-Caveat Lector-
ROBERT ANTON WILSON
http://users.bestweb.net/~kali93/raw.htm
Paradigm Shift Interview by Philip H. Farber
We think many of our readers are already familiar with the work of Robert Anton
Wilson. If
you're not -- hoo boy! -- we are a little envious of you, because you've got the
chance to
discover for the first time an amazing collection of books including Illuminatus!
(with Robert
Shea), The Earth Will Shake, The Widow's Son, Prometheus Rising, Cosmic Trigger,
Quantum Psychology, and a bunch more. Wilson's novels and non-fiction are guaranteed to
blow the cobwebs from your neurons, rattle your cage, yank your chain, and open your
eyes.
Paradigm Shift recently had the pleasure of conducting the following interview with Dr.
Wilson:
PHF: What is it that you most like to do with your time these days?
Robert Anton Wilson: I like to get stoned and surf the Web. I find all sorts of
wonderful
wonders, both in text and art. This hobby occupies a few hours a night, three or four
nights
a week. Otherwise, I enjoy most of what I do but feel more pressure about it. I look
after
my wife Arlen, who is recovering from a stroke; I shop and cook and houseclean etc.;
and I
keep working on an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories for Harper Collins. All that
has its
own rewards, but stoned Websurfing is just pure play... and often educational, too.
PHF: Heh heh.... That's a common pastime around here, too. Do you think that the
hyperlinked nature of the web encourages a different kind of thinking? If so, does
surfing
stoned enhance that?
RAW: I kind of suspect that hyperlinking encourages holistic or at least nonlinear
perception, but I had a lot of experience with that before the Web. Most of my
favorite 20th
century writers --especially Joyce, Pound, Williams, Burroughs -- seem to have a
hyperlinked style. McLuhan compared them to the front page of the New York Times and
Kenner compared them to film montage. It's all blended in my head --nonlinear page
make-
up in journalism, montage in film, collage in painting, Joyce, Pound, Williams,
Burroughs,
now the Web -- and being stoned certainly helps you groove with that kind of "cubist"
sensibility. In fact, stoned dial surfing on TV makes for much the same effect. (I once
thought I invented dial surfing but so many others invented it at about the same time
I don't
think we'll ever know who was first...)
All that said, websurfing remains the most fun, and probably the most educational.
PHF: What are some of your favorite sites to surf stoned?
RAW: Well, I'd rather turn that around and ask you and your readers the same question.
I'm working up a list of The 10 Best Sites To Visit While Stoned, which I'll add to my
own
web site when it's finished, and I'm still looking for more leads...Just tack them on
at the
end of this interview and I'll explore all the ones that are new to me.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Please send submissions for the Best Sites To Visit While Stoned to
[EMAIL PROTECTED], and we will forward suggestions to Dr. Wilson.
PHF: Okay... I'm sure we have enough stoned people surfing these pages. Perhaps we can
set up a form to submit URLs that can accompany this interview.
RAW: I hope so. By the way, not to be too coy, a few of my favorite web sites, which I
have
bookmarked and don't keep the URLs for, are the Unofficial George Carlin site, the
Monty
Python sites, the SubGenius site, the Discordian site and the Republic of Texas site.
PHF: Anyway... From what you see in your virtual travels, do you think people are
generally
using the web with intelligence, or has it become a wasteland to rival prime time
television?
RAW: I don't know what "people"are doing with the Web. Since most people seem to me to
be moderately retarded, I assume they're not using much of what is available to them.
However, the brightest people I know are using the Web very creatively and all seem to
be
getting brighter...or at least better informed.
I assume the brightest people use TV that way, too, and they have used books that way
for
500 years now.
PHF: Our webzenmaster, John Hoke, asks, "Do you think the web is a conspiracy to keep
all
the other conspiracies out in the open?"
RAW: Well, that's certainly an amusing way of looking at it. In general, I regard the
Web as
the closest approximation yet achieved to the ideal of a free marketplace of ideas. The
Marxist criticism of democracy ("freedom of the press belongs only to those who own the
press") has always been uncomfortably close to the truth. But with the Web (and
newsgroups, chat rooms etc.) more people have more freedom of the press or freedom of
speech than ever before. I believe that is the most positive development in this
generation.
It's not just the conspiracy pages that show a much greater diversity of opinion than
the
general media. Diversity is all over the net. Everybody who can save up enough money to
get a computer can send their own version of reality to the world at large. "Just what
I
always wanted," Tom Jefferson would say.
PHF: Is there anything you'd like to see happening on the 'net that you haven't found
there?
RAW: A more perfect union of internet, TV and VCRs. And that can't be more than a few
years away...
PHF: I'm interested in your recent work with Richard Bandler. Have you found NLP to be
useful in your writing?
RAW: Yes and no. Dr. Bandler keeps insisting that I have used NLP for years, even if I
didn't
know it myself. I can see what he means. Both Richard and I have been strongly
influenced
by Alfred Korzybski, whose system of non-aristotelian logic and general semantics
underlie
a lot of what Bandler does in his workshops and hypnotherapy; and they also underlie
much
of my "guerilla ontology," not just in my ideas but in my styles of presentation and
my way
of altering styles. (For instance, my psychedelic theories derive as much from
Korzybski as
from dear old Timothy Leary.)
So you might say I "knew" NLP before I studied it. On the other hand, studying NLP has
helped me a great deal. I understand my own work better and therefore I think I can do
it
more skillfully and powerfully now.
To put this into wider context, in a recent conversation Dr Bandler agreed with me that
Faulkner uses many NLP techniques in his prose, particularly in his famous long
sentences,
where the readers absorb a lot more than they consciously comprehend. And, of course,
Faulkner also influenced my work a good deal.
PHF: Okay... Since NLP was developed from modeling effective language, that makes
sense. Apart from writing skills, have you been playing with it in other ways?
Accessing
altered states or otherwise changing brains?
RAW: Of course. Chiefly, I use it to relax and stop worrying -- two things I need to
work on
these days, due to medical problems afflicting people near and dear to me. I use a
combination Sufi listening exercise (which gets you into relaxation and near trance)
and
Bandler's mighty mantra, which you repeat every time you start going back into worry or
anxiety. The mantra is slow and spaced and it says to the voice of worry, "Shut the
fuck
up." After a few tries you get very good at making that damned voice shut the fuck up.
I've also used some NLP techniques in my workshops to make various meditation exercises
quicker and more efficient. No doubt about it, NLP has one of the most practical and
efficient reprogramming systems around.
PHF: Do you think NLP or Ericksonian hypnosis has potential for changing imprints? Or
just
conditioning?
RAW: Gee whillikers, I wish you wouldn't ask such hard questions. I have been trying to
figure this one out ever since I learned a little NLP, and the more I learn, the more
unsure I
become. NLP certainly changes conditioning. Maybe, just maybe, it can even reverse
imprinting. I'll have more definite opinions about that in another year or so.
PHF: Damn... I was hoping you had the answer to that one! Anyway... on to other
territory... What's your take on the Clinton administration's attempt to squelch
medical
marijuana, even in the states where people have voted for medical herb?
RAW: I hate to become predictable, but I regard Clinton's position as not only wrong,
morally and medically, but unconstitutional, fascistic and all-around rotten. If Bob
Marley
hadn't said it already about the pope, I'd say Clinton was Imperial Wizard of the Ku
Klux
Klan, Godfather of the Mafia and general all-around Anti-Christ; but I guess that line
does
work better for the pope.
To sound less violent and more precise, the Constitution lists the powers of the
federal
government very clearly. Nowhere does it list the power to create an official school of
correct medical theory and use force to prevent competition by rival theories.
This power is clearly reserved "to the States or the people," an ambiguity I assume was
deliberate because the founders wanted power divided as many ways as possible and each
part in some tension (a la Bucky Fuller's dynamic tension philosophy) with all the
others.
The growth of federal power over all the traditional checks and balances is the worst
single
event of this dying century and I hope it will be reversed in the next century.
This is not just a matter of one medical heresy; the FDA is cracking down more and more
often on any doctor who does not obey orthodoxy, and orthodoxy always turns out to be
that which benefits the billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry. Materialists may
consider that
match between orthodoxy and profits mere coincidence, Jungians may call it
synchronicity,
but to me it looks like a conspiracy to rip off the public.
There's a new medicine for AIDS, I forget its name, but it will cost $20,000 a year.
Those
with less money than that will just have to suffer on. Now really does anybody believe
this
medicine would be legal if you could grow it in your backyard and it made no profits
for the
corporate elite?
As Bismarck said, "Laws are like sausages. You have more respect for them if you
haven't
seen how they're made."
Oh to get back to that Bob Marley quote. I don't really consider Clinton the Godfather
of the
Mafia or Imperial Wizard of the KKK, but he does look more and more like a General All-
Around Anti-Christ.
PHF: Heh... I'm in agreement. Do you think the various pro-medical-pot bills that
passed in
a few states bodes well for legalization in the near future, in spite of Clinton and
the
pharmaceutical industry? Under what conditions would YOU like to see herb legalized,
if at
all?
RAW: I have an Ideal Answer and a more Pragmatic Answer. Ideally, I would like a
government that let everybody to hell alone and let us all make our own medical
decisions
and even our own recreational decisions. That, I think, is the kind of government
intended
by the Constitution. The idea that we are ignorant children and Papa Government has to
make all our decisions for us is not a democratic idea, not at all; it's a medieval,
almost
Papist idea. I'd get rid of all victimless crime laws and let everybody do anything
that harms
not their neighbors. I know that sounds looney, like one of those 18th Century
radicals of
the Tom Jefferson ilk, but ideally it is the kind of government I'd like.
Pragmatically, since most Americans, like most people everywhere, have an emotional
anchor to the patriarchal- authoritarian structure, as described by Reich in The Mass
Psychology of Fascism, I don't expect the radical ideas of 18th Century intellectuals
to have
any sudden rebirth here, or anywhere else on the planet. So, pragmatically, I just
hope for
gradual moderation of the present insane drug laws, as more and more people, even
conservatives, become more and more aware that we're spending vast billions of dollars
on
a "war" that cannot be won, while other parts of our country are falling apart because
of
lack of funding for better schools, civilized medical care, etc. According to Pete
McWilliams's
Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, we spend around 450 billion a year trying to enforce
victimless crime laws. People who want a balanced budget or a smaller national debt
have
more and more realized what a vast waste that is. They will favor moves toward more
moderation and some sanity.
Of course, the major argument for cutting back on the War On Sin is simply that in real
crimes you've got victims who are eager to help the police identify the culprit, public
agreement that such crimes (robbery rape etc.) should not be allowed, and a general
cooperation between the people and the cops. In victimless crimes, you have the
opposite
situtation. The only way the power elite can really win any war against Sin is to spend
trillions, not billions, and establish a full-scale totalitarianism. There's enough
growing
resistance to federal power already; I don't think the public will allow the higher
taxes and
total loss of liberty such a war would cost us.
PHF: Free associating from the federal gov't to conspiracies... Do you think the
current
media glut concerning aliens, X-files, Men in Black, etc., is an indication of some
organized
attempt at propaganda or disinformation? Or something rising from the collective
unconscious?
RAW: This requires a complicated answer. I don't see one organized conspiracy running
the whole show, but I do agree with Jacques Vallee and Phil Klass that the government
has
used UFO flaps to help plant certain belief systems (Vallee) and also to cover up other
things they didn't want us to know (Klass) --for instance, in early days, the U2 spy
planes.
However I think most UFO events come from somewhere else...and my favorite model
combines Jung (spontaenous release of archetypes of the collective unconscious) and
Persinger (energy fluctuations that provoke real Lights, usually ball lightning, plus
"poltergeist" type phenomena (dancing furniture, electric systems going on and off
unpredictibly etc.) plus brainwave change unleashing the Jungian archetypes...>
But these are just my favorite models. The UFO experience seems to me profoundly more
puzzling than either the dogmatic Believers or dogmatic Debunkers seem to realize. I
guess
my third favorite model, or non-model, is Hynek's agnostic notion that we may have to
change basic ideas (about time, space, ego or whatnot) before we can begin to fathom
this
galloping wierdity.
Based on experience with media, I don't think any central conspiracy "controls"
everything
totally, although certain ideas get notably ignored in mass media and certain ideas get
reinforced over and over... but on the other hand, what gets fashionable depends most
often on box office returns. For instance we've had so many films about serial
killers,not
because the Power Elite wants to make us more afraid of one another, but because The
Silence of the Lambs did so damned well; and we have so many alien movies because ET
did so damn well, and now we have sinister alien movies because X Files did so damn
well.
PHF: Any thoughts about where such a radical change in basic ideas might come from?
RAW: As of today (August 11, 1997) I find the most interesting ideas in traditional
Buddhism, Nietzsche, Charles Fort, several quantum physicists (Nick Herbert, David
Bohm,
Fred Wolfe, David Finkelstein) and in Rupert Sheldrake. Add together the Buddhist yoga
of
detachment from fixed ideas and emotions, Nietzche's and Fort's merciless assault on
the
cultural prejudices that are so deeply embedded we usualy don't notice them, quantum
uncerainty and holism, Sheldrake's special variety of holism, and I think we have the
beginning of a hint of the New Paradigm we need.But after looking at this list I
realize I
should have included Korzybski's general semantics, Bandler's neurolinguistic
programming
and Leary's evolutionary-existentialist neuro- psychology or info-psychology as he most
recently labelled it.
PHF: Okay... so why are conspiracy theories so popular?
RAW: Information flow is accelerating, as several studies have indicated and as I have
documented in a few of my books. Information acceleration leads to fractal functions,
according to mathematician Theodore Gordon. Fractal functions are always unpredictible.
Okay?
Well, most people don't know enough math and sociology to understand that simple
paragraph.All they know is that everything is getting more unpredictible and that looks
spooky to them. (The unpredictible tends to spook all mammals...) Unable to grasp what
is
happening (accelerated evolution), most domesticated primates feel spooked and
threatened and look around for some Evil Force to blame. Conspiracy theories will
continue
to proliferate as long as the acceleration does not include an acceleration of general
education...but that will have to happen as the whole world moves into high gear. Then
we'll have more understanding (science) and less demonology (conspiracy theory.)
PHF: Any suggestions for those who might find themselves curious about conspiracy
theories, or on the verge of swallowing one whole?
RAW: I am 100 per cent in favor of studying conspiracy theories because, next to
quantum
mechanics, they represent the best test of how well you can handle ambiguity and
uncertainty. Most people at present cannot handle indeterminacy at all and generally
evade
it by rushing to premature certitude. If you really study conspiracy theory carefully,
examining all its flavors, the result is like studying quantum theory and all of its
conflicting
models. You either go bonkers or you learn to think beyond the aristotelian either/or
logic of
our culture.
The best way to study conspiracy theory without swallowing one theory whole is to
prepare
yourself by a thorough training in clasical logic, fuzzy logic, general semantics and
quite a
bit of Zen-Sufi humor, until you have internalized the realization that Universe is
infinite
chaos and any model you make at a date cannot possibly contain all of it but only
represents the mixture of your knowledge and ignorance at that date.
PHF: You recently joined the Board of Advisors of the Fully Informed Jury Association.
Why
is this group so important in your estimation?
RAW: Well, after I quit the ACLU I had to find some outlet for my energies. (The ACLU
has
decided they're in favor of discrimination against certain groups.I'm not in favor of
discrimination against any groups, so I had to withdraw.)
The Fully Informed Jury Assocation seems to me the best safeguard against the absolute
tyranny of the federal government, toward which we seem to be headed. When juries know
that they have the right, both de jure and de facto, to nullify any law they find
obnoxious or
trannical, we have a real chance of withstanding the increase of omnipresent State
meddling in every aspect of our lives. (They're prying into our bladders already. When
even
your bladder is not private and safe from invasion, how much liberty is left
concretely?)
De facto any jury can vote as they damned please, and they often do. De jure, they have
the right to acquit when the law itself seems unfair or unjust to them, but judges
often lie
and tell them they do not have this right. FIJA is around to spread the word that
juries have
had this right since Magna Carta and still have this right, and any judge who says
otherwise
is a liar and tyrant.
Of course, as an advocate of jury nullification, I also belive in the equally old
tradition that
juries should be chosen totally at random. In the early days, a jury was the first
twelve men
the bailiff saw when he walked out the door of the court. It should be both men and
women,of course, but it should remain equally random. The lawyers should have no
ability
to stack a jury. The traditional system, with its random factor, comes as close as
humanly
possible to obtaining a true cross section of the common sense, the common decency and
the common humanity of the people, and I trust those factors, if not blindly the way
Catholics trust the pope, certainly a lot more than I trust lawyers and judges.
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