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Book Five of The Laws contains various preludes which are full of "wisdom sayings" regarding the soul, the body and property. These preludes will be skipped in the name of brevity of exposition, and we will concentrate on what occurs when the preludes are finished. After the preludes comes a purge. The city must be purged in order to be rendered pure. The citizens are likened to flocks of animals which are purged of the sickly so that they do not infect the healthy. The preludes have provided the criteria for these purges. Of purges, the harshest performed by a tyrant is best, but sending away those who are not worthy to become colonists elsewhere will do, as long as we get rid of all the undesirable elements. Prime among these are those who rouse the poor toward revolt and who want to force a redistribution of property. The colony is seen as a reservoir into which the water is flowing from every direction. The prospective citizens must be tested and gently purged in order to make sure they are as pure as possible.

The purge reduces variety and gets rid of the rif-raf. The reduction of human variety attempts to produce as homogeneous a population as possible. Here the testing occurs on entry instead of being part of the educational system, as we saw in the Republic. Plato believes in testing human beings. This testing presupposes that humans do not change. That the good are always good and the bad always bad, and you can tell the difference by tests. Unfortunately, with human beings, the soul or interior is, as Plato says, the most important part, and it is notoriously difficult to test. I tend to agree with Eric Hoffer that it is the rif-raf who are the most likely to be creative. In his analysis, the preeminence of the United States comes from its being composed initially of rejected elements from Europe. In some cases, they are deported criminals, as in Australia. On the basis of the purge we are really setting up two colonies. The one the Stranger is building, and the anti-colony of the rejected human material. This second colony, the shadow of the former, is the place where the negative fourfold resides. It is opposed in every way to the pristine colony of the positive fourfold. It is the land of the rejected. It is, in fact, Atlantis.

We know that Plato attributes the communistic high utopia to ancient Athens through the tale of Critas. The enemy of ancient Athens was the descendents of Poseidon who founded Atlantis. The high utopia has an opposite which is described in great detail. Specifically, it is a polis where there is an interspersion of land and sea within the polis itself. Here, the positive and negative fourfold are balanced instead of rejecting the negative fourfold for the dominance of ontological monism. Poseidon had five pairs of sons who were all kings. The eldest was Atlas. Each son ruled as a tyrant over his portion of Atlantis, but the laws governed the interrelation between the ten separate kingdoms. Here, we see an image of the autopoietic ring. Each part of the ring is closed and has its own quality according to its king. But they form five pairs instead of the twelve parts that the lower utopia will be divided into in the next book. In Atlantis, the polis is based directly on the form of the autopoietic ring. There are multiple rings of land and sea. On the center ring, there is a race course that goes around the whole island. This race course represents the internal flow of information around the autopoietic ring. There is a single input and output channel that has been cut through the rings of land. Poseidon created the rings of land to protect his mortal lover. A woman was the center of the structure, and thus, there is an essential reference to Aphrodite as the origin of the structure before the canal was cut. When the canal was cut, the Island accepted myriad foreigners and different types of humans. They made a terrible clamor and din. Ultimately, this led to the decay of the immortal part of the people and its being superceded by the mortal. Finally, this led to war and to the justice of Zeus who caused them to be defeated by the Republic of ancient Athens who guarded their own purity. The ancient Athenians held everything in common, while the Alantians kept everything separate with ten tyrants and their separate kingdoms. It is clear that the separation of the parts of Atlantis is the opposite of the unity of Ancient Athens. But it is also clear that one embraces only the positive fourfold, while the other embraces both the positive and negative fourfold. The lower utopia stands between these extremes. It also embraces only the positive fourfold, but has not taken the extreme of complete unity that breaks down all barriers. But within the lower utopia, there is a war against variety. The purge is only one example. Others have been named before this. Variety is accepted in Atlantis. The greatness of Atlantis is the ability to accept and make the most of diversity and variety. First, it has the variety of the intermingling of land and sea. Then the ten kingdoms. Finally, the many people who come from many lands to this technological paradise. As we move from complete unity to the balance of negative and positive fourfolds and the support of diversity, we encounter within the positive fourfold a point where there is the minimal diversity necessary to display the structure of the autopoietic unity. Within that unity the autopoietic structure appears on a level of ideas as we have seen with the two types of immortality. But in Atlantis, the autopoietic structure appears in the architecture of the place. The autopoietic structure has become expressed in material terms, in the structure of the island and its technology. Atlantis embraces all diversity and balances the negative and positive fourfolds, which in the end, leads directly to war. In that war, unity fights diversity. Unity wins over diversity, showing its inherent strength. An earthquake plundges the combination of unity and diversity back into the sea. Atlantis shows us that the balance of negative and positive fourfolds is unstable. It demonstrates what happens to the rejected colonists if they try to build a kingdom based on the autopoietic ring.

Atlantis shows us a possibility, like that which was explored in the Republic, which is rejected. Both extremes are flawed in Plato's eyes. One extreme attempts to eliminate all variety and expresses the extreme fear of diversity in action. The other extreme attempts to accept all diversity and even balance the positive and negative fourfolds. The lower utopia of the Laws is between these two extremes. Atlantis is much like Schiera. The fact that Poseidon had ringed Schiera with mountains is significant in this regard. Both are masters of the sea. Both live in untold wealth and derive from matings with Poseidon. Both have great technology and untold riches and plenty. However, Atlantis has a structure which shows its relation directly to the autopoietic ring. Each segment of the ring looks forward and backward and so is thus twinned. This can be seen as related to the twinned Kings of each of the five sections of Atlantis. There is only one entrance to the ring where it manifests only one of its otherwise hidden regimes. All the kings are balanced against each other, all threatening the others if any one of them attempts to go outside its allotted boundaries. Schiera we see only as the ultra-polis as opposed to savages. But this is enough to define the other end of the spectrum that would otherwise be missing. The savages are the end of the spectrum completely dominated by the negative fourfold. They live in caves. They do not honor strangers, and in fact, eat them. They live in the darkness of forgetfulness or ignorance of the Olympian gods. Their humanity is covered so that they do ruthless and blatant injustice to other humans. Their social structure never attains the unity of the polis and is thus always in chaos. They represent the abyss where no civilization has penetrated. Thus, the spectrum goes from the total unity and light of the positive fourfold of the higher utopia, through the minimal differentiation of the lower utopia which allows the autopoietic unity to appear, through the mixture of positive and negative fourfolds and the maximum variety of Atlantis, and on to the domination of the negative fourfold in the savages. Atlantis represents civilized savages who are engulfed by the negative fourfold in the form of the sea under the wrath of Zeus. Atlantis shows us what happens when the autopoietic ring becomes embodied instead of remaining the spirit of the city, as it does in the lower utopia.

Next, Plato's Stranger treats the touchy subject of the redistribution of the land, which in the case of the lower utopia, is a first distribution. In settled cities, this wicked problem cannot be solved because what everone does will be wrong in someone's eyes. In the colony, there is the lucky circumstance that it is possible to make a first just distribution. He says it is necessary to determine the number of households first, and picks a number. That number is one which is not too big or too small, that will make the colony strong but not too strong. He picks the number 5040 for its easy divisibility. It has 60 minus one divisions, and all numbers between one and ten are divisors. We have likened this number to the birds in the theogony of Aristophanies. These oikos will be the center of fertility which will give the immortality that belongs to the species to the city. They will be bound by the marriage ring. But the households are, by their nature, partial because acting alone, they cannot defend themselves. Thus, if they do not pull together into a formation like birds into a flock or bees into a swarm, they will be destroyed. Thus, the oikos needs a polis as an outward part to protect it from the world. But Plato places some heavy restrictions on the oikos. The first major restriction is that the number will never change. The second is that the land distributed to the oikos may never be alienated from it. It cannot either be bought or sold. Third, there must always be an heir to succeed the head of the oikos, even if it does not come from the same family. Fourth, no dowries are given or received so that trade in women from the oikos is limited. Finally, no silver or gold may be possessed in private by anyone. These restrictions on the oikos make it an unchanging feature of the landscape of the lower utopia. Here, instead of being destroyed, the oikos is frozen. The natural rise and descent of households we know in histories of the fortunes of families is contained by making the estate unalienable. Beyond that there are four economic classes which provide the range of variability in the fortunes of families. No one may own more than four times the worth of the homestead. All excess beyond that is given over to the state. So the oikos may grow and decay in these limits, but may not pass beyond these limits and so extremes of wealth and poverty are to be avoided. It is these extremes that are seen by Plato as the real danger to the polis from the oikos. In the preludes, he says individuals are to avoid these extremes as well.

The allotment is to avoid the precincts of the gods laid down by oracles or from ancient sayings. These precincts are allotted first. The lawgiver should not change any of these things. So the households which are fixed are immediately contrast with the lands allotted to the gods. We may see that the birds are contrast in the theogony of aristophanes to the windegg which is unbroken. The windegg holds, we have postulated, Aphrodite which when broken, reveals one of her faces; in the case of the theogony: Eros. The lands assigned to the Gods are like the windegg. Like the windegg, they are unbroken by the distribution of the lands. The lawgiver cannot change what has been laid down by the gods, but he goes on to make something that cannot be changed in his laws, which is the number of households. Thus, there are two levels of manifestation here. There is the manifestation of the gods apparent in their temples, lands, and sacrificial sites. Then there is the manifestation of the households which overlays that prior unchangeable distribution which itself strives to be unchanging. They are alike in their attempt to be unchanging, but they are different in that one is immortal and self-sufficient, a source, while the other is, by definition, partial because without the city the household cannot survive. The people of the households come together at the sacrifices, and this allows them to come to know each other.

He should give to each group a god or demon or some hero, and before he makes any other land distribution, he should set aside choice places for sanctuaries and everything that goes with them. In this way, when the various parts of the population gather together at the regularly established intervals, they'll be amply supplied with whatever they need; they'll become more friendly to one another, at the sacrifices, will feel they belong together, and will get to know one another. There is no greater good for a city than that its inhabitants be well known to one another; for where men's characters are obscured from one another by the dark instead of being visible in the light, no one ever obtains in a correct way the honor he deserves, either in terms of office or justice. Above everything else, every man in every city must strive to avoid deceit on every occasion and to appear always in simple fashion, as he truly is -- and, at the same time, to prevent any other such man from deceiving him.¹

This little bit of wisdom, like so much that Plato says in the preludes, has a great deal of hidden meaning. Here we see the rejection of the negative fourfold again. It is the places of the gods which are sanctuaries where men from the oikos come together and become known to each other. This manifesting, where men stand together on the sacred earth looking toward heaven thinking of the immortals and displaying themselves as mortals, is the essence of the positive fourfold. Displaying means coming out of the oikos into the open. The realm of women is left behind. Women are the very embodiment of deceit. Men should do everything to prevent deceit from happening because with deceit one enters the realm of the negative fourfold. The light makes visible their characters. When their characters are obscured, then they do not get their due honors. Nor do they receive proper justice from other men. So here we see the essential relation between the oikos and the realm of the immortals which is mixed throughout the city with the land distributed to the oikos. The oikos are havens for the darkness of the negative fourfold. The sanctuaries are the places where the positive fourfold is enacted. Manifestation is appearance of the men to each other. That manifestation must avoid deceit and even prevent deceit. The negative fourfold is banished into the partial oikos. But the negative fourfold also appears in relation to the sanctuaries. This is because these sanctuaries are established by oracles, by apparitions, by ancient sayings whose origins are lost. The negative fourfold covers the origin of the sanctuaries. Thus, the unalterable lands assigned to the immortals where the play of the positive fourfold takes place covers over this unknown and hidden origin which is lost in darkness surrounding the oracles, covered over by ancient sayings of unknown attribution, dispersed by chaos of history, and lost in the abyss of oblivion. So the positive fourfold appears between two locuses of the negative fourfold. One locus is the realm of women from which the men emerge to display themselves. But the other locus is the origin of the sanctuaries which lie hidden beneath the founding myths which are their primal scenes. The negative fourfold that covers over the always already lost origin of the space in which the positive fourfold operates, also serves as the place from which the men venture forth for every sacrifice. So, although the negative fourfold has been banished like the sea, it is, in truth, never far away.

Plato talks at great length about how this city is only second best. How the city that shares women and children as well as property in common is best. He tells us that we must strive to exclude what is private from all aspects of life. This exclusion is clearly the exclusion of the negative fourfold. But by this exclusion women and men are no longer different, but become all but equal. This equality is best because it approximates the total fusion of Primordial Being into Conceptual Being. But it is best only in theory. In practice, it is impossible because the banishment of the negative fourfold obscures a side of humanity which, when suppressed, causes the horror stories of genocide. Here Plato says something very significant:

... if, insofar as possible, a way has been devised to make common somehow the things that are by nature private, such as the eyes and the ears and the hands, so that they seem to see and hear and act in common; if, again, everyone praises and blames in unison, as much as possible delighting in the same things and feeling pain at the same things, if with all their might they delight in laws that aim at making the city come as close as possible to unity -- then no one will ever set down a more correct or better definition than this of what constitutes the extreme as regards virtue. Such a city is inhabited, presumably, by gods or children of gods (more than one), and they deal in gladness, leading such a life.²

The point here is that unity cannot be achieved by men. The lower utopia is nearest to immortality and second in point of unity. He says the third will be examined after that. The third may well be the description of Atlantis. Like Schiera, it was close to the gods before it was destroyed. At any rate, see that eyes, ears, and hands are naturally private. The autonomy of organisms is written into human nature. The hundred handed ones and the cyclops were flawed creations. The perfection of the gods was that their number was twelve, and that they were different and independent but unified under a single ruler. But even they have wars and petty bickering which lead to wars among humans, whom they steer by their souls as cattle. The cyclops and presumably the hundred handed ones are without civilization and unity among themselves. So here the extreme that Plato proposes is clearly out of the question. In fact, there is a strange turning over into opposites where the representation of unity which reminds us of the cyclops and hundred handed ones is what we earlier saw as the very embodiment of savagery. Total unity, leads to its opposite utter diversity and chaos. Total unity is a gloss that covers over genuine differences. Total unity, when entered, becomes like an abyss that throws one to the opposite extreme of complete disunity. Total unity is the nihilistic opposite of total disunity, and they are ultimately the same. Thus, the civilization which tries to become an ideal utopia turns naturally into a kakatopia. These two are again opposite Atlantis which attempts to balance the negative and positive fourfolds. There is oscillation between total unity and total disunity on the one hand, and there is destruction for Atlantis/Schiera on the other. This leaves the lower utopia as the only viable alternative left. It is just far enough away from unity to avoid the rolling over into the opposite. It has just enough difference to allow the autopoietic unity to emerge. But it is not so far away that the autopoietic unity becomes embodied -- instead it remains the nobler part -- the soul of the lower utopian city.

Each household is twofold. It has two lots of land near and far from the city, and two houses on each lot. The household's wealth varies within set limits. Those limits are defined to be of four economic classes. These classes are what is left of the castes which are important to Indo-European societies. Here, they become defined purely in economic terms. The point is that they do not disappear altogether. The link with the fundamental form of Indo-European society is maintained, albeit abstractly. The households are also divided into twelve districts that become tribes related to the twelve gods. So the unity and the facets of the gods become the unity and differences within the city itself. Here we see the perfection of the unity of the gods projected on earth, instead of the flawed extreme unity of the cyclops and the hundred handed ones. The sanctuaries are to Hestia, Athena and Zeus on the acropolis. In Atlantis the sanctuaries are to Poseidon and his mortal wive, Clito. Hestia represents the Hearth of the oikos. Athena represents the polis as a protector for the household. Zeus, with his light and dark sides, represents the combination of the positive and negative fourfold where the positive dominates the negative. Poseidon, like Hades, represents the domination of the negative fourfold over the positive. In Hades, the negative has complete sway. In Poseidon, there is more positive, but still the negative is dominant. Earth is darker and denser than the sea. Only in Zeus' realm does the positive gain dominance. He bestows that on his cities. Especially cities which bring together the darkness of Dionysus or Hephaestus with the light of Athena or Apollo and balance the nihilistic opposites.

The fact that both fourfolds, positive and negative, are balanced and contained in the polis Atlantis, assures it will be destroyed as the opposites cancel. Four rings of water and four rings of land. They were set up by Poseidon. The four rings of land and water are dual, like the twin kings. Poseidon set up the rings to protect Clito. They center on the mountain where one of the men of earth who was Clito's father had lived. There Poseidon made two springs flow, one hot and the other cold like the springs at Troy. The springs are at the center of the polis instead of at the periphery. There are two city walls, one around the whole land, and the other around the second ring of the island. No assembly area is described. Atlantis does not conform to the general schema of the polis. Atlantis arises from the sea through Poseidon and returns to it by the will of Zeus. The island was given to Poseidon with the distribution of lands to the gods. The distribution of lands to the gods predates and underlies the distribution of lands in any city.

Of old, then, the gods distributed the whole earth by regions, and that without contention. That gods know not their several dues, or if they know them, yet some seek by contention to engross to themselves what more properly belongs to others--these are perverse imaginations. They apportioned to each his own by righteous allotment, settled their territories, and, when they had settled them, fell to feeding us, their bestial and flocks there, as herdsman do their cattle. Only they would not coerce body with body in the fashion of shepherds who drive their flocks to pasture with blows; they set the course of the living creature from that part about which it turns most readily, its prow, controlling its soul after their own mind by persuasion as by a rudder, and so moving and steering the whole mortal fabric. Thus diverse gods received diverse districts as their portions and reigned over them.³

Here we have a fascinating detail of the relation of men to jinn and how men were controlled when Kronos set them over us in that era of worlding. Athena and Hephaestus were both given Athens, and Poseidon was given Atlantis. Gods know their due, unlike men. Plato tries to tell us that they do not contend with each other. But from many myths, it is clear that Poseidon is always contending to increase his due. The story of the aggression let loose from Atlantis underlines this constant drive for more. From Atlantis, war and domination was unleashed when the autopoietic ring was breached by the later generations who inhabited Atlantis. Their lands were very rich, but still they were not satisfied. With their technology, they became imperialistic and took over Europe and Africa right up to Greece and Egypt. In Plato Prehistorian, Mary Settegast⁴ attempts to adduce the evidence that such a conflict might have well taken place about 9600 BC. That evidence may be seen in various myths concerning the rivalry between Athena and Poseidon over Athens. The setting of these myths in the context of archeological evidence is of real interest. However, in the end, we are brought back to the fact that really all we know about Atlantis is the description of the island. And that island has, as its most important feature, the intermingling of water and land in symmetrical circles. Those circles are like the frozen waves of a rock thrown into the ocean by the earth shaker. The whole unfolding of Atlantis takes place in a moment before Zeus allows the process to be completed, swallowing both the warriors of Athens and the whole island of Atlantis. With its four rings, it is the image of a minimal system, an interference pattern, in which unseen causation impacts the earth. In this case, the causation produces the minimal system of the autopoietic ring embodied, which when broken open, unleashes war and finally self destruction as its fate catches up with it. The rising from the sea and cataclysmic disappearance back into the sea is an emergent event, in which the whole life of Atlantis is lived out. The four double rings (land and sea) represent the four phases of emergence. At ground zero there is a sacred enclosure surrounded by a golden railing where it was forbidden to enter. There the conception between mortal and immortal occurred that engendered the five pairs of twins. Two springs, hot and cold, also appeared there. A pillar existed where the laws were written which made each king keep within bounds by the threat of all the others. Near the pillar, bulls, sacred to Poseidon, roamed free. Every five or four years, alternately, one of these would be captured and sacrificed so its blood ran onto the words of the law. Then the kings would swear allegiance to the law and take council with each other. Note here that blood is poured on the pillar of the law, as if it might be offered to the spirit of the dead, as Odysseus did to bring it alive again. Bulls roaming freely is contrast with the sacred enclosure where no man may stand. The conception of Poseidon is contrast with the pillar of the law. One clot of blood would be placed in the wine for each King. They would make libation with this special wine. After the sacrifice the Kings sit around the sacrifice on the ground in the dark, clothed in the blue like the sea.

Thus they gave and received judgement, if any charged any with transgression. Judgement given, when the morning came, they wrote the judgements on a plate of gold and dedicated it and their robes for a memorial. Now there were many more special laws concerning the rights of the several kings, but the chief of these were that they should bear no arms one against another and that if any should essay to overthrow the royal house of any city, all should come to its help -- but ever in accord with the rule of their ancestors-- they should take counsel in common for war and all other affairs, and the chief command should be given to the house of Atlas. Also, the king should have no power over the life of any of his kinsmen, save with the approval of more than half of the ten.⁵

We know that these laws are exactly the same as those that did not work for the three dynasties of which Sparta was the only one that survived. Here it is shown to be working. Second it is clear that the whole system is based on averting transgression. Each King has his land on which he is a tyrant. The whole point of the laws is to keep this division in force for all of time. It is clear that within the negative fourfold there is a concept of non-transgression as well as presented in the theogony of Aristophanes. The windegg appears, and eros produces the rest of creation by the transgression of the parts of the negative fourfold against each other. This transgression is clearly opposite the mutual mirroring of the positive fourfold. Transgression, and even penetration, is part of the feminine experience in a fundamental way. If this transgression does not occur, then nothing happens, and the negative fourfold exists as the Essence of Manifestation, pure immanence. The center of Atlantis is the point where transgression across the human female's bodily boundary occurred by Poseidon. That place may not now be transgressed. The islands were created to protect Clito, but also to imprison her. The islands were an oikos where the five twins grew up. The oikos became a city, and the statues of the wives of the ten original kings were set up along with the statues of the kings themselves. Poseidon himself appears in a giant statue with the Nereides. Thus, male and female is balanced in some sense at the heart of Atlantis. They set up kingdoms which do not transgress against each other, held in a kind of dynamic balance where all are the deterrent to each. Each is a tyrant in his own land, but they come together every five or four years balancing the even and the odd. When they come together, there are two actions. One is the sacrifice of the bulls who are free. They cannot use iron to catch them, but only ropes and clubs. The kings themselves seem to be the ones that catch the animal. Out of the free herd, one is caught. This manifestation of one out of the free herd is like the cutting of the channel out of the islands. The island manifests to the outside world its warlike nature via the channel. Here, in the sacrifice, the kings are consecrating and renewing the law. The dead letters of the law are given life again like the dead fed by blood. The blood is spilt on the phallic column, which is like the breaking of the hymen, renewing the act of transgression by which Atlantis was founded. There is a curse on the column against anyone who breaks the law inscribed there. The origin of the law declares itself as still active in the law. We see here that the two immortalities that were intertwined by Plato in the last book we studied from the Laws are here brought into a union. The immortality of the law and the immortality of the species is made one thing. The law is continually being brought back to life as if it were a mortal who has died and can be renewed by libations of blood. The sexual act that is the basis of species immortality is also being reenacted at the same time. The blood not only flows upon the law pillar, but also is used in the libation. Each king is allotted a clot of the blood in the libation ritual. Then, once the law has been brought back to life and linked with the lost origin of the kings of Atlantis, judgements are taken according to the law against each of the kings, by a council of the rest. This taking of judgements occurs in the dark, with them sitting on the ground in dark blue robes. The sitting on the dark reminds us of the darkness of Night within the fourfold. Then we remember that the bulls roam freely which reminds us of the Chaos of the fourfold. The blue robes remind us of the Abyss of the sea over which Poseidon presides. The blood covering the inscriptions remind us of the covering of the negative fourfold. So we see in this ceremony, where the two immortalities are brought into union, that the negative fourfold is very much dominant. The next day judgements are written on plates of gold. Then the positive fourfold is entered again. There is a transformation from the negative fourfold, after the union of the two immortalities, back into the positive fourfold. The robes are taken off and dedicated, along with the plates. The inscriptions of judgements makes the results of the court, all against one and one against all, known to the world.

In this strange ritual, we can see the closest possible mingling of the two immortalities and the transformation from the dominance of the negative to the positive fourfold. Here the ceremony covers over the always already lost origin of Atlantis in the conception of the five pairs of twins with Clito. The greatest among these was Atlas, who held up the world as a punishment from Zeus. The house of Atlas always presides in Atlantis. The holding up of the world is based on the ability to meld positive and negative fourfolds and to bring the two strands of immortality (Law and Species) into one primal scene. This melding is the opposite of the pristine unity which rejects difference, rejects the negative fourfold, makes the two wings of immortality into one, the only good gods of the Republic who do not have intercourse with mortal women. Such good gods become insipid and uninteresting. They are mere ideas divorced of the shenanigans of the jinn who continuously think up ways to divert the RTA from its proper course. In Atlantis, man/women, land/sea, positive and negative fourfold, the two immortalities are all balanced, and so they must cancel cataclysmically.

The Real city stands between savagery and Atlantis, as the lower utopia stands between the republic of ancient Athens and Atlantis. The Republic represents complete unity and is contrast with savagery. The savages are completely enveloped in the negative fourfold, as the Republic claims to be completely embodying the positive fourfold only. Atlantis is the balance point between these two tendencies. Because it balances, it is destroyed as opposites cancel. Between savagery and the higher utopia, there is an oscillation. These nihilistic opposites keep turning into each other. It is like the mithraic double bind in Christianity. There is a schizophrenic alteration between their teachings of meekness and the mithraic distortions of Paul and Constantine which sends the army after the priests. This oscillation is what makes the ultimate utopia a hell on earth. Those which strive for the ultimate utopia are really the most brutal savages in disguise. It is only the penultimate utopia which stands back from complete identity and allows the autopoietic unity to appear as a possibility prior to the collapse into complete unity. Here, the autopoietic ring is the soul of the community. But if we drop one notch down to the third best, then we see the structure of Atlantis where aggression is based on technological superiority. This structure is doomed to the cancellation of opposites. But here is where the complete structure of Primordial Being appears. The primal scene, which covers over the single source, is sketched, projecting back the always already lost origin. We can see the oscillation between unity and savagery and catastrophic collapse as again nihilistic opposites. In fact, if you take these together, you get the basis of the formal structural system. Formalism may be seen because of oscillation between gloss and the particularities. Structuralism appears to bridge the catastrophic discontinuities. Between Savagery and Atlantis we see the Real city. The Real city is rooted in the negative fourfold. It has as its basis the endless schizophrenic production of variety. That cornucopia of diversity and variety arises from Pandora's box. In the Real city, the progressive bisection away from unity is breaking down into multiple regimes that are simultaneously present. It is one step away from complete chaos. The Real city, scattered households bound together for defense, strives toward the realization of intersubjective unity within its walls. That possibility is defined and bounded by the image of Atlantis on the one hand and the oscillation between unity and savagery on the other. The autopoietic unity is a non-nihilistic distinction, like marriage, and must exist in relation to the nihilistic background in order to be seen as completely different from that background.

When we look at this diagram which links the autopoietic unity as non-nihilistic distinction and the nihilistic background, we see that the nihilistic opposites of positive and negative fourfold and the two nihilistic strands of immortality as glosses are balanced by the nihilistic oscillation between unity and savagery. Oscillation is nihilistically balanced against the intermingling in a primal scene. Here we have four types of nihilism against which the non-nihilistic distinction is arrayed.

These four kinds of nihilism form a minimal system which is the inverse of the autopoietic minimal system. They are a minimal system of artificial emergence, whereas autopoiesis is the minimal system of genuine emergence. These two are duals and directly imply each other. Artificial emergence is only genuine emergence in another guise, and vice versa. In order to be free, we must escape the entire lot of inter-embedded nihilistic duals. This can only be done by embracing the Void and then going beyond the Void which is the antidote for the insidious structure of Being. The Void is the opposite of Being and still participates in the nihilistic mirroring. Only by getting beyond the cancellation of the Void with Being in all its nihilistic self-mirroring, can we be free of the disease what lies dormant within us and conditions our every thought, perception and action in the world. Even non-dualistic thought, perception, and action is not enough. We must get beyond the point where the lines are drawn between thought, perception, and action. Out beyond the void into the purely incomprehensible which comprehends us. Out beyond even the single source which is still a representation and an image.

TABLE 20
Aristophanes Theogony	Kinds of Nihilism	Philosophy Concepts
Good	Unity; Immortality of Law; Melding	Holoidal
Negative Fourfold	Negative and Positive Fourfold	Non transgression; Essence of Manifestation; Pure immanence
Windegg (amphora)	Sacred compound which may not be tread upon	Body without Organs; Intensities of experience
Eros (honey)	Aphrodite; sacrifice of bull whose blood runs on pillar of the law; Lost origin of race in mating of Poseidon and Clito; Self-organizing ring of kings who keep each other in order	Autopoietic Unity
Birds (bees)	Bulls roaming free	Desiring Machines; Partial Objects
Positive Fourfold	Positive and Negative Fourfold	Transgression; Transcendence; Ontological Monism; Self-grounding
Enframing	Savagery; Immortality of Species; Oscillating	Ephemeron