evolution"
(Frank

White's
Overview
Effect)
insists
that
our
species
can
never
expect
to
attain

"universal
insight"
until
it
learns
to
adopt
as
a
species
the
"Copernican

Perspective"—an
outside‐in
"overview"
of
earthly
affairs—that
so
moved
many
of
the

first
astronauts.

In
the
Space
Age,
an
"off‐planet
journalist"
(Howard
Rheingold)
assembles
a

collection
of
essays
(Excursions
to
the
Far
Side
of
the
Mind)
exhibiting
the
practice
of

"extraterrestrial
anthropology"
on
a
variety
of
contemporary
phenomena.



In
the
Space
Age,
a
visionary
San
Francisco
filmmaker,
Jordan
Belson,
makes

an
experimental
film
("Re‐Entry")
based
on
the
Tibetan
Book
of
the
Dead
using

footage
of
John
Glenn's
epoch‐making
Friendship
7
flight
into
space
as
the

metaphoric
basis
for
his
depiction
of
the
Buddhist
conception
of
the
soul's
journey

out
of
the
body
into
the
Bardic
spheres
(Youngblood
157‐77).

In
the
Space
Age,
the
German
electronic
composer
Karlheinz
Stockhausen

insists
in
an
interview
that
music
is
the
spiritual
means
not
only
of
self‐discovery
but

of
cosmic
orientation:
"Sooner
or
later,
when
one
has
achieved
this
[cosmic]

consciousness,"
he
tells
Jonthan
Cott,
"one
will
travel
there
as
a
cosmic
tourist
and

by
that
show
that
everything
exists
at

once."
He
notes,
too,
that
he
is
"really
not

interested
in
staying
in
this
body
an

unlimited
time
because
certainly
I
want
to

fly
without
airplanes
and
go
much
further

and
faster"
(Cott
17,
104‐5).
Among
his

most
important
compositions
are
such

space
music
as
Kurzwellen,
a
variably

scored,
completely
intuitive
improvisation
based
on
periodic,
random
scanning
of
the

shortwave
spectrum,
and
Ylem,
a
musical
record
of
the
soundscape
of
the
universe

from
one
Big
Bang
to
the
next.

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 13

In
the
Space
Age,
French
cultural
critic
Paul
Virilio
discovers
in
the
increasing

abstraction
of
the
war
machine—the
end
of
hand‐to‐hand
combat,
the

importance
of
invisibility
(stealth
technology,
for
example)
and

camouflage,
laser
sighting,
infrared
night
vision,
the
pivotal
role
of

surveillance,
the
equation
of
perception
and
destruction—a

development
counterpointing
the
colonization
of
the
Archimedean
point

in
the
modern
age.

Spaciness
is
protean.
In
Woody
Allen's
Manhattan,
Isaac
Davis

(Allen)
describes
his
first
wife
to
a
new
girlfriend:
"[She]
was
a

kindergarten
teacher,
you
know.
She—she
got
into
drugs
and

she,
uh,
moved
to
San
Francisco
and
went
into
est
[Erhard

Sensitivity
Training]
.
.
.
became
a
Moonie.
She's
with
the

William
Morris
Agency
now"
(Four
Films
241‐42).

Robert
Jay
Lifton
has
described
such

individuals
as
Protean
("Protean
Man"
311‐31).

A
generation
ago
an
individual
took
pride
in

maintaining
a
single
identity
over
the
course
of
a
lifetime,
often

working
at
a
career
long
after
it
had
ceased
to
be
fulfilling,
staying

in
a
marriage
even
though
love
had
died,
keeping
faith
with
a
basic

set
of
key
ideas.
By
contrast,
today's
Protean
man
or
woman
may

change
hats
on
a
regular
basis,
practice
"serial
polygamy,"
and
embrace,
without
any

real
intellectual
crisis,
a
sequence
of
seemingly
contradictory
ideologies:
such

individuals
may
undergo
as
well
quite
radical
personality
metamorphoses,
shape‐
shifting
throughout
a
lifetime
without
ever
settling
into
the
known
and
predictable,

without
ever
feeling
the
need
for
stability
or
consistency.
(Such
a
phenomenon
is
not

restricted
to
American
culture.
In
Boundaries,
Lifton
chronicles
the
life
histories
of

Proteans
in
Hong
Kong
and
Japan
whose
development
makes
Allen's
fictional

kindergarten
teacher/hippie/Moonie/talent
agent
seem
an
exemplar
of
coherence:

one
Japanese
youth,
for
example,
mutated
from
a
member
of
a
radical,
anticapitalist,

anti‐Western
terrorist
group
into
a
corporate
executive
in
less
than
ten
years.
Such

journeys
Lifton
characterizes
as
"psychohistorical.")

Contemplating
the
possibility
that
the
Nuclear/Space
Age
might
well
give
rise

to
individuals
capable
of
living
"on
the
very
conditions
which
once
had
been
next
to

death
itself,"
Norman
Mailer
wondered
more
than
two
decades
ago
if
we
were
not

likely
to
see
the
development
of
human
beings
thriving
"on
the
stimulations
of
the

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 14

uprooted
and
displaced"
(282).
As
a
psychic
symptom,
Proteanism
would
seem
to

indicate
that
such
beings
are
now
being
generated
from
modernity's
natural

selection.
No
doubt,
New
Babylon
will
actively
recruit
them
as
prominently
spacy

citizens,
and
their
malleability
may
make
them
valued
space
colonists
as
well.



 
 

Spaciness
is
narcissistic.
For
cultural
critics
like
Tom
Wolfe
("The
Me
Decade
and
the

Third
Great
Awakening"),
Christopher
Lasch
(The
Culture
of
Narcissism
and
The

Minimal
Self),
Dorothy
Dinnerstein
(The
Mermaid
and
the
Minotaur),
Peter
Marin

("The
New
Narcissism"),
and
Richard
Sennett
(The
Fall
of
Public
Man),
the
most

distinctive
characteristic
of
the
last
decade
and
a
half
of
the
Space
Age
is
its

narcissism.
"The
withdrawl
of
commitment,
the
continual
search
for
a
definition
from

within
of
'who
I
am,'"
Sennett
writes
in
a
concise
assessment
of
the
malaise,
has

resulted
in
"self‐absorption
which
prevents
one
from
understanding
what
belongs

8
within
the
domain
of
the
self
and
self
gratification
and
what
belongs
outside
it"
(9). 

Narcissism
is
often
simplistically
equated
with
egoism,
but
nothing
could
be

further
from
the
case,
as
Lasch
has
reminded
us,
seeking
to
clarify
(in
The
Minimal


8


As
a
contribution
to
the
culture
of
narcissism's
oral
history,
Marin
records
the

following
dialogue
(and
his
response
to
it):


I
kept
thinking
about
a
conversation
I
had
recently
with
a
man
much
taken
with

mysticism
and
spirituality.
He
was
telling
me
about
his
sense
of
another
reality.


"I
know
there
is
something
outside
of
me,"
he
said.
"I
can
feel
it.
1
know
it
is
there.

But
what
is
it?”

"It
may
not
be
a
mystery,'
I
said.
"Perhaps
it
is
the
world."


Marin’s
response,
he
informs
us,
surprised
his
listener.
"He
had
meant
something
more

magical
than
that,
more
exotic
and
grand,
something
'above'
rather
than
all
around
him.
It

had
never
occurred
to
him
that
what
might
be
calling
to
him
from
beyond
the
self
were
the

worlds
of
community
and
value,
the
worlds
of
history
and
action—all
of
them
waiting
to
be

entered
not
as
a
saint
or
a
mystic,
but
in
a
way
more
difficult
still:
as
a
moral
man
or
woman

among
other
persons,
with
a
person's
real
and
complex
nature
and
needs.
Those
worlds
had

been
closed
to
him,
had
receded
from
consciousness
as
he
had
ceased
to
inhabit
them
fully

or
responsibly
or
lovingly,
and
so
he
felt
their
ghostly
presence
as
something
distant
and

mysterious,
as
a
dream
in
which
he
had
no
actual
existence"
(49‐50).
Narcissism,
in
other

words,
is
otherworldly
in
Lovejoy's
sense.

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 15

Self)
his
own
complex
position.
"As
the
Greek
legend
reminds
us,"
Lasch
writes,
"the

plight
of
Narcissus"
is
not
"egoism"
but
"confusion
of
the
self
and
the
not‐
self":

"The
minimal
or
narcissistic
self
is,
above
all,
a
self
uncertain
of
its
own
outlines,

longing
either
to
remake
the
world
in
its
own
image
or
to
merge
into
its
environment

in
blissful
union"
(19).

The
"Me
Decade"
of
the
1970s,
as
Tom
Wolfe
notes
in
a
similar
vein,
was

actually
the
product
of
a
new
license
to
try
to
climb
out
of
the
stream
of
human

history
and
change
the
natural
order
of
things.
As
a
phase
of
the
Space
Age,
the
Me

Decade
was
for
Wolfe
a
period
characterized
by
an
obsessive,
narcissistic
attention

to
self
and
the
suspension
of
belief
in
"serial
immortality"—faith
in
one's
children,

one's
inheritors,
one's
people
as
part
of
a
"great
biological
stream"
whose
needs

outweigh
the
limited
demands
of
the
individual.
"Most
people,"
Wolfe
notes,
"have

not
lived
their
lives
as
if
thinking,
'I
have
only
one
life
to
live.'
Instead
they
have

lived
as
if
they
were
living
their
ancestors'
lives
and
their
offsprings'
lives
and

perhaps
their
neighbors'
lives
as
well.
They
have
seen
themselves
as
inseparable

from
the
great
tide
of
chromosomes
of
which
they
are
created
and
which
they
pass

on."
In
the
Space
Age,
intimations
of
mortality
have,
for
perhaps
the
first
time
in

human
history,
given
"the
license
to
try
to
climb
out
of
the
stream
and
change
the

9
natural
order
of
things"
("Me
Decade"
145‐46). 

True
selfhood,
however,
Lasch
wisely
remarks,
"is
the
painful
awareness
of

the
tension
between
our
unlimited
aspirations
and
our
limited
understanding,

between
our
original
intimations
of
immortality
and
our
fallen
state,
between

oneness
and
separation"
(Minimal
Self
20).
Unable
and
unwilling
to
bear
the
tension

of
which
Lasch
speaks,
spaciness
resolves
each
dichotomy
in
favor
of
the
first
term.

Viewed
in
a
psychohistorical
perspective,
"Faustian,
Promethean
technology,"
Lasch

concludes,
is
the
result
of
a
failure
to
accept
such
a
definition
of
the
self;
the

Faustian,
the
Promethean
"originate
.
.
.
in
the
attempt
to
restore
narcissistic

illusions
of
omnipotence"
(19).
And
spaciness,
too,
has
its
genesis,
wedded
through
a


9

Writer
Cyra
McFadden,
author
of
Serial,
a
satirical
portrait
of
California
spaciness,

records
another
specimen
of
narcissism's
oral
history
in
her
account
of
a
social
event
in

Marin
County
(the
Body
Snatchers'
point
of
origin).
"At
a
dinner
party,
a
new
acquaintance

tells
me
about
her
intimate
life.
Although
she
is
still
'processing'
her
old
husband
.
.
.
,
she

just
spent
a
weekend
with
another
man
from
whom
she
gets
'a
lot
of
ego
reinforcement.
My

therapist
keeps
telling
me
to
go
where
the
energies
are,'
she
says,
'so
that's
what
I
am

doing,
because
that's
what
went
wrong
the
last
time.
I
didn't
just
kick
back
and
go
with
the

energies.'"
Her
conversation
leads
to
a
Space
Age
insight.
"Suddenly
I
realize
why
Marin's

own
George
Lucas
is
getting
rich
from
Star
Wars,
a
film
in
which
people
go
where
the

energies
are,
at
speeds
faster
than
'hyperspace,'
and
deliver
themselves
of
simple‐minded

philosophy
in
one‐syllable
words"
(173).


T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 16

common
birth
and
common
dreams
to
contradictory
ambitions
of
remaking

(terraforming)
not
just
the
world
but
the
universe,
of
reuniting
the
human
soul
(sans

body)
not
just
with
earthly
nature
but
with
the
cosmos.

In
the
Space
Age,
a
philosophically
minded
American
novelist,
the
late
Walker

Percy,
authors
a
strange,
unclassifiable
study
which
he
calls
"The
Last
Self‐Help

Book,"
for
which
he
offers
the
following
revealing
sub‐sub‐titles:
"The
Strange
Case

of
the
Self,
your
Self,
the
Ghost
which
Haunts
the
Cosmos,"
"Why
it
is
that
of
the

billions
and
billions
of
strange
objects
in
the
Cosmos—novas,
quasars,
pulsars,
black

holes—you
are
beyond
doubt
the
strangest";
"Why
it
is
possible
to
learn
more
in
ten

minutes
about
the
Crab
Nebula
in
Taurus,
which
is
6,000
light‐years
away,
than
you

presently
know
about
yourself";
"How
it
is
possible
for
the
man
who
designed

Voyager
19,
which
arrived
at
Titania,
a
satellite
of
Uranus,
three
seconds
off

schedule
and
a
hundred
yards
off
course
after
a
flight
of
six
years,
to
be
one
of
the

most
screwed‐
up
creatures
in
California—or
the
Cosmos?"
(7‐8).

In
the
Space
Age,
a
rock
song—David
Bowie's
"Space
Oddity"—
presents,

through
dialogue
between
"command
control"
and
a
space
capsule
in
orbit,
a
portrait

of
an
astronaut
so
beleaguered
by
earthly
problems
and
enraptured
by
the
ecstasy
he

experiences
when
free
from
gravity
on
an
EVA
(extravehicular
activity)
that
he

refuses
to
return.

In
our
"otherworldly,"
spacy
psyches,
we
have
come
to
seem
more
and
more

like
astronauts
in
orbit
in
a
damaged
craft,
longing
for
reentry,
due
back
on
the

planet
Earth
yet
incapable
of
return
because
our
heat‐shields
have
been

10
destroyed. 


Spaciness
is
unaccommodated.
In
the
Space
Age,
a
book
on

developmental
psychology
(Joseph
Chilton
Pearce's
Magical
Child
argues

that
modernity
is
in
the
process
of
destroying
a
primordial
process

through
which
the
mind
and
imagination
of
every
growing
child
is

bonded
to
earthly
nature.


10

In
a
visually
astonishing
scene
from
Woody
Allen's
Manhattan
(1979),
in
many

respects
a
companion
film
to
Annie
Hall,
Allen's
new
persona
Isaac
Davis
wanders
across
a

lunar
landscape
—actually
a
display
in
New
York's
Hayden
Planetarium—with
a
woman
with

whom
he
is,
despite
his
loathing
for
her,
about
to
have
an
affair
and
fantasizes,
heat
shield

down,
about
committing
"interstellar
lust"
on
the
moon's
surface.


T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 17

According
to
Jean
Piaget's
"genetic
epistemology"
of
the
developing
child,
the

adaptation
of
an
infant
to
his
or
her
world—"the
continuous
process
of
using
the

environment
to
learn,
and
learning
to
the
environment"—progresses
by

11
"accommodation"
and
"assimilation." 
In
accommodation,
the
child
realizes
that
it
is

necessary
to
"give
in"
to
the
things
of
the
world,
accepting
and

then
molding
behavior
to
its
textures,
its
contours,
its

temperatures,
colors,
shapes,
hardness
or
softness,
and
size,

because
to
do
so
is
essential
if
the
individual
is
to
live
in
the

12
world
and
not
against
it. 
But
spaciness
cannot
or
will
not
give

in,
cannot
or
will
not
adapt
to
things
as
they
are;
consequently
it

develops
a
psychic
orientation
that
requires
either
total
mastery
of
an
environment

perceived
to
be
hostile
and
threatening
or
a
distancing
from
things:
a
perpetually

detached
posture
on
the
surface
of
life.

An
ancient
Hindu
fable
tells
of
a
wealthy
king
who,
after
stubbing
his
bare
toe

on
a
rock,
subsequently
issued
commands
that
his
entire
kingdom
be
carpeted
to

prevent
such
a
future
injury.
A
wise
counsellor
intervened,
however,
and

recommended
that
the
king
might
instead
carpet
only
his
own
foot,
a
suggestion
that

resulted
in
the
invention
of
the
shoe.
Clearly
a
fable
whose
moral
is
accommodation,

yet
Space
Age
modernity,
viewed
in
the
mirror
of
this
tale,
is
just
as
spoiled,
just
as

puerile,
as
the
king.
Demanding
freedom
from
all
future
risk
and
from
the

vicissitudes
and
uncertainties
of
nature,
we
have
constructed
an
unreal
simulation
of

the
world.
Housed
within
it,
we
dream
of
never
giving
in;
of
defying
accommodation

13
for
ever
and
ever;
of
never
giving
up,
and
never
growing
up. 13
(Our
refusal
to


11

Assimilation
refers
to
the
process
through
which
developing
human
beings
absorb

new
information
and
fit
it
into
preconceived
notions
about
reality.
The
interaction
of

accommodation
and
assimilation,
Piaget
believed,
gives
birth
to
the
adult
ability
to
think.


12

"The
intent
that
drives
the
child
for
the
first
few
years,"
Joseph
Chilton
Pearce

explains
in
Piagetian
terms
in
his
Magical
Child,
"is
that
of
physical
interaction
with
all
the

possible
contents
of
the
living
Earth
(its
creatures,
phenomena,
experiences,
and
things)

and,
above
all,
its
principles
and
laws
of
interaction.
These
principles
are
quite
practical
and

mundane,
such
as
'fall
down,
go
boom,'
and
'fire
means
burn.'
Each
physical
contact
the

child
makes
brings
about
a
corresponding
patterning,
or
learning,
in
his
new
brain.
These

patterns
and
the
relationships
between
them
that
are
made
through
regulatory
feedback

then
grow
us
the
child's
structure
of
knowledge,
or
world
view.
The
story
of
development
lor

the
first
four
or
five
years
is
the
structure
of
these
brain
patterns
from
sensory
experience

and
the
resulting
feedback
and
synthesis
that
takes
place
within
the
brain"
(13).

13

A
number
of
thinkers
have
theorized
about
the
causes
of
our
failures
of

accommodation.
Paul
Shepard's
Nature
and
Madness
argues
that
"unaccommodated
man"
is

a
recent
development,
the
result
of
a
"progressive
peeling
back
of
the
psyche,"
a
devolution,

exactly
opposite
to
the
normal
growth
curve
of
the
individual,
which
has
given
rise
to
a

puerile
society
of
"childish
adults"
(16‐17).
In
The
Mermaid
and
the
Minotaur,
Dorothy

Dinnerstein
demonstrates
that
our
detachment
from,
and
distaste
for,
the
earthly,
our

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 18

accommodate
ourselves
to
the
earthly
has
now
resulted
in
futuristic
fantasies
of

escape
from
the
body
itself,
a
subject
to
which
I
devote
an
entire
chapter
below

["The
Departure
of
the
Body
Snatchers"].)

In
the
Space
Age,
an
architect
(Witold

Rybczynski)
writing
a
history
of
the
idea
of
comfort

can
detect
an
extraterrestrial,
unaccommodated

development
of
the
concept.
During
the
design

phase
of
the
Space
Shuttle,
Rybczynski
notes,
"a

cardboard
mock‐up
of
the
cabin
was
built.
The

astronauts
were
required
to
move
around
in
this

full‐size
model,
miming
their
daily
activities,
and

every
time
they
knocked
against
a
corner
or
a

projection,
a
technician
would
cut
away
the
offending
piece.
At
the
end
of
the

process,
when
there
were
no
more
obstructions
left,
the
cabin
was
judged
to
be

'comfortable.'"
The
implications
are
clear:
"The
scientific
definition
of
comfort
would

be
something
like
'Comfort
is
that
condition
in
which
discomfort
has
been
avoided'"

(225‐26).


Spaciness
is
weightless.
We
have
already
seen
how
the
ascensionistic
language
of

spaciness
reflects
a
disaste
for
the
"heavy."
Indeed,
spaciness
might
be
described
as

weightless.

In
the
Space
Age,
the
late
Italian
writer
Primo
Levi,
a

profound
chronicler
of
the
horrors
of
the
Holocaust,
expresses

great
envy
of
the
astronauts
because
of
his
own
fond
dream
of

finding
himself
freed,
"if
only
for
a
moment,
from
the
weight
of

[the]
body"—a
dream
he
takes
to
be
"a
prelude
to
the
future,
as

yet
unclear,
in
which
the
umbilical
cord
which
calls
us
back
to

mother
Earth
will
be
superfluous
and
transparent"
(122‐23).

In
the
Space
Age,
Hillel
Schwartz,
in
Never
Satisfied:
A
Cultural
History
of

Diets,
Fantasies
and
Fat,
argues
that
"the
culture
of
slimming
[of
the
1970s
and

1980s]
has
reached
its
apogee
when
dieters
imagine
foods
without
calories
and

bodies
without
weight."
"The
weightless
body,"
according
to
Schwartz,
"is
a
body


"human
malaise,"
is
traceable
back
to
culture‐bound
"sexual
arrangements,"
in
particular
to

the
system
of
child
rearing
that
prevails
in
modern,
patriarchal
societies.
And
Pearce,
in
his

Piagetian
Magical
Child,
argues,
as
we
have
seen,
that
the
ancient,
evolutionary
process
in

which
mind
and
imagination
are
bonded
to
the
Earth
has
been
destroyed.

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 19

without
any
sense
of
gravity,
detached
from
the
body
politic"
(303).
(In
the
Space

Age,
a
book
on
"the
tyranny
of
slenderness"
in
modern
America
(Kim
Chernin's
The

Obsession)
argues
that
at
the
heart
of
our
obsession
with
weight
loss
lies
a
fear
of

the
mature
woman's
body
in
the
wake
of
growing
female
power
in
a
time
when
the

cultural
dream
is
to
remove
the
body
from
nature.

In
the
Space
Age,
a
brutally
sadistic

character
in
a
novel
(Anthony
Burgess'

Clockwork
Orange)
depicting
an

ultradecadent
and
ultraviolent
not‐very‐far‐
distant
future
society
refuels
his
"creative"

energies
by
listening
again
and
again
to

Beethoven's
Ninth
Symphony,
music
he

thinks
of
as
"like
silvery
wine
flowing
in
a

spaceship,
gravity
all
nonsense
now"
(33).


Spaciness
is
senseless.
Life
in
the
Space
Age
is
increasingly
senseless.
We
now
live

largely
indoor
lives
in
"sensory
deprivation"
environments
and
artificial
light.
Our

14
vast
knowledge
of
the
world
is
increasingly
"dashboard
knowledge." 
In
our

"misplaced
concreteness"
(Alfred
North
Whitehead),
we
mistake
our
instrumentation

for
reality,
as
if
the
reading
on
the
speedometer
were
speed
itself.

In
the
Space
Age,
acoustician
R.
Murray
Schafer,
contemplating
the
history
of

"soundscapes,"
suggests
that
in
the
development
of
not‐to‐be‐listened‐to
music—
from
the
avant‐garde
experiments
of
Erik
Satie
to
contemporary
elevator
music,

especially
commercial
systems
like
Muzak
("Moozak")—we
have
discovered
"the

embalming
fluid
of
earthly
boredom"
(96).


14

Owen
Barfield
uses
the
term
"dashboard‐knowledge"
to
refer
to
merely
operant

knowledge
of
the
world:
the
ability
to
manipulate
and
control—to
drive
—
nature,
an
ability

that
does
not
at
all
depend
on
actual
understanding
of
its
meaning
or
purpose.
When
we

read
a
speedometer
Barfield
reminds
us,
it
is
well
to
remember
that
we
are
not
actually

experiencing
the
speed
of
the
car.
Similarly,
when
we
inspect
the
findings
of
a
radio

telescope,
we
must
remind
ourselves
that
we
have
only
dashboard
knowledge
of
the
nature

of
the
stars.
When
we
look
at
modern
science's
conception
of
theory
and
hypothesis
and
its

acceptance
of
the
"if
it
works
it
must
be
true"
approach,
it
"is
almost
as
if
they
expected

dashboard‐knowledge
to
tell
us
how
the
engine
was
made."
Galileo
may
have
counseled—as

one
of
the
foundational
principles
of
the
scientific
revolution—that
"in
every
hypothesis
of

reason,
error
may
lurk
unnoticed,
but
a
discovery
of
sense
cannot
be
at
odds
with
the
truth
,

but
in
fact
much
of
modern
science,
Barfield
argues,
now
has
little
to
do
wit
h
"discoveries

of
sense,"
relying
wholly
on
dashboard‐knowledge
instead.
See
Saving
the
Appearances,

chapter
8.

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 20

In
the
Space
Age,
we
are
not
surprised
to
find
the
philosopher
Daniel
Dennett

engaged
in
a
thought
experiment
("Where
Am
I?"
217‐31)
in
which
NASA
removes
a

man's
brain
from
his
body—
placing
it,
"disembodied
in
Houston,"
in
a
life‐support

system
at
the
Manned
Spacecraft
Center—so
that
"he"
can
be
sent
on
a
rescue

mission
into
a
highly
radioactive
underground
chamber.
This
cautionary
tale
leads
to

much
futuristic
speculation
on
the
possibility
for
and
implications
of
"remote

sensing"
and
"telepresence"
(Marvin
Minsky's
term),
and
a
meditation
on
mind‐body

interaction,
the
nature
of
reality,
and
the
location
of
the
self.
(Such
imaginings,
in

fact,
have
become
increasingly
common:
the
anthology
in
which
"Who
Am
I?"

appears—The
Mind's
"I"—collects
several
similar
ones.)

In
the
Space
Age,
the
"cyberpunk"
science
fiction
of
William

Gibson
(Neuromancer,
Count
Zero)
portrays
certain
gifted
individuals

of
the
next
century
who
have
learned
to
negotiate
a
new
form
of

reality,
a
"consensual
hallucination"
called
"cyberspace,"
a
simulated,

all‐encompassing
three‐dimensional
space
generated
by
the

information
produced
by
computer
programs.

The
"real
world"
of
the
late
twentieth
century
sees
the
development
of
virtual

reality
systems
(VRS),
replicant
forms
of
consciousness,
sometimes
deemed
the
"LSD

of
the
1990s,"
which
permit
the
wearer
of
a
special
computer‐assisted
special

helmet—complete
with
"eye
phones"—and
"data
gloves"
to
substitute
momentarily

for
the
normal
input
of
the
senses
a
multiple,
simulated,
wraparound,
all‐
encompassing,
computer‐generated,
alternate
reality
in
which
he
or
she
may
move

15
about
at
will. 
Revealingly,
no
one
to
date
has
been
able
to
endure
exposure
to
the

senselessness
of
a
VRS
for
longer
than
forty
five
minutes
without
developing
signs
of

psychosis.
The
device's
creators
have
come
to
call
the

mental
state
that
results
from
overexposure

"Simulation
Sickness."

Cyanide‐laced
Tylenol,
mass
murder
in
a

McDonald's,
a
plethora
of
barbaric‐elementary
school

shooting
sprees,
terrorist
bombing
of
a
Pam
Am
jet,

fatal
child
abuse
.
.
.
hardly
a
day
goes
by
in
the
Space

Age
without
a
new
revelation
of
horrors
beyond
comprehension.
"Is
it
possible,"
Neil

Postman
wonders,
"that
a
'senseless'
crime
has
its
origin
in
an
acute
deprivation
of


15

For
a
discussion
of
recent
attempts
at
creation
of
the
virtual,
sec
Brand,
Media
Lab

110‐17;
I
am
also
indebted
to
a
National
Public
Radio
report
on
virtual
reality
systems
aired

on
All
Things
Considered,
6
January
1991.

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 21

real
sensory
experience?
Is
it
possible
that
immersed
in
a
world
of
surrogate

experience,
we
simultaneously
lose
our
senses
and
lose
touch
with
them
both?"

("Teachings"
428).


Spaciness
is
puerile.
An
adult
human
being
who
never
grows
up,
who
remains
an

"eternal
youth,"
is
known
in
archetypal
psychology
as
a
"puer"
(from
the
Latin
for

"boy").
All
puer
figures,
James
Hillman
observes,
suffer
from
an
obsession
with

"vertical"
values—symbolized
in
Greek
myth
by
the
flying
and
falling
of
puers
like

Ikaros
and
Ganymede.
But
as
Hillman
explains,
this
soaring
stems
not
just
from
high

spirits
but
from
a
weakness
of
character.

[The
puer]
must
be
weak
on
Earth
because
it
is
not
at
home
on
Earth.

Its
direction
is
vertical.
.
.
.
The
horizontal
world,
the
space‐time

continuum
which
we
call
"reality,"
is
not
its
world.
.
.
.
The
puer

therefore
understands
little
of
what
is
gained
by
repetition
and

consistency,
that
is,
by
work,
or
by
moving
back
and
forth,
left
and

right,
in
and
out,
which
makes
for
subtlety
in
proceeding
step
by
step

through
the
labyrinthine
complexity
of
the
horizontal
world.
These

things
but
cripple
its
winged
heels,
for
there,
from
below
and
behind,

it
is
particularly
vulnerable.
It
is
anyway
not
meant
to
walk
but
to
fly.

Being
young
and
therefore
not
yet
disillusioned,
failure
does
not
frighten
the

puer
because,
as
Hillman
observes,
he
is
certain
he
can
always
begin
again,
can

always
start
over,
a
certainty
not
shared
by
the
old.
The
puer
thus
believes
himself

to
have
"vertical
direct
access
to
the
spirit,"
and
he
seeks
every
imaginable
shortcut

to
it
in
an
effort
to
make
his
vision
of
his
goals
and
the
goals
themselves
one.
Thus

he
"cannot
do
with
indirection,
with
timing
and
patience"
and
"knows
little
of
the

seasons
and
of
waiting."
For
the
puer
figure,
life
is
no
"odyssey
of
experience."
"It

wanders
to
spend
or
to
capture,
and
to
ignite,
to
try
its
luck,
but
not
with
the
aim
of

going
home.
No
wife
waits;
it
has
no
son
in
Ithaca"
("Senex
and
Puer"
24‐26).

In
the
Space
Age,
French
social
scientist
Michel
de
Certeau
finds
the

development
of
the
skyscraper,
and
of
the
voyeuristic
view
of
city
life
made
possible

by
it,
to
be
the
product
of
an
"erotics
of
knowledge"
that
sanctions
a
"scopic
or
a

gnostic
drive"
(122‐23).
To
descend
back
into
the
horizontal
world,
to
submit
to
the

"tricks
of
Daedelus
in
his
shifting
and
endless
labyrinths,"
he
writes,
is
to
experience

anew
the
fall
of
Ikaros.
("It's
hard
to
be
down
when
you're
up,"
reads
a
puerile
but

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 22

revealing
advertisment—cited
in
de
Certeau's
essay—for
the
observation
deck
at
the

World
Trade
Center.)

In
the
Space
Age,
a
movie
critic
(Pat
Aufderheide
in
an
essay
entitled
"Earth:

Love
It
or
Leave
It")
surveys
recent
science
fiction
films
and
concludes
that
more
and

more
the
genre
exhibits
a
surprising
lack
of
faith
in
the
world
and
that,
in
a
strange

metamorphosis,
science
fiction
aliens—once
menacing
threats
to
human
existence—
have
become
"escape
hatches"
for
humans
completely
alienated
from
earthly

existence.

In
the
Space
Age,
viewers
of
the
monumental
thirteen
part

PBS
series
Cosmos
watch
the
astronomer
Carl
Sagan,
one
of
the

era's
major
scientific
popularizers,
venture
forth
naturally,

almost
effortlessly,
into
the
universe
in
a
sporelike,
thistledown

spaceship
of
the
imagination,
while
wearing
the
regulation

college
professor
uniform
(a
corduroy
jacket
with
patched

sleeves)
instead
of
an
ugly
and
cumbersome
space
suit.

In
the
Space
Age,
military
planners
begin
to
think
of
war

in
space
as
clean,
scientific,
and
precise.
Reagan's
Star
Wars
"Atari
program"
(aka

SDI),
Mark
Crispin
Miller
argues,
now
"offers
the
deft
consultant
a
realm
where,
yes,

it
finally
will
be
possible
to
deploy
machines
that
enable
a
kind
of
war
'in
which
the

heat
of
personal
feelings
has
no
place'
[Herman
Kahn],
a
place
where
battle
can
flash

16
silently,
decisively,
without
leaving
any
mess"
(154) 

In
the
Space
Age,
an
Indian
sage,
founder
of
the
International
Society
for

Krishna
Consciousness
(the
Hare
Krishnas),
writes
a
book
explaining
how
to
use
yoga

in
order
to
travel
to
other
planets.
The
desire
to
actually
journey
to
other
worlds,

the
Swami
writes,
is
only
the
latest
manifestation
of
the
puerile
"natural
desire
to

live
forever
in
happiness,"
but
he
warns
against
falling
for
the
materialistic
dreams

of
the
space
program.
Our
true
ambition
should
instead
be
the
transcendence,
by

purely
spiritual
means,
of
this
"miserable
land
of
birth,
old
age,
disease
and
death"

in
search
of
planets—he
assures
us
that
there
are
many—where
"life
is
eternal
and

blissful."

The
Space
Age
is
thoroughly
puerile.
Its
culture
fosters
puerility;
life
in
a

simulator
demands
it.


16

Miller
is
responding
to
the
observations
of
futurist
Herman
Kahn,
reported
in
the

New
York
Times,
that
"clean
wars
could
be
fought
in
outer
space,
with
'intense
light
rays,

'space
mines
and
decoys,'
and
'robot
warrior
craft'"
(154).
 

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 23


 

Spaciness
is
gnostic.
To
hear
us
talk,
the
Space
Age
has
engendered
a
rebirth
of

Gnosticism.
In
The
Arrogance
of
Humanism,
David
Ehrenfeld
suggests
that
the

peculiar
Space
Age
illusion
that
"we
can
escape
the
earthly
consequences
of
our

arrogance
by
leaving
the
mother
planet
either
for
little
ersatz
worlds
of
our
own

making
or
for
distant
celestial
bodies,
some
of
them
as
yet
undiscovered"—a

pipedream
Ehrenfeld
finds
"immature
and
irresponsible"—is
in
fact
the
modern,

debased,
secularized
reincarnation
of
an
ancient
faith:


Space
with
its
space
stations
and
space
inhabitants
is
just
a
replacement
for

heaven
with
its
angels.
Even
the
idea
of
immortality
is
there,
fuzzy
like

everything
else
in
this
imaginary
humanist
domain—for
if
one
looks
closely
at

the
writings
of
the
futurologists
and
the
would‐be
L‐5
pioneers
one
finds
hazy

references
to
relativity
and
time‐warps,
ways
of
making
immense
journeys
of

many
light‐years
distance
without
dying,
except
perhaps
with
reference
to
the

people
left
behind
on
Earth.
Space
is
nothing
more
than
a
watered‐down

heaven
for
modern
unbelievers.
Only
now
we
have
located
heaven
more

precisely
in
the
solar
system
than
in
the
days
when
Dante
wrote
about

paradise.
(120)


The
validity
of
Ehrenfeld's
contention
would
seem
apparent
to
all
but
those
who,

hell‐bent
upon
ascending
to
such
a
heaven,
take
ignorance
of
history
and
the
history

of
ideas
as
virtually
a
sign
of
election
and
seldom
trouble
themselves
with
such

17
ironic
insights. 


17

Consider,
for
example,
Frank
White's
vacuous,
puerile
The
Overview
Effect.
Relying

almost
exclusively
on
the
testimony
of
astronauts
and
cosmonauts
as
his
"intellectual”

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 24

Such
a
revealing
comparison,
however,
does
not
precisely
capture
the

intellectual
genealogy
of
these
"futurologists
and
.
.
.
would‐be
L‐5
pioneers."
In

their
advocacy
of
the
extraterrestrial
imperative
it
is
not
so
much
the
voice
of

mainstream
Christianity
we
hear
as
the
come‐back‐from‐the‐dead,
dissident

protestation
and
prophecy
of
the
heretical
religious
movement
of
the
early
Christian

18
era
known
as
Gnosticism. 
To
call
spaciness
Gnostic
is,
in
a
sense,
to
imply
all
the

above.

Though
Gnosticism
is
a
designation
given
to
the
beliefs
of
a
wide
variety
of

early
Christian
sects,
its
central
tenets
can
be
summarized
with
some
accuracy.
A

"transmundane"
religion
with
a
dualistic
and
transcendental
conception
of
salvation,

Gnosticism
taught
that
"the
world
is
a
stupendous
mistake,
created
by
a
foolish
or

vicious
creator‐god
.
.
.
[a]
Demiurge
.
.
.
of
a
very
low
grade
on
the
celestial

hierarchy,
himself
the
result
of
an
error,
who
thinks
that
he
is
supreme."
"The

gnostic
God,"
Hans
Jonas
writes,
"is
not
merely
extra‐mundane
and
supra‐mundane,

but
in
his
ultimate
meaning
contra‐mundane.
The
sublime
unity
of
cosmos
and
God
is


sources,
White
has
written
a
book
almost
devoid
of
historical
or
cultural
perspective.
Except

for
the
customary
analogy
that
"leaving
Earth
is
like
emerging
from
the
ocean
onto
the

land,"
White's
whole
book
is
grounded
in
an
ahistorical,
scientific‐technological
present.

18

Though
gnosticism
is
a
designation
given
to
the
beliefs
of
a
wide
variety
of
early

Christian
sects,
its
central
tenets
can
be
summarized
with
some
accuracy.
A
"transmundane"

religion
that
taught
a
dualistic
and
transcendental
conception
of
salvation
(Jonas
31‐32),

Gnosticism
taught
that
"the
world
is
a
stupendous
mistake,
created
by
a
foolish
or
vicious

creator‐god
...
[a]
Demiurge
...
of
a
very
low
grade
on
the
celestial
hierarchy,
himself
the

result
of
an
error,
who
thinks
that
he
is
supreme"
(Godwin
84).
"The
gnostic
God,"
Hans

Jonas
writes,
"is
not
merely
extra‐
mundane
and
supra‐mundane,
but
in
his
ultimate
meaning

contra‐mundane.
The
sublime
unity
of
cosmos
and
God
is
broken
up,
the
two
are
torn
apart,

and
a
gulf
never
completely
to
be
closed
again
is
opened:
God
and
world,
God
and
nature,

spirit
and
nature,
become
divorced,
alien
to
each
other,
even
contraries"
(Jonas
251).
In
the

"mutant
thought"
of
Gnosticism,
men
thus
come
to
seem
"planetary
detainees"
"waging
war

against
the
very
nature
of
our
presence
here
on
earth"
(Lacarriere
10,
20,
28).


Despite
his
radically
alienated
state,
the
Gnostic
is
sustained
by
his
faith
that
above

the
tyrannical,
monstrous
Demiurge
there
exists
another,
truly
divine
being
and
that

"humanity
is
not
totally
without
hope
of
reaching
this
true
God
whom
the
Demiurge
does
his

best
to
hide,
both
from
himself
and
his
subjects"
(Godwin
84).
Without
the
beyond,

Gnosticism
would
have
lapsed
into
"a
hopeless
worldly
pessimism"
(Jonas
261),
surrendering

itself
to
that
"universal
shipwreck
which
is
the
history
of
matter
and
of
man"
(Lacarriere

20).


Thus
the
great
"Gnostic
drama,"
enacted
on
a
worldly
stage
that
had
itself
become

the
equivalent
of
the
underworld,
came
to
seem
"the
metaphysical
history
of
the
light
exiled

from
Light,
of
the
life
exiled
from
Life
and
involved
in
the
world—the
history
of
its

alienation
and
recovery,
its
'way'
down
and
through
the
nether
world
and
up
again"
(Jonas

50).
Motivated
by
"the
conviction
that
there
exists
in
man
something
which
escapes
the

curse
of
this
world,
a
fire,
a
spark,
a
light.
.
.
and
that
man's
task
is
to
regain
his
lost

homeland
by
wrenching
himself
free
of
the
snares
and
illusions
of
the
real,
to
rediscover
the

original
unity,
to
find
again
the
kingdom
of
this
God
who
was
unknown,
or
imperfectly

known,
to
all
preceding
religions,"
the
Gnostic
mentality
sought
escape
from
the
earthly

(Lacarriere
10).


T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 25

broken
up,
the
two
are
torn
apart,
and
a
gulf
never
completely
to
be
closed
again
is

opened:
God
and
world,
God
and
nature,
spirit
and
nature,
become
divorced,
alien
to

each
other,
even
contraries"
(Jonas
251).
In
the
"mutant
thought"
of
Gnosticism,
men

thus
came
to
seem
"planetary
detainees"
"waging
war
against
the
very
nature
of
our

presence
here
on
Earth"
(Lacarriere
20).

Despite
this
radically
alienated
state,
the
Gnostic
was
nevertheless
sustained

by
the
faith
that
above
the
tyrannical,
monstrous
Demiurge
there
exists
another,

truly
divine
being,
and
that
enlightened
beings
might,
by
raising
their
consciousness,

reach
out
beyond
the
dissimulations
of
the
pretender
and
find
the
true
God.
Without

hope
of
the
beyond,
Gnosticism
would
have
lapsed
into
"a
hopeless
worldly

pessimism"
(Jonas
261),
surrendering
itself
to
that
"universal
shipwreck
which
is
the

history
of
matter
and
of
man"
(Lacarriere
20).

Thus
the
great
"Gnostic
drama,"
enacted
on
a
worldly
stage
that
had
itself

become
the
equivalent
of
the
underworld,
came
to
seem
"the
metaphysical
history
of

the
light
exiled
from
Light,
of
the
life
exiled
from
Life
and
involved
in
the
world—the

history
of
its
alienation
and
recovery,
its
'way'
down
and
through
the
nether
world

and
up
again"
(Jonas
50).
Motivated
by
"the
conviction
that
there
exists
in
man

something
which
escapes
the
curse
of
this
world,
a
fire,
a
spark,
a
light
.
.
.
man's

task
is
to
regain
his
lost
homeland
by
wrenching
himself
free
of
the
snares
and

illusions
of
the
real,
to
rediscover
the
original
unity,
to
find
again
the
kingdom
of

this
God
who
was
unknown,
or
imperfectly
known,
to
all
preceding
religions"

(Lacarriere
10).

"The
fundamental
difference"
separating
the
Gnostics

from
their
contemporaries,
writes
Jacques
Lacarriere,
in
a

passage
that
could,
almost
without
altering
a
word,
be
adopted

as
an
accurate
characterization
of
the
most
radical
of

contemporary
space
advocacy,
was
"that,
for
them,
their
native

'soil'
[was]
not
the
Earth,
but
that
lost
heaven
which
they
[kept]

vividly
alive
in
their
memories."
As
"autochthons
of
another

world"
who
had
"fallen
onto
our
Earth
like
inhabitants
from
a
distant
planet"
and

"strayed
into
the
wrong
galaxy,"
they
experienced
a
perpetual
"longing
to
regain

their
true
cosmic
homeland."
"The
sense
of
uprootedness,"
the
alienation,

experienced
by
the
Gnostics,
Lacarriere
shows,
was
"not
merely
geographical
but

planetary."
"To
treat
them
as
aliens
in
the
political
or
civic
sense"—as
their

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 26

contemporaries
did—was
as
absurd,
Lacarriere
suggests,
as
"giving
a
Martian
a

temporary
residence
visa"
(29‐30).

Gnosticism
held,
of
course,
that
all
humans
were
Martians,
though
few
ever

attained
to
the
esoteric
insight,
the
gnosis,
that
enabled
such
self‐knowledge.
And
to

hear
the
Gnostic‐minded
among
us
talk
today—let
us
call
them
(with
Lacarriere)
the

New
Gnostics—the
situation
has
not
changed:
our
species
still
suffers
from
"this

universal
exile,
this
galactic
dispersion
that
has
caused
us
to
be
dumped
on
the
mud

of
planet
Earth"
(Lacarriere
30).

The
original
Gnostics
expected
to
be
saved
from
the
hell
of
Earth
and
body
by

knowledge,
by
spiritual
insight,
not
by
technology,
not
by
a
cybernetically

engineered,
exosomatic
evolution
or
the
deus
ex
machina
of
a
rocket
in
which
they

could
journey
in
search
of
the
real,
the

true
homeland.
Only
the
adepts
of
gnosis

have
changed
in
its
Space
Age
rebirth,

not
the
essential
message.
Now

"enlightenment"
comes
not
to
religious

visionaries
but
to
rocket
scientists,

artificial
intelligence
experts,
and
space

colonization
gurus.
Now
we
find
Barbara

Marx
Hubbard,
prominent
space
advocate,
arguing
that
the
great
religious
prophets

of
antiquity
were
actually
"ancient
futurists"
whose
vision
of
spiritual
transcendence

was
really
a
pre‐hightech
premonition
of
humanity's
destiny
in
space
(285).


Spaciness
is
otherworldly.
In
The
Great
Chain
of
Being,
historian

of
ideas
A.
O.
Lovejoy
describes
the
"unit
idea"
(an
early
avatar

of
the
meme)
of
"otherworldliness"
with
great
precision.

Otherworldliness,
Lovejoy
writes,
is
"the
belief
that
both
the

genuinely
'real'
and
the
truly
good
are
radically
antithetic
in

their
essential
characteristics
to
anything
to
be
found
in
man's

natural
life,
in
the
ordinary
course
of
human
experience,
however

normal,
however
intelligent,
and
however
fortunate."

For
the
"otherworldly
mind,"
"the
world
we
now
and
here
know
—various,

mutable,
a
perpetual
flux
of
states
and
relations
of
things,
or
an
ever‐shifting

phantasmagoria
of
thoughts
and
sensations,
each
of
them
lapsing
into
nonentity
in

the
very
next
moment
of
its
birth—seems
.
.
.
to
have
no
substance
in
it."
Under
the

T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 27

rule
of
such
a
mentality,
"the
objects
of
sense
and
even
of
empirical
scientific

knowledge
are
unstable,
contingent,
forever
breaking
down
logically
into
mere

relations
to
other
things
which
when
scrutinized
prove
equally
relative
and
elusive"

(Lovejoy
26‐27).

The
mentality
of
the
Space
Age—placeless,
ageographical,
ahistorical,

postmodern,
Protean,
senseless,
narcissistic,
unaccommodated,
weightless,
puerile,

and
Gnostic—is
otherworldly.


IV

In
Federico
Fellini's
acclaimed
8
1/2
(1963),
a
film
director,
troubled
by
the
demands

of
his
art,
by
his
loss
of
inspiration,
and
by
marital
trials,
seeks
to
"steer
off
after

something
into
space."
A
movie
about
a
movie,
a
metafilm,
8
1/2
tells
the
story
of

Guido
Anselmi's
abortive
struggle
to
complete
his
current
project:
a
dark

commentary
on
the
modern
world
in
which
survivors
seek
to
flee
to
another
planet
in

"an
attempt
to
escape
atomic
pestilence."
Throughout
the
film,
Guido
and
his
cast

and
crew
look
on
as
the
set
for
the
spaceship's
immense
launching
pad
is

constructed.

We
know
from
the
film's
opening
sequence—in
which
Guido
imagines
himself

miraculously
floating
away
from
his
troubles
into
the
sky,
only
to
be
pulled
back
to

Earth
and
to
responsibility
by
his
producer
("Down!

Definitely
down!"
he
calls
to
Guido)—that
escape
upward

is
his
constant
fantasy.
But
by
the
film's
close
he
has

abandoned
his
dream
of
vertical
escape,
accepting

instead—in
a
Nietzschean
amor
fati—his
earthly
fate,

past,
present,
and
future,
troubles
and
all.
In
the
film's

final
sequence
we
watch
the
launching
pad
being
torn

down
and
all
the
characters
of
Guido's
life—both
real
and

imagined—descend
from
its
scaffolding
back
toward
the
Earth.
Though
few
critics

have
noticed
it,
8
1/2
should
be
understood
as
an
important
and
revealing
document

of
the
Space
Age,
one
that
ultimately
rejects
the
escapist
temptation
to
simply
leap

over
worldy
obstacles.

But
to
hear
us
talk,
Guido's
acceptance
is
uncharacteristic.
To
listen
to

discourse
of
the
Space
Age,
we
seldom
heed
any
longer
the
command
of
"Down!"


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