Plebians

The earth is neither flat, nor round, nor toroid. As de Selby writes:

Standing at a point on the postulated spherical earth, one appears to have four main directions in which to travel, viz., north, south, east, and west. But it does not take much thought to see that there really appear to be only two since north and south are meaningless terms in relation to a spheroid and can connote motion in only one direction; so also with west and east. One can reach any point on the north-south band by travelling in either ‘direction’, the only apparent difference in the two ‘routes’ being extraneous considerations of time and distance, both already shown to be illusory. North-south is therefore one direction and east-west apparently another. Instead of four directions there are only two.

It can be safely inferred that there is a further similar fallacy inherent here and that there is in fact only one possible direction properly so called, because if one leaves any point on the globe, moving and continuing to move in any ‘direction’, one ultimately reaches the point of departure again.

The idea that the earth is spherical is due to the fact that human beings are continually moving in only one known direction, though convinced that they are free to move in any direction, and that this direction is really around the circular circumference of an earth which is in fact sausage-shaped. It can scarcely be contested that if multi-directionality be admitted to be a fallacy, the sphericity of the earth is another fallacy that would inevitably follow from it.

The position of a human on the earth is like that of a man on a tight-wire who must continue walking along the wire or perish, being, however, free in all other respects. Movement in this restricted orbit results in the permanent hallucination known conventionally as ‘life’ with its innumerable concomitant limitations, afflictions and anomalies. If a way can be found of discovering the second direction, i.e., along the barrel of the sausage, a world of entirely new sensation and experience will be open to humanity. New and unimaginable dimensions will supersede the present order and the manifold unnecessaries of the one-directional existence will disappear.