“Among the latter, both in respect of name and caricature imitations, are their contemporary theaters now existing there. BTG XXX

“The three-brained beings of the contemporary civilization quite frequently assemble in considerable numbers in these theaters of theirs in order to observe and presumably to study the various prepared manifestations of their ‘actors’, as they have quite recently begun to call them, just as the other learned members of the club of the Adherents-of-Legominism studied then in Babylon the reproductions of the learIIed beings of the group of the mysterists. BTG XXX

“These theaters of theirs came to have a significance of the greatest importance in the ordinary process of existence of your favorites, and on account of this they built particularly large buildings for this purpose which rank in most of their contemporary cities as the most remarkable constructions. BTG XXX

“We had better continue to clear up first the causes why it has been customary among your contemporary favorites to have such theaters everywhere, and afterwards what their contemporary actors do in these theaters, and how they manifest themselves there. BTG XXX

“As regards the question why it became the custom among them to assemble, often in considerable groups, in these theaters of theirs, it was in my opinion because these contemporary theaters of theirs and all that goes on in them happen to correspond very well to the abnormally formed common presences of most of these contemporary three-brained beings, in whom there had been already finally lost the need, proper to three-brained beings, to actualize their own initiative in everything, and who exist only according to chance shocks from outside or to the promptings of the consequences crystallized in them of one or other of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer. BTG XXX

“From the very beginning of the arising of those theaters of theirs, they assembled and now assemble in them for the purpose of watching and studying the reproductions of their contemporary ‘actors’; no . . . they assemble only for the satisfaction of one of the consequences of the properties of the organ Kundabuffer, a consequence which had been readily crystallized in the common presonces of the majority of them, and called ‘Oornel’, which the contemporary beings now call ‘swaggering’. BTG XXX

“In this respect, the contemporary theaters turned out to be corresponding for your favorites, because it is very convenient and easy for them to show off, as they like to say, their ‘chic coiffures’ or the ‘specially-tied-knot-of-their-cravat’, or the daringly bared, what is called ‘Kupaitarianpart-of-their-body’, and so on and so forth, while at the same time they can look at the new manifestations of the ‘fashions’ already actualized according to the up-to-date indications of those same candidates for ‘Hasnamuss–individuals’. BTG XXX

“To get a clear picture of what these contemporary ‘actors’ do during their ‘swaggerings’ in these theaters, you must first be told about yet another exceedingly strange ‘illness’ existing there under the name of dramatizacring’; the predisposition to which illness arises in the presences of certain of them thanks only to the carelessness of what are called their ‘midwives’. BTG XXX

“And these contemporary actors there first reproduce this work themselves alone, without strangers, and they reproduce it until it is exactly as the sick being himself has indicated and as the producer has ordered, and when finally their reproduction proceeds without the participation of their own consciousness and feelings and these contemporary actors themselves are completely transformed into what are called ‘living automatons’, then and then only, with the help of those among them who have not yet become entirely living automatons — for which reason they later acquire the name of ‘stage managers’ — they do the same thing under their direction, but already now in the presence of other ordinary beings assembled in these contemporary theaters. BTG XXX

“Thus you can now, from all I have just said, easily conclude that, besides many definitely maleficent consequences which I shall soon touch upon more in detail, these theaters cannot of course provide anything for that lofty aim which the Babylonian learned beings then had in view when they created for the first time such a form of conscious reproduction of perceptions and of the associative reactions to them of other beings similar to themselves. BTG XXX

“All the same, it must be admitted that from their theaters and from these contemporary actors of theirs they obtained, of course accidentally, for the processes of their ordinary being-existence one ‘not-bad-result’. BTG XXX

“And why these contemporary theaters of theirs with their contemporary actors have become useful for improving the quality of their sleep was due to the following circumstances. BTG XXX

“Well then, when your favorites, existing in such a manner in their ‘daily life’ go to these contemporary theaters and follow the senseless manipulations of these contemporary actors, and receive ‘shocks’ one after the other from every kind of reminiscence, already previously perceived, of not less senseless and absurd notions, then during this waking state of theirs, they willy-nilly obtain more or less tolerable being-associations, so that when they go home and go to bed they sleep much better than usual. BTG XXX

“Although indeed these contemporary theaters with all that proceeds in them happen to be in this way — but of course only ‘for today’ — an excellent means for the better sleep of your favorites, nevertheless the objectively evil consequences of these theaters for beings, and particularly for the rising generation, are incalculable. BTG XXX

“The chief harm for them from these theaters is that they are an additional factor for the complete destruction in them of all possibilities of ever possessing the need, proper to the three-brained beings, called the ‘need-for-real-perceptions’. BTG XXX

“They have become such a maleficent factor chiefly owing to the following: “When they go to their theaters and, sitting quietly, look on at every kind of varied many-sided, even though senseless, ‘manipulations’ and manifestations of their contemporary actors, then although they are in their usual waking state, yet every kind of association, both ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ proceeds in them exactly as they proceed during their complete passivity or sleep. BTG XXX

“In other words, when they happen to be in these theaters, they are not entirely in that passive state in which the proceeding of the transformation of substances required for their usual waking state has somehow become automatized in them also, with the result that these contemporary theaters of theirs have come to be for them only an additional maleficent factor for the destruction, as I said, of the ‘need-for-real-perceptions’. BTG XXX

“Although these maleficent radiations gradually become there the lot or specific attribute of the representatives of all the branches of their art, yet my detailed ‘physiochemical-investigation’ definitely showed me that they are always most maleficent in those mentioned contemporary artists or actors who mime in these contemporary theaters of theirs. BTG XXX

“These enumerated consequences are particularly conspicuously and strongly crystallized in just those contemporary ‘representatives-of-art’ who are the ‘manipulators’ of the contemporary theaters there, and they are particularly strongly crystallized in them because, always performing the roles of beings similar to themselves, whose Being and significance in the process of their existence are ordinarily far superior to their own, and also, as I have already said, being themselves really almost nonentities, they with their already wholly automatized Reason, gradually acquire false notions about themselves. BTG XXX