Guest speaker: Robert Anton Wilson
PROGRAM NOTES:
[NOTE: All quotations below are by Robert Anton Wilson.]
“Most people are living in a world they can’t understand. And when people can’t understand something they tend to go for sinister explanations of it.”
“I prefer to think that, at minimum, there are about 24 conspiracies afoot. . . . I cannot find any proof of any conspiracy that really existed, that was brought into court and convicted, that lasted more than ten years before everybody double-crossed everybody else, and the conspiracy fell apart.”
“He [John von Newman] realized that most of our perceptions are in the ‘maybe’ mode. They’re not yes or no, they’re not true or false, they’re just ‘maybes’. I think ‘maybe logic’ is probably the greatest invention of the 20th century.”
“I regard religion and patriotism as the two major mental illnesses afflicting this planet.”
“The CIA/Tsarist/Nazi Alliance began to me to seem more and more the key to everything that’s been crazy and bizarre and incomprehensible about American foreign policy in the last fifty years. I think the central thinking of the ruling class of the United States is basically within the Tsarist paradigm.”
“Patriotism is loyalty to a gene pool.”
“I would say faith is the chief fomenter of war in the whole history of the world. Even in comparatively secular societies it becomes an article of faith that the government is justified. The other side is all wrong. We’re all right. And nobody’s supposed to think about the question at all. That becomes despicable. I believe we should think about the despicable.”
“It absolutely stops thinking entirely if you’ve got enough faith.”
” ‘Faith is believing what you know aint so’. That’s why they put lightening rods on their churches.”
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Comments from original blog page: http://www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/?p=298
Rafti
This podcast arriving when it does is just one more example of “coincidences abounding”.
Last weekend I was at an extremely narcisistic “Born Again” graduation ceremony for forty students that lasted about two hours!
I was blindsided by the pledge to the Christian flag, and then the pledge to the Bible (only one version of the Bible, the others don’t count), sitting throughout the pledges as a statement of my right to do so (I being 1 in @ 400). They then convinced me they are out to change the world to fit their beliefs, at all costs. Fascists come in many forms.
I think the hippies made the same mistake back in the 60’s (70’s really) “out to change the world to fit their beliefs, at all costs.” In a land of infadults (adults that act like infants) how could we not end up with a dictator?
During the graduation ceremony they even threw in a good helping of self negating phrases including “To suffer is to be saved”, “To die is to live”; or as I prefer to think of it “The Bible according to Charles Manson”. I suspect that if Jesus really came back, and they accepted him as such, his behavior would mortify modern day “Christians”. Jesus must spend a lot of time in Jail, as that is where many people find him.
When I asked what language the Bible was originally written in the response was “English”, when I pointed out that no one in the Bible spoke English, and English didn’t exist then and there, the reply was “IF the Bible was translated it was done so by the hand of God and the translation was perfect.” They did concede that Jesus wasn’t really born on Christmas (It was actually in the Spring when the sheep were giving birth in the fields), and it’s scientifically proven beyond a doubt that nailing a person to a cross through the palms of the hand won’t hold anyone up, the nails have to go through the wrists (just as shown on the Shroud of Turin). So the Bible is a perfect translation loaded with errors placed there by the hand of God? So are we supposed to offer our daughters to angry mobs of sodomites to satiate their sexual desires or not? If Jesus freaks weren’t so closed minded they’d be God’s comics! They are a clear and present threat to personal freedoms, and will stop at nothing in their maniacal effort to run over your dogma with their Karma. They are capable of lying, cheating and stealing, but lack the conscious to undo the harm preferring instead to “pay” for their sins with cheap prayers to imaginary playmates.
“It’s blatantly obvious to anyone who cares to look at reality that God does not play favorites; that is the domain of humans who want to dehumanize other humans” –William Rafti
amic
I had to leave a comment here and say thank you to Lorenzo for podcasting a Robert Anton Wilson talk. I haven’t heard him on your show before, i must admit you never fail to pleasantly surprise me..
Felix
Not a very good RAW talk, out of the dozen or so I’ve heard. Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy it, but that I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for him to really get going, and he never seemed to…
My favourite of his talks is when he gets talking about general semantics, Leary’s eight circuit model of consciousness, and Eastern mysticism.
Cheers to you for a change of pace though, Lorenzo. A bit of talk about conspiracies, and why people believe outlandish stories can often be necessary for a community like ours. Bearing in mind of course that “the universe is stranger than we can imagine”…
Felix
A timely article for a rather provocative UK magazine:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/arti…
EROCx1
Caught the RAW talks this week. Glad you shared him on the salon. I like the RAW on the topics Felix mentioned too. Some time in the future you should play those or his thoughts on drugs & policy in general. Real mind candy. Of course, one can never forget TSOG: The Creature Who Ate The Constitution – Robert Anton Wilson where it reads…
The Piss Police.
“And the Beast said,
“By their pee shall ye judge them,
And by your pee shall ye be judged,
And all shall be judged by their pee,
And in the snow shall their names be written.”
DrPurple
Almost all of RAWs fiction is simply fantastic. I would love to hear more RAW. However, I think his views on religion are childish and misformed. It’s natural for a 14-21 year old to have RAWs view of religion, but when one uses psychedelics I find it hard to believe that one wouldn’t come to a more open-minded and loving view toward all humans who find expression of their experiences of God within one of the myriad religions of the planet. It might sound cute, rebelliious, and often in RAWs wonderful novels hillarious, but it can’t be taken seriously when measured against actual experience. There is a gaian experience, a direct, unmediated, touch/view/sound/smell/taste that can be had… and it takes place daily across the planet both in and outside of organized religions. There is a mytho-poeic beauty to most of the non-fundamentalist religions of the world, and it’s a beauty that is more fully realized and directly experience with the use of plant sacraments.
RAW simply hasn’t enjoyed the power of sacrificial cannibalism that’s offered in many parts of the world. The power of eating a living God is something that I’d think most psychedelic-minded people would enjoy or at least appreciated. But instead the RAW/atheistic/agnostic-but-closed-to-revelatory-experience-POV forces people like him to spout anti-organized religious statements or make wild claims about abuses of individuals in the past (and present) and somehow think that the flawed individual (and community) reactions by some in organized religions apply to all practices at all times. Frankly, this is so.
Rather, as Terrance told us, it’s all about love. Those organized religions that show their love are obviously expressions of the positiveness of the Gaian experience, while those individuals who act hypocritically, irrationally, and against their own stated beliefs are the work of flawed individuals, but not necessarily a flaw that should be applied to all expressions of those religions. In short, there are truths, deep, life-supporting activities that take place every day in organized religions.
So, while it might sound funny to hear RAW talk about communion as cannibalism, it is a deeply positive experience for those who are able to experience it, taking in of the body and blood of Jesus Christ so that throughout the week/month (depending on the sect of Xtianity) one is reminded that God is within them. Protestants take this symbolically. Catholics take it literally, one of the few instances where Catholics are literal, and protestants are symbolic. There are also many non-Christian instances in Hinduism, many pagan sects, many wiccan goddess believers, of getting power/knowledge/joy/ecstacy by imbibing your God or a symbol of it. My personal favorite of these is the worship of Bacchus in nature; positive A-Camp experiences come to mind. (Yes, I’m a heretic toward all my deeply-loved communities).
RAW says faith is believing something you know to be false. Anyone who will meditate on faith seriously, lets say in a candidate or an idea or a person we know, will know that faith isn’t that, at all.
DrPurple
My previous post refers only to RAWs views on religion as expressed in this podcast. RAWs actual views are more coherent and loving in other works/talks of his. There’s an element of humor, too, in almost everything RAW does. This is what makes his novels so enjoyable.
h3r3n0w
I was very happy to see a RAW interview go up on the salon. I got turned on to his writing last year. While I’ve really enjoyed his fiction thus far, I’ve really gotten a lot out of a few of his non-fiction works ‘Prometheus Rising’ and ‘Quantum Psychology’.
I’d love to hear more of him on the salon, though I agree with Felix above, that this talk never really got into the rhythms that I know RAW can hit and didn’t go into what I think are the most valuable topics of Wilson’s works– namely ‘Maybe Logic’ any of his/Leary’s 8-Circuit model of conciousness.
I’d love to see more in the future.
Lorenzo
You have my attention … look for more RAW in the next podcast (#153)
🙂
fun-da-mental
Hello Lorenzo, thanks for you excellent comments on the ‘state of the psychedelic community’. I am continually impressed by your well verbalised comments and thought.
And continue to publish the work of RAW! Cheers and Pura Vida to all here!