The death of Robert Anton Wilson.

international | arts and media | news report Saturday February 10, 2007 09:41 by fnord

Robert Anton Wilson or "RAW" managed to achieve something quite extra-ordinary in his life. He coined words for a sub-culture, ensured the legacy of William Seward Burrough's "23", explored time slips and James Joyce whilst living in Ireland in the book of the illustration (& and being a generally nice but somewhat weird guy). What was really cool about the man - was his lack of paranoia. More than any other contemporary American writer he had mananged to make a comfortable living from life options which normally we do not counsel the young to pursue. He asked us to ignore and see the fnords just to test us if we knew they were there or not...
to wonder about the wires going into our houses and if they ever left.......
to think about how fake money really was.
Robert Anton Wilson - novelist, essayist, philosopher, psychologist, futurologist, anarchist, and conspiracy theory researcher.

Robert Anton Wilson (18/1/32 - 11/1/07)

I'm not capable of eulogising the man & nor does he need it - but it's a good opportunity to introduce people to his work & legacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson

some quotes which appear to make him very serious perhaps more serious than he was for he truly walked in the steps of other people. If you follow that sort of linear time thing fnord :-

My early work is politically anarchist fiction, in that I was an anarchist for a long period of time. I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian. I suppose an anarchist would say, paraphrasing what Marx said about agnostics being "frightened atheists," that libertarians are simply frightened anarchists. Having just stated the case for the opposition, I will go along and agree with them: yes, I am frightened. I'm a libertarian because I don't trust the people as much as anarchists do. I want to see government limited as much as possible; I would like to see it reduced back to where it was in Jefferson's time, or even smaller. But I would not like to see it abolished. I think the average American, if left totally free, would act exactly like Idi Amin. I don't trust the people any more than I trust the fnord government.

"Robert Anton Wilson: Searching For Cosmic Intelligence" - interview by Jeffrey Elliot

"The Western World has been brainwashed by Aristotle for the last 2,500 years. The unconscious, not quite articulate, belief of most Occidentals is that there is one map which adequately represents reality. By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he or she has the map that fits. Guerrilla ontology, to me, involves shaking up that certainty. I use what in modern physics is called the "multi-model" approach, which is the idea that there is more than one model to cover a given set of facts. As I've said, novel writing involves learning to think like other people. My novels are written so as to force the reader to see things through different reality grids rather than through a single grid. It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal fnord is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind. It's only possible to see people when one is able to see the world as others see it. That's what guerrilla ontology fnord is — breaking down this one-model view and giving people a multi-model perspective. "

"Robert Anton Wilson: Searching For Cosmic Intelligence" - interview by Jeffrey Elliot

Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.

- Cosmic Trigger II

Every morning I have been looking at CNN to see if there is any reason for hope. I see a few large and impressive peace protests here and there around the world, but mostly I see empty robot faces monotonously reciting the magick incantations, "We must support the President" and "We must support our troops". both of which mean the killing must continue.

- Cosmic Trigger II

Obviously, the faster we process information, the more rich and complex our models or glosses — our reality-tunnels — will become. Resistance to new information, however, has a strong neurological foundation in all animals, as indicated by studies of imprinting and conditioning. Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show a truly staggering ability to "ignore" certain kinds of information — that which does not "fit" their imprinted/conditioned reality-tunnel. We generally call this "conservatism" or "stupidity", but it appears in all parts of the political spectrum, and in learned societies as well as in the Ku Klux Klan.

- Quantum Psychology

The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred imbeciles.Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans outline their territories by ink excretions on paper.

- Prometheus Rising
I
t only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
fnord fnord fnord fnord
- The Illuminatus Trilogy

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I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout during blowjobs. "Oh Random Chance! Oh Random Chance!" just doesn't cut it….