Contents

Preamble 1. Philosophy versus Psychology 2. Nature versus God 3. Sexual versus Erotic 4. Technocratic mindsets 5. Christ the Carpenter 6. Non-linear and Linear 7. Fact versus Fiction 8. Sex versus Gender 9. Reverse Psychology 10. Conclusion

Preamble – Shakespeare's nature-based philosophy                     Contents

The idea Shakespeare’s deeply philosophic appreciation of the natural preconditions for life and art is both more consistent and comprehensive than that of any other recognised philosopher will strike some as contrary to the traditional view of Shakespeare as an incomparable ‘Bard’ with no intentional philosophy. After all, T. S. Eliot allows Shakespeare only a ‘rag bag’ philosophy at best, and William Wordsworth thinks the crucial twenty-eight Mistress sonnets a ‘puzzle-peg’.
        While many suspect there is a profound philosophy embedded in Shakespeare’s works, they do not bring to the plays – and particularly the Sonnets – the appropriate degree of philosophical acuity or even common sense to appreciate readily Shakespeare’s peerless achievement. However, it is not difficult to show Shakespeare structures his works – all his plays, sonnets and poems – with a completely consistent natural logic common to humankind within nature.
        Once we apprehend and apply the required relationship of natural givens or preconditions, Shakespeare’s Folio of thirty-six plays, his 154 sonnets and four longer poems suddenly become a brilliantly interrelated corpus of unmatched perspicacity and structural simplicity revealing the basis of the depth and breadth of his understanding and expression.
        When Shakespeare arranges his Sonnets of 1609, he lays out systematically the natural dynamic of body and mind that informs all his poems and plays. The level of premeditated structuring is sufficient to derive the Sonnet template (below) as a schematic representation of his nature-based philosophy.
        Shakespeare’s Sonnets reveal a deliberate logical and numerological organisation into an overarching set of 154 sonnets that incorporates two sequences of 126 sonnets to the male and 28 sonnets to the female plus the increase argument of the first fourteen sonnets. Then follows the deliberate separation of beauty and truth in the Mistress sequence and conflation of truth and beauty in the Master Mistress sequence.
        The representation of the thematic and numerical relationships in the Sonnet template show how the various parts of the 154-sonnet arrangement cohere isomorphically to provide a powerful tool for interpretation and exploration. The Nature template - Sonnets maintains the terminology of the 154-sonnet set to demonstrate how the 1609 Sonnets configure the relationships.

Nature Template - Sonnets

        It is possible to reduce Shakespeare’s semi-generic characterisation of the principal components of his philosophy in the 1609 Sonnets to their everyday equivalents to form a corresponding Nature template. The modifications identify Mistress as female, Master Mistress as male and beauty as sensation.

Nature Template

        The everyday constituents of the Nature template show Shakespeare, more than any other thinker, includes only unquestionable givens or logical preconditions in the basic structuring of his Sonnets – as the basis for all his works. Each element is an irreducible feature of the constitution and operation of the human body and mind. They are not optional but essential components for the physical and cognitive functions of body and mind.
        Shakespeare’s philosophic tour de force both originates in and reconverges on the concept nature. Everything Shakespeare writes suggests he has an unerring appreciation that the word nature is the only overarching singularity in the English language (and in other Latinate languages), which is referred to entirely without qualification. In his Sonnets – and in his other works – the status of nature is never questioned but is accepted invariably as the ground from which all else entails.
        The unique use of the word nature in everyday language reveals its logical status in the lexicon and grammar of thought, speech and writing. We use no other generic word – not universe, not world, not god – only in the singular. Similarly, no other word in English operates without articles such as ‘the’, ‘an’, or ‘a’, and nature does not have to resort to the faux singularity of a proper noun, as does the name God.
        As Ludwig Wittgenstein realises, all words as vocalised sounds are effectively arbitrary before they are defined through their use in the language-game or grammar of language. Hence, the preference for the word nature to represent the singularity of everything not only preconfigures its uniqueness but also points to its logical ramifications within human life and thought.
        The English word nature derives from the Latin natura (‘birth’, ‘origin’, etc.) or (g)natus (‘born’) or (g)nasci (‘to be born’, ‘originate’). So the word chosen by apologetic philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas and Baruch Spinoza with which to characterise the relation between their monotheistic male God and ‘His’ creation carries with it the implication that nature and being born are etymologically inseparable.
        Shakespeare recognises the fundamental link between nature at large and human procreation (again more consistently than any other thinker) when he structures his Sonnet set thematically and numerologically into two sexual sequences, one to the female and the other to the male – within the context of the whole set of 154 sonnets representing nature. Shakespeare dedicates twenty-eight sonnets to the female and 126 to the male, effectively dividing the set to replicate the sexual differentiation of male from female in nature.
        Shakespeare’s next move is entirely consistent with both nature’s philosophic singularity and its archaic etymology. The precondition for any birth (human or other sexual species) in nature is the differentiation at some point in evolutionary/biological history of the male from the originary female with consequent requirement for the male to return to the female to perpetuate their kind.
        It seems, then, Shakespeare’s unprecedented inclusion of a female and male sequence in his set of 154 sonnets based in nature has a deeply biological/logical premise and consequence. That he understands this to be the case is confirmed when he has the first fourteen sonnets argue specifically for increase. They warn unequivocally of the irreversible outcome if all humans failed to increase (sonnet 11 specifically).
        Already embedded in the word nature are the natural implications Shakespeare articulates in the overall structure of the set and the first set-piece argument for increase within the set. The sexual division of male from female in nature is not only the pivotal moment that leads to the multiplicity of human sexual and gender types and potentialities, its logical implications are pre-recorded in the word nature that grammatically represents our abiding sense of singularity.
        With these three biological/logical moves, Shakespeare naturally – and so readily – constructs the first half of what we refer to as the Nature template - Sonnets. By logically aligning the preconditions for physical life, he effectively forms a completely consistent Body template. In turn, the Body template represents the natural precursors to the second half of the Sonnet template.
        In the structural dynamic of Shakespeare’s intensely philosophic 154 sonnets, his next move is to show how the logical operations of the human mind are configured entirely isomorphic with bodily dispositions. In keeping with the rigorous natural logic of his initial insights (configured within the Body template), the constituents of the Mind template consider only unarguable givens representing the human being’s apprehensions, expressions and intuitions within singular nature.
        Shakespeare begins his examination of human sensory perception by acknowledging every human being apprehends the natural world primarily through the senses. In the Sonnets, and particularly in the first eleven sonnets to the female (or Mistress), he uses the word ‘beauty’ to characterise the unprejudiced singularity of incoming sensations. He recognises (as do other philosophers) that the everyday sensations of colour, sound, smell, touch and taste are unbidden and unmediated singular effects (sonnets 127 to 137).
        Then, as Shakespeare recognises in sonnets 138 to 152, the determination of true and false (a dynamic he calls ‘truth’) occurs only in the context of articulate language. In the grammar of language or saying, we continually swear and forswear concepts based in words to comprise the lexicon of possible or impossible conceptual correspondences to things in nature.
        Lastly are the interior sensations of the mind (that Shakespeare also calls beauty) such as intuitions and visions that occur initially as singular unbidden and unmediated effects arising from the unconscious mind. Such sensations are then either articulated in language or given singular expression in music, poetry or art. Shakespeare dedicates the lengthy sequence to the male or Master Mistress to discussing the natural logic and ramifications of mind-derived sensations (sonnets 20 to 126).
        Shakespeare’s Sonnets recognise that these three organically dynamic activities – incoming sensations, enlanguaged ideas of right and wrong, and interior sensations of the mind – are the logical basis for all sensory, cognitive and imaginative possibilities. They constitute the irreducible components of the second half of the Sonnet template or the Mind template.
        The layout of the complete Nature template makes visible the derivation of mind-based activities in the Mind template from their isomorphic precursors in the Body template. In evolutionary or Darwinian terms, it is not surprising that the Mind template should morph out of the Body template as the mind derives from the body over evolutionary time.
        Shakespeare acknowledges the body to mind development by recognising that logically anything he says about the Body template presumes on the reflectivity and reflexivity of the Mind template. In other words, he accepts that what he says and writes about nature and the sexual dynamic has only as much soundness as his mind’s ability to remain completely at one with his body’s natural dispositions and logical alignment.
        Shakespeare dedicates five sonnets (15 to 19) immediately after the fourteen increase sonnets to facilitate the transition from the sexual dynamic in nature to its natural correlate in the sensory and cognitive functions of the human mind. He accepts the Mind template derives from the Body template and conversely everything he thinks, says or writes depends on the body dynamic for its perspicacity and potentiality.
        One of the consequences of aligning the natural givens from the Sonnets in the Nature template to form the Body template and the Mind template is a graphic insight into Shakespeare’s appreciation of the logical distinction between the sexual and the erotic. In his Sonnets, there is a clear separation of the literal arguments about the significance of the sexual dynamic from the more evocative or even provocative verse as he moves to make the erotic dynamic palpable for the protagonists.
        Shakespeare very deliberately identifies the sexual with the female/male differentiation in nature and the consequent requirement for increase. Similarly, he is equally determined in identifying the erotic with all mind-based constructs and their attendant desires while recognising the erotic is logically consequent on the sexual dynamic in nature.
        Shakespeare appreciates that the most overdetermined mind-based construct, the biblical monotheistic God, demonstrates through His purely erotic genesis (as with the plethora of Goddesses and Gods in creation myths) that all mind-based activities are inherently erotic because they are imaginative constructs founded logically on the sexual dynamic in nature.
        This very brief summary of the derivation of the Nature template from Shakespeares Sonnets of 1609 and the intimation he publishes the 154-sonnet set to present the philosophy behind all his plays and poems is based on the evidence and argument available at length and in detail in published volumes (2005 and forthcoming) and on the Quaternary Institute website.
        Crucial to the purposes of the current essay is the simple demonstration the Sonnet template both conforms to evident structural features of the 1609 Sonnets and is logically sound. It supersedes all attempts over 4000 years by more psychologically afflicted philosophers to develop a sound philosophy free from the need to validify speculative claims for any mind-based constructs - particularly the biblical God, who usually gets a get out of jail free card by apologists.
        As we consider a number of philosophic issues in the following sections of this essay, it will become apparent traditional apologetic reformulations of the sound logic of the Nature template that attempt to represent the claims of biblical religions for their mind-based male-based God and his pantheon of mind-based constructs reveal the illogicality and hubris associated with such supererogatory constructions.
        The God template (below) is merely the worst-case scenario that characterises (inevitably crudely) the intractability of mind-based male-based beliefs. It shows clearly why such beliefs are at odds with nature and the natural implications for human physical and mental well-being.

God Template

        The intent in the following sections of the essay is to take a number of seemingly disparate issues and show how to apply the Nature template to first analyse the problematic situations and then either facilitate their resolution or demonstrate the reason for their intractability. We will see that conformity to the Nature template allows philosophic perspicacity whereas distortions to the Nature template to form equivalents of the God template prevent such consistency and comprehensiveness.

1. Philosophy versus Psychology                         Contents

Why, we ask, has no one in 400 years since William Shakespeare’s death in 1616 previously sounded out his consistent and comprehensive nature-based Sonnet philosophy? Moreover, as a corollary, what has traditional or academic philosophy been doing over the last 400 years or more if it has not been doing philosophy?
        The simple answer is that all other philosophers over the last few millennia have been in varying degrees practicing psychology in the guise of philosophy. Consequently, not one ‘great’ – or lesser – philosopher from the 1600s onwards appreciates the profound and systematic philosophy in Shakespeare’s works.
        In contrast, because Shakespeare bases his understanding in a sound and encompassing nature-based philosophy, he has deeply penetrating insights into the near universally practiced psychology-as-philosophy syndrome. His nature-based philosophy also enables him to give unprecedented expression to the vicissitudes of human psychology (including the idea of an imaginary soul) throughout his play and poems.
        Even modern nature-orientated thinkers prove blind to the sound and comprehensive nature-based philosophy in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Their shortcomings relate directly to the role many have as academics in Tertiary philosophy departments – or an undue faith in such academics.
        Effectively, most so-called philosophers are still constrained by the fact Universities were founded around 1100AD with the express expectation scholars would justify the biblical belief in an omnipotent Creator God. Consequently, apologetics has been the principal form of philosophic practice over the last 400 years – and the vestiges of its justificatory techniques continue to afflict even the most skeptical thinkers.
        Furthermore, all apologetic thinkers before 1100AD were similarly determined to demonstrate the cogency of male-based biblical beliefs through the process of valid rather than sound argument. However, because all such beliefs are mind-based constructs or mind-induced desires, then the corresponding so-called philosophy amounts to no more than psychological justification for reified or personified imaginary ideals and expectations.
        Once a mind-based construct like the biblical monotheistic God is given priority over nature and is enforced as dogma, it inverts the natural order of body before mind. When believers make the mind prior to the body, and in effect subsume the body into its mind-based creativity, inconsistencies abound not the least of which is the perennial – and ironically named – mind/body problem.
        That many so-called philosophers address themselves to the mind/body problem over the centuries without questioning the psychological perversion the inversion of the body/mind dynamic represents indicts their faith in the redemptive value of valid argumentative ploys – which early logicians including Aristotle invent wittingly or unwittingly for them.
        Comparing the Nature template’s sound natural logic with the contrived logical validity of the God template makes graphic the artificiality of the mind/body problem. The only justification for persisting with the rampant inconsistencies of the God template is the psychological vulnerability – or sometimes bravado – of those at dispositional odds with their natural body/mind trajectory.
        What sets Shakespeare apart from every apologetic philosopher is the comprehensiveness of his nature-based understanding that incorporates the female/male priority (anathema to male-based beliefs) consistently all the way to the deepest sensations and soulful intuitions of the imaginative mind. By doing so, he demonstrates the complete illogicality of the God template with its pretentious occlusion of the originary female and the preemptive substitution of a purely mind-based sensation of psychological singularity and simplicity (hubristically named God) for the incontestability of the philosophic unity and diversity of nature.
        While no other thinker has Shakespeare’s depth and range, in the early Twentieth Century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein does set out to reject imposed metaphysical imperatives and recover a sound philosophy from the mess of historical psychological speculation. After attempting – but failing definitively – in his first period of work to show language is reducible to an atomic/molecular logic derived from nuclear physics, Wittgenstein subsequently makes tentative moves towards a more broadly nature-based understanding.
        Returning to philosophy in the 1930s, Wittgenstein begins by demonstrating that language generates meaning only through the natural dynamic of everyday use over time. He comes to appreciate that ‘language games’ are founded on ‘forms of life’ and the facts of ‘nature’ and having ‘parents’ and these natural givens provide the unquestionable basis of ‘certainty’ for the purposeful function of any language game.
        In the later years of his career, Wittgenstein also writes at length on the philosophy of psychology. His treatment of the philosophical/psychological confusion, though, only goes as far as psychological phenomena such as visual illusions. His investigation focuses on the phenomenon he calls ‘seeing as’. Typically, ‘seeing as’ involves the ability of the mind to see two different images in the same shape but not at the same time – as in the often reproduced duck/rabbit diagram.
        Underlying Wittgenstein’s investigations into the philosophy of psychology is the deeper issue of mistaking psychology for philosophy. Unfortunately, while Wittgenstein does appreciate that nature and parents are unquestionable givens in regard to mind-based activity, he does not devise a systematic account of the relationship between natural philosophic certainties and visual psychological conundrums.
        While Wittgenstein does identify nature and parents as unquestionable givens, in the context of his simplistic take on the philosophy of psychology, other thinkers ignore his natural grounds for language and focus on the apparent relativistic implications of his examination of sensory conundrums. What certainty, they ask, can philosophy have if simple visual phenomena lead to conflicting interpretations? Hence, the ease with which such thinkers align Wittgenstein with psychological philosophies such as post-modernism.
        The confusions arise and multiply because those practicing psychology as if they are doing philosophy cannot see past the mind-based constructs psychology generates. From their mind-based disadvantage, they consider both philosophy and psychology to be irredeemably rooted in the mind and hence both subject to the same doubts and historicity.
        Both male-based/mind-based beliefs and modern skepticism – typified by the post-modern malaise – consider the mind prior to the body. Effectively, they lock themselves into a self-validating trance that denigrates the body – and hence nature.
        Over three-hundred years before Wittgenstein provides a mere sketch of the relation between philosophy and psychology, Shakespeare adroitly and profoundly redresses the philosophic issues Wittgenstein tentatively investigates in his determination to find certainty beyond traditional mind/based metaphysics. Shakespeare does so by first recovering the natural logic of human evolution of body before mind and structures his philosophy with only unquestionable givens. By accepting uncontestable preconditions, he then shows how and where psychology relates to philosophy.
        The confusion in conflating psychology and philosophy evaporates by recognising philosophy as the relationship between the unarguable givens or natural preconditions for both the human body and mind. Shakespeare is the only philosopher who sets out all the natural givens basic to human existence and consequently for the operations of the human mind. He is also a peerless poet and playwright who is able to give vivid expression to his insights into everyday human life and the depths of mature love.
        Each of the components of the Nature template is unequivocal and irreplaceable for human beings to be the sort of thinking and emotional animals they are. From singular nature, to the sexual dynamic of female and male and the logic of increase devolves the constitutional sensory, language and super sensory faculties of the mind. The fact of human sexuality in nature and the consequent isomorphic capacity of the mind to use language to interrelate true and false amidst sensory inputs and outputs underpin all other possibilities.
        Whereas philosophy sets out the natural relation between body and mind in terms of unarguable givens, psychology pertains only to the operations of the mind as it responds to opportunities and vicissitudes in the world. The syndrome of confounding philosophy with psychology arises in part because the body dynamic of sexual increase in nature is the precondition for the operations of the mind. This ironically leads to the reflexive ability of the mind to reconstitute the natural dynamic within its own parameters creating the illusion of an organisation independent of nature – typically the God template of biblical religions.
        The single most revealing marker of such inversions of natural philosophy is the eroticism underlying all myths of origins. The confusion of sexuality with eroticism and vice versa in modern psychology and psychiatry has its roots in the unwillingness to address fully the inversions introduced by male-based faiths a few thousand years ago.
        Shakespeare’s perennial influence both on philosophy and psychology, with philosophers writing books attempting to explain the philosophic depth in Shakespeare’s works and psychiatrists misattributing his characters’ traits onto Shakespeare himself, belies his unparalleled clarity about the logical relation of philosophy and psychology. By comparison, Wittgenstein flounders in the simplistic sensory implications of the conundrum. The Nature template (readily derivable from the Sonnets) shows incontrovertibly just how philosophy, psychology, the sexual and the erotic, body and mind stand in relation to one another.

2. Nature versus God                                                 Contents

Apologetic philosophers from Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) – and even contemporary thinkers – perennially attempt to reconcile the issues of ascendancy surrounding the words God and nature. With the recovery of Greek thought in the early Renaissance, the conflict between Plato and Aristotle – between absolute idealism and natural empiricism – resurfaces in the standoff over God and nature.
        It is no accident of etymology or epistemology that such philosophers swing the debate around the two words God and nature. The monotheistic God of the Bible, as the most singular of the religiously unborn, represents all mind-derived entities not generated through the natural process of procreation (or as Shakespeare calls it – increase). The word nature on the other hand derives from the Latin natura (natus) or nasci meaning to be born. Hence, nature represents everything that depends on or subtends upon the dynamic of increase.
        The mono-God, then, represents effectively all mind-based male-based constructs and anything not subject to the natural dynamic of increase. Specifically, because there are no correlates to mind-derived sensations external to the human mind, the idea of God is a purely mind-based fabrication or fantasy.
        In contrast, nature represents everything that devolves around the natural propensity to propagate and the necessity to procreate for the persistence of sexual species. If humankind, for instance, decides not to procreate – or neglects to do so en masse – there will be no more believers to sustain the mind-based sensation called God, but the full panoply of nature (sans humans) would continue regardless.
        The response of philosophers to the God/nature question is as diverse as Aquinas’ attempting to show God commands nature, to Spinoza arguing God and nature represent the same thing – or to Nietzsche announcing the death of God. Then there are modern philosophers who argue the mind is dependent on the body and so any mind-based constructs like God are logically dependent on nature – and not vice versa.
        Yet it is William Shakespeare who systematically and effectively corrects all the traditional anomalies – and the subsequent apologetic posturing. Implicit in his organisation of the 1609 Sonnets (as the basis for all his plays) is a nature-based philosophy that logically differentiates and delineates the meanings of the words nature and God. Shakespeare’s clarity about the exact relationship is both unparalleled and comprehensive of the breadths and depths of the relationship.
        The structural arrangement of the 154 sonnets – which the Nature template represents – shows the logical priority of the basic components with singular nature as the groundedness for the eventual manifestation of the interior sensation of the mind believers call God.
        By ascribing 154 sonnets to nature, Shakespeare recognises the unique grammar of the word nature, which occurs only in the singular when referring to nature at large. By giving nature the numbering 154, Shakespeare knows that traditional numerological addition configures its unity: 154 = 1+5+4 = 10 = 1+0 = 1. Similarly, in English, the word nature uniquely accepts no articles such as the, an or a – as do the words God, universe, world, etc.
        The distinctive grammar of the two words nature and God should be sufficient to show that ever-present nature is the logically singular default or given and the sensation called God (or whatever name) is a mind-based language-dependent construct subtending on the naturally evolved body/ mind dynamic. Furthermore, the word God cribs its apparent singularity as a name by capitalising on the conventional uniqueness of proper nouns.
        While Shakespeare appreciates the simplicity of the demonstration, he knows there are contributing factors militating against an easy acceptance of the obvious. Over the last 4000 or so years, each of the principal components of the Nature template has been subject to dislocation or even complete inversion as a consequence of the beguiling influence of believing the mind-generated sensation called God has priority over all else – and bizarrely creates everything out of nothing.
        Typically, biblical mythology idealises nature as an Edenic Paradise and elevates the male as precursor for the female. In biblical myth, the female becomes the locus of death rather than physical increase, whereas in nature the female and not the male is the locus of the birth process. With their immaculate conceptions, virgin births, disembodied resurrections and re-embodied judgments, death is the perpetual recourse of such religions.
        In turn, the biblical about-face brands immediate sensations as the source of evil rather than unmediated or neutral inputs to the mind. The upshot is to invert the natural true/false dynamic, with mind-based constructs (like the male God) given priority over natural contingencies. Ironically, biblical devotees worship interior sensations of the mind as fully cognizant and literary, rational Gods and Goddesses.
        Basic to the perverted religious syndrome is the inclination to prioritise the mind over the body. Consequent on the seductive attractivity of mind-based sensations is the confusion of the eroticism of mind-based desires for body-determined sexuality. All Gods and Goddesses, including the monotheistic God of the Bible, are born of erotic and not sexual processes.
The Nature template captures with incredible economy the verifiable dynamic and identifies precisely those elements so readily distorted by mind-based beliefs. In the Sonnets, Shakespeare discusses the various elements and their susceptibility to corruption by mind-based zealotry.
        It is possible to represent the distortions in the God template (illustrated in the preamble) that inverts the Nature template to show the corruptions and their consequences. The Nature template, in the light of the corrupt God template, critiques the faulty logic behind the inclination to invert, confuse or conflate the relationship between the word God and nature. Nature is the uniquely singular word that encapsulates all else including the singular mind-based sensation named God.
        The word nature represents all possibilities by default – not by convention or legislation. In contrast, the word God while also referring to singular sensations of the mind – even the most intense sensations of connectivity and purposefulness – requires special etymological conditions to represent that singularity. It acquires a capital G and the first three Mosaic Commandments to regulate it into its privileged position by capitalising on the singular reference of proper nouns. Whereas no other word readily substitutes for nature, God has synonyms in Allah, Jehovah, et al., – all with capitals and all imposed by fiat.
        Shakespeare recognises that the God template inverts wholesale the Nature template. He not only clearly details the type and extent of the corruption, he also examines in the thirty-six Folio plays the malconsequences and gratuitous violence that follow when believers in whatever version of the God template ignore their common base in nature and impose and enforce their mind-based/male based beliefs.
        While Shakespeare acknowledges in detail the inversion of natural logic into cul-de-sacs of psychological intractability, he is also uses methods throughout his works to reverse psychologise the impasses and cruelty issuing from the imposition of the God template as a universal norm. He uses a variety of tactics to counter the worst consequences of its unbridled application.
        (See Section 9 for a discussion of Shakespeare’s reverse psychological methods.)

3. Sexual versus Erotic                                         Contents

The most perversely erotic entity the human imagination ever creates is the male-based mind-based monotheistic God of biblical myth. More sensationally erotic than pornographic imagery or even nudity in religious art, the singular sensation called God both genuinely evokes and simultaneously misrepresents the deepest erotic impulses in the human mind.
        The apparently self-creating mono-God of revealed religion not only capitalises on the deepest mind-based sensations, in biblical myth scribes intensify the mind-generated pure erotic frisson by declaring ‘His’ priority over the originary female and the biology of increase – so effectively the whole of nature.
        When ancient scribal cultures were established, male-orientated myths of origins provide the overarching contexts under which Kings and Queens rule – and still rule – with impunity. Even in Twenty-first Century democracies, the biblical myth remains entrenched in the Anglicanism and Monarchy of Great Britain and hence the British Commonwealth.
        Similarly, in republics like the United States of America, despite the separation of State and Church in the American Constitution, Christianity resurfaces by default in State functions and institutions. Of the growing number of democracies in the world, many still pay obeisance in their political observances to the God of the undemocratic and misogynistic churches.
        Significantly, in the global demography, the multiplicity of myths in a plethora of world religions reveals the inherent factionalism behind traditional male-based beliefs. As a consequence, in the absence of a viable global myth, there is a burgeoning awareness of the natural logic that enables mythic expression.
        Significantly, the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1966) provides an exacting critique of the conditions for mythic expression in his Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1912-23) and Étant donnés (1946-68). Moreover, 300 years earlier Shakespeare gives an even more trenchant critique of the logic of myth in his 1609 Sonnets and 1623 Folio of plays.
        The crucial distinction both Duchamp and Shakespeare make for understanding the logic of mythic expression is between the sexual and the erotic. Significantly, no Goddess or God in mythical stories is born through sexual or biological means – i.e. through the womb and birth canal of the fertilised female. The non-sexual genesis of all inaugurating Goddesses and/or Gods from the multitude of world religions signals that all mind-based sensations are inherently or logically erotic – as are the language constructs they inspire.
        The Nature template highlights the natural logic of the sexual-to-erotic dynamic basic to all living beings, which Shakespeare articulates in full in his Sonnets and explores in his plays. Conversely, the God template clearly shows the inversion of the dynamic when it institutes the erotic as the precursor for the sexual. The inconsistencies and injustices consequent on the willful corruption of the Nature template speak to the philosophic illogicalities and gratuitous injustices endemic to all male-based mind-based beliefs.
        The myths of origin at the heart of the world’s cultures memorialise the mind-based birth suite of all goddesses and gods in societies’ religions. For devotees, the inscribed eroticism underscoring the representations of their goddesses and gods in myths manufactures the attractivity of religious texts.
        In other words, by swallowing the body dynamic whole into the mind dynamic, biblical myth converts nature into a vast paradisiacal erotic landscape (the most recent manifestation of which is the metaphysical theory of the Big Bang). Ungoverned by natural prerogatives, the God of biblical myth – in a glowing personification that leaves His more salacious counterparts from the realm of mind-satiating artistry in the shade – evinces the most idealistically pure mind-enhanced epiphanies. However, exactly the same deeply felt sensations when called God can incite equally intense mind-based delusions leading to the most gratuitous of murderous excesses.
        Crucially, Shakespeare recognises that the unacknowledged deep eroticism at the heart of biblical religions, while satiating the mythic potentialities of the human mind, inverts and distorts the natural relationship between the sexual body and the erotic mind. The combination of satiated mind-based sensations and the elevation of their deeply affective singularities to venerated divinities speaks to the intensity of the sensations but also to an ignorance of their natural mind-alone provenance and religious inversion.
        Gian Lorenzo Bernini captures brilliantly – if somewhat unintentionally – the relationship between the divine and the erotic in his rapturous sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa (~1650). In his exquisite marble evocation of the ecstatic moment Carmelite Teresa of Avila consummates her heady union with God, Bernini interprets her notes as suggesting she simultaneously masturbates to an erotic climax.
        Ironically, the Catholic Church’s general proscription on masturbation foists unfairly on the laity a measure required to discourage the onanism rife amongst an unnaturally eroticised celibate clergy. The paedophilia prevalent amongst religious orders is a criminal consequence of the consecrated puerility of hermetic eroticism.
        The Nature template illustrates clearly the source of the delusion as well as the reason for its mind-altering intensity and apparent intractability. Because everything, including the mind-based sensation called God, is part of nature, then at the deepest levels in the human mind the sensations experienced are effectively the mind’s simulacrum of its connectedness to the whole of nature.
        No wonder the experience of the deeply erotic sensation called God has the capacity to lull the mind into preferring a delimited version of nature pseudo-certified free of the perceived vicissitudes of the sexual dynamic. The Churches and their avatars like Jesus Christ – whose erotic death on the Cross forges a promissory guarantee or I.O.U. for asexual bliss in eternity – proffer an anodyne Heaven.
        Shakespeare’s plays and longer poems explore and critique the full gamut of the dubious legacy of the mind-marooned biblical God – and Christ – but always from within the context of the natural logic of the nature-based philosophy articulated in the Sonnets of 1609. Shakespeare covers the range from the rarified closet eroticism in monasteries and nunneries to their unbridled counterpart, the murderous machinations of King Richard III. Richard III evokes ‘God’ one hundred times – significantly more mentions of the word God than in of any Shakespeare’s other Comedies, Histories and Tragedies in the 1623 Folio.
        When biblical and other idealising mythologies corrupt the Nature template to form the inverted equivalent effectively as the God template, they render the sexual secondary to the erotic. Because the female is the precursor for the male in nature, the inversion creates a syndrome in which the female needs to be continuously denigrated and marginalized.
        Hence, the Churches through their predominantly male-exclusive hierarchies proscribe both increase and sexuality. The consequence is the obscenity of a male clergy imposing unnatural strictures on childbirth and delimiting the natural multiplicity of gender dispositions to a unequal duality of dominant male and subservient female.
        The impositions of beliefs in mind-based Gods who logically cannot procreate is completely at odds with a woman’s natural right to manage her body and hence her pregnancy – through abortion if necessary. Moreover, the similar disregard for the natural formation of a variety of feminine and masculine gender types such as homosexuals, transsexuals, lesbians, etc., in the period after conception reveals the illogicality of enforcing the belief in male supremacy constitutional to male-based mythologies.
        The iniquities are particularly acute in Churches like the Catholic where the Pope is staunchly celibate and monks and nuns become role models for all believers – in imitation of a Christ crucified without progeny. Hence, the Catholic Church is most extreme in enforcing unnatural practices and expectations on its adherents under threat of excommunication.
        The terrible irony – maybe even the elusive reverse psychology of Shakespearean irony – is that a Church that outlaws abortions and homosexuals is itself the most diabolically erotic entity ever instituted – worse than explicit pornography or even whorehouses. At least those practices, in which increase remains a possibility, do not sanctify the celibate eroticism personified in the anti-nature, anti-female and anti-sexual figurehead of Papal righteousness.

4. Technocratic mindsets                              Contents

In the minds of those with deeply ingrained linear or technocratic dispositions or tendencies, a belief in overly imaginative constructs such as creation myths, cosmological constants, imminent robotics, the ascendancy of artificial intelligence, or even Big Bangs, can override or completely confound the natural relationships evident in the Nature template.
        An insight into the source of the syndrome emerges by following the Nature template through from one end to the other. It is then possible to throw light on the reasons why those with technocratic or linear mind-sets have difficulty moderating their fascination with mind-based inventions and fantasies.
        Thinkers and/or practitioners with technocratic dispositions frequently minimize or dismiss the first or Body half of the Nature template. They focus instead on localised areas of the second or Mind half of the Nature template – the investigative fact-to-facture (or true/false) dynamic of language and the imaginative facility driven by interior sensations in the mind.
        Such thinkers ignore or denigrate the first half of the Nature template – with its uncontestable givens – in their headlong desire to ordain and exploit mind-based inventiveness and creativity. They overlook or dismiss the universality and singularity of nature, the undeniability of female priority and the logic of increase in their beguilement with and advocacy for purely mind-based constructs.
        Ironically, the mind’s ability to generate and accommodate an extraordinary number of facts and fictions is isomorphic with the body’s capacity to generate billions of similar but non-identical human beings – along with its untapped reservoir of multi-cellular potential. The mind both accommodates a multitude of facts and conceptualises a vast array of imaginative possibilities of which only a fraction are practical enough to be manufactured into items useful for human productivity and survival.
        While there may be a number of biological or conceptual mechanisms driving the tendency to prioritise mind-based constructs, once embedded in susceptible minds – and the syndrome can be apparent in either males or females – the inclination to believe in technocratic solutions without reflection seems almost irreversible.
        The worst consequences of the near religious belief in such over-reaching constructs can be constrained only by constitutional or legislative procedures that enforce the birthright sensibility of the complete Nature template. Foremost is the American Constitution where Thomas Jefferson (in particular) appreciates the logic of instituting the total separation of a nature-based State from a male-God based Church. The Constitution prevents any of the many religious constructs from becoming the religion of the United States or of individual States.
        The need to enact precautionary legislative measures to counter linear technocratically inspired beliefs and impositions anticipates the religious fervor with which over-masculinised minds invert the natural body/mind relationship. Such minds override the isomorphic connectivity between the originary female and offshoot male and the consequent capacity of the mind to mirror the biological relationship in the language dynamic that arbitrates the logic of true and false.
        When viewed in the light of the Nature template derived from Shakespeare’s works, the connection between body-based givens that generate the offshoot male (who depends on the female for reproductivity) and mind-based constructs (that appear to stand apart from nature) is plain to see.
        The isomorphic relationships across the Body/Mind connectivity of the Nature template make it possible to appreciate the logical consequences the singularity of the originary female and the provisional status of the offshoot male have for the language dynamic of true and false. The female corresponds to ‘true’ because within sexual species she is the undifferentiated groundedness for all human possibilities while the male corresponds to ‘false’ because in the larger evolutionary process the female can survive without his sexual contribution.
        As Shakespeare argues in the Sonnets, the archetypal recalcitrant male is fated to die ‘alone’ if he (and hence the whole of humankind) ignores the logic of increase. Likewise ideas developed in language out of the imagination (the ‘false’ in the Mind half of the Nature template) lose their connectivity to nature if they are treated as self-actuating and/or self-perpetuating entities.
        The manic tendency to act against the natural prerogative to increase, further exacerbates the irrecoverability from immersion in the seductiveness of mind-based constructs. Biologically the male cannot exist independent of the female and also expect to persist across generations. Unconditional religious celibacy, for instance, is a self-defeating syndrome that requires generation after generation of sexual propagated males to commit to the erotic celibate fantasy. Every God-infallible Pope is born of a biological mother – and father.
        The delusional syndrome of male-alone perpetuation has its source in the biology of sexual reproduction where some originary female embryos become more masculinised and correspondingly are proportionately less feminised. After conception, in the process of cell division and with the feminisation and masculinisation of the zygote, there are varying degrees to which genes and hormones engender the balance of masculinisation in relation to the underpinning feminization.
        For those males who are born more masculinised than feminised (and similarly for overly masculinised females) there appears to be a collateral tendency to accept – or believe religiously in – the ‘false’ part of the true/ false dynamic in human understanding through language and sensations. Even more so, is the susceptibility to male-based mind-based constructs that are no more than reified manifestations of inner sensation of the human mind.
        The most difficult constructs to ameliorate are those that verbalise, configure or give form to pure male-based/mind-based sensations – typically, the deepest singular sensation is called God, or other equally evocative epithets. Such pure mind-based constructs – originally generated speculatively for enhancing the deeper cultural intimations and expressivity of the species – when divorced from their sexual and sensory basis in nature become blindly exclusive, frequently exploitative and often destructive.
        To some, the interrelationship of the isomorphic components of the Nature template, with the base physicality of the body dynamic and the consequent conceptuality of the mind dynamic, appear enigmatically random yet at the same time seem inexplicably determined. Not surprisingly, the apparent conflict is incomprehensible when viewed from the engineered logic of biblical prerogatives with their male-based prejudices and expectations.
        The irony intensifies because the types of structure instituted by technocrats are extremely linear mind-based inventions that lack the flexibility and resiliency of the natural structure of the Nature template. While there is a full spectrum of sensibilities evident in human potentiality from non-linear to linear, the narrowed focus of the technocratic mindset leads to a prioritizing of minutiae and infinities over more grounded natural implications and possibilities.
        For those disposed toward conceptual linear processes, mind-devised regularities such as scientific laws, digital systems (versus analog), mathematical constants (such as equality, zero and infinity) and their applications have a seductive certainty and universality. Yet the invention of all the computing constructs is datable to identifiable moments in recent history before which only the certainty and regularity of nature prevails.
        One of the worst consequences of the technocratic mindset is the imposition of linear social, political and religious constructs on the thoughts and writings of thinkers like Charles Darwin, Marcel Duchamp, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein appreciates the irony when he comments that if mathematicians listened to his critique of their methods and expectations it might be the worse day for mathematics. In his wisdom, he accepts that an unfettered technocratic mind-set is necessary to ensure continual inventiveness.
        The thinker linearly addicted tertiary scholars most grievously afflict and disrespect, though, is William Shakespeare. They alter his texts to conform with their linear religious beliefs or reattribute significant parts of his works to other writers of decidedly linear dispositions – dispositions that are ironically closer to their own limited tertiary sensibilities and expectations.
        Unable to accept or accommodate Shakespeare’s unmatched ability to give expression to both non-linear and linear syndromes, such scholars do not reflect on their own limited technocratic sensibilities. Instead, they use their hubristic status in the publishing world to cover-up and perpetrate deceptions that rate as the most heinous literary crimes foisted on a literary giant.
        Shakespeare examines the syndrome in great detail in his Folio of thirty-six plays. In the Comedies, he shows how to ameliorate the worst effects of male-based/mind-based impositions and, in the Histories and Tragedies, he presents twenty-two case studies of the unalloyed application of such constructs in fomenting societal mayhem and murderous intrigue.
        Twenty years after beginning to write plays around 1590, Shakespeare publishes the 154 sonnets in 1609 to provide a consistent and comprehensive natural logic for the analysis and resolution of such mind-based disasters and cruelty. That it has taken 400 years for the Sonnet logic to be recognised points to the degree to which God-like technocratic expectations are inured in the culture.

5. Christ the Carpenter                                                 Contents

A common refrain from churchgoers and particularly their clergy when fires, earthquakes or floods damage or destroy their consecrated buildings is that, after all, God’s love and the Church is really in the people themselves. The implication is that ecclesiastic structures are secondary or incidental to a belief in God – that God exists independently of visible structures built by humans, because the constructions merely celebrate his heavenly existence.
        Yet it is not uncommon, as happened following the Christchurch earthquake of 2009, after the airing to the media of such sentiments about not needing buildings, for the church to construct with indecent haste a new cathedral at the cost of millions of dollars. Moreover, the high-end design and construction teams are at work well before the parishioners – and the rest of the thousands of displaced citizens – have moved out of emergency accommodation, which can be as basic as tents and portaloos in a park.
        What, then, is the relationship between a God who is purported to exist independent of buildings and the immodest rush to construct new buildings? What is more, why are church buildings deconsecrated when they pass their use-by date as if the building itself has an intimate relationship to whatever the idea of God represents?
        Typically, schismatic faiths (famously the Protestants at the beginning of the Reformation) announce they will reject built structures in favour of simple congregational gatherings or even a one-on-one relationship with their God. Yet, no congregation of believers manages for long without the assistance of at least a consecrated niche or a ring of stones if not magnificent cathedrals and cloisters and ancillary buildings covering many hectares – as happened after the death of iconoclast Francis of Assisi.
        All this makes sense if their God is seen as being merely an intensely felt mind-based sensation that has no existence outside the human skull. No wonder, then, that those who want to believe their God is transcendental – somewhere beyond the human body in space and time – resort to buildings to sustain the illusion he is anything but a byproduct of their most cloistered cranial interstices.
        Goddesses, Gods or the biblical mono-God, were once imagined to reside on Mount Olympus or in the vicinity of Mount Sinai, and then believed to inhabit the heavens beyond the clouds. However, as astronomy peered further into space, the deities shifted house to live ever more remotely beyond the outer reaches of inter-planetary orbits until the only site remaining was completely beyond inter-galactic space. However, the brilliant irony is that all the time ‘He’ – or ‘She’ – has been cowering in the confines of the human skull.
        The pathetic irony resides in the realisation the monotheistic God of the Bible does not create the world, but that human beings create ‘God’ every time they invoke His name or refer to the book they write or gather in buildings they construct to give Him existence outside the human cranium. Without the frequent invocations such as ‘God bless’, ‘God be with you’ or (heaven help us) ‘In God we Trust’, God ceases to exist – except as an unworded, unbuilt, forever internalised intense sensation of the human mind.
        In complete contrast, nature requires no special creation, no salutation, no contrite pleading, no commandments – and to the point of this section – no structures or images to cause it to exist or to ensure its continued existence. Hence, it is patently evident why believers in an invisible God build ‘Him’ purpose-made buildings in which they congregate every time they wish to worship ‘Him’. Worse, they readily become violent or even genocidal if nonbelievers challenge or mock their manically elaborate fantasies.
        I confess my awareness of the God/builder syndrome was piqued when separate visits from two Christian friends during a building program on our property led not to their usual proselytising conversations but to hours of discussion about the intricacies of the buildings under construction. In further conversations with either of them, I found the mere mention of building activity would again divert them immediately from their usual religious enthusiasms.
        It seems the only way to encourage God out of his hiding place in the human mind has been to construct more and more magnificent edifices in the belief he would be happy to show himself at some future undisclosed eschatological time so long as the buildings have no other function than worshipping his Immanence. All this is conditional of course on nature’s willingness to let the monuments survive the next earthquake or hurricane or tornado.
        The idea of God depends on linear minded technocrats who require a male-based manifestation to assuage their psychological angst about being an offshoot of a female-based species. Yet, there exists a revealing acknowledgement God remains marooned in the human mind without the willingness of builders to fabricate a public façade. Moreover, the evidence does not come from anecdotal or incidental suspicions about the reason why believers build churches.
        Rather the self-reflexive job descriptions of both the biblical Creator God and his blessed Son Jesus Christ reveal their true location is in psychological sensations and fantasies of the human mind. The biblical descriptions of the two male deities are explicit about their dependence on wood, hammer and nails to get an extra-cranial manifestation.
        Is it a measure of the significance of built structures for the manifestations of God the Creator/Architect’s presence that the New Testament assigns God’s son Christ the trade of Carpenter? Is Christ, then, not only the Son of God, but also symbol of the need for construction to fabricate the otherwise invisible manifestations of God on Earth? Why is Christ labeled a Carpenter rather than a Rabbi or other religious profession, or any other trade?
        God’s Son Christ, when apparently visiting Earth, further compounds the building symbolism when he declares ‘Thou art Peter and upon this rock will I build my church’. While many – particularly Catholics – rejoice in the pun on Peter derived from the Latin Petrus meaning rock, they seem oblivious to the comical implication that Christ the Carpenter self-identifies himself as needing to be made visible in built form on the back of his leading disciple.
        Then, as if to drive home the point, Christ is crucified with the tools of his trade – wood, hammer and nails. The Christ who is killed by carpentry metaphors then disappears for three days back into the cranium he originated from only to reappear resurrected on Sunday. It is as if he says, here boys is the way to get me out of your heads and make me appear real – use the tools of my trade and martyrdom.
        Without God the Creator or Architect, Christ the Carpenter and Peter the Rock, the edifice of the Christian Church as a manifestation of the divine presence would not get off the ground – or out of our heads. God, Christ and Peter as deeply symbolic mind-based constructs would be forever circling around the brain unable to make themselves known – not even to themselves.
        The act of building to materialise the biblical God does not recognise a pre-existing heavenly Maker, but the idea of God the maker idealises the universal urge to construct edifices – particularly to encapsulate the ideal building in ecclesiastical structures. Idolatry in this context is the conflict or tension between the ever-absent God and the need to manifest His presence in the only way he can exist – courtesy of built structures or imagery.
        Another pertinent experience I recall was entering Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome and having the overwhelming sensation I was in God’s Tomb. One of the problems for a God whose only existence is as a deeply felt sensation in the human mind is that as soon as the believers in his cosmic presence build churches to commemorate His divine omnipresence he begins to die. Or, better, the attempt to bring Him to life in bricks and mortar like any reified expectation is dead even before it begins.
        Hence, the rapid rate at which new generations of hopefuls replace previous religious manifestations as they atrophy – even if some religions survive comatose for a few thousand years. Iconoclastic moments in the destruction of previous emblems of eternal life support systems give way to new periods of iconographic intensity.
        The logical difference between the singularity and universality of nature and a simplistic and effervescing God ensures that when monuments to belief disappear then God disappears – except from the inner recesses of the mind. If humankind becomes extinct then God goes extinct. However, in stark contrast nature remains ever-present and indestructible.

6. Non-linear and Linear                                                 Contents

Any story, myth, or even scientific theory that posits a beginning and an end unavoidably or logically self-identifies as a linear mind-based construct. It matters little whether it be an ancient belief in an idealised Elysium beyond earthly vicissitudes, or a biblical trajectory from Creation Day to Heavenly Judgment, or a modern scientific belief in a cataclysmic Big Bang that ends in a contracting Universe.
        Whatever form they take, the repurposing of such linear constructs indicates the presence of an underlying syndrome. It seems, despite the persistence and gravitas of the imagined beginnings and ends, the linear scenarios are little more than psychological ploys to allay the apprehension some experience in accommodating their perception of nature as irredeemably non-linear.
        What then, does it mean to say nature (as the logical and etymologically singular given for all other possibilities) is neither non-linear nor linear – or is both linear and non-linear? How is it possible for nature to elicit both an apprehension of non-linearity and be the repository for the possibility of construing and then utilising the numerous forms of mind-based linearity?
        Typical of such purpose-made linear constructs are scientific laws, mathematical equations, algorithms, fractals, digital systems, computers and even the idea of a one-way journey – or effective suicidal trip – to Mars. The common limitation of each of the linear constructs is an inability to map accurately – without adjustment or correction – onto the natural world.
        More significant for societal and cultural purposes are the linear mind-based constructs that form the basis for, typically, the male-God mythology of the Bible. Moreover, there are consequences for all the spin-off biblical religions from Judaic, to Christian and Muslim – and their multitude of sectarian branchings. As such linear beliefs are endemic to human psychology-cum-philosophy, little wonder it proves difficult for many to see clearly the relationship of their mind-based and frequently male-based constructs to nature.
        Shakespeare is the only thinker ever to have appreciated fully the logic of the syndrome and to have given it precise expression in the 1609 Sonnets and explore its ramifications in his 1623 Folio of plays. Moreover, the Nature template we derive readily from the Sonnets is a biological/ logical explanatory tool for analysing the many linear mind-based/male based conundrums.
        The rationale behind the desire for physically or metaphysically defined starting points and finishing lines can be found by consulting the Nature template. When mind-based constructs – and male-based religions typically – are fabricated around the trajectory from life to death for individual humans on planet Earth, aspects of the neglected first or Body part of the Nature template are incorporated involuntarily and illogically into mind-orientated beliefs and expectations.
        The evolutionary non-linear birth/death cycle of human life in nature is absorbed and transformed – despite the linear mind-set overtly disparaging or rejecting it – into the linear beginning/end or life/death scenarios of metaphysical anticipation. The non-linear natural dynamic of procreation reduces to a linear simulacrum devoid of natural prerogatives as believers transform them artificially into imaginary surrogates.
        What may have originally arisen as a mind-based response to natural contingencies, in the hands of those alienated from the dynamic of the Body portion of the Nature template by excessive male-based and/or mind-based inclinations, becomes an overblown substitute that cuckoo-like ejects its natural counterpart from human intellectual intercourse. Ironically, the truncated natural birth/death dynamic in mind-based myths and theories reasserts itself in the life/death myths developed to assuage the fears and hopes of mind-marooned thinkers and dreamers.
        Shakespeare’s nature-based philosophy as evident in his Sonnets, plays and poems – and crystallised in the Nature template – shows clearly the syndrome while providing a unique tool with which to rectify its worst manifestations and consequences.
        Not only is the conceptual apparatus of linear constructs an artificial replica of the natural dynamic of procreation (or increase as Shakespeare calls it), the language of all mind-based replicas of the linear-neutral birth/ death trajectory mimics their natural counterpart. In the linear imagination, Goddesses and Gods as well as universes are born and inevitably die, and are then reborn as they experience multiple deaths as the mind engineers linear scenarios for the benefit of its eschatologically hopeful adherents.
        Also visible within the Body portion of the template is the impetus that drives not only linear mind-based expectations but also linear male-based religions. The sexual differentiation of male from female in nature creates a divide between the non-linear female and the linear male.
        The generic female is non-linear because she is the repository of the creative potential realised in the birth/death scenario. The capacity of the female of many species to undergo parthenogenesis – and its residual potential in the human female – points to the originary female’s non-linear status.
        By comparison, the female’s linear male offshoot needs to return to the female to reproduce in a non-linear manner. Left alone or standing alone, the male reveals his linear susceptibility to the life/death beliefs instead of accepting the non-linear evolutionary birth/death trajectory. Hence, the inversion of natural propensities in linear constructs explains why male-based religions are always linear in their eschatological promises to believers.
        Similarly, in ignorance of the natural logic of life Shakespeare uniquely structures into his 1609 Sonnets, science and mathematics are also subject to linear trajectories and delusions. Fundamental to – and symptomatic of – the mind-based conceits underpinning evidential science and scientific speculation is the elaborately constructed edifice of mathematics. Moreover, the two mathematical constructs that best characterise the artificiality of all such conceits are the concepts zero and infinity.
        Significantly, humans invented zero and infinity only a few centuries ago to aid in the process of mathematical computation. As pure mind-based constructs, they have absolutely no counterparts in nature. Yet populist scientific theories such as the Big Bang are predicated largely on speculation about the physics of a barely known universe made artificially constant by the concepts zero and infinity. The creation of the universe from nothing in a cataclysmic Big Bang and its infinite expansion to fill ever-increasing space is entirely a construct of a manically linear imagination.
        Even the claim 1 + 1 = 2 might be true in all possible worlds, as some rationalist thinkers believe, resolves itself into the equation 1 + 1 – 2 = 0 showing the faith in providential mathematics is a matter of belief not fact. The similarity between the conceits of discrete beginnings and ends in science, mathematics and religion is simply a consequence of misunderstanding the relation between true/false in the Nature template and the consequent implications for inner sensations of the mind.
        Besides the need for constants like zero and infinity to make mathematics finite and hence calculable, the inadequacy of pure mathematics to describe accurately the simultaneous singularity and complexity of nature is evident in the invention of non-linear mathematics. In contrast to simplistic mind-derived linear systems, all processes in nature are inherently nonlinear with the consequence that non-linear systems readily seem chaotic, unpredictable or counterintuitive.
        The confusion affects entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, where linear systems are said to hide some phenomena such as chaos and singularities. Hence, to some, aspects of the behavior of nonlinear systems appear to be counterintuitive, unpredictable or even chaotic. However, Wikipedia avers that although such chaotic behavior may resemble random behavior, it is absolutely not random.
        Indeed, Wikipedia acknowledges, non-linear problems are of considerable interest to engineers, physicists and mathematicians and many other scientists. In mathematics, since nonlinear equations are difficult to solve, linear equations commonly approximate nonlinear systems. Yet this works well only up to a point.
        Those who prioritise linear thinking over non-linear/linear possibilities tend to characterise the non-linear as somehow defective or troublesome as if the lack of fit that blights linear systems is the fault of non-linear eccentricities. Typical is the invention of Chaos Theory where instead of accepting that linear systems generate the sense of chaos, theorists attribute chaos to those seemingly random events and eventualities that do not fit linear models.
        Yet, by consulting the Nature template, it is immediately evident that nature incorporates both linear and non-linear possibilities. Moreover, the set-to between the linear and non-linear is purely a consequence of inventing mind-based constructs – whether religious, scientific or mathematical – and then feeling piqued because they do not accommodate or characterise the whole of nature.
        This also explains why the Wikipedia entry contradictorily considers the non-linear as chaotic and yet not random. It is chaotic viewed from the mind-based perspective of linear constructs yet is not random because there is nothing in nature outside the human mind that is ever or logically random.
        The equivocation in the Wikipedia entry is symptomatic of male-based/ mind based pedagogues wanting their neatly formulated constructs to be universally true. Yet as creatures who are unavoidably part of nature, they cannot but sense there is something wrong with their overwrought expectations.

7. Fact versus Fiction                                                 Contents

What is it about religious belief that provides its adherents with the most ecstatic mind-based epiphanies but also foments the worst excesses and horrors humankind can visit on itself – and on the planet? Biblical beliefs, particularly – whether Hebrew, Christian or Muslim and all their sects and subsects – are incredibly seductive to a susceptible mind-set yet are only too frequently associated with unimaginable cruelty and genocidal violence.
        To get a measure of the peculiar attractivity that compounds saint-like purity with satanic evil it might be instructive to consider the findings from research on the obesity epidemic afflicting those cultures subject to the processed foods available in modern diets.
        Trials with rats at the Scripps Institute suggest modern processed food differs from traditional fare in the inability of the body or mind to resist particular proportions of obesity-engendering ingredients.
        Researchers began by feeding rats a diet of fatty foods in one trial and then sugary foods in the next. They found that neither fat nor sugar alone create sufficient levels of habituation to cause chronic obesity. It seems rats have biological mechanisms to prevent overdosing on either fat or sugar.
        So, how to account for the readiness with which those hooked on high-energy foods become excessively obese and find it near impossible to break the habit? Further research at the Institute reveals rats have no way of moderating their intake of processed foods like cheesecake with a 50/50 fat/sugar combination.
        The research suggests the human body, while able to signal a sufficiency of fat or sugar consumed independent of each other, has no mechanism to sound the alarm when humans indulge in the artificial combination of 50/50 fat/sugar over time. Street trials seem to confirm that foods with the 50/50 combo, which do not occur naturally but have proliferated over the last few decades, are the ones food bingers find the most difficult to resist.
        Whatever the soundness of the scientific research into the effects of fat and sugar, and its applicability to the obesity epidemic, when researchers talk of wholly artificial foods that have no natural correlates, a comparison with wholly artificial mind-based beliefs is tempting.
        What if, instead of fat/sugar (or body-based seductions), the relationship of fact and fiction in the constitution of mind-based beliefs and theories is investigated?
        Even when the examination is cursory, a particular type of thinking and writing – all the way from religious texts to ‘fantastic naturalism’ novels and even conspiracy theories – seems to depend on a 50/50 mix of fact and fiction to beguile adherents and devotees. Is there an explanation in the fat/sugar 50/50 dependency of rats and humans as to why there is an equal mix of fact and fiction in both the Old and New Testaments – and other religious texts across the world’s cultures?
        It may seem odd that the Bible, as a witness of God’s words for his chosen people, the Hebrews, intermixes mythic writings patently not based in verifiable facts and factual accounts of significant events chronicled in Hebraic history.
        For instance, the Creation myth in Genesis about the formation of the world and ‘mankind’s’ place in the world and the eschatological myth of Christ redeeming ‘mankind’ – are all buttressed by fantastic happenings such as virgin births, extreme longevity and miracles, etc. Yet, in and around the myths, etc., are interwoven far more credible historical accounts of kingdoms, successions, the flight from Egypt, the story of David and Goliath and others.
        Yet it is the whole Bible – myth and history – that believers venerate and swear on as the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and not just the more Godly portions. Together, the patently imaginary events and the historic accounts combine to provide the basis for the Books that form the modern Bible.
        Even on cursory examination, it is apparent the Bible combines fact and fiction in something like a 50/50 ratio. It is as if by interlarding fact with a similar amount of fiction the scribes knew intuitively or possibly knowingly that a susceptible and suggestible portion of the population has no resistance to the beguiling fact/fiction combination.
        In its day-to-day operations, the human mind is quite capable of recognising or distinguishing facts from non-facts. Moreover, it will accommodate an intensive imbibing of facts up to the point when it is inclined to resort to fiction. It is not uncommon for a laboratory researcher, for instance, to turn to novels or movies for relaxation.
        Similarly, an excess of fiction or virtual reality incites a resort to facts or just everyday activities. The continual gyration between fact and fiction in day-to-day thinking and action is both informative and productive. It provides a sound platform for organised life and an imaginative and inventive basis for discovering ways to adjust and modify circumstances to suit real and perceived needs.
        Significantly, the 50/50 combination of fact and fiction in religious belief (or any virtual reality scenario) appeals to an aspect of the mind where artificial constructs have no counterpart in nature. The mind effectively has no mechanism to counter readily the seductiveness of the evenly blended fact/fiction ratios.
        The consequence can be ecstatic belief unmoderated by natural prerogatives – as in monastic seclusion from procreative imperatives. Alternatively, the mind, when confronted with an artfully contrived combination of 50/50 fact and fiction, having no mechanism to ameliorate rationally the unmoderated beliefs, is readily seduced into unconscionable hate and violence.
        While books like the Bible exhibit the deepest and potentially most pernicious examples of the 50/50 fact/fiction scenario, there are many lesser instances of the deceptive combination in literature and thought. The above-mentioned ‘fantastic naturalism’ uses the syndrome to entertain minds with stories that combine equal parts fantasy and reality.
        Authors such as A. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling, Elizabeth Knox, Juan Luis Borges and many film directors like Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas and Peter Jackson seem to know intuitively or intentionally they can gross billions of dollars by providing such material to a susceptible and gullible audience.
        Apparently sane thinkers also fall prey to the 50/50 combo in the plethora of conspiracy theories that spring up around events or writings in which there is an element of uncertainty or mystery. The conspiracy theorists fill in the missing facts with fantastic postulates creating a gerrymandered answer for those who are unwilling or unable to get a sufficient perspective on the issues or are at odds with the intellectual and artistic depth of the writings.
        Major disasters, high-level assassinations, space phenomena, etc., draw those with the requisite mind-set into both endless speculation and doggedly held beliefs despite the available evidence overruling their speculations. Doubts incited by interlarding quantities of fiction to throw doubt on known facts readily dissemble natural cautions. The tenacity with which conspiracy theorists hold to their patently inadequate scenarios is explicable if their susceptibility to the 50/50 fact/fiction syndrome is acknowledged.
        The connection between the biblical 50/50 fact/fiction gullibility and the willingness of those holding to such beliefs to be beguiled by politicians and others preaching half-truths or alternative facts becomes patently obvious. When politicians, for instance, continually interlard their claims with dubious facts, there is a constituency of believers already predisposed to be swayed by such devious propaganda.
        The writer most subject to conspiracy theories is William Shakespeare. In all instances, the inability of the perpetrators to understand his works drives the syndrome. To compensate for feeling bewildered by their ignorance of his nature-based philosophy, so-called scholars take his extant works and interlard them with fictions about emendations, authorship theories, or reattribute parts of his works to other authors on technologic samplings.
        The immense irony is that the very philosophy they are unable to appreciate provides the most effect tool for revealing the inadequacy and rationale behind their behaviour. Those who claim to love his works treat no other thinker anywhere as cavalierly as they do Shakespeare. They have the temerity to alter the sonnets and plays to conform with their own inadequate paradigms or belief systems – in Shakespeare’s case most often the Christian faith.
        If the effect of the 50/50 ratios remains unknown for either body or mind, then the human being lacks a powerful tool for assessing the nature of the problem and formulating responses to prevent or overcome the deleterious effects of both bodily and mental obesity.
        Both the fat/sugar and fact/fiction scenarios can be illustrated and analysed using the Nature template. The relationship between highly processed foods and similarly manufactured religions and theories suggests the problem lies in an ignorance of the natural components of the Nature template and their logical or evolutionary relationships.

8. Sex Versus Gender                                                 Contents

Shakespeare structures his set of 154 sonnets so that the whole set represents nature. Furthermore, he seems to appreciate that the etymological derivation of the word nature from the Latin ‘natura’ meaning ‘birth’ or ‘origins’ gives a linguistic and philosophical purpose to his division of the set into two sexual sequences – to the originary female and offshoot male – with the first fourteen sonnets providing the increase argument.
        With the first or Body half of the Nature template set logically in place, Shakespeare then develops it isomorphically into the second or Mind half. Hence, the logical structuring of the mind accommodates incoming ‘sensations’, ideas (‘true’ and ‘false’) and interior ‘sensations’. The natural logic of the body gives rise to the logic of the mind’s faculties and reciprocally the mind dynamic is biologically dependent on the body dynamic.
        This Section addresses the double consequence that the sexual dynamic of the body not only infuses the mind dynamic with a pervasive eroticism (as explored in Section 3) but that the female/male dynamic also gives rise to the feminine and masculine dispositions of the mind.
        A direct result of the sexual dynamic of originary female and offshoot male characterising the Body half of the Nature template is the concomitant feminine/masculine gender dynamic that characterises the Mind half. Shakespeare is very clear about the distinction and structures the double relationship of eroticism and personae into the 1609 Sonnets.
        Considering the 154-sonnet set as a whole, 154 sonnets represent nature, 126 sonnets represent the male youth and 28 sonnets represent the mature female. With the first 14 sonnets presenting the logic of increase, it is apparent that the primary structuring orientates around the sexual dynamic – within nature.
        Shakespeare’s presentation of sexual differentiation of the two sequences and the increase argument is quite perfunctory and literal regarding the biological/logical status of sex. Only after sonnet 14 does he begin to employ erotic metaphor, pun and innuendo – with the final two sonnets 153 and 154 being intensely erotic.
        Similarly, it is not until further within the set – sonnets 20 to 126 and sonnets 127 to 152 – that the feminine and masculine gender dispositions of the mind begin to play a part in creating a believable representation of their many ramifications. Sonnets 20/21 introduce the feminine-to-masculine gender characteristics of the male youth as the Master Mistress and, from sonnet 22, the Poet makes frequent reference to the youth as both an independent person and as a representative of his youthful persona.
        How and to what extent, then, within the configuration of the Nature template derived from the Sonnets, does Shakespeare accommodate the range of feminine and masculine gender dispositions of the mind? Can we begin to appreciate what it is about his works that, despite their resolute nature-based logic, they attract the interest and even lifelong admiration from all sexual and gender orientations?
        For instance, over the last 400 years, Shakespeare’s Sonnets have appealed to homosexuals as much as to heterosexuals. Because of his exceptional sexual and gender inclusivity, some commentators are led to wonder whether Shakespeare himself was hetero, homo or bi – or a bit of each.
        Yet it is not Shakespeare’s own sexuality or gender preferences that drive his inclusivity but his consistent and comprehensive determination to base his understanding in nature – the biological source of all sexual and gender types. The ever-renewing natural biology of sexual differentiation and the consequent sex determination in the early stages of embryo development is the source of the multiplicity of sexual and gender variations.
        What is the relationship, then, between the more overt residual feminine-to-masculine bodily characteristics (including rarer evolutionary types such as hermaphrodites who have both female and male organs) and the myriad of mind-based gender dispositions or preferences from heterosexual to homosexual and lesbian along with androgynous, bisexual, transgender and asexual?
        Critical is the process of defeminisation toward varying degrees of masculinisation that occurs in the womb in the month or two after conception. In every developing embryo, whether with XX (female) or XY (male) chromosomes, rudimentary Mullerian (female orientated) and Wolffian (male orientated) ducts form and it is their expression that determines whether the embryo becomes male or remains female.
        The XX or XY embryos require specialised genes (SYR, etc.) and hormones (testosterone, etc.) that act to suppress the Mullerian ducts and promote the Wolffian ducts otherwise the embryo exhibits originary female anatomy and behaviour – even if it is XY. While the activity of other genes (Foxl2, etc.) appear to stabilise the female embryo and its post-natal developments through to menopause to curtail the tendency to exhibit male characteristics, the male never replaces the female as the primary basis for fecundity and reproductivity.
        In other words, although both defeminisation along with masculinisation and the stabilization of the female embryo must occur for a human embryo to become a viable reproductive and functioning female or male in all sexual species, the male remains completely dependent on the female for reproduction.
        Shakespeare structures logically and numerologically the natural female/ male dependence into his Sonnets 400 years ago where, without equivocation, he acknowledges the male is but an offshoot of the female. Centuries before modern science, Shakespeare could see from observing roles of female and male in childbearing, and the illogicalities of male-based/mind-based cultural and religious beliefs that the female is the precursor for the male.
        Consistent with Shakespeare’s natural logic, modern biology suggests the twin processes of defeminisation and masculinisation revert to female morphology and behavioural predispositions if the necessary processes to create the offshoot male morphology and behavioural dispositions do not occur. Hence, we can expect Shakespeare’s works to account for both sexual morphological differentiation into female and male persons and gender behavioural differentiation into feminine and masculine personae.
        The evidence suggests the degree to which the embryo is masculinised – or remains female if it fails to be defeminised – produces the full gamut of sexual types from outright female to fully functioning male. In between there are a range of intermediate types from partly masculinised female to partly feminised female and likewise for the male. Included is androgyny, where both female and male bodily characteristics are apparent, and more atypically, hermaphrodites, where both female and male sexual organs occur together.
        As Shakespeare’s increase sonnets recognise, the fully differentiated female and male individuals with their female and male gametes or reproductive cells intact are necessary for the sexual evolution of the species. All the other female/male types are a natural consequence of the degrees of transformation enacted on the originating embryo – XX or XY or other rarer possibilities such as XO and XXY – by the processes promoting the offshoot male option while maintaining female viability. While the intermediate types may not be fertile or reproductive, they add to the resourcefulness of the species in day-to-day survival and productivity – as with drone bees.
        Similarly, there is a full range of feminine and masculine gender types consequent on the underlying feminisation or the secondary defeminisation and masculinisation of the human mind. Unlike female and male sexual differentiation, where at least some females and males need to procreate for the continuation of the species, the various combinations of feminine and masculine gender characteristics in any individual are not crucial for the perpetuation of the species.
        Hence, there is a significant differentiation between the physicality of the sexual body and the conceptuality of the erotic mind. Consequently, in male-based/mind-based religions and in cultures where they prevail, the inversion of the body and mind components of the Nature template incites and exacerbates non-biological expectations. The glorification of the non-sexual or erotic feminine/masculine dynamic over the natural processes of sexual evolution reinforces the sense humans have alternative recourses to achieve immortality after death.
        Hence, the imaginary biblical God, as a non-sexual or a-sexual entity, can only be symbolically female or male as ‘He’ is but an intimation or expression of masculine and feminine dispositions – or varying degrees of gender dispositions. Modern believers who quibble over whether God is sexually a female or male miss the point that He or She can only be differing degrees of an erotic feminine or masculine persona.
        Evident from the illogicality of the God template, the relationships are terminally confused with the misattribution of a sexual characteristic to nominate a singular mind-based sensation as ‘God’. The God of the Bible is nothing if not a misconstrued gender personification of deeply eroticised interior sensations of the human mind. The natural basis of the relationship resurfaces only if believers recover and understand the biological/logical implications of the female/male and feminine/masculine sexual/gender relationships of the Nature template for the body and mind.
        Shakespeare’s sonnets, plays and longer poems all examine and rectify the consequences of inverting the natural relationship of sexual and gender types. Either they celebrate the recovery of natural logic for the contentedness of body and mind or they detail the malconsequences of persisting with the unnatural prioritisation of gender characteristics for exhortation and exploitation.
        When reading the Sonnets, it helps to appreciate that Shakespeare’s Poet addresses a mature female or Mistress and an immature male or Master Mistress whose physical sexual characteristics are conterminously erotic feminine and masculine personae of the human mind. The mature female appears as a natural feminine/masculine persona, the male youth (or any immature female) as an overly masculinised persona with the Poet as the one who has learnt to balance both feminine and masculine personae (see sonnets 42/43, 133/134 and 143/144).
        Similarly, in all Shakespeare’s plays in the 1623 Folio, all the characters – in their immense variability of human types – on the one hand can be read as sexual persons active in their societies and cultures. However, it is equally possible to consider all the characters as constituting the multifarious gender personae or characteristics of any human mind – or all human minds.
        When females cross-dress as males in plays like The Merchant of Venice (Portia), Twelfth Night (Viola), As You Like It (Rosalind) and The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Julia), they do not change their sexuality but merely their gender assignments. Their role is to implement the appropriate societal, political and cultural changes the God of the Bible proves incapable of doing. They only have to adopt the gender guise of the masculinised God and then freely doff the guise when they accomplish the gender rebalancing.
        Shakespeare has his canny and cunning gender-swapping females and God-mocking males intervene because, as the sexual/gender dynamic of the Nature template shows, ‘God’ cannot act at all as he is resolutely marooned in the gender matrices of the human mind. Moreover, the unnatural contradictions and impositions of the God template reveal why ‘He’ is personally so impotent – but why his believers frequently cause completely gratuitous mayhem and murder.

9. Reverse Psychology                                                 Contents

Introductory remarks

Throughout Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, thirty-six plays and four longer poems, he reveals and critiques the way the consistent and comprehensive components of the Nature template are converted religiously into the inversions and perversions of the God template. He details the implications when the trajectory from singular nature to interior sensations of the mind (the biblical deities) manifests in prejudices, injustices and violence in the patriarchal and misogynistic cultures of the previous few millennia.
        In his Folio of fourteen Comedies, ten Histories and twelve Tragedies, particularly, Shakespeare explores the continual manic reimposition and enforcement of mind-based/male-based constructs – as typified by the God template – for religious and/or monarchic advantage. He shows how the mandating of such institutional measures occurs against the constant backdrop of natural prerogatives that frequently re-emerge centre stage when the overwrought constructs prove untenable or disastrous.
        Consequently, Shakespeare’s method is never just to recount historical incidents and precedents. After all, the accounts in the chronicles and literature most likely reflect authorial prejudices and allegiances.
        Instead, all Shakespeare’s sonnets, plays and longer poems make telling adaptions to the source material from the chronicles, literature or dramas. The changes he makes to the originals both correct their male-based/mind-based prejudices and reassert our birthright nature-based philosophy.
        Shakespeare’s Sonnets, for instance, are not simply a response to or an advance on the sonnet vogue in the 1580s and 1590s. He both critiques the Romantic or Idealistic expectations of his compeers in sonnetry and develops a brilliant philosophic method based in natural logic for achieving mature understanding, emotion and expression.
        At heart, Shakespeare remains true not to the chronicles or dramatised history but true to nature and our inherent natural logic, which he articulates in the 154 sonnets – as the Nature template makes evident. However, Shakespeare goes further than laying down the conditions for natural contentedness and mature love. Because he understands the psychological reasons for the susceptible mind’s attractivity to male-based/ mind-based constructs, his lead characters act out the positive and negative implications.
        In the fourteen Comedies, Shakespeare has the eleven leading females and three gender-balanced males implement strategies to forestall or turn about the deeply embedded traditional mind-based constructs. They apply natural logic to remedy or ameliorate the worst consequences for recalcitrant believers.
        In contrast, in the ten Histories and twelve Tragedies, Shakespeare has the title characters – eighteen out of nineteen of whom are male (remembering seven English Kings feature in the ten Histories) – demonstrate the worst consequences of the abrogation of natural logic. He examines the fatal imposition of male-based mind-based constructs from Ancient Egypt to Tudor England to show that such cultures perennially foment rather than prevent gratuitous mayhem and murder.
        To critique in the Histories and Tragedies or resolve in the Comedies an array of male-based mind-derived prejudices, Shakespeare uses incisive reverse psychological techniques. Whatever the outcome, either in epiphany or in catharsis, he directs the reverse psychological techniques towards the possibility of achieving resolution with nature-based clarity and contentedness.
        Throughout the 154 sonnets, thirty-six plays and four longer poems Shakespeare uses humour, puns, comedic characters, mock arguments, mock characters, cross-dressing, fools, songs, mangled language, sarcasm, blasphemy, sexual innuendo, irony, subliminal messages and other devices. In the Comedies, the uptake by the offending characters is successful but in the Histories and Tragedies the dogged pigheadedness of fated characters proves disastrous for kith and kin.
        Indicative of where the problem lies is that we talk regularly of using reverse psychology but far less readily of using reverse philosophy. For instance, a search online for reverse psychology produces many entries, whereas searches for reverse philosophy usually defaults to reverse psychology with only a refined search for ‘reverse philosophy’ revealing specialised usages.
        Most of the usages treat philosophy as if it were psychology. The nature-based philosophy in Shakespeare’s 1609 Sonnets is the only published ‘philosophic’ text that never confuses philosophy with psychology.
        As the Nature template shows, philosophy primarily maps out the logical relationship between nature and humankind – and more particularly for the trajectory from the body to the mind – without prejudice. Philosophy, then, does not need to be challenged to reverse itself. Rather, the problem develops in the second half of the Nature template where those with overly idealistic expectations of mind-based constructs completely misinterpret or invert their intrinsic or natural psychology to pervert all or most aspects of the natural body-to-mind dynamic.
        As argued in Section 1, the apologetic philosophy of the last few millennia is in effect psychology masquerading as philosophy. Once thinkers recognise and recover the natural logic of the body/mind dynamic then philosophy becomes philosophy without equivocation, obviating the need to make challenges to illogical thinking by using reverse psychological techniques.
        Hence, the application of reverse psychology identifies psychological or mind-based consequences when the immature mind appropriates functions germane to the body as if they derive from the mind. Alternatively, the nonlinear/linear precedent of the female/male dynamic, in its impact on the operations of the mind, creates linear methodologies and expectations. These mind-based linear constructs most frequently precipitate a resort to reverse psychological techniques.
        Shakespeare was acutely aware of the implications of the syndrome 400 years ago. The first half of the Nature template encapsulates the relationship of originary female to offshoot male. To ensure persistence into following generations the linear male has no other recourse biologically but to return to the generative female. Left to his own devices the male as the offshoot of a female-based species is an evolutionary dead end.
        Because the natural logic of the originary female-to-male body dynamic transposes isomorphically onto the logic of the mind, an equivalent scenario of precursor-to-offshoot plays out. Just as with incoming sensations to the mind, what is true in language is readily verifiable in nature.
        Conversely, what is false in language – or generated willfully by the machinations of the imaginative mind – requires repeated assertions of validity over time. The continual attempts to demonstrate validity of mind-based constructs – hence apologetics – contrasts with the soundness of facts evident in the world about.
        Reverse psychology is particularly applicable to the syndrome where believers assert the male is the precursor for the female (as in male-based religions). It can also remedy claims by idealists that ideas generated in the mind have an independent existence apart from nature (as in Platonism).
        A reverse philosophical procedure would imply the body (hence nature at large) is somehow at fault – which is patently not the case. Because the mind over body syndrome is a mind problem and not a body problem, the treatment is through reverse psychology to engineer the recovery of natural logic. The confusion is a direct result of misrepresenting our birthright body-to-mind natural philosophy.
        Each of the previous eight sections examines a significant consequence in the psychological inversion of philosophical common sense. To identify the reason for the absence of philosophic clarity, we apply the nature-based logic Shakespeare articulates in the Sonnets for all his poems and plays.
        In the plays particularly, besides the overall nature-based argument for the return to natural sanity, Shakespeare deploys characters who inject into the action moments of reverse psychological insight to point up or remedy the malconsequences of male-based/mind-based recalcitrance. His intent is to counter with an appropriate measure for measure the non-philosophic or illogical psychological excesses of traditional beliefs and speculative theories.
        Shakespeare’s purpose in the Comedies is to bring the plays to a successful conclusion through the deployment of canny and cunning characters. In total contrast, in the Histories and Tragedies he makes the audience aware of the failure of title characters to find a way out of their contractual quicksands or tragic quagmires.
        The natural logic behind Shakespeare’s micro-dramatic methods is brilliantly simple. Every reverse psychological gambit aims to unsettle the male-based/mind/based constructs and consequent prejudices and injustices ingested by his readers or audience when imbibing their traditional beliefs and misunderstandings. By jetting elements of their birthright natural logic past their ingrained misconceptions, he incites a deeply sourced nature-based response.
        To correct an error or fault arising from misapplying the true/false dynamic of language that creates simplistic ‘truths’ (such as the fantasy belief in the existence of an extra-cranial biblical God), Shakespeare elicits a natural response in keeping with the Nature template and its originary female/male dynamic.
        Every move Shakespeare makes is in line with the nature-based philosophy of the Sonnets. The humour, wittiness and/or dramatic irony evident in each play are consequences of applying the appropriate technique to remedy a particular ill or misconception.
        In the Master Mistress sequence, Shakespeare discusses the idea of using small doses of a contrary belief or theory to incite a reaction that results in accepting an understanding more in tune with natural logic. In sonnets 118 and 119, particularly, Shakespeare states the principle and anticipates its beneficial consequences.

Reverse Psychology

In the plays, there are a number of instances where characters achieve their aims not by direct pleading but by stating the opposite to what the target character expects. In Much Ado About Nothing, for instance, Beatrice and Benedick separately overhear conversations expressing disbelief the two ‘friends’ cannot see that each loves the other despite their constant claims of complete disinterest. The reverse psychology Don John and others deploy is successful as at their next meeting Beatrice and Benedick accept their challenging but engaging compatibility.
        In Julius Caesar, Mark Antony sings Cassius and Brutus’ praises with reverse psychological guile. Despite their roles in overthrowing Caesar – the headstrong military conqueror who turns self-deifying despot – the crowd readily interprets his eulogy as a call to hunt Cassius and Brutus down.

Clowns

Shakespeare’s appreciation of the potency of humour as a tool to dislodge traditional adolescent beliefs and attitudes is evident in his deployment of Clowns to present his nature-based philosophy. He uses humour throughout his plays, even interjecting passages of hilarity into the mordant lives of the seven kings in the ten Histories and the twelve unreflexive leads in as many Tragedies.
        In As You Like It, the character Touchstone – whose parts in the Folio are labeled ‘Clown’ – acts as a lightning rod to ground the pretensions and fantasies of the homicidal younger Duke and idiotic melancholic Jaques. Early on Shakespeare has Touchstone identify the qualities that distinguish a ‘natural philosopher’ from the traditional apologists for biblical illogicalities.
        Then, later Touchstone runs rings around the hapless Jaques by stating the logical conditions for avoiding gratuitous violence. He advocates using an ‘if’ as a last resort to defuse the absolutist manic dictates of autocrats and theocrats.

Mock Characters

While Shakespeare gives Touchstone the responsibility for articulating aspects of his nature-based philosophy, other comic characters merely mock through their unknowing stupidity the pretensions of their superiors. In Love’s Labour’s Lost, the Curate Nathaniel, the Pedant Holofernes, the Braggart Armado and Constable Dull – flaunting false piety, verbosity, braggadocio and ignorance – point up the deeper delusions and false hopes in the sexist monasticism of their Lordly betters.

Mock Arguments

If in some plays Shakespeare deploys mock characters, in others he has witty characters present mock arguments. As with all his reverse psychological techniques, the mock characters and mock arguments challenge and unsettle the prejudices and illogical beliefs held by Christians and other believers in the audience – then and now.
        In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Speed twice engages his fellow characters in set pieces of mock argument. First with Protheus and then with Launce, Shakespeare has Speed take a swipe at the ‘Shepherd/Sheep’ and the ‘Jew/ Christian’ imagery from the Bible. Speed uses traditional syllogistics to prove nothing but that the premises of valid or apologetic argument come to nothing because they are not naturally sound.
        The audience watches as two gentlemen, Valentine and Protheus, and their girlfriends, Julia and Silvia, struggle to orientate themselves to their roles in life (with only Silvia manifesting a vestige of soundness). The audience hears Speed’s mockery of traditional valid argument in the context of Shakespeare’s sound argument from the overarching nature-based philosophy that structures the whole play. Each of the characters is an argument place in Shakespeare’s larger purpose that leads, at least in the Comedies, to a natural resolution.
        In Twelfth Night, or, What You Will, where Shakespeare criticises the epiphanous belief in a transcendental Christ-child, he has Feste the Clown mention the word ‘Syllogism’ as he mocks traditional argumentative processes. Feste runs syllogistic rings around moribund Olivia as she struggles to justify her religiously morbid and morose mourning of her brother and father.
        Later, Feste tells the romantically marooned Duke Orsino he would rather be told he is an ‘Ass’ by his enemies than be praised by his friends. As Orsino absorbs the apparent contradiction, the resulting enlightenment frees him from his lovesick doting on Olivia and prepares him for a mature relationship with Viola.

Fools

Shakespeare also deploys fools who knowingly reflect back the megalomania and malconsequences of headstrong dictators. In King Lear, the Fool, who acts as a foil to the egotistical and murderous Lear, is able to mirror his grossness and unfairness, but is unable to avert the utter tragedy consequent on Lear’s male-based mind-based tirades and impositions. The Fool, as a persona of Lear who dies in synchronization with Lear at the end of the Tragedy of King Lear, lacks the natural logic enjoyed and employed by Touchstone and Feste in their Comedies.

Mangled Words

Shakespeare also employs characters such as Pastor Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Captain Mackmorrice in Henry V, with their Welch and Irish accents, to mangle words central to the beliefs of his audience. Both characters highlight the critique Shakespeare makes of biblical beliefs that drive the lunacy of Falstaff in his pursuit of the two wives and the warmongering of Henry V.
        In the first Scene in his play, Evans interjects the word ‘Got’ a number of times – and one ‘Christians’ – to unsettle the language expectations of Shakespeare’s largely English audience. While the whole play addresses the Christian patriarchy and sexism that allows Falstaff to impose his grossly unwanted sexual advances on Mrs. Ford and Page, Shakespeare continually reminds his audience of his intentions through the verbiage and antics of minor characters.
        Similarly, in Henry V, Mackmorrice interjects the word ‘Chrish’ – and one ‘Christ’ – a number of times in conversation with the English Captain Gower, the Scottish Captain Jamy and the Welsh Captain Fluellen. In a play in which Michael Williams will soon challenge Henry V’s right to wage gratuitous Christian war for personal monarchic advantage, Shakespeare has minor characters mangle the jingoistic Christianised language of Henry’s England.

Cross-dressing

Whereas the reverse psychology of mangled language by minor characters adds to the background effects of the many tactics Shakespeare uses, when some of his leading female characters in the Comedies cross-dress to effect a complete turn-about of biblical prejudices and injustices their reverse psychologising is forefront and central to the meaning of their plays.
        In Twelfth Night, or, What You Will Viola cross-dresses as Cesario a male eunuch to effect a sea-change in the melancholic Illyrian culture from the transcendental expectations of Christ’s Epiphany (Twelfth Night) to the democracy of mature choices (What You Will).
        In The Merchant of Venice, Portia cross-dresses as Balthasar, a lawyer, to show that God’s mercy is an impotent chimera and that a dose of natural logic around the meaning of the words ‘pound’ and ‘flesh’ immediately forestalls the pigheaded a feud between Christian and Jew.

Immature and Mature Love

Another form of reverse psychology Shakespeare directs at his audience is the contrast between mature love and immature love. In The Merchant of Venice, Jessica and Lorenzo provide the perennial immature form of romantic love in contrast to the mature nature-based love Portia brings to her relationship with Bassanio – although he goes through a steep learning curve as he struggles to match her emotional depth.
        In Much Ado About Nothing, the more idealistic and then jealous relationship between Claudio and Hero is the foil for the maturity of love awaiting the more feisty and circumspect regard evident in the love-match between Beatrice and Benedick.
        In Twelfth Night, Olivia and Sebastian are the lachrymose Christian pairing married off before the play’s end. Their psychological love lacks the depth and range of the mature love through natural logic Viola is able to instill in the previously romantically blinded Orsino.

Subliminal Messages

Shakespeare involves Portia in another reverse psychological strategy in The Merchant of Venice when she laces a song with subliminal messages to ensure Bassanio chooses the correct casket. As a victim of her recently dead patriarchal father’s misogynistic will, Shakespeare has Portia demonstrate a way out of her predicament. Throughout all his plays he typically inserts subliminal messages to cue the audience to his intended meaning.

Pithy Songs

In other plays, Shakespeare uses songs to amplify messages inherent in the meaning of the play. The song that ends Twelfth Night appears to mock the baby Christ of the Epiphany in its first couple of stanzas and then leads to audience through to a meaning in sympathy with the play’s natural logic.
        To a different end, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare has Pastor Hugh Evans interlace his meandering locutions with excerpts from Christopher Marlowe’s The Passionate Shepherd to His Love. Shakespeare intensifies his mordant nod to Marlowe’s stargazing sensibility by having the words of the song recited by a verbose Christianiser.
        Furthermore, Shakespeare’s reverse psychological mock of Marlowe as an inferior poet, from the mouth of the garrulous egotist God-fearing Evans, predates by 400 years the stylometric idiocy of the latest edition of the Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works where the editors assign parts of the three Henry VI plays to Marlowe.

Sexual Innuendo

Throughout his plays and poems, Shakespeare uses sexual innuendo to jet ideas past the censorship of his prurient auditors in the Globe or elsewhere. In Hamlet, Hamlet begins his alienation from his bedmate Ophelia by heightening the erotic dissociation. He uses phrases like ‘country matters’ and words like ‘nothing’ to refer wittily to her genitalia.
        In All’s Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare intensifies the interplay between Parolles and Helen in an early exchange when Parolles uses sexual innuendo to counter her sainted expectations. Parolles gives her a racy reminder of the logical rootedness of ‘rational increase’ in the lives of every human born and every human who will be born in the future – including her offspring with Bertram. The innuendoish lesson in the basics of life is in keeping with Helen’s use of a bed trick to dupe Bertram later in the play and overcome his heady resistance to her ungentrified origins.

Dramatic Irony

As a reverse psychological gambit, Shakespearean irony pervades all his works. He twists the conventional beliefs of his audience so the staid outcomes expected in traditional dramas are turned around completely.
        In The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare intensifies the dramatic irony when Polixenes who, even under intense provocation from Leontes, acts rationally in the first half of the play, but proves equally capable of patriarchal murderous rage in the second half. The deep irony is that their psychological unpredictability derives from an overly-idealistic innocent childhood together.
        Once they inherit the Kingdoms of Sicily and Bohemia, respectively, their immaturity of judgment resurfaces when Leontes first threatens the life of his wife Hermione and baby daughter. Then sixteen years later Polixenes threatens to murder the same daughter who is now in love with his son Florizel. Adding to the intensifying irony, Shakespeare mocks religious expectations throughout the play by secluding Hermione in a nunnery to reappear sixteen years later as a mock religious statue that appears to comes to life.

Virtual Playwrights

Shakespeare employs another reverse psychological tactic writ large when he gives a few of the lead characters in the Comedies roles as virtual directors of his play scripts. Shakespeare creates parts for them where they take responsibility for staging a successful outcome. The reverse psychology doubly kicks in when commentators, editors or directors – who reject Shakespeare’s inversion of traditional biblical beliefs – take exception to characters given the responsibility to ensure a natural resolution in a dysfunctional culture.
        In Measure for Measure, Vincentio announces early on that he will stage-manage the Christian dysfunction in Vienna, with its double dissoluteness of rampant monasteries and whorehouses. He does so, though – unbeknown to the citizens – from behind the hood of a mock monk. The irony is intense when commentators like Harold Bloom cannot temper their outrage as they pour vitriol on Vincentio – despite him having Shakespeare’s complete confidence to run his play.
        In Prospero’s play, The Tempest, Shakespeare allows the reformed and repentant patriarch to establish and control a ‘magical’ island – an island existing only in the minds of his audience. Prospero employs the unChristian props of a zesty sprite and the misanthropic son of a witch and ends with a wedding conducted by Greek goddesses.
        Throughout, Prospero implements the natural logic he learns from his ‘books’ and reflections after he realises his rejection of his daughter, Miranda, at birth is an indictment of his imbibed patriarchal prejudices. Even more reverse psychological is the final scene where Prospero tosses aside his ‘magical’ gear and sends the motley crew of Kings and Dukes back to mainland Italy to resume life as before – albeit more enlightened.
        Ted Hughes, for one, could not believe Shakespeare intended to dissolve the wondrous island as Hughes imagines the blissful finale would continue hereafter. He fails to appreciate Prospero’s awakening to natural logic and the role of the family group conference on the conceptual island is to establish precedents for managing future male-based/mind-based crimes in realpolitik Italy.

Blasphemy

Similarly irreverent to the traditional Christian or biblical ear are the blasphemous, and other irreligious comments Shakespeare has his cast of multifarious characters make periodically. Words and phrases like incardinate, maculate, Incony Jew, and the use of the God/dog inversion – as by Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII – cut past the imbibed sacrosanctity of Shakespeare’s audience to alert their natural sensibilities.

Inferior Verse

Even poetry does not escape Shakespeare’s manipulation as characters like Orlando in As You Like It write and recite inferior verse. The reverse psychological effect is to alert the audience, if only involuntarily, to the overarching presence in the play of Shakespeare’s peerless poetic and dramatic achievement – and trenchant philosophy.
        The most hilarious and revealing example of Shakespeare using versification to point up the inadequacies of biblically inspired rhyme is in Love’s Labour’s Lost. When Ferdinand, Dumaine, Longaville and Berowne fall unexpectedly in love, they all write inferior sonnets and poems to their forbidden loves.
        Only Berowne’s sonnet has thematic similarities to Shakespeare’s own sonnets but it still lacks the deep understanding and reflexivity of the full Nature template. Hence, the savvy Ladies consign all the Lords to a year of privation to think over their unearthly expectations and rhyming.

Sarcasm

Shakespeare even resorts to intentional sarcasm to highlight the knowing evil in characters like Richard III when he woos the Queen whose husband he kills shortly before. Then there is Iago in Othello, whose soliloquys on Othello and Desdemona reveal a level of intentionality not even the greatest of Shakespeare tragic heroes can muster. By emphasising the supreme command by such Machiavellian misanthropes of an aspect of the Nature template, Shakespeare shows just how bereft the other characters are of any of its elements – and why their fate is to die needlessly.

Puns

When Shakespeare articulates his nature-based philosophy, with its ensuing female/male priority and logic of increase, he uses language fully aware of its inherent eroticism devolving from its basis in the sexual dynamic in nature. Many words and phrases throughout his plays, poems and sonnets pun intentionally on the interconnection between bodily dispositions and language.
        In The Winter’s Tale, as Leontes indulges his adolescent rage against Hermione and Polixenes, Shakespeare has him pun unintentionally in phrases such as ‘my wife is slippery’ and ‘Holy Horse’ and in his frequent use of the word ‘nothing’. Leontes uses language simultaneously as a weapon against an innocent wife and his friend that reveals his immature appreciation of the natural logic of language by accidentally punning on the very sexual matters troubling his adolescent mind.

Bastards

Shakespeare has parts for bastards in some of his plays – with the word bastard occurring in many of them. While bastards are central to the action in only a few plays, Shakespeare uses the compromised social status of those born out of wedlock to jar his audience through reverse psychology to reconsider their convention-bound prejudices.
        In King John, Phillip Falconbridge, the bastard stepbrother of Robert, is introduced as the illegitimate son of Richard the Lion Heart. He is a mostly fictional character Shakespeare brings on in the first scene to highlight the inequality and injustices bastard children face – and partic- ularly sons – in a patriarchal culture. Phillip demands his half of the properties left by their dead father to Robert. However, to avoid the unjust impositions of primogeniture he forgoes his rights in exchange for the ‘honour’ of being a professional soldier like his father.
        Shakespeare’s most exacting bastard, though, is Edmund, son of Gloucester. In the opening scene of King Lear, Shakespeare has Gloucester add insult by reminiscing fondly about the dalliance that leads to Edmund’s bastard birth.
        While Lear and Gloucester wander around the heath achieving partial reconciliation with nature – whose priorities they and their culture abuse relentlessly – Edmund achieves filial justice in the blinding of his reprobate father. Significantly, Shakespeare endows Edmund with sibling sympathy at the end from his alienated brother, Edgar.

Plays within Plays

Famously, Shakespeare has Hamlet take advantage of a visiting troupe of actors to stage a play within his play. The strategy works, both letting Hamlet prove Claudius is responsible for King Hamlet’s death, and allowing Shakespeare to alert his audience to the idea Hamlet is but a play whose content is paramount. Shakespeare’s reverse psychological intent is to expose the abrogation of natural logic that leads to murderous cultures fomented by male-based mind-based beliefs.
        At first, the tactic of using a play within a play seems lop-sided in The Taming of the Shrew, as the Induction characters of the introductory Scene do not return at the end of the play to round out the drama. However, Shakespeare demonstrates his ulterior purpose in using plays within plays when the characters in the Induction Scene make it clear their contribution merely sets the scene for the denouement of biblical illogicalities.
        When Petruchio enters to tame Kate, he proceeds to rectify her male-induced truculence and restore her psychological balance by teaching her the natural logic of language. With consummate irony, Kate demonstrates at the end that she and he are free of such demeaning prerogatives.

Mockery

The most enduring example of Shakespeare’s use of direct mockery to alert his audience to the gross prejudices and outright sexism in his culture occurs in his treatment of grossly simplistic Sir John Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor. The fact many commentators miss the nature-based aim of the mockery and continue to see Falstaff favourably as a garrulous knight-errant suggests Shakespeare’s deployment of reverse psychology will always elude overly simplistic minds.
        Mrs. Ford and Page (and others) shame Falstaff mercilessly three times throughout the play. First, he hides in a dirty laundry basket, then he dresses as the Witch of Brainford, and then ‘fairies’ mock him under an oak tree at midnight. The intensity of the mockery leads Falstaff to admit partial defeat while it provides a trenchant comment on the rabidly pejorative culture of male licentiousness and presumptuousness – then and now.

Endnote

Shakespeare’s plays demonstrate the consequences of not understanding the nature-based philosophy he articulates in his Sonnets – and made graphic in the Nature template. He argues that the dramatic oversight is responsible for the largely unavoidable misunderstandings, disagreements and gratuitous violence in the politics and religions of sixteenth century society – and still occurring in the twenty-first century.
        To counter the deeply embedded prejudices and injustices, Shakespeare employs many reverse psychological techniques that puncture the pretensions of believers and provide systematic methods to climb out of the adolescent mind-set of traditional faiths. Alongside the overarching argument of each play – with their nature and female-based philosophy as the basis for human understanding and expression – he provides continual provocations intended to alert or awake biblical or male-based mind-sets to their inherent natural logic and more realistic aspirations.

10. Conclusion                                                 Contents

Concluding – How to use the Nature template

Central to an appreciation of the thinking behind Shakespeare’s works – the thirty-six plays in the Folio, the four longer poems and crucially the 154 sonnets – is the realisation he publishes Shake-speares Sonnets in 1609 around twenty years after writing his first play to present the philosophy behind all his works.
        Once we recognise the reality and viability of the nature-based philosophy evident in the Sonnets, it takes little structural or logical sense to figure out the basic components of the philosophy. The components have to be both naturally consistent and able to demonstrate the inadequacy of attempts over the last 4000 years to construct male-based mind-based systems of belief.
        The Nature template and the illogical God template are both consequent on working out Shakespeare’s brilliant philosophic achievement with its unmatched expression in verse and drama. The Nature template, as applied to many issues and situations in the world and in the human mind, proves to be unequalled as a tool for interpreting Shakespeare’s works and for demonstrating the inadequacy of traditional philosophical/psychological insights and problems.
        The nine topics we consider in this essay demonstrate the incisiveness of the insights inherent in the natural structuring of the Sonnet philosophy. They solve intractable problems besetting failed attempts to construct a consistent understanding using the inverted God template.
        When we ask what philosophy is and how it differs from psychology, a resort to the Nature template immediately reveals the difference and the reasons for traditional confusions. Then we can resolve the traditional apologetic debate about the ascendency of God over nature by showing how male-based beliefs turn the Nature template on its head – even corrupting the etymology and meanings of the two words nature and God.
        Basic to understanding the relationship of traditional culture-orientated myths to modern world demographics is the realisation all such myths are erotic as they subtend on the sexual dynamic in nature. Another consequence of male-based mind-based beliefs is their appeal to technocratic mind-sets, where the prioritising of mind-based constructs creates cul-de-sacs of technologic fantasies.
        Then, by examining the name and occupation of Christ, as God-made-man, it is apparent he is a technocratic construction and tells us so by his carpentry tools and reliance on built form. Arising from the same set of expectations, when thinkers prioritise mind-based constructs, they inevitably ‘create’ a linear world that lacks the variety and sustainability of non-linear/linear nature.
        The susceptibility of the human mind to believe fantastic scenarios as true is not a product of the illimitable human imagination but a weighted combination of 50/50 fact and fiction to which some minds have little resistance. On a different tack, only by consulting the Nature template is it obvious that the sexual dynamic of the body gives rise to the democracy of gender types in nature – hence why male-based religions acknowledge only male and female and confuse sex and gender.
        We then itemise the reverse psychological strategies, tactics and methods Shakespeare uses to unsettle the tendency of susceptible minds to believe unreservedly in mind-based constructs and elevate them over nature. As the human genotype continues generation after generation to give birth to the same complexity of sexual and gender types, the tools Shakespeare provides from the Nature template to reverse psychological techniques are always viable and rewarding.
        Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, thirty-six plays and four longer poems remain fascinating and beneficial to twenty-first century audiences because he appreciates that life is perennial and its excitements and developments are never ending. His nature-based philosophy remains unchanged because more than any other philosophy it accommodates all possibilities within its natural logic.

Roger Peters Copyright © 2017

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