Orgone was the last interesting development in the history of mechanical vitalism. What Reich did was render Aristotle’s striving substance, Leibniz’s appetition, and Schopenhauer’s Will in a way that was both primitive and consistent with physics and biology—as a subtle plasma. The self was a ghost again, ectoplasm was real, but both are too fine-grained to be captured by instruments of perception. But they are nonetheless physical, and can be stored in gross materials like electrons in a capacitor.

The living body is matter that is permeated by a negentropic and morphogenetic field. Ghosts and souls are material, this material is “life itself,” and the stuff that makes it up can be stored and transmitted. Does it have any special qualities? No—it is just life as substance. Besides making spirit into matter, the orgone thesis says nothing more than —

• Orgone Thesis: The soul is a volume of immortal (and immaterial) spirit that pervades the body like a field or gas.

Well, if the soul is real, what other choice do we have? It must be a ghost or field made of subtle stuff. It is other than ordinary (dead) matter—yet it exists in reciprocal relation to it. When it it moved by matter, soul-stuff generates (for itself) perception. When it moves matter, soul-stuff generates volition.

In making orgone so bare, Reich follows the method of Protestant theology. Take a traditional occult entity, strip away whatever you can until only bare essence remains, then translate this as directly as possible into an existential judgment, such as —

God made the universe in seven calendar days.

and

God made all species from scratch, instantly, so that they popped into existence as ready-mades.

This is one of the pay-offs of literalism—it obviates the work of understanding and coherence with scientific knowledge. As a Christian girl I briefly dated told me after she saw my library,

It’s hard to understand because we’re not supposed tuh.

With orgone, which is just the aura made substance, Reich joins these lazy affirmations. That is, he jumps straight from the (convincing) ghost metaphor to ectoplasm … because ectoplasm just is the soul as matter.

Incredible.

The motivation is the fact that emergence offends us. There is a deontological premise here somewhere. The idea that we ought to feel putative towards the claim (which is usually propagandized by saying that “it’s dangerous”) is strong. There’s a vigilante feeling about it, too. Deniers of God’s dominion is tantamount to the disbelief that would kill him.

The anti-emergence sentiment is a principle of Yahvism. In fact, believism is the principle means of attacking science in academia. It’s amazing, these people like Bonevac and Koons. One recently deceased analytic philosopher at University of Texas once said that Fundamentalist philosophers aren’t philosophers where it counts, which is at the level of will, or volition. To invent a ridiculous alternative (because it works with any belief-demanding creator fantasy) and then fall for it is pathologically in every area of philosophical virtue. It is cowardly. It is ultra-pessimistic. It is copro-anthropomorphic, because Yahveh is a projection of our shittiest alpha-tyrant traits. It offends against coherence and consistency to speak of a world-antithetical creator and miracles. And so on.

Bonevac and Koons are scared where it really counts. How do I know this? Because they said so in print. They both admit that their leap into faith was motivated by actually being scared by Pascal’s Wager —

Crap. It says in the book of Odin that not believing in Odin means torture after you die. Oh shit. By saying that I’ve kinda killed the reasonableness of not believing.

The anti-emergence sentiment is usually schematized as the anti-evolution club. Their propaganda: belief in evolution (1) reduces the dignity of self, and (2) kills the theistic motivation for moral action. I only care about (1) here.

The argument for (1) is actually good. It is this:

1. Self loves self.
2. Self’s self love is its innate being and virtue.
3. God is love.
4. Saying that this love is not love hurts its feelings. Life and awareness are potentialities of organized matter? Love is blind and inert?
5. You’ve just killed the love that loves you and is you.

Related is that anti-myth sentiment. Saying that the love-story is myth makes it fiction. The topic is real, so it existed as the weird thing the story. Else, the love never existed, so love never really loved you.

Both moves, it is claimed, kill belief—and therewith its object. Physical objects are accessed by perception. Simple physical objects do not behave as an other mind. But the love is accessed through faith-perception. It exists when you posit it. (Posit it and check.) The target of the affirmative consciousness become concordant with the subject. Then, if the object is the substance of the subject, then there is a self-supporting faith-loop. The subject that affirms its ontological ground is a bootstrapping subsistent. Existence gains an epistemic investment, which upon reflection seems invalid but when experienced provides full presence. Also, the only existence that arises for us as a topic is the epistemic kind. Indeed, epistemic access is a deep or transcendental condition of any existent (for the subject).

Consciousness exists. And in our experience of it it is thoroughly consciousness. The external object is a diversion of the affirmative epistmic-ontic outflow. We grind matter between our fingers, and it falls. That clay is dead. Life enters it from without.

So physics has penetrated behind this and seen that matter is really vibrant and self-organizing and, when given surplus energy, creates negentropic reproduction mechanisms like the hypercycle