The New Sins
TRANSLASTED OUT OF THE ORIGINAL TONGUES
WITH THE FORMER TRANSLATIONS
DILIGENTLY COMPARED AND REVISED
Conceived by
THE BETTER-EMANCIPATED STRIVERS FOR HEAVEN
In loose conjunction with the
SECOND CONGREGATION OF TRUSTERS OF TOMMOROW
ISBN: 0571 21228 X
Published by McSweeneys Books, New York:
www.mcsweeneys.net
Text & photos by David Byrne
How about we try the first two and the last two pages of this book ...
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
This book is for everyone. It is written in plain language, allowing both professional and lay person to derive sustenance and pleasure from its pages. It is made to be carried. The book can be consulted at any time of day - its convenient size fits a purse or jacket - think of it as a
laptop for the soul.
It is to be dipped into - added like a seasoning to a commute, a night out, a moment in the ladies' room or a brief elevator ride. The words and images at times may inspire business decisions, economic decisions, creative choices or even the path of love. More often they may simply puzzle. At first the words may completely baffle and confuse. Therefore, season lightly, sparingly, allowing the natural flavours to come out and assert themselves.
This is not the I Ching, nor a book of dream interpretations or a horoscope. However, like those esoteric references, it may be consulted in times of indecision and doubt. It will describe in plain, day-to-day language, how to react, behave and respond in new and unfamiliar situations.
It is for all faiths, all creeds and all races.
HOW TO READ THIS BOOK
This book, like a newspaper, a porno magazine, a home-cooked meal or a strand of DNA, can be opened and consumed anywhere. The whole is contained in all and any of its parts and all parts are contained in the whole. No part is better than any other part, and there is no right order in which to read this book.
The images in this book function in much the same way - as algorithms, as
software programs for the eye. The themes of the text are not so much illuminated and articulated by the images as they are planted by them. And each is the seed of the other. The images are virtual tools, programs, machines which, like those dumb devices, do not announce out loud and directly how they may be used - all possibilities are seemingly open to the reader. And like any software program, they invisibly define the parameters of the user's thoughts, choices and investigations. A seeming Democracy of Choice is actually an invisible hand - guiding, shaping and helping.
The pictures in this book will explain what the text obscures. The text is merely a distraction, a set of brakes, a device to get you to look at the pictures for longer than you would ordinarily
To this end, the writers of this book have conveniently printed the important concepts in coloured type, so that the principle themes of this book can be ingested at a glance, or, should one choose to do so, more leisurely, over a glass of wine of strong coffee. Simply by reading the highlighted phrases one can surmise the essential ideas proposed by the authors. One could even choose to read only the highlighted words - reducing the book to approximately one sentence. Even then a seed is planted.
Now to the final two pages ...
Sanity and lunacy are judged by the balance of the community, by the population surrounding one. Locals, friends, neighbours. Their judgements are not certain and fixed. Their taste and proclivities, like laws, are arrived at by a consensus. A consensus which may be wicked, depraved, topsy-turvy or just plain wrong. The aim of consensus is to see eye-to-eye with one's neighbours - to effect a calming of the waters. But what if a storm or a tidal-wave is what is needed? What if one's neighbours are all Nazis, fanatics, amoral entrepreneurs and priests? How is one to live? Is there a way out?
One must get past the sane and the insane - one must see eye to eye with chaos - look it in the eye and not be afraid. One must go beyond sin and virtue. One must avoid the other people and their lazy views, their television moralities and pieties. Their love of pets, flowers and children. There is no safety in numbers, only in solitude.
In The True Heaven we are equal to God. We are just like Him. We sit around and crack jokes and He laughs. It is Natural, Obvious, Perfect. Not accepted, but it is as it should be. He respects us for our cunning, our desperation and our wit - and we enjoy His body language and His sense of humour. In Heaven, a harlot may be as proud as a model of chastity. All are equal and all are beautiful. The thief and the saint are brothers - the saint will not reproach the imagined sins of the lawless one. All judgement is subjective; therefore all judgement is suspended. Trash and treasure are all shining and perfect.
A perfect match - humans and the deity.
THE PAYBACK
When we die will there be justice? Restitution? Will the good be rewarded and the evil punished? No, it is here that it happens. Justice is quiet, invisible, personal.
It happens in houses, fields, in airpots and in nightclubs. Over cups of coffee and slow lunches. During the yelling and screaming in the hallways and bedrooms, throughout the loving and desiring. The riding on the bus, the sweeping of the barroom floor, the fumbling, the sweating, leaning, pining.
It is happening all the time everywhere at once.
THE NEW PERSPECTIVE
You have become undone, released, unmoored.
You are floating and will seek safe harbour.
This New Perspective will allow these insights to
pour out on us, seal us, reprove us, imprint on us,
teach us, reveal us, search us, speak to us.
instuct us, renew us, intercede for us, strengthen us,
quicken us, comfort us, lead us, sanctify us,
flatter us, humble us, right us, re-imagine us,
chastise us, and completely fall on us.
A man who bears a bowl of water on his head feels its weight,
but if he goes right into the water it will be all over
him, and he will not notice the burden of it.
Remind me 2 scan a couple of the images - there are about 50, one opposite each page of text. Plus the very creative & amusing 'Circles of Hell' ...
Click here - asssuming I remember 2 upload it
Darn - it did not scan all that well ... so ...
After 'Demographic testers' comes:
- Biotechnologists & cyber prophets
- Scientists & humanitarians
- Communications technicians & inventors
- Instructio manual & textbook authors
- Animal rights activists
- Human rights activists
That was the sub-division labelled 'Sins of extreme logic'
- Military heroes
- Missionaries
- Loyalist and reformers
- Patriots
That was the sub-division labelled 'Sins of ideological adherence'
Some Links:
The New Sins
This review asks 'what kind of madman wrote this?'
List of bookstores {mainly in the U.S.}
Speaking of loose (or withered) moorings ...
click :)
Update October 2002 -
Page 56:
To maintain one's sense of the real, the true, the pure - to see theessence behind this Matrix-like grid of appearances is exceedingly difficult. One must be a rock, a soldier on guard at all times. One must be as a lake - deep and transparent - or at times as a thick fog - impossible to grasp but all-enveloping.
One's behavior, as a speaker of the Truth, will be suspect. It will be assumed that one is behaving erratically, following some Satanic Dark urges - one may be called a terrorist, a cynic, a Republican, a joke or a comedian. One will be laughed at, fired from one's job, scorned by sexy women and handsome men, But they, the beautiful and celebrated, will be the ones who harvest a bitter crop when their seeds fail to germinate. They will grovel at your feet, asking your beauty secrets and your health regimen. They will make a last-ditch effort to be friends. They will pretend to renounce their past activities and behaviors.
{For comparison? - scroll down to 'protected crevice in society', which mentions seeds & germination!}
One must be prepared to be outcast, scratched off the list of dinner invitees, removed from meetings and pointed at by parents and their victims - their impressionable children.
One must resist all this and hold fast to the knowledge that the work of the Spin Doctors, Hype Merchants, TV Pundits and Talk-Show Experts has done its worst - that everything is exactly the opposite of that which it appears to be. This, however, is good. This is a sign that things are reaching a turing point, a point of no return, that we are going round the bend, round the corner, and a new vista will present itself at any moment.
Slowly, inevitably, the meanings of words have lost their moorings, and step by step new meanings have evolved, words have changed, mutated - until the words and their meanings have come full circle. And they have come to mean their exact opposite. The dictionary may cling like a desperate lover to the old definition, but we all know that subtle forces have been at work.
The world has been beguiled, bewitched, enchanted, charmed, entertained, enthralled, delighted and captivated. One is constantly reminded that one feels good, while simultaneously popping another psychopharmaceutical or being pummeled by devouring sounds and meaningless voices. One is told to ignore those nagging doubts, those pesky dark suspicions. Those who enthrall are the Dorian Grays, the Vampires who feed on ashes with a lie in their right hands. They use philosophy, digital hype and reductive reasoning until the cheese is spoilt. And then there is nothing one can do but throw it out
In the past the Levantine religions asked us to voluntarily surrender, to remove our battle gear, lower our resistance and let the glorious waves of confusion and delusion wash over our minds and bodies. It was glorious. But in fact, as we have seen, one must, in the present era, NEVER remove one's armour, one must never fly that White Flag of surrender - for to do so is to be swept away, carried downstream to a place of peaceful ninnies and nincompoops. Where things will be taken care of and music is played by people who have done their market research and demographic testing.
...
