Page 118 - The Irony Board

Into the Cosmos

The sphere of Calvinism

With one end of
The spine nailed down,
The other can
Only describe
Great circles of
Of painfully
Known radius.

Gluckman here repeats the common view that Puritanism is a
psychotic attempt to mortify the flesh in order to vivify the spirit, a
denial of normal bodily functions in affirmation of salvation. The
twisting of logic required to justify all this repression is simple: if the
elect (a limited number of heaven-bound individuals) exhibit saintly
behavior, then those who reject any hint of worldliness must be
among the elect; conversely, any sign of sensuality indicates eternal
damnation. Sex and dancing are equally sinful in this doctrine; since
both involve pelvic movement, Gluckman has taken the spine as the
central axis of his epigrammatic exercise in religious geometry. It is
the lower end of the spine which is immobilized by radical
Protestantism, becoming the fixed center around which the rest of
the body must uncomfortably revolve. “Describe” has two
meanings: first, in mathematical terms, it is the process by which the
radius of a sphere transcribes the surface in great circles; this is a
physical description of the cramped universe of motion permitted
the Calvinist. Second, in a doctrinal sense, the other end of the spine
is the head, which is verbally restricted to describing the circular
reasoning upon which the prohibition is based.

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