Quantum Psychology, Chapter Eight

[I really enjoyed RAW's lucid exposition on Maybe Logic. The exercizes would seem to work well for an Internet discussion, so here they are. -- Tom]

Classify the following propositions are true, false or maybe:

A. In 1933,  Franklin Roosevelt became president of the United States.
B. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt became president of the United States.
C. On Jan. 18, 1932, Cary Grant had his 28th birthday.
D. The river Necker flows through the city of Frankfurt.
E. The river Necker flows through the city of Heidelberg.
F. Humanity evolved from Old World apes.
G. Force always equals mass multiplied by acceleration.
H. Francis Bacon wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare.
I. Sex education leads to an increase in sex crimes.
J. In the  years in which sex education increased in the U.S., reported sex crimes also increased.
K. The census of 1890 showed 4,000,000 inhabitants of New York City.
L. An ordinary pack of cigarettes contains 20 cigarettes.
M. Ronald Reagan knew about the Iran-Contra guns-and-cocaine deals of North, Secord and Hull.
N. Ronald Reagan did not know about the Iran-Contra crimes until he heard the news on TV.
O. All the differences between men and women result from cultural training.
P. Sombunall of the differences between men and women result from cultural training.
Q. All differences between men and women result from genetic factors (testosterone, estrogen, etc.)
R. Sombunall of the differences between men and women result from genetic factors (testosterone, estrogen, etc.)
S. The lost continent of Atlantis exists under the sea near Bermuda.
T. The lost continent of Atlantis never existed.
U. Hitler had only one testicle.

Would Ayn Rand approve of Paul Ryan?

I  usually shun the topics of the day, but wanted you to see Roderick Long's post at the Bleeding Heart Libertarian blog ; Ayn Rand's comments about Ronald Reagan are quite amusing. Incidentally, while libertarians tend to emphasize their differences among themselves, the Rand quotations would serve as an example of where they agree. I doubt that Robert Anton Wilson, or many other people who have sometimes call themselves libertarians, would disagree with Rand's Reagan comments. 

Academic publication has RAW article

The Brill Handbook of New Religions and Cultural Production has an article entitled "Making the Donkey Visible: Discordianism in the Works of Robert Anton Wilson" by David G. Robertson. This would appear to be an episode of Wilson being featured in an academic publication. Mr. Robertson is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Edinburgh; his Ph.D. research project is entitled, “Aquarian Conspiracies: Extraterrestrials as discursive unit between New Age and conspiracist milieux.”

Today's best correction

From the New York Times ArtsBeat blog:

An earlier version of this post, citing the translation from Folha de S. Paulo, the newspaper that published the interview with Mr. Coelho, imprecisely rendered a quotation. Mr. Coelho said, "If you dissect 'Ulysses,' it gives you a tweet," not, "Stripped down, 'Ulysses' is a twit."

If you follow literary news, you'll know what the post is about: Paulo Coelho gave an interview in which he said James Joyce damaged the 20th Century novel by reducing it to pure style. As the Times post reveals, his comments generally have not been well-received. I haven't read anything by Coelho, so I can't express an opinion on his work.

Arthur Hlavaty's Nice Distinctions

Prominent SF fan (and RAW and Robert Shea fan) Arthur Hlavaty has released Nice Distinctions 23, his latest fanzine. Old school fans apparently can still receive a copy printed on paper but it's also available at a PDF download from this archive. If you like it, email Mr. Hlavaty at the address given in the zine and he'll email you the next issue.

Much of the zine consists of "greatest hits" from Arthur's blog. (Today's attack on Yoda made my day.) Arthur is always looking out for the underdog, a pursuit that sometimes takes him into surprising territory. I particularly liked this look back at Arthur's school days, fed by a news report:


 From 1954 to 1960 I attended Horace Mann, a boys' prep school in NYC. I didn't like the unisex aspect, but I admittedgrudgingly at the timethat I was getting an excellent education. Now that I have accepted my geek nature, I am grateful, and I particularly remember the great teachers I had, such as one English teacher, a small, gentle Asian man named Tek Young Lin.
        Horace Mann has been in the news lately. A few weeks ago there was a New York Times Magazine report revealing that 20 years after I left, at least three teachers were sexually abusing their students. Now there is a follow-up story reporting that Tek Young Lin had sex with some of the boys in his classes.
        I never knew, or even suspected, that he was gay, but in retrospect I am not entirely surprised. What also does not surprise me is that he appears in this story far less abusive than those usually reported on. We read of a couple of people who do not feel harmed by what happened, and one who reports that Mr. Lin took No for an answer. Where the earlier story brought tales of traumatized lives, this one has textbook material about "unequal relationships."
        When I was at Horace Mann, everyone knew that same-sex relations were bad; the only question was whether the perps should be imprisoned or just cured. Now everyone knows that adult-teen relationships are bad, particularly in schools, which I have to admit is a lot less irrational. (In the 50s we were told that heroin and marijuana were unthinkably awful drugs. Failing to distinguish between them led to problems. In the 50s we were told that gay sex and teacher/student sex were unthinkably awful….)
        So maybe Mr. Lin harmed some of those he was involved with. And maybe he was good for some. There are a number of men my age who are deeply grateful that when they were teens, an adult man showed them that they were not The Only Homosexual in the World, and gave them ways to express their forbidden feelings. I am told that the current relative sanity in these matters means that such adults are no longer needed. It would be nice to think so.
        But I also believe that in many cases it didn't make that much difference. In I Will Fear No Evil and later books, Robert A. Heinlein noted that a lot of teenagers experiment with same-sex acts (sometimes with a teacher or scoutmaster) and most are neither traumatized nor converted.
        For a long time I felt guilty that I had never written to Mr. Lin to express my gratitude for the knowledge and inspiration I acquired from him. I have now done so.

My interview with Mr. Hlavaty on the Golden APA is here.

Free Rudy Rucker books

Many Robert Anton Wilson fans will be interested in Rudy Rucker. They were in a movie together, as this fascinating article recalls (Mr. Wilson was not at his best at the time). Rucker gained fame as an important cyberpunk author.

I mention this because Rucker's acclaimed Ware Tetralogy (four novels, the first two won the Philip K. Dick Award) is available free at Feedbooks.  Rucker also has put a complete collection of his stories online as an HTML page.

Oz Fritz on Gnostic agnosticism

Oz Fritz's entire post on Musical Gnosis and Philip K. Dick is worth a careful read, but I particularly liked this passage on Gnostic agnosticism:

Taking a gnostic approach to agnosticism indicates a willingness to experientially seek out the truth of deeper philosophical matters, like 'Who am I' and 'Why am I here' despite never reaching a final conclusion.  A good example of this in play occurred at a RAW Q&A session when I asked Wilson what he thought about the Secret Chiefs.  In the Thelemic system, the Secret Chiefs represent the enlightened masters who supposedly guide human destiny.  They have corollaries in other occult systems such as Theosophy. "The Secret Chiefs," RAW replied, "are a useful metaphor."

I suspect that "Gnostic agnosticism" also could be a way to describe the attitude of Robert Shea. His zine No Governor No. 7 (available from the "Resources" links at this site) includes a newspaper article about him from the "Glencoe News" newspaper, Jan. 3, 1985. It quotes Shea as saying that he had been interested in mysticism for years and meditates for 20 minutes a day.

"I got involved in mysticism thinking it would give me some practical benefit," Shea says in the article. "But once you get into it, you lose that motivation. Writing becomes a way of getting closer to mysticism."

Quantum Psychology, Chapter 7

As the exercizes for Chapter 7 of Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology do not seem practical to me for an Internet discussion, I will beg your indulgence this week and pose a question which I invite sombunall of you (those who find it interesting) to join me in answering. Incidentally, there are many chapters left in the book, and the chapters are small, so if you have not taken part so far, there's plenty of time to get a copy of the book and "catch up."

Q. Robert Anton Wilson suggests in Chapter 7 that we think of possible outcomes in terms of probabilities rather than a rigid yes/no, i.e. "that will surely happen" vs. "that will never happen." Please give two example of how adopting this probability system consciously might affect your behavior, or how you think about an issue.

Here are my two.

(1) I have been about to come up with a blog entry for Quantum Psychology every Monday for six weeks in a row so far, and since I began this blog I have maintained a schedule of putting up a posting every day. I would estimate that my probability of posting today was 95 percent, i.e. there was at least some possibility I would fail because I was sick, I encountered an overwhelming emergency, I simply refused to do it, etc.

It seems to me that because I realize the people who read this blog have been "trained" to check for something every day, it is more likely that I will post -- because I don't want to disappoint them.

(2) I would guess that the possibility I will get into an automobile accident during my commute to work tomorrow is about .1 percent. (I have commuted to work for several years; I had to have my car repaired a couple of years ago when I hit a dead deer that suddenly loomed in front of me as I drove down the highway. I was not hurt.)

I try to remember to put on my seat belt when I get in the car. Although the possibility of an accident is low, it is definitely there. And the possibility that I might get hurt in an accident, if one took place, is probably quite high. Since much of my driving by necessity is at a high speed on a highway, perhaps the possibility is 40 percent. So it is worth my time to take a second or two to buckle up.

A 'Renegade History'

I have been reading A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell, and I am surprised this interesting book has not attracted more attention. This is a book that any libertarian, anarchist or civil libertarian would want to read. Russell's thesis is that much of our freedoms today come from folks who simply refused to accept rules that did not make sense to them, and that we owe much to those "renegades," including blacks, Irish immigrants, prostitutes and others.

Jesse Walker's interview with Russell is here.

Original Falcon issuing ebooks

Eric Wagner forwarded a newsletter to me from Original Falcon, a publisher of occult and esoteric books, which announces that Original Falcon is getting into ebooks in a big way. (Original Falcon was founded after a schism with the folks at New Falcon. I'm unclear on the details.) Original Falcon's catalog of ebooks is here.

New Falcon, unfortunately, is moving more slowly into ebooks, and since it is the publisher with much of Robert Anton Wilson's back catalog, it will have to get moving if more RAW books are going to be available for Kindle, Nook, etc. I just checked Robert Anton Wilson for Kindle, and I did not anything new.

Data's Cat has new album coming out

Data's Cat is the band name for an English musician who makes "slightly-delic prog space rock."

His album titles are suggestive. The first album was called Maybe Logic. The new album coming out this fall is called Cosmic Trigger.

More information here and here.

Maybe it would be logical to release these things as MP3s to make it easier for American fans to get a copy? The sound samples I've tried so far sound good.

Gore Vidal, the RAW connection?

If you pay attention to the world of letters at all, you'll know by now that Gore Vidal died. (His historical novel Julian, about the last pagan Roman Emperor, was very good and very well-researched. Perhaps you have noticed my obsession with late Roman/early Byzantine history.)

Jesse Walker wrote an obituary for Reason and noted (in an email) that Vidal's Myron uses the names of Supreme Court justices to replace the names of sex organs in descriptions of sex acts, much as Wilson did in Schroedinger's Cat (presumably for the same reason, to protest an anti-porn decision by the high court.) "I suspect that's where Wilson got the idea," Walker writes. Walker thinks that Vidal's use of the justice's names may only have been in the first edition; Wikipedia appears to be silent on this.

Many of Vidal's criticism of U.S. foreign policy sound like Wilson. (Many of Vidal's obits mention his "isolationism," the favorite smear against people who speak out for peace.)

Update: Interesting Christopher Buckley essay on Vidal.

Robert Anton Wilson, a modernist classicist?

I've just finished reading Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History and Philosophy at the End of Antiquity by the classicist Anthony Kaldellis, mentioned earlier in this blog. (Procopius is the major history of the sixth century Byzantine Empire and the Emperor Justinian.)

In much of the book, Kaldellis notes that Procopius is a heavily allusive writer who constantly echoes and refers back to other classical works. This is a recurring trait of Greco-Roman writers, Kaldellis notes:

"Classicism began immediately with the birth of the classical, in the eighth century B.C. The first known verse inscription, the famous Cup of Nestor, contains an allusion to Homer. The joke on the cup  cannot be fully understood unless one knows the text of the Iliad to which it refers. It is 'nearly the oldest example of alphabetic writing and, at the same time, Europe's first literary allusion, an extraordinary fact.'* The Greeks wrote like this throughout all periods of antiquity, and that Procopius did so should in no way be correlated with the fact that he happened to live in what is now called the 'later' Roman Empire." (Page 61).

It seems to me that Robert Anton Wilson could be described as a "modernist classicist," given that he read modernist writers very closely and often alludes to modernist writers such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, etc.

You don't have to pick up on Procopius' allusions to read his History of the Wars of Justinian; after all, he is describing exciting events, including wars on three continents, the Nika riots and an outbreak of bubonic plague that rivaled the medieval Black Death for its impact. Yet, his writing communicates much more to classicists such as Kaldellis who can appreciate Procopius' references to Herodotus, Thucydides, etc.

Similarly, I read ILLUMINATUS! in college without realizing that Hagbard Celine's name refers to the protagonist of Finnegans Wake, the multiple viewpoints echo Ulysses, the cut-up technique is indebted to William Burroughts who got it from Bryon Gysin, etc. But for those who can pick up on the references, the work picks up added depth.

Another passage of the same Kaldellis book illuminates something that RAW himself wrote about. Kaldellis notes that "Classical allusions could be used to subvert the surface of a text whenever authors wanted to express opinions that for various reasons could not be stated openly ... Only a few readers would see past the outer layer to the inner message that was carefully hidden from the gaze of kings." (Page 36).

One of the examples Kaldellis gives is the Empress Theodora's famous speech during the Nika riots, when she declares that "kingship is a fine burial shroud." This slightly misquotes a saying reported by several classical authors that "tyranny is a fine burial shroud," said by a companion to Dionysius, a notorious tyrant of Syracuse. This implies that Justinian was a tyrant, without saying so openly, which would have been very dangerous. (Historians sometimes compare Justinian to Stalin. It was Justinian, for example, who shut down the famous school of philosophy in Athens that had existed for hundreds of years.)

This observation is reminiscent of RAW's observation in Cosmic Trigger that alchemists had to disguise their meanings in their writings to avoid persecution by the church.

* Professor Kaldellis is quoting Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet, B.B. Powell.