Reprinted from SCIENTIFIC AMERICA, October 1981

The Pleasure Caste
by Kevin McCormick

Kevin McCormick was activated in the last half of the 20th century and was immediately assigned one of the most curious missions in planetary history.

His extraordinary post-terrestrial, post-human intelligence became apparent at an early age.  The young Kevin was simply too smart, too active, too radiant to pass as a normal domesticated primate.  His Out-Caste status caused him considerable grief and confusion -- a fate typical of many Evolutionary Agents during the primitive terrestrial period.

McCormick's futique telepathic abilities brought him, while still an undeveloped cub, into the field of mass-neural-activation (then called show business).  His acute neural equipment allowed him to sense which neuro-electric signals were needed to trigger mutations in young terrestrials.  Before he was 30 years old he had become the most successful movie producer of all time -- based on his uncanny skill in fabricating, on film, the future realities of the emerging species.

After his film assignments were completed McCormick retired for several months of re-imprinting and serial-reality fabrication using the new powerful transmitter drugs.  It was then that his next career as philosopher began.  His first step was to become Pope of the Roman Catholic Church (1986) and permanent President of the International Psychoanalytic Association.  Thus liberated, he proceeded to do What-He-Wanted on several Worlds of His Own Device for several decades.

A study of History reveals that each gene-pool and every successful civilization has produced an aesthetic-elite caste -- those whose nervous systems are especially sensitive to sensual stimulation; those who have the ability to receive, manage and transmit neurosomatic, hedonic signals.  Those who are robot-programmed to stimulate pleasure in themselves and in others (either singularly or in cooperation with other reality-artists).

The wording of the last paragraph is carefully designed to indicate that there are three aesthetic-artist-sensory castes:

Hedonic Consumers:  those who receive pleasure.

Hedonic Directors:  those who create pleasure realities for themselves and others.

Hedonic Producers:  those who exchange pleasure.

We are discussing here a strange and powerful caste of humans whose psychology (and neurology) has been ignored by philosophers because of the "taboo" nature of the subject.  Pleasure.  Beauty.  Sensuality.  Eroticism.

We refer to those called Artists, or "show business" people, entertainers, courtesans.  Those in the Pleasure Industry.  For obvious reasons Hive philosophers and Establishment Reality-Definers tend to discredit the Pleasure-Aesthetic Castes and the contributions they make to the species.  There is little overt, bureaucratic pressure on young people to take up a life of courtesan-actress-musician-artist when they "grow up."  Indeed, the classic situation calls for discouragement by the gene-pool of such aspirations on the part of the young.

At the same time that the Hedonic Occupations are publicly taboo, there is a covert acceptance of them.  Millions of middle-class dociles are titillated by notorious courtesans such as the Gabor sisters when they exhibit their ill-gotten diamonds on the Johnny Carson Show.  Few of the enrapt electroid audience would actively encourage their daughters to learn this glamorous profession or their sons to contribute to such display.

One of the most obvious examples of human castes -- elements which link to form the social molecule -- is the pervasive presence of the show-biz-pleasure profession.  Night clubs, saloons, theatres, carnivals, brothels, dance-halls.  However fake, tinsel, laundered the actual performance -- the allure, the promise is always the same.  Somatic reward, in-human soft-skin-bliss, hip sophistication, erotic movement, hedonic consumption.  Self-indulgence.  Self-actualization.

With established society actively discouraging recruitment into these professions, how do we account for the fact that in every gene-pool and in every age a certain percentage of young adults pop up as pleasure-dispensers?  Genetic caste.  Good looks and animal magnetism are the give-aways.  Observe any group of children at play and you can forecast those who are robot-templated by DNA to play hedonic roles.  Who give off the sexual radiation.  The flamboyant self-confidence of the budding performer.

An interesting dilemma appears at this point.  We do not have a formal, precise language to classify and describe the various pleasure-roles and hedonic processes.  Indeed, before The Principles and Practice of Hedonic Psychology (1974) there had been little scholarly attention to pleasure in western literature.  Whereas there existed an enormous nosology of pain, an endless clinical listing of negative pathological states, there was no psychiatric or psychological classification of the states of excellence, elite accomplishment, or pleasure.  (It is true that a crude literature of beauty-pleasure existed in the Orient:  pillow books, Tantric Hindu texts, Islamic-Sufi works.)

Why is there no terminology for beauty-pleasure in the West?  Neuro-censorship.  If words are invented for these myriad hedonic delights, then people will talk about them and enjoy them -- a turn of events which Christian-Marxist hive establishments could not tolerate.

This taboo against the recognition of pleasure began to crumble in the 1960's.  For the first time in the history of humanity a mass middle-class awakened to Self-Actualized Hedonism.  We can justly use the term "awaken" to describe the sudden insight that the body is a pleasure instrument, designed to receive a wide range of sensory stimuli which can be self-directed and self-controlled.

Before the 1960's, in western culture, hedonic bliss was taboo -- reserved only for the aristocracy.  Sexual pleasure was limited to marital intercourse -- and then only for hive reproductive purposes.

Susan Kaiser Vogel was born in 1947 -- equipped with a body-brain model 2020.  Her neurological equipment was thus designed to inhabit realities 73 years ahead in the future.

She was fortunate enough to appear in Southern California, the most advanced time zone, exactly when it became the center for post-terrestrial mutation.  Her advanced mutant status was recognized at an early age by those close to her.  She was encouraged, protected, "listened to" by an increasing number of persons who recognized that she was a direct-clear line to the future.

The energy given off by her nervous system and its magnificent carriage was radiantly visible to even the most larval observer.  Comparative ethologists have been fascinated by Susan's time travel experiences.  Never in planetary history did a futique visitor adapt so successfully to primitive life on a one-G planet.

Conceived ten mutational stages ahead of the Dom-species, she was forced to deal with gross, vulgar, jittery, ugly, repetitious behavior.  The species was dedicated to safety, security, sanity, sex-role conformity and almost totally blind to the aesthetic.

After mastering the limited vocabularies of the physics, chemistry, biology and psychology of the period, Susan focused her adolescent attention on the central genetic issue of the time:  Aesthetic Self-Actualization.

The Terminal Adult Authority of the centralized Aquarian Age had limited sensory awareness to perception of hive-cues.  Red meant stop.  Artists, sculptors, playwrights, musicians worked within prescribed schools.  The illusion of Bohemian-rebellious-individuality was carefully cultivated by hive moralists so that the Out-Castes produced by each gene-pool in each generation could be effectively isolated, neutralized and their symbolic spokes"men" rewarded.  (The best example of the Stage 12 Insectoid-Collective-Artist-Poet is to be found in the Beatnik School -- which imprinted grey-black-drab-ugly-urban-political-socialist models on the nervous systems of Caste 13-14 juveniles.)

Susan Kaiser Vogel sensibly avoided Art Bureaucracies and with stunning clarity selected Alan Watts as her first neurological guide.  (Alan Watts, a most influential Evolutionary Agent of the late 20th century, promoted the use of 5th Circuit Neuro-transmitters to suspend hive imprints and to focus the brain on direct sensation.)

Susan developed the most sensitive neural-radar system ever used on a primitive planet.  Her eyes scanned with naked-microscopic clarity registering, not just forms, but the play of light patterns.  She used Zen techniques to free her ears from hive-imprinted limits and thus developed her auditory equipment to a point far beyond human limits.  Similar exercises in modalities of taste, touch, and kinaesthetics made her the most sensuous person ever to inhabit the planet.

then Susan moved to Stage 14 (Life-as-Performance-Art).  From this period date her monumental architectural-constructions:  Can of Worms, Desert Forms, Blue Flame, Peach-Fuzz Invitation, The Blue Wave of Venice, The Fourth Pyramid of Giza.  This phase was climaxed by her Crystal Palace, a walk-in piece composed of cut diamonds loaned by Ronnie Winston and the Shah of Iran; her Emerald Mosque -- a thirty-foot edifice made of costly emeralds; and her Transcontinental Highway -- a twenty-foot-high wall of crystal glass which stretched from Atlantic City to Santa Monica.  The construction of this piece solved the problems of the first Jerry Brown administration.

Susan Kaiser Vogel's architectural period pushed minimal art to its maximal limits.  Susan's assignment was to teach the basic lesson of DNA -- The Harmony of Extremity.  her pieces fused recklessly the most solid brick with the most fragile-ephemeral pastel color, the hardest with the softest, the most elegant with the most common.  While her pieces employed the most ancient-basic paleolithic material and technique (one-stone-on-top-of-another) they represented the most avant-garde.  At once the most commonplace and the most subtly conceptual.  Her pieces were the most durable in material and construction -- yet they lasted only a few days.  Take your eyes off these massive structures and they disappear!

Susan's works during this period were designed to shock, electrify -- activate primate brains at first sight.  Thousands who saw The Blue Flame in the UCLA sculpture garden exclaimed:  "What is it?"  "It's a window to the sky," they might be told.  Museum visitors walked into a room and were suddenly surrounded by peach-Fuzz Invitation, a 43 foot semi-circle of soft-smooth pinkness electrically sliding along their nerve endings.

By 1980 millions of citizens in the advanced zones of the planet had been activated by Susan's transmissions and understood that Space Migration was basically an aesthetic challenge -- the power to create Mini-Earths meant humanity need never again be aesthetically passive.

An astonishing leap in artistic sensibility followed.  By the year 2000 the alert earthling could look forward to designing and constructing a limitless number of Mini-Earths.  The inspiration for this, the first Aesthetic Society in human history, is credited to Susan Kaiser Vogel.

Her creation of the Universe of Beauty was, however, an adolescent, high-school achievement.  Susan Kaiser Vogel's greatest fame emerges from her courageous, sensitive experiments in neural fusion and genetic-linkage.  her work in Conscious Conception and RNA-telepathy raised the Conception of Love six stages higher than had ever been experienced on the Planet of Her Birth.

Go to Next Page