Umbrellas Unopent in Tempests, Part XLIV

“Does spontaneity have use of beauty?” Itwethey wonders. “Any preoccupation or consideration for beauty would imply premeditation contrary to spontaneity,” Itwethey thinks. But it may be more difficult and subtle than this. “Beauty cannot be volunteered…Is spontaneity volunteered? Can one volunteer one’s self for spontaneity? If so, spontaneity does not exclude some kind or measure of preparation, and that included preparation might just have something to do with beauty.”

Unless the spontaneity volunteered for is a denatured spontaneity...It might be. Denatured because cultured and cultivated, with the processes of culture and cultivation carefully concealed by the acolytes and apostles of “openness” (AoA) in order to make spontaneity (and “openness” (but why and how the openness we are far away from explaining)) the false token they pay at the toll booth of the Gate at the fence of the Garden of Eden, when they are returning there, naked.

However that may be, the spontaneity sought by the AoA is situated historically, with certain political and perhaps ethical features which can, and must, be sketched.

In general, AoA spontaneity signals a rejection of rationality. It signals an alliance with the arts against the sciences which are conceived of as arts of control and confinement. The scientific arts are dogmatic, authoritarian, and hierarchical—all obviously (?) the opposite of the spontaneous and therefore to be opposed. And avoided. Spontaneity is against the state—it is in some intellectual alliance with anarchism (but it is not anarchism or any other explicitly political stance, all of which would be considered, in their very nature as political stances, political ideologies, and therefore constrained (NOT spontaneous.) The spontaneity is a reaction to the entire political spectrum, left side, right side,( but maybe not the infinitesimally-small space (which is also as large as the universe) where right and left meet and are perfectly, mystically balanced—but this remains to be examined.) For example, socialist planning would be rejected on the basis of spontaneity in a reaction against the “left.” As capitalism is considered to be unplanned and spontaneous production and exchange, capitalism would be affirmed if not for the stifling and inhibiting effects of capitalism the AoA believe they have experienced directly (though they do not theorize why these occur, and Itwethey does not see how they could, having rejected rationality (and thus the power of theorization, as Itwethey herself conceives this.)