Peace — A litmus test for libertarians?

This article by Robert Higgs argues that although libertarians should not look for excuses to quarrel with one another, peace is a legitimate "litmus test" for whether someone is really a libertarian. I've linked to it because (1) I agree (2) I think Robert Anton Wilson would agree. (Via @Antiwar2, aka Angela Keaton, on Twitter.)

But Siriusly folks

Mysteries of Sirius, a Web site I ran across recently, explores the speculation involving the "enigma of the dog star" and includes Robert Anton Wilson material.

I confess I have not studied this matter closely enough to have an opinion on Robert Temple's book, The Sirius Mystery,  and the Sirius matters discussed in RAW's Cosmic Trigger Vol. 1: The Final Secret of the Illuminati and other works.

Science Fiction Encyclopedia launches

The beta version of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia has launched, thus making available for everyone the same book that I bought years ago as an expensive hardcover. ("Beta" means that some of the content is still missing from the free Internet version.) There is a quite decent-sized entry for Robert Anton Wilson, plus entries for related subjects such as Robert Shea, the Prometheus Award, libertarian science fiction, etc.

A Robert Shea quote

I've been reading through the first issue of "No Governor," Robert Shea's anarchist zine (Spring 1975, list price, 25 cents). Although I tracked it down to read the Robert Anton Wilson article, I like some of the other pieces, particularly Shea's own article, "Doing Anarchist Yourself." The last paragraph is worth quoting:

We are all victims of an authoritarian mind-set that dates back, at least, to the neolithic era. The anarchist movement, little more than a century old, represents a beginning effort by some members of our species to erase that programming and try to think about human problems in a new way. This new thinking, and doing, whatever it may become, will not originate with leaders or groups. It will come from individuals, from the voice and the light within.

Robert Anton Wilson resource site

The Robert Anton Wilson 417vibe.com site is an apparently new site that attempts to provide a "one stop shop" gathering together videos, audio, articles and a bibliography. It's a nice supplement to other sides, although for some reason it doesn't collect interviews, and the anonymous compiler (there is no contact information) apparently is not aware of rawillumination.net and doesn't include  any of the material I have found. (Via triangleeye, apparently a new blog.)

One more Steve Jobs post

Here is Professor Juan Cole, on "Steve Jobs: Arab-American, Buddhist, Psychedelic Drug User and Capitalist World Changer."

A band from the book

Ultraviolet Hippopotamus is one of the bands listed in book three of ILLUMINATUS! It's also a real band.

From the Grand Rapids Press: "(By the way, [drummer Joe] Phillion says the band's name comes from one of author Robert Anton Wilson's "Illuminatus" works.)"

The news of the day

We all live in Steve Jobs' world, and so when I learned last night that he had died, I was shocked that he had left us to fend in the world on our own.

John Markoff's obituary in the New York Times is a must-read. I apparently haven't followed Jobs' career very closely, because I didn't realize just how much it was influenced by the California counterculture that Robert Anton Wilson was so familiar with. Here is one of the sentences that jumped out at me: "He told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. He said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics — even people who knew him well, including his wife — could never understand."

My other take on Jobs is here.

A prediction from RAW

Here is a posting from DemocraticUnderground.com, from "drokhole," who says,

You want an eerily accurate prediction of these protests/uprisings? Robert Anton Wilson from 1990:

"If the rate of increase of information does have the structure of a Mandelbrot set, as McKenna claims, by the year 2012 we should have information doubling every day and, later in the year, every hour and then every nanosecond. I can't imagine what this means practically in terms of social change, because every doubling of information in the past has resulted in totally unexpected social revolutions, violent or non-violent."

With the utilization of twitter, facebook, YouTube, Occupy Wall Street sites posting up-to-date "meeting minutes," other Occupy Everywhere sites popping up every minute, and livestream (talk about up-to-date by the nanosecond), I'd say that was a pretty amazing prediction. That man's intelligence and wit is sorely missed.

(All of the above from the original posting; hat tip to Michael Johnson on alt.fan.rawilson. Go here for Michael's 10-point plan in reaction to the protests.  -- Tom)

Thank God the police are protecting us from movie posters

One of the recurring themes of Cosmic Trigger 3: My Life After Death is the absurdity of PC though on college campuses.

Here's a real-life example of the sort of thing that amused Robert Anton Wilson. A theater professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout put up a poster on his office door of a character in the "Firefly" TV show, captain "Mal" Reynolds, saying "You don't know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you'll be awake. You'll be facing me. And you'll be armed."

If, without knowing the context of the quote, you are thinking "Gee, I wonder if my professor would be cool enough to be a Firefly fan" or "that's a poetic way of saying I won't talk about you behind your back," you don't think like a college administrator. The campus police chief removed the poster. When the prof put up another poster, protesting fascism, she removed it, too. She also reported the professor to the "threat assessment team."

Three top administrators then issued a statement defending the police chief's actions and stating, without a trace of irony, "This was not an act of censorship."

Email exchange between the police chief and professor is here.

I'm reporting Police Chief Lisa Walter, Chancellor Charles Sorensen, Provost Julie Furst-Bowe and Vice Chancellor Ed Nieskes to the stupidity assessment team.

H. P. Lovecraft's eldritch places

Robert Anton Wilson was a Lovecraft fan, and we're getting into the Halloween season, so here's a couple of links: Five places that helped inspire Lovecraft and a virtual walking tour of Lovecraft's Providence, Rhode Island.

ILLUMINATUS! has a scene (page 329 of the omnibus edition) in which Robert Putney Drake calls on Lovecraft in a house on Benefit Street. This may be either a mistake or a dramatic liberty; the Wikipedia entry on Lovecraft says that Lovecraft lived on Barnes Street until 1933; 135 Benefit Street is the address of "the shunned house," from the Lovecraft story. Does anyone know if Lovecraft ever lived on Benefit Street?

'Magic mushrooms' can cause lasting personality changes

A new study suggests that a single dose of psilocybin can bring about a measurable personality change that lasts at least a year, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers. Specifically, the  dose caused "in the part of the personality known as openness, which includes traits related to imagination, aesthetics, feelings, abstract ideas and general broad-mindedness."

The study leader, Roland R. Griffiths, "believes psilocybin may have therapeutic uses. He is currently studying whether the hallucinogen has a use in helping cancer patients handle the depression and anxiety that comes along with a diagnosis, and whether it can help longtime cigarette smokers overcome their addiction.

"There may be applications for this we can't even imagine at this point," he says. "It certainly deserves to be systematically studied."

Hat tip: Mike Gathers, via alt.fan.rawilson.

New William Burroughs opera

An announcement of an opera, The Ticket That Exploded: An Ongoing Opera.

"Based on William Burroughs’ 1962 dystopian novel about identity disintegration, oppression of humanity’s collective consciousness through technological influence, and revolution through the subversion of those very technologies.

"Featuring live vocalists Ted Hearne, Nick Hallett, Anne Rhodes, and Megan Schubert, video vocalists Melissa Hughes, Steve Dalachinsky, and Ryan Opperman, an ensemble of thirteen instrumentalists, and live video projections from Jason Ponce, the opera will be organized using the same cut-up techniques and emphasis on fragmentation of language that distinguishes Burroughs’ literary work.

"An ongoing opera is one which has set material but is perpetually reconfigured during the performance, mixing composed material with indeterminate composition strategies and conducted improvisations. With zero staging, all visuals are conveyed through projected live video manipulations. Pre-recorded video performances will facilitate vocalists to interact with other vocalists who are not present, or even to sing a duet with themselves. These efforts to perpetually repurpose the musical and visual content of the opera are a direct effort on my part to draw comparisons between the performative and the generative-- to make the very act of reorganizing materials function both as a blueprint for making art and as art itself."

Hat tip: Jesse Walker, currently fending off an attack from a Randroid named Tibor Machan.

Walker: "“Every one of us has our perceptions filtered by the thousands of stories and assumptions and rituals that constitute our culture. Every one of us has held beliefs that seemed self-evidently accurate but were actually contingent elements of the time and place that produced us. This is true not just of the people reading this article, but of every person, in every era, who has been capable of perceiving anything at all. You can stretch those perceptions, expose yourself to new worldviews, learn new things, but you’ll always be embedded in a cultural matrix." Machan: "The passage exemplifies just such a viewpoint, whereby no one is capable of objectivity and everyone is caught in some set of preconceptions."

Jesse didn't actually say that no one is capable of an objective opinion, but never mind. Objectivism today, objectivism tomorrow, objectivism forever!