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

¿23?¿23?¿23?¿23?¿23?
¿23?¿23?¿23?¿23?¿23?¿23?
¿23?¿23?¿23?¿23?¿23?¿23?
¿23?¿23?¿23?¿23?¿23?¿23?

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….

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Comments (3 of 3)

Fuck Aristotle!

by nothing new there then

Sat Feb 10, 2007 13:25

His codified squiggles and innate sexism really did fuck things up for quite a while.

RIP Wilson- there is nothing new under the sun, not even vague squiggles
on codifying anarchistic thought, so I shall stop my squiggling right no......................

RaW was a grand bloke but bad artist. I hope he goes out of print.

by obit :: iosaf ::

Sat Feb 17, 2007 16:37

Robert Anton Wilson spent more time than you'd expect in Ireland. -What with him knowing about worm holes and time slips and stuff. He should have just been able to enter our narrative for the original ideas. When he launched the initiative on the sticker design (in illustration) he invoked a "finnerty" and skirted so close to Flann O'Brien / Myles na gCopeleen [. http://www.rawilson.com/csicon.shtml ] Though his wikipedia entry did not record the similarity till after his death. Except for his final months he seemed to make a good living at the packaged product his series of books were. & there was always a faintest suspicion that he had to hallmark that material as his own to stop others jumping on the gravy wagon complete with their special gremoires of all the wavy gravies. & thus it would have been natural since he sold to a north American audience that ideas and inspiration from un-readable Joyce or others might be....so cool. Raw was a Nietszchean who perhaps introduced more people to Terence Mc Kenna than otherwise would have found him. Why!? (who ever is paying attention to me from the assembly) - don't you know what it might have meant?
The aliens wouldn't have got us and even if they had – they would have remained simple beings with a funny head but four reliably placed limbs. Mushrooms wouldn't have been bio-chemtrailed out the ecosystem - they would have just remained "our little secret". & the most insufferable of all - Dan Brown would not have had the groundwork of a prepared market so as to do what he has done. Like it's gone past a joke. Eric Rodenberry's star trek would never have gone. No atlantis stargate - no bucks roger - no george lucas- no death (sentimental) of Hollywood. Post-modernity had arrived & all was grist for the mill. But only some people would get paid for it. It was very much in their interest to keep post-modernity fashionable. The result was a re-colonialisation of our past. It has achieved no more depth than “Dreamworks” constant sanitisation of our global ethnic cultures. Anarchist writers never really lived "off" their writings nor are they likely to in the future. In the past it would have seemed as hollow as Sid & Nancy's cheeks. In fact as a representational group they seemed to be particularly hapless at keeping steady incomes or employment.

As a writer I'd put r.a.w. in a heap under the complete Terry Pratchet, Douglas Adams, Hugh Rankins to mention 3 English writers of entertaining books which are fill the Tolkien / Wagner appetite of retarded imaginations which really need the huge battle scene. They are all writers who translate badly & made no attempt to write simplified second versions of their work, which as a translator I take as a sign of poor writing. No way would a copy of RaW be getting near my copies of Joyce. I even have qualms of Roddy O’Doyle leaning into Flann O Brien since someone borrowed Patrick Mc Cabe’s “butcher boy”. But if someone was coming around then I’d have to stack the bookshelves carefully to appear more erudite. I usually keep books on the floor which appears ignorant.

Some writers are original and tell stories we think we've never heard before but they delight us because we have. Some others write and tell you about themselves, some even better ones (as Chesterton another right Nietszchean tried to forgive himself) just get you to think they're writing about themselves. His words were “good writing tells you about the character bad writing tells you about the writer”. Some other writers amongst the greatest in fact - hardly dared to invent fiction. It is a dangerous art..... to make an idea something else. The greatest writers to whom I refer were readers.

Weeks ago I had food at a friends house & admired an old photo of one those the greatest writers. By co-incidence I had found a file on the internet of him reading one his texts & been strangely phazed by how it effected me or how I found myself hearing it. It was not the voice of the poem as I had read it nor as I had heard others recite it. As I launched into an account of this - another person who didn't recognise the photo of that great writer - J.L. Borges asked who he was & why, noticing the slight warming of temperature as both I and R (our host) smiled sharing a great respect for JLB. (But there was no reason that person should have recognised JL Borges - you are not supposed to see writers, just give them good tables in restaurants - near the door so they can leg it. You are not supposed to see them glaring from web-pages or the backs of paperbacks with the slightly constipated look of the mighty magickian ). I tried to put together pithy reasons why Borges is & was so great without getting into the comparison of myths, legends, cabala, magic, philosophy - "I'm in weird groups on the internet".. I couldn't express pithily why Borges was and is - because to do so would be to excel him. I would have to explain the adjective he gave his name to in an shorter way than merely say :- read him & understand his adjective.
http://www.borgesian.com/
Erudition is a very pre-internet value. & then my friend R. put it so –
"Borges was a great reader who knew how to write with greatness."

I hope RaW & his extended group go out of print. not out of any nastiness - far from it - rather I think he & they would be happiest to lurk on the internet till the stage comes no-one can plug-in the java scripts anymore & he becomes like one of those indestructible CD's we all used to see on "tomorrow's world". R.a.W. wanted to report dying without interest, completely resigned and calm - almost with apathy as if it were to be another "oh i done that. oh i know what that is. Ya! It’s a inter-quantum-dimensional tunnel – the masons had a sign for it – carved into rock on Mars too - have you heard my surreal jokes? I don't use "is"!!!! mad no?" let's be Joycean again. Oh yes do! I'll bellow the sound effects. Mnnngkqaw

Yet when his child died tragically many years ago, he had part of her body preserved using the cryogenics. I don't think such a decision is easily explained by either a trendy modernity or inability to accept loss. To enter the complete remains of a family member is hard enough - to surgically remove the head in the belief that it may be re-animated or put in some form of stasis - is something else entirely.

[ i notice this forum has no tick buttons & limited html options….Why can't I upload my videos? I'm an artist. you won't compete with the other packages. you have to serve the community. Where do my comments go? ]

They were the published writers who were at kernel of their activity successful fanzine collectors & knew about the "scene" before anyone else because they bought the records every week and hung out on the same sofa in the club or teepee on the site. They could have been the Richard Branson of Ska or Trojan records. Young Richard knew all te best sounds & was just so cool – he deserved to be a millionaire. They were not the beats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats Nor did they offer a shamanistic route out of this reality or address any real material problem (such as losing hair or establishing communities – not throwing festivals) & that is still one problem they left behind. I find myself thinking about another Mr Wilson a British one who started out as a radio dj, did local television being a prat - and then set up “factory records” - gurggle gurggle - oh then he invented Madchester – Baz not Taz– the Ryder brothers - yeah I did that- I'm Tony Wilson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Wilson

No wonder kids brought shooters into his club.

& it makes me wonder - because I did that too. all of it. make music, do parties, pop my eyes out on stalks, speak in tongues, put my head in bass bins, and attempt to flog experimental drugged drinks on a hippy stall at the back of festivals. & I didn't need to hang out with & out of the Ryder Brothers for the pleasure. & I did the RaW/McKenna thing too. So what? When we found ourselves in millienialism in London mid-90's and communality was found between different political and social groups. Rts! didn't really count on people who couldn't walk under street signs because of the psychic wave inteference or others who would be able to do that sort of thing - even if it sort of meant keeping thier house squatted - "because the aliens were just about to interract".

I'll be honest after what remained of the tapes of Fear & Loathing - once you take out the "I could drug and drink you under the table" bragging - I'm not sure I'd want to get playboy or rolling stone magazines of the last 40 years and read all, that is most, even more than 3 paperbacks full of Gonzo himself. But what makes Hunter S. Thomson special still - was his end as much as how he too followed in the path of the beats. His final strangely shaped word meant everything. “Formally. in html with comments attached.” that exact same way we condemn all the evil of this world. Gonzo gave us "extreme life thrills" not "near death tingling". & We all remembered him a year later for how that thrilling life was terrified of death. His is one of the most cross-posted death notices on the global indymedia network. & so he lost the fight when death came looking for him & that was the white rabbit in one word “counseler”.
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/74399

the fine print.

Now the illustration is a fnord. you'll realise that as soon as you look at it. It's why you don't really like it. Just remember what the brain feels like and next time you get that sensation - there'll be another fnord. close to you. fnords can hide in audio files, computer screens, and most of all on television. Especially when you're feeling optimistic at that turn in the biorhythm when the holistic medicine finally pays off. & you’ve only been on medieval medicine for six months now. Up and at you that fnord will come. Many but not of all us see them in socfnordlist fnord.ork fnord.par fnord.posters". Some more sensitive types can't turn on the television because of them. Learn that they are arguably a useful part of existence. Less like the psychic viral material the fanzine readers just to suggest & more like really healthy bacteria that you need in your colon to help you shit properly and keep your cholesterol down. Become aware of your own ability to fnord others. Practise the oxymoron get a fluorescent pen & highlight all the co-incidental numbers. Robert Anton Wilson died 11th of first month 2007 and wasn't sure if he could trace his existence back to January 18th 1932. He is credited with the Aristotelian work of classifying the fnord after its previous discovery by Kerry Thornley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerry_Thornley of "zenarchy" (probably spoke Esperanto)-Despite the attempts made to classify the phenomena in different disciplines after Descartes & Spinoza. There was no "discovery", no flag to be planted on the brain or physical organism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fnord But what did occur was a dangerous synchreticism against the backdrop of revisionist understanding of the human condition. Which is just as appalling really & truly as the whole gamut of “spiritual” experience crammed into a young person such as the italian or spanish homeless and jobless squatters at rave parties in 90's london who my swedish housemate insisted on cleansing . without chill-out or water ? Can you really cleanse someone by closing your eyes, waving incense over the head and then giving them tiger balm to rub on their nostrils?
It's like would you copyright & patent & issue souvenir mugs with "deja-vu" written as one word? "Perhaps yes. If you stirred up masonic conspiracy and put a symbol on it - there's a sucker born every dimension." would you ? just for the money? But what was missing in the fanzines was supposed to enter the "essays". Yet the selection of mind candy of one numbed the other. The conspiracies which found audience did so for reasons. They had been promoted in the inter-war period & played central parts in propaganda throughout Europe. Franco's stock explanation of all evil - was the alliance of masons, jews and the English who encouraged the "rojo-seperatistas". Hitler shared the prejudice but still didn't give Franco Mauritania. There are such people around now I suspect (not like Franco & Hitler but who can sell social poison as mental candy). The Celtic Tiger nurtured them. "I sense it". But they started arriving back then. & curiously a lot of them stopped off in Ireland – from the USA less from the UK “to write their novels”…"listen to the magical speech"…. “cultural carpetbaggers”.

But if you don't take my word for it - that all this type of writing & reading is crap & always, was. At time of death the last "noteworthy" recycling and neutralisation of our cultural roots with the sort of cut & paste borroughs would have fouled cry at was entitled "William Reich in Hell". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich_in_Hell It took as subject (a musical) the death of Reich the psychoanalyst, his imprisonment - the mystery - the conspiracy - but all packed in RaW mental soul candy. Marlyn Monroe and Tibetan buddhism get to sing snatches of melody whilst de rigour favourites of de Sade & the Golden Dawn come into it too. But is there actually an exploration of the why & how the CIA/FBI killed him & destroyed his papers? Or does the work merely confirm Reich's papers were taken - he had found something - he was working on something else - and Kate Bush's song did his mystery and legacy more credit, perhaps encouraged more curiosity.....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbusting perhaps allowed others to follow and treat upon the same material without "oh you can't do that. RaW did it. i've the t-shirt". & this from the careerist who "faithfully attended to disinformation activist events". No-one would have bothered with 11 conspiracies if RaW hadn’t jumped on Borroughs "23" & so perhaps it is "co-incidence" that RaW died on the 11th of the 1st month. Whether he is with Reich in Hell or Borroughs in Space. we don't know. Just that l want his papers to go out of print. Maybe a kind reader would call up the NSA? you don't need a number - just life the telephone receiver.

Many of us did and many of us did not have contact with psychedelics & were quite capable of assimilating those experiences using intellectual & social tools closer to home. There was no hadith of the who, why, where code of psychedelic experimentation or sub-cultural transference. To allow those who congregated around Timothy Leary (as his mind clearly fell to tatters) that privelage is as trite as to credit Michael McLaren with anti-capitalism or Madonna with eroticism. It was a sneaky & sly wound which anarchism, libertarianism & many other "sub cultural groups" had to suffer. But with time the damage heals. This is perhaps (leaving aside pop philosophy & cult writers) I worry about the Chavez & Castro package.
So - Sartre wouldn't shag Simone for shame which is why he let everyone know they were chaste. During the little gap between such shame & Foucault is where enough people were trained to sell the RaW package. One in its time as successful and politically useful as the Geldof/Bono package is today. Those who saw the fanzines as anarchistic or representing anarchism made a syllogistic mistake. Not even Tony Wilson with his stable of bands "joy's division" "durutti's column" and formula of factory records - oh so clever- thought to encourage people to politicise the package or package the politics. He admitted as much both times around the carousel, first for "factory records" then later for the "happy Monday". It was in his words "irony" & then threw in "post-modernism".

So just you ponder - before the mix of conspiracy theory, sex, drugs, rock & roll, travel, grooviness, bit of sinister touch me not, anarchy, which that generation of freaks packaged up out of your missed school and museum time -

Jones kept you quiet.

" I'm not going to touch psychedelic articles again at least until Albert Hoffman is stone dead... & no freezer " Hoffman’s centenary birthday - http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=73750
Albert's 101 years of age now an authentic near death experience- http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=73750
Drug debate: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/73978

© iosaf mac diarmada. 17 - ii - 2007 the anniversary of Kasparov's 2 human victories & 1 loss against the chess IBM programed supercomputer Deep Blue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_blue

never trust a wilson. reclaim & deconstruct "fnords".

it is just co-incidence that Robert Anton Wilson died on Albert Hoffman's 101st birthday (11/01/07)

by .:. - the war on fnordism is declared.

Sat Feb 17, 2007 18:57

so many fnord (((eyes))) fnord [ + 1] on this page to get that little link.
Maybe he didn't follow wilhelm reich to hell after all. " strange people Raw was never paranoid the other one we shudder to guess.

Maybe RaW went to room 101 instead.

Now Mr wilson - you're neither Tony wilson nor Colin wilson - on the record data from all those little wires we put in your house which never came out - we know you didn't like the Baz nor did you know Crowley. you never touched the harold wilson coup. Allow me to introduce to you my colleague, the learned and erudite De Selby who will discuss some matters with you.
5 = 2+3.....2+2=5
you spilt some secrets
on the earth like milk.

ah!
...he'll be there a long time yet. We're not ending the world for robert anton Wilson or any bloody Wilson.

i shall write a series of books with him as a character & protagonist. & use "fnord" a lot. If you're just looking for interesting facts and not into absorbing political movement life stuff - click this link & read the story of how the bad fnords almost won. This might interest you if you had been fortuanate enough to live in ignorance of underground culture. & No! "it is not co-incidence" If you have deja vu & have read that last sentance several times now - stop clicking the link. You're a moebius strip. Now close your eyes & we'll shove some tiger balm up your nose.
Albert Hoffman is 101 years in decimal & really scared of dying............................ so would i be.................wouldn't u? RIP Hunter S. & RAW & all writers for they honestly know not - what they do. http://indymedia.ie/article/80939&comment_limit=0&conde...83866

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The Death of Robert Anton Wilson.

Comments (3 of 3)