On Bluesky, Brian Dean of the RAW Semantics blog had suggested that a portion of the Wikipedia bio on RAW ought to be revised. Brian writes, "And while I'm momentarily online, I want to say I think this paragraph in RAW's wikipedia entry does him a disservice. The idea he wrote books 'on ESP, mental telepathy' etc comes from a poorly informed NYT obituary. (He *referenced* many things in his books of course). I hope someone corrects this."
The offending passage says, "In addition to writing several science-fiction novels, Wilson also wrote non-fiction books on extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs, and what Wilson called "quantum psychology".[6]"
Brian has written up a better substitute and posted it in the form of a fake FBI document, above.
When I looked at the Wikipedia entry, I noticed that the bibliography also needs updating, as it gets the title of Beyond Chaos and Beyond wrong and appear to omit some of the posthumous titles. Anyone can edit Wikipedia and I have done that myself in the past, although I think I'll wait and see if Rasa or someone else wants to try to fix the Wikipedia entry.
5 comments:
I'm not sure the "anyone can edit Wikipedia" notion is still true. Every edit I've ever made to Wikipedia-- all accurate, some as simple as grammatical corrections-- were all instantly changed back. I suspect only the annointed are allowed to edit. Be prepared to see corrections incorrected back.
What’s called the “offending” paragraph sounds completely accurate, to me. All those subjects get covered in CT 1 and elsewhere. Brian’s paragraph appears great too, but doesn’t mention any of the paranormal stuff. Perhaps they can both be included?
Just to clarify: Brian's rewrite does look far superior than the one from the Times which could maybe be edited. For instance, "extrasensory perception" and "mental telepathy" sound redundant.
Subjects RAW wrote a lot about not included in either include magick and skepticism.
Thanks for mentioning this, Tom. The paragraph that I think somewhat mischaracterises RAW's work is the second para in his Wikipedia entry - a short summary of what Wilson wrote his books "on". That's why I think it does a disservice to RAW.
Let me try to explain why I think this. If you were to list 5 or 6 things that his books "are" "on" - to someone new to his work - would you put "ESP" and "mental telepathy" as the first things on that short list?
I don't mean to imply that RAW doesn't mention those topics in his books at all - he obviously does. And they certainly have a place in a long list of all the things he does reference. As I added on Bluesky, by way of illustration (not a great one): if a sociologist wrote books on sociology that had a few chapters dealing with 'alien abduction' and 'satanic panic', etc, you wouldn't summarize her oeuvre by saying she wrote books "on space aliens & Devil worship". (Not that I'm saying RAW wrote books on sociology, to be clear!)
Even with books such as The New Inquisition or CT1, which seem full of examples of "extraordinary phenomena" (or however you'd describe those things), I don't think you'd ideally summarize those books as being "on extraordinary phenomena". Or on ESP or mental telepathy, etc.
I have my own biases, which is why I don't think I'm the person to amend the Wikipedia. I'm too much of a fan and advocate with certain specific interests. And I certainly didn't intend my fake FBI description as the "correct" or superior version. It's just the kind of wording I'd lean to if I were to attempt to describe RAW's non-fiction books in a short para to someone who knew nothing about RAW (while knowing I was bound to be leaving out very, very much).
Btw, the phrase "esoteric brain-change" that I used was meant to cover everything from Zen, yogas and Magicks to ingestions of substances and uses of technologies and practices, etc, etc, that alter consciousness in some extra- or non-"ordinary" manner. Basically a way to avoid long lists (which one would otherwise need to describe all the things RAW's books include). Basically my cop-out!
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