"Ne pas subir"
(A Further) Interview with
Maurice Dantec
What will be the metaphysical
questions of the 21st century ? Maurice G. Dantec arms his acidic
visions with theology, (bio)physics, military strategy, realogenes,
literature, data processing, music, in order to attain a speed
escape from which elements of answers can appear.
After several novels and essays,
Maurice G. Dantec is beginning a new literary trilogy entitled
Liber Mundi.
The first opus, Villa Vortex,
was released in Spring 2003. News from the front...
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
First question - a tricky
one - who is Maurice G. Dantec ?
According to the neopaganist
review entitled Eléments, I'm a reincarnation of President
Schreber. After Lafranchouille.com - King- of-Webzines - I'm
a "writer made of rubber who thinks that Quebec is located
in America".
After Mona Chollet and her
Taliban troops from the 5th arrondissement of Paris, I'm a dangerous
Americano-Zionist extremist. I don't remember according to which
bog-paper of the National Contemporary sub-culture, I'm a fierce
xenophobe (understand by that, "opposed to criminal bullshit
- from wherever it originates") and a danger to democracy.
People also say that I dislike conservationists, as well as totalitarian
feminism.
All those views are rather
close to reality, and in consulting each other, they may be able
to draw a portrait of me than could be distributed by the republican
Stasi.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
In Laboratoire de Catastrophe
Générale (general catastrophe laboratory), you're
providing the reader with "a few basic rules concerning
metastable mobile warfare and hypermobile tactics against the
Matrix, the first draft of a comprehensive 'survival guide in
ground zero'".
What is the Matrix and
how can you fight against it ?
(Reply:) The Matrix is the
contemporary post-modern "society", or rather let's
say its media-cultural metamorphosis.
It's a metaphor for the huge
factory producing nihilistic viewpoints that have become fully
objectified, in which we are living, it seems.
Of course that was a reference
to Gibson. I was trying to show how the "network" and
its possible future developments were also a metaphor come true.
The nihilism-producing machine
has turned into an objectified nothingness that creates machines
- by machines I mean human beings, human beings who are slaves
to themselves - in a vast and reticulated "self-regulating
system".
How to fight against it ?
This question comes back to me each time I write. I only have
scraps of answers that I picked up from a short wave radio. I
sometimes try to retranscribe them, as I did during the process
of writing the two volumes of a journal I started for that purpose.
That made a lot of people
laugh in Paris, I believe.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
You're dealing with the
condition of the free man condemned to crypts. Which crypts are
the most fertile ?
It seems that I was thinking
in particular about the first Christians' catacombs, or to a
"tunnel" which would go under a "wall". But
the word "crypt" also refers to notions of "letters",
of "codes".
The adjective "fertile"
doesn't really fit in regards to my notion of this Freedom, which
has more to do with a duty, perhaps even a sacrifice, or let's
say a "free and sovereign obedience", than a right.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
What themes do you deal
with in your next novel Villa Vortex ?
The Holy Trinity as a process
of unfolding the folded, and inverting the inverted. - The World
City as the Fall, the inevitable disintegration of the Polis.
- Death as a personal Interface between Nothing and Infinity.
- The genetic chain as the secret metacode of Narration.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
What reasons led you to
embrace Christianity ?
Faith knows no reason. Grace
escapes all rational frameworks.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Could you explain to us
your theory on the "construction" of Christ ?
I don't understand this question.
I have never - I think - hinted at such an idea of a human "construction".
Since I don't believe in a
God-Architect, but in the Might of the Word, I don't see how
I can answer your question for the time being. Christ is God
made human, there's no "construction" in that. Indeed
God the Son has always existed, together with the Father and
the Holy Spirit, forming together the divine Tri-Unity.
Its incarnation on earth has
- according to me - a much greater and more mysterious aim that
the mere re-pardoning of our sins through communion.
Such views reflect the terrifying
weakening of religion brought on by modern catechisms, and it's
been even worse since the Vatican II.
Of course I can't explain
this impenetrable Mystery, at least for the time being. I still
haven't been BAPTISED since I converted. As I think is said in
the Nicean Creed, God created the Son through generation, and
the Holy Spirit through procession. That's the only thing I can
clearly assert.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Some schools present Christ
as a warrior, a conqueror. -- What do you think about that ?
This confines Him to a political
and "human" role. -- Jesus was a Prophet, HE IS Christ,
foreseen by the Holy Scriptures thousands of years ago.
As Wilhelm Reich says so justly,
if He had been a warrior and a conqueror - as Mohamed was - Christianity
would NEVER HAVE EXISTED. On that point too I must admit my way
of thinking has changed and has come closer to THE truth (there's
only ONE truth).
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Do you have any answers
regarding questions raised by the issue of the famous "missing
link", which is the intermediary between ape and man ?
Apart from some famous singers,
I don't believe there is such thing as a missing link between
ape and man. That is the ultimate dross of the mechanistic thought
which is looking everywhere for CONTINUITY.
I am an evolutionist, but
a heterodoxical one.
I believe in a divine "Intelligent
Design", which today in the US would put me in the little-enviable
position of the Darwinists who had to face fundamentalist Calvinists
in the early 20th century.
And I'm not even talking about
the (French) Republic-Homeland-of- Human-Rights that I left.
There's no "missing link"
between man and ape since mankind is the product of a "catastrophic"
DISCONTINUITY - see the parable of the Fall - which throws it
out of the CYCLE of NATURE.
Or let's say to its END POINT
of transmutation, a neotenic helix, which never closes and evolves
into a double spiral. In short "created in the Image of
God", as it is precisely specified in Genesis.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Does the explanation given
by Arthur C. Clark and Stanley Kubrick in 2001 : A Space Odyssey
seem plausible to you ?
That doesn't matter. It is
one of the most beautiful works of 20th century science-fiction.
I would remind you that, in the introduction of his novel, Arthur
C. Clark explains that he intended to write a "scientific
fairy tale" with the ability to give "a rational explanation
of God". That's the only limit to his text.
There is no reason for the
existence of God. Therefore there can be no rationally understandable
explanation of His "existence" by men.
Men can only understand the
existence of God through Faith, which - you'll understand that
very well - can only cause thrashing panic, or limitless hatred
for any good self-respecting rationalist, especially if he is
also a typically narrow-minded Frenchman.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Will the evolution from
man to its successor be of the same nature ?
Probably. But my way of thinking
has evolved since I wrote the two volumes of the Théâtre
des Opérations (theatre of operations).
I would no longer say that
Man's Successor of man will be Christ, since I believe Christ
is always UNIQUE. Christ is the intensified counter pole in a
single person.
The new human species will
indeed be the product of a catastrophe, of a Flood - if you want,
of an infinite contraction of the telluric and social forces
upon themselves, from which will result a contrary extension,
also infinite, in the form of Grace.
In the breach, the meta-human
will appear in the medium of a post-humanity which - undoubtedly
- will almost be destroyed by its own involutive forces.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
In one of your theories
you explain that humanity - having passed the 10 billion mark
- would be obliged to leave Earth and in doing so, come into
contact with other civilizations ?
With more than 12 billion
inhabitants, Earth will be inhabitable. According to relatively
recent studies, that could happen around 2050.
In the meantime, a part of
Humanity will indeed have rebuilt on a few "Arks" which
will be in orbit around Mother Earth, or around other objects
in the solar system. It is probable that at this precise "moment"
of Evolution, an "official" meeting between stellar
civilizations will become possible, necessary and desirable.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
You believe that extra-terrestrials
exist, that is you've integrated " the basic cosmobiological
evidence" into your beliefs a long time ago. Do you think
a meeting with other civilizations will not take place before
this fatal threshold, or that it has already happened ?
Questions regarding the presence
of other intelligent forms of life in the Cosmos are endless,
they'll become the metaphysical questions of the 21st century.
As far as I'm concerned, it is principle that the Life is not
rare in Cosmos. However, it is possible that the development
specific to Humanity is much less common, perhaps something like
the relationship that exists between our species and other species
living on this planet.
The orthodox vision of Darwinism
leads us to think that each great catastrophe - some of which
reduced by up to 90 per cent the existing (forms of) life on
the planet - proves that only CHANCE enabled the appearance of
Homo Sapiens.
I think that this series of
catastrophies exactly "proves" the contrary. I think
they prove that "Nature" is a "lab-oratory"
where the selective goal is to produce the being the most developed
possible for this particular biosphere.
The rhythm of planetary catastrophies
is that of a double-helix. The end of each cycle is not closed,
but the process starts again from a discontinuity.
This is precisely this selective/evolutional
discontinuity of the world which - in my opinion - proves the
existence of a Unifying Metastable Principle.
But you can't call that God
without being suspected of dishonest negotiations with the Opus
Dei.
It seems useless to discuss
the issue of "contact" between humanity and "extra-terrestrial"
civilizations. Each time evidence is put forward, they bring
out the strait jackets and The Morning of the Magicians.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Paul Virilio deals with
" virtual travel" and says that in the future, the
projection of virtual reality will be able to replace actual
travel. Will it then be possible to imagine that humanity will
desire and be capable of carrying out this (massive) exodus ?
One of the ultimate tendencies
of evolutionary humanity is its technical de-creation. On the
one hand, there is - in a mode of maximum extensivity - a technological
network which is part our own biology, until the moment of collective
electrochemical hallucination, the democracy of human rights
is extended to the invertebrates, the cacti, the electrical household
appliances. On the other hand, counter poles in modes of intensity,
"quantum jumps", pirated and retroviral derivations
of these same techniques t prepare them to a higher stage of
production - that of the Integral Man, opposed to the self-enslaved
social masses, unsubdued to anticosmic Laws as well as pancosmic
Philosophies, and as a result of his knowledge, creates a bridge
towards the Spirit.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
You also say that mankind
will radically mutate from this period on?
Yes indeed, but I don't believe
in "general mutations" that would affect all the individuals
of the species. Rather let's say that these mutations are precisely
thanatogenes, they precipitate the factors of involution, disease,
carcinomic self-destruction.
Their counter poles are "singular
mutations", which support the Factor of Evolution, and take
place within a particular "individual", a concrete
individual if I may say so, which then becomes - to quote Berdiaeff
- a "person". And in my opinion, if the mutation is
succesfully completed, he becomes a "Prophet".
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Towards a Metatronic future
?
See how funny this is: Metatron
is - in The Book of Enoch - represented as the Angel of the Creator's
Light, He who Appears, because "in front of the True Name
of G., all men perish" - (Genesis).
It is the Veil of Light of
the Unutterable one. It is he who takes Enoch, at the end of
its 300th year, to carry him directly, by means of Assumption
to the sky, in the presence of the Glory of God. Enoch- Metatron
is a central figure of Zohar, or other Pseudepigraphic or apocryphal
Books - Jewish and/or Christian.
It's noteworthy that the origin
of this name can be explained through linguistic analyses that
link it to Greek roots, as well as to Jewish, Indian and Sumerian
roots. And that it still exists 6000 years later, used by nutcases
who think the genetic code is much more than instructions for
a biological erector set, and who think insanely that poetry
is the Electric principle itself, and who find themselves insulted
on the Internet for that !
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Could you provide us with
a deeper insight into Métraton : La Naissance de l'Electricité
(Metatron : the birth of electricity) - themes, forms, contributors
? ?
Here we are. Just like Tragedy
was the creative Act of the Greek civilization - because it synthesized
all the Dyonisiac and Appolinian tendencies of the Hellenic culture
- Electricity seemed to us, to a small group of people, myself
included, to constitute the same kind of Birth Act for the American
civilization. Edison's Invention - the circumstances in which
it occurred, its origins, and its developments - led us well
beyond a "historical" vision.
Here we see instead a cosmogenesis
mysteriously included in a world dedicated to devolution, a phenomenon
which we can only transcribe in the condition of surpassing,
from the beginning, all "analytical", Cartesian or
university postulation.
Even if however a laboratory
at the University of Montreal is to be involved, our aim is to
create - excuse me for using bad words in everything I do - an
electronic "work of art", made mainly by an active
collaboration between a group of authors, musicians, and possibly
of video artists, around this "topic". There will be
at least a book and a CD. The designers of this project are Richard
Pinhas, Jérôme Schmidt and myself. The project was
established as a partnership with Leo Scheer Publishing. We expect
to present the project to the public from 2004.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
You present certain drugs
like "realogenes". Which are the ones to be used, which
are those you would strongly recommend ?
It's not at all that, I'm
not a psychotropically appointed guru. Hallucinogen drugs are
extremely dangerous Instruments of Knowledge, and those who use
them EX-clusively are bound to the Fall, as is indicated in the
parable of the Apple of the Tree of Life and Death. It is by
ex-cluding the apple from its branch that the man became mortal.
If you do not include the use of psychotropics in a true - that
means FREE - devotion to God, you will end up, at one point or
another, falling into one Luciferism or another, possibly Idol
or self-worship. There is no doubt for me however that certain
substances, whether "natural" or "artificial",
have consequences such as the in-depth modification of our cerebral
cortex, which SOMETIMES opens to us up to (I underline it) Dimensions
which are normally invisible to us.
Let's not go any further,
I can already hear the atheistic rationalists laughing sarcastically.