In a guest post at the RAW Semantics blog, "RAW political #4," Marky Moon argues that despite the fact that he is known for an essay on "non-Euclidean" politics, Robert Anton Wilson used labels such as "conservative" in many of his writings. Moon also argues that, within reason, the use of the labels can be useful:
"Before we can make intelligent and creative use of political categories/sorts/labels, we probably need to make peace with their conventional usage – ie not nihilistically mock or negate them in a way suggestive of petulant adolescent superiority. The latter, unfortunately, seems a very common mode on social media, and provides rich ground for algorithmic mayhem. Really, we want what the Buddhists call upaya, or skillful means – deconstructive, but also pragmatic, not reflexively fighting convention."
The post identifies Moon as the author of What the Discordians don’t tell you (Unsaying Press, 1991). I'd provide a link, but I can't find one for either the title or "Unsaying Press." (Google insists on telling me about Marquee Moon, an old Television album.) If I get a link, I'll revise this post for anyone who might be interested in the book. [Addendum: See the comments .... Bobby Campbell seems to know this Marky Moon fellow, too!]
6 comments:
I think Marky Moon might be a colleague of Timothy F.X. Finnegan, Dean of the Royal Sir Myles na gCopaleen Astro-Anomalistic Society :)))
Thanks for the mention, Tom. I see it more as an argument *against* a certain subtle but chilling self-censoring restriction over the use of such labels (a restriction which RAW never advised nor suggested, at least not in the manner we sometimes see it now, coming from certain immensely influential figures, who would apparently prefer that people don't use these labels at all. Anyway, maybe best if people read the article for themselves, rather than read too much into our lame summaries. It covers a lot of things RAW-related.
@Brian Thanks, Brian. I would imagine some of my attempts to briefly summarize a long blog post are more successful than others, but of course the link is meant to invite readers to check out the post for themselves.
@Tom - Ah, no prob. I appreciate all the mentions I get here - and the ongoing promotion of RAW's work you do - more I than can say. As for that odd Apophatic bunch, they seem prone to being misunderstood. They're based in a village in the foothills of Snowdon, where Big Cat sighting seem quite common (plus the occasional Yeti). They have no Internet connection, as yet - they rely on someone in England to send them a monthly print-out of Facebook and Twitter so they can keep up-to-date.
I see Von Hanfkopf is submitting under "Marky Moon."
Nice try. We're onto ya.
"Hey man, let's dress up like cops—think of what we could do"
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