Postulating there is no deity setting actual rules for existence (other than deities which are themselves vast hoary accretions, or potentially powerful pneuminous beings not of our creation, either of which would not be an ultimate being) what can we say about the ethical status of the accretions? Does this question even make any sense?

We believe there is some kind of commentary can be made on this topic, though it is difficult given that all human existence is a priori accretive (if we accept the theory). All the ideas in your ‘mind’, all the stuff you can see and hear, even yourself are all accretions of the same conceptual substance -pneuma. The commentary requires a kind of wondering. The wondering is something like this: is it possible that attaching too many accretions to the self (the neurotic accretion or NA) is in some sense negative? Again this is tricky because of the issue of value. In an ethical void, whether we exist as pneuminous beings bound up with endless threads to endless other accretions or whether we minimise the lines of connection seems to matter little. However there is the matter of the functionality of the organism. Is it possible then that weighing the NA down with endless accretive layers impairs its functionality?  This doesn’t really seem unreasonable.

Using our the recently developed D&G plug-in we can say that extra accretions are formed through intensities. Emotional attachments, patterns of behaviour, these are how it happens. Keeping things, holding onto feelings, being fixed in routine. If accretive theory is correct then these kinds of actions are creating actual accretions of pneuma that themselves accrete to the NA. Some kind of affect, some kind of will makes this happen.

It is easy to note systems like Buddhism eschew attachment (many religions touch on this kind of aspect) and in that sense encourage forming as few a lines as possible. What we find interesting is the tension between the poles of maximum and minimum accretive attachment. A truly minimal engagement with excessive accretions is often the aim of occult systems. The notion is that the accretions encumber the ‘energy body’ and thus reduce its capacity to be effective. This, in its harshest form, could involve separating oneself from even other persons in order to free oneself from the bonds both of our attachment to them and of their ability to pneuminously restrain us through their perception. At the other end of the spectrum is the pneuminous hoarder. Some NAs don’t know how to let go of anything , either emotionally or physically. Pneuminously these are near identical. A physical thing is just pneuma attached to a vector, it is the pneuma we are in contact with, not the vector. ‘Physical thing’ is just one more concept (accretion) itself, admittedly a deep grammatical one. Unbound pneuma (the contents of the mind) is just that, pneuma unbound to the vector field plane that gives rise to physical grammar. Emotionally charged accretions, either bound or unbound can be astonishingly powerful and the NA may feel it cannot separate itself from them. Artifacts, memories, places all can be accretively bound by intensity. Extreme cases of being wedded to endless accretive structures can be reasonably said to impair the well-being of the organism.

But in the middle of this spectrum, isn’t this where ordinary human existence lies? Accretive formations are a regular part of existence that humans generally manage to negotiate without lapsing into the hoarding pole -the other pole is generally perceived as less problematic and certainly not something one is likely to lapse into. What is interesting to speculate about in this regard is the role of capitalism in relation to our accretive relations. Mass production, endless improvement and easy replacement arguably have a negative impact on what could be seen as positive accretive relations.  Whilst it can be seen as unhealthy to be excessively attached to appliances, furniture etc, it is possibly better to have some kind of intensity attachment to such things as opposed to viewing them as purely disposable. Disposable is fine if the disposability can be dealt with, however we can see that this has not really worked out.

The point is that a certain kind of keeping things is not unhealthy attachment even if it can resemble it. Disposable and/or mass produced things mirror each other in their encouragement of the non-special. The keeping of and passing on things imbued with intensity is an important part of being-human. By this I again refer to something like the notion of Heidegger’s human. The human of the disposable is the post-human. The fantasy of freeing oneself from stuff (unless one is embarking on an occult path) is largely exactly that. You free yourself from stuff in order to passively accept the disposability of stuff. You cannot give someone a phone and expect it to be particularly meaningful. No one will keep it to pass it on.  But things like vases, plates, cutlery, rooms, tables these should be allowed to grow old (for humans to be humans -if they want to be humans) and be passed on.

In this sense capitalism gives the worst of both worlds. It generates attachment to stuff, desire for stuff. The accretive attachment becomes to ‘buying’ itself and the ephemeral status/feeling the stuff may bring. Capitalism gives no freedom from attachment to accretions like the sorcerer requires, attachment is still horribly present. But equally, valuing the stuff is lacking, for there is so much more where it came from. The attachment of affect at the level of what I have called being-human is missing.

Viewing things through the eyes of accretive theory can help to redeem some of the capitalist dehumanising. This is so because accretive theory says that the things gather what happened to them. Not just in their cracks and knocks but at the pneuminous level. Things accrete like we (NAs) do, it is a double process. Just as I become attached to it so it does to me and when I am gone my interactions with the thing are still there accreted to it. Disposability/mass production helps to develop the attitude that the things are all the same. Each thing has embedded in it its story in the pneuma.

None of this says what anyone should do. It merely describes certain relations under various conditions.