The Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Creative Commons photo, source.
The David Lee essay I referenced yesterday had a sentence that jumped out to me: "Well, judging by nearly everyone (but not all) the people I've ever met on the Discordian scene, I'd assumed anyone handling RAW's legacy would be fairly politically Left, and on board with proper climate science."
The assumption that everyone who is a RAW fan is a leftist seems uninformed. But when I make that remark, I am really pointing a finger at myself.
I got interested in RAW when I was in college. I was in a small group of Libertarians at the University of Oklahoma. We were all big fans of the Illuminatus! trilogy, which came out in the 1970s, when I was in college.
I assumed at the time -- and thought for many years -- that most, or at least very many, RAW fans are libertarians. Launching this blog about 16 years ago taught me this was not true. In Britain particularly (David Lee is British) RAW fans tend to be Labour Party types. There are a few British libertarians, but apparently only a few. In the U.S., there are in fact plenty of RAW fans among libertarians. But it's not clear to me that they outnumber people into magick or Bernie Sanders fans.
It took me awhile to realize that Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea attracted a wide range of weirdos, rather than just the sort of weirdos I hung out with in college. Do other RAW fans make that same mistake?
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3 comments:
my perception is that RAW moved from libertarian to left as he aged, and that society in general has gone either hard left or high right, that the middle/libertarian is a rarity, and most RAW fans lean significantly to the left now. Hard right RAW fans have always seemed to have missed the joke on the conspiracy front and seem more and more intolerable these days.
David mistook my pushback on "climate crisis" for denial of "climate change" even though I used the phrase "climate change" in the very next sentence in my communication with him. I tried to clarify that with him, but it sounds like he did not revise his public comments. I haven't bothered to look and have no more interest in what he has to say. His original comments were much more off base, but Rasa gave him some feedback and he revised them a bit.
The whole thing was a mess. I take a lot of responsibility for that. And I regret inviting him to contribute in the first place. And he did not seem to take rejection well.
My assessment is that we all mostly see him the way we want to and claim him as a kindred thinker. Myself included. I often find myself disagreeing with statements I see that assert "RAW would think X about Y were he alive today". But of course I usually assume he'd think what I think (and what I think is usually shaped by something he wrote or said).
Thank-you for posting David's essay; he makes some good points and its a worthwhile read.
What he posted was his first submission. My initial reaction to it was favorable with the exception of the strident political rhetoric. I generally agreed with the views, but thought the tone and certainty of the remarks to not jibe with the Maybe Magick invocation. David was asked for specific changes regarding that and he sent in a second submission which completely complied. During this process, a number of new articles by RAW came in; one of them covered similar ground as David's piece in terms of hope and optimism. We opted to go with the RAW article.
The suggestion that sombunall editors were not on board with "proper climate science" stems from an objection to how it was characterized as a "crisis" in the piece. It seems reasonable to debate whether it's a crisis or not while still agreeing with the science that holds that man's impact on the environment is real, dangerous and accelerating.
My personal opinion is that we see a real stupidity crisis among the power possessors who seem more concerned with fighting each other, fighting wars and holding on to power than putting their attention on making the world a better place and helping out people in need. They appear in service to themselves, not in service to others.
Bottom line: Maybe Magick isn't a political book, it doesn't take sides. It can be used to great advantage and enjoyed by people of any political persuasion.
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