Scott Alexander on Scott Adams

In a previous post, I referred to Scott Adams as "my Ezra Pound," noting that I wasn't on board with many things he said or did but that I remained a big fan of Dilbert up until Adams' death. That post in turn linked back to an earlier one, about an excellent Robert Anton Wilson essay about Ezra Pound. 

The blogger Scott Alexander has now weighed in with a long piece on why he loved Adams, and the ways in which Adams went off the rails.  And today, that was followed up with highlights of the comments about the piece, with Scott Alexander's replies. 

Timothy Leary's computer games

A video, above, talks about "Timothy Leary's Lost Games." One of them, Neuromancer, is available at the Internet Archive. 

The video and the game link are via RAW Semantics on Bluesky. 

Greek philosophers interacted with Buddhists and Hindus, back in the day

I have already done a blog post on Hellenistic Philosophy by John Sellars.  As I mentioned earlier, it focuses on three main philosophical schools of the period: Skepticism (which sheds light on RAW, himself a philosophical skeptic), Stoicism (currently having a moment) and Epicureanism (a philosophy I am very interested in).

RAW had many interests and a complex philosophy which can't be summed up in a few words, but it is also fair to observe that he was simultaneously interested in currents of Western philosophy but also knew a lot about Eastern philosophies and religions, including Buddhism. As I finished Hellenistic Philosophy, I noticed a nice bonus: A brief but fascinating appendix,  "Looking East," which explores contacts between Greek philosophers and their counterparts in India.

I had  known that the Greek skeptic philosopher Pyrrho had traveled with Alexander the Great's army and reached India (there's a book about this, Greek Buddha by Christopher Beckwith, that I've been meaning to read, as I'm a Beckwith fan), and Sellars mentions the book, and many others that also sound very interesting.

Sellars is careful and cautious, and he isn't convinced that Indian philosophy influenced Greek philosophy in a substantive way, but he also shows there were more contacts between the two groups than one might think.

He mentions, for example, that Ashoka, the famous  Indian Buddhist ruler, "send Buddhist envoys to the land of the 'Yonas' (from 'Ionians,' i.e. Greeks), and it goes on to name the Mediterranean rulers to whom they were sent. Some of these envoys were themselves Greeks who had embraced Buddhism. Indeed, the inscription not only says  that these envoys were sent, but also claims that these areas were successfully conquered by Dharma, Buddhist teaching. In exchange, some of these Hellenistic kings, notably Ptolemy II of Egypt, sent envoys to India. Some have claimed that Buddhist communities developed in the Mediterranean world, with a text by Philo describing an unusual and otherwise unknown monastic community cited as evidence. Others have claimed to have found  Buddhist gravestones in Alexandria." There are other possible encounters cited.

All of this seems fascinating to me, and Sellars names plenty of other books to explore. 

Circling back to RAW, Sellars' book toward the end has this quote from Sextus Empiricus, a famous Skeptic philosopher: "Skeptics are philanthropic and wish to cure by argument, as far as they can, the conceit and rashness of the Dogmatists." 

John Higgs on the counterculture

John Higgs' latest book is about David Lynch.

As I mentioned recently, John Higgs has announced that his Substack will have a paid tier that includes substantial essays and an annual book. There will still be a free newsletter devoted largely to his latest books.

The newsletters with the substantial essays are known as "New Moon Letters," and John has just issued "New Moon Letter 1." As John is still trying to get the news out about his new offering, that first issue is free for everyone to read in full.  John's essay is about the modern counterculture, and how it can function as an alternative to the online world. See also Ted Gioia's recent "state of the culture" newsletter. 

Adam Gorightly's 'Saucers, Spooks and Kooks' now a movie

Adam Gorightly's book, Saucers, Spooks and Kooks, is now a documentary movie, out Jan. 22. Trailer is above. Preorder here.  And there is a Substack newsletter. 

"The film explores how disinformation helped fuel the UFO mythos, and how that fog continues to cloud what we think we know about UAP."

It sounds like the book, which I liked. See my writeup for the book. 

Adam of course also is an important historian of Discordianism. See his official website. 

 

New 'punk rock opera' from Dan Robinson

I've written a bit about Dan Robinson lately, both about the Jukebox Musical album, his official soundtrack album for Tales of Illuminatus No. 2, and an overview of him and his band, the Headies.  He wrote to me announce his new Danny and Darlings solo album, Goddamned Wonderful.

"Just released a new project as Danny and the Darlings.  It’s something I had been working on for awhile, and wasn’t sure when I was going to release it. But with the recent escalation of fascist violence against those living in America, I thought the time was now.  This is an anti-fascist punk rock opera.  40 minutes of protest music, all recorded in my bedroom.

"It’s a story about a regular dude who’s abducted by aliens and is imbued with god-like powers  of unlimited love and all the perks therein.  His message of hope catches on and he eventually gets the attention of the tyrannical right-wing power structure who aim to take out our hero, in the most biblical way possible."

Available on Bandcamp. 

See also Ted Gioia's recent "state of the culture" essay, which argues that Bandcamp is part of "the new counterculture." 

"Substack, Patreon, and Bandcamp give artists around 90% of revenues and total creative control. And other indie channels are in development with similar plans to support creators," he wrote. 

Oz Fritz on what helps him as he battles cancer

Oz Fritz, who has been getting treatment for cancer, reveals in a new blog post what he has leaned on to help with his mental outlook:

"It seems advantageous to keep one's mood and spirits up as one navigates through cancer treatment. This can often prove difficult depending how much pain and discomfort the body experiences; harder too when it drags on for months or years. Everyone finds their own tools and methods to handle the possible depression, anxiety, downerness, fear and pain. I have found Aleister Crowley's The Book of the Law  (Liber Al) an excellent, non-chemical way to alleviate and banish debilitating thoughts and emotions."

More here.

The cancer treatment for Oz seems to be going well and he is in my thoughts. 

My 'Ezra Pound' has died

 

Scott Adams (Creative Commons photo, source).

Robert Anton Wilson was famously able to see the good in reviled people, notably Ezra Pound; as I blogged last year, one of my favorite pieces in A Non-Euclidian Perspective was an early piece about Pound in which RAW wrote:

"To see Pound as he  is -- a man of genius and goodwill, of folly and rage, of love and integrity and hatred and dishonesty -- is to admit that such contradictions can exist in the human personality. That is not a comfortable thought -- it is especially uncomfortable to those of us who are, like Pound, idealists intent on changing the world -- so we prefer to brush it aside and go on playing our life-myth that the universe is one big Western Movie where the 'good guys' (us) are fighting the 'bad guys' (our enemies.)"

There's another good quote at my link to the previous post. 

I certainly didn't like Adams' politics or many of the things he said (this New York Times obit has a selection) but I always loved "Dilbert" and I even subscribed to the paid service offering a "Dilbert" relaunch, I am here posting a few of my favorites. I thought the strip remained funny and topical right up to the end, perhaps your mileage may differ. I also liked his book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. I haven't gotten around to his book on framing yet. 

Updates: Last year's reading and Michael Johnson's new RAW series

A couple of updates on recent blog posts.

My end-of-the-year list of the books I read in 2025 has been updated with links. In many cases, I wrote about a particular book, either here or elsewhere.

Michael Johnson has continued a  series on his Substack newsletter that all RAW fans should take a look at. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post,  it began with  "Robert Anton Wilson on Plant Intelligence, (Part One?".  Now we have, in rapid succession, "Robert Anton Wilson and Plant Intelligence: Evoluationary Views and Speculations Beyond Darwin," and then part three, "RAW's Erotic Panpsychic Cosmotheism." Don't skip the footnotes! 

It was nineteen years ago ...

 

I did not remember that yesterday was the anniversary of Robert Anton Wilson's death, at age 74, until after I did Sunday's blog post, but other folks remembered. On Bluesky, RAW Semantics, e.g. Brian Dean, posted the above artwork and wrote, "The incomparable Robert Anton Wilson died on this day (11 January) nineteen years ago. More than ever, read his books!"

Also on Bluesky, Klaster Chaosmos posted a thread which included a photo of a shelf of RAW books and a link to RAW's books at Hilaritas Press. 

Nineteen  years! Certainly RAW hasn't been forgotten, but what can we do to bring him more to the attention of the world at large? 

Sunday links

 

New art from RAW Semantics on Bluesky. Note he is active on Bluesky again. 

Texas A&M bans Plato. 

Bob Weir has died. 

Erich von Däniken has died. 

Tyler Cowen on the best art of the century, so far. 

New movie and book recommendations from Scott Sumner. I really like that guy's blog. 

An interesting philosophy book

I have been reading an interesting book that I had my wife give me for Christmas: Hellenistic Philosophy by John Sellars. 

If you aren't familiar with the term, "Hellenistic" doesn't simply mean "Greek." The Hellenistic period is a specific time of ancient history, from the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC) to the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C. In other words, it covers the time after the heyday of the Greek city state and figures such as Pericles and before the complete Roman takeover of the Mediterranean. The period is when the successors of Alexander ruled a huge swath of territory in southeast Europe, northern Africa and Asia, imposing a Greek speaking elite.

As Sellars explains in his book, the Hellenic period saw the rise of Epicureanism and Stoicism, and a revival and reinvention of skepticism, also known as Pyrrhonism. There were other philosophies active, too, although Sellars concentrates on those three. Plato's Academy kept going during this period, although it went through a skeptical phase, Cynics were active and Aristotle also still attracted scholars. Sellars, if you don't know him, is an expert on ancient Greek philosophy who has written quite a few books. Most are about Stoicism, although he also wrote a good, short book about Epicurean ethics, Fourfold Remedy, which I read last year.

My main motive in wanting to read the book is my strong interest in Epicureanism; I wanted to learn more about the milieu from which it emerged. But the book also offers an outline of Stoicism, which has experienced a recent revival of interest, giving Sellars a market for  his books that goes beyond college students studying philosophy.

But a nice bonus for RAW fans is the focus on skepticism. Robert Anton Wilson had many influences, but in a sense he also was a modern skeptic. His model agnosticism and "maybe logic" was opposed to certainty and ideological dogmatism. 

So it's interesting to read about philosophers  of skepticism and how some of their thoughts seem to prefigure some of RAW's.

Here is one of the passages in the book, in the chapter  on "Knowledge," where Sellars is talking about how Metrodorus interpreted Carneades. (They were two figures in the Academy in this period, when it was going through its skepticism phase.) "On that view, Carneades was thought to have held that a wise person could hold opinions about some things so long as they do not assent to the truth of those opinions." To my ears, this sounds a bit like RAW's saying, "I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions."

If you want to read a book that focuses solely on ancient Greek skepticism, Sellars suggests reading Ancient Skepticism by H. Thorsrud. 

Robert Anton Wilson (and Joseph Matheny) on Tubi

Most of my American readers should be familiar with Tubi, the website/app/TV channel which offers movies and TV shows. The programs are free and supported by commercials. 

Via Reddit's r/Robert Anton Wilson site, I recently learned that Robert Anton Wilson: The "I" in the Triangle, a documentary nearly two hours long, is available now on Tubi. 

The credits list Joseph Matheny as the director and one of the "stars," along with RAW, so I asked Joseph for more information, and he responded with helpful notes, as it his wont:

"That's the I in the Triangle talk I sponsored and had taped in my friend's occult bookshop in 90.  A younger me makes an appearance, doing a whimsical introduction. It is also available for sale on DVD, etc., on my friends' Original Falcon's website, and free to download from places like Archive.org and YouTube. 

"It was a lot of fun, and Bob and I hung out for a few days, and he taught me how to make a martini, using a method and formula he picked up from reading about W.C. Fields. I use that recipe and method to this day. This was before Bo moved to Santa Cruz. He was still living in LA. Of course, he and Arlen would move to Santa Cruz to be close to his kids. 

"Here's some pics of that visit. We're hanging out at Nina Graboi's, (my downstairs neighbor) smoking some hash I had scored."