Article on 'Starseed," Eight Circuits and Clare Graves

An article at Medium, "Tim Leary, Robert Anton Wilson and Developmental Psychology," posted last month by Don Dulchinos, discusses The Starseed Signals, the Eight Circuit model and the psychology system of Clare Graves (which I know nothing about). 

Excerpting a couple of paragraphs may provide an idea of what the article focuses upon:

I was inspired by Mike Gathers’ recent essay, Freud, Jung and a Platypus Get an MRI [PDF here] to take another look at the 8 circuit model (BTW, shout out to Mike in the 303 — I’m in Boulder.) Leary came of age professionally in the 1950’s, when psychology was undergoing an encounter with behavioral psychology, notably B.F. Skinner, and the reaction was humanistic psychology — Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and others. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has become iconic, but wasn’t the only such model.

Mike’s piece was especially interesting to me as I’ve been doing recent work on a developmental psychology system put forth by Clare Graves, also starting in the 50’s, and known under the popular title Spiral Dynamics. Graves taught psychology at Union College in Schenectady, NY, where he consulted in organizational psychology at General Electric’s world headquarters, and where I studied briefly with him as an undergraduate.

Podcast news of note [UPDATE]

1. Robert Fay and our friend Roman Tsivkin from the Feeling Bookish podcast appear on the new "Should You Read Before You Die?" podcast, to discuss whether you should read James Joyce's Ulysses.  

2. Znore discusses his new book, Death Swear of the Cluster, which I've recommended on this blog (and which I just finished.)

I've provided links but the usual podcasting apps on your smartphone should work. (Search for "Sync Book Radio" for the Znore podcast). 

UPDATE: Daisy Eris Campbell will appear on the Feeling Bookish podcast on Feb. 28 and the recording will be released the next day, Roman Tsivkin reports.  More on that soon. 

Tweet I enjoyed with all of the bad news

 

Trance Medium: Whom do you wish to contact on the otherwise?
Me: Mr Robert Anton Wilson.
Trance Medium: I call upon Mr Robert Anton Wilson to come forth and communicate with us now, Mr Wilson, are you present?
R.A.W: Maybe.

— Don of The Witch Mafia✴ (@PeterBecause13) January 4, 2021

RAW writes a movie review

Another find by Martin Wagner: "The Burning Gorilla" by Kevin O'Flaherty McCool ("mosprobably Robert Anton Wilson," Martin says), ostensibly a review of the movie Morgan -- A Suitable Case for Treatment, also seems to be a commentary on the Vietnam War. It was first published in the East Village Other in 1966. Excerpt:

Breathe deeply, from the gut. Do you smell it? It’s blood and napalm. The stink, the pornographic, stench of blood and napalm is all over the country. People are falling in the streets. They call it smog, air pollution, a million lies. I tell you it is blood and napalm. There are stains on the Constitution, and the officials try to tell tourists that it is the mildew of age but it is really blood and napalm. Look at the skirts of Liberty standing there in the harbor. They try to tell you that it is rust that you see. No. No. It is blood and napalm.

Prometheus Rising exercise and discussion group, Week Thirteen

 

The late Andrea Dworkin 

Chapter One “The Thinker and The Prover”

By Apuleius Charlton Special guest blogger

I guess for the next few paragraphs I’ll equivocate, as always, with what the Grand Old Man has to say about the Thinker and the Prover. Namely, while I agree with the general treatment, I don’t believe the model is infallible. The Thinker does Think but the Prover doesn’t always do the trick without drugs, trauma, or psychosis. 

My daughter loves Pizza Hut. A couple years ago I took her to Pizza Hut before going home after I had picked her up: now it is her favorite pizza. The town that she lives in and I grew up in doesn’t have a Pizza Hut which I can imagine adds exclusivity, most alluring of spices. One of her most successful birthdays was at a Pizza Hut. So, the other night I found myself shivering outside of a pick up window, on foot, waiting on Pizza Hut. 

The Hut nearest my home closed recently and when my daughter was with us over the holidays she was adamant that she needed some of that pizza pie. So I found the nearest franchise, placed an order for pick-up and drove there with my daughter. It was a relatively mild night so I only wore a cardigan and let my daughter go out without a coat. I tried the door of the restaurant and found out it was locked. Instead I asked an employee on a smoke break if I needed to go through the drive thru and she instructed me to just walk over to the window. I did so. 

For what must have seemed a longer span of time than it was, I stood there with Lucy as cars pulled up behind us. I felt like a dumbass standing in the spotlight of a Jeep’s headlights. Eventually Lucy got cold and I took off my cardigan. As I stooped to put it around her I saw that the ground was littered with coins. Of course, this is one of the most natural environments to find dropped change in but it struck my sense of synchronicity. As much as I ruminated on the possible significance and tried to stir up my courage, I couldn’t bend over and avail myself of any of the coins, I couldn’t even ask my daughter to pick one up because of the anxiety of standing in a drive thru with someone else looking on. Odd that no amount of will power or curiosity could cause me to break my societal (4th Circuit) imprints that 1) it is an intolerable offense to stand in a drive thru and be seen and 2) it is undignified to stoop to pick up change. 

It is amusing and tragic that my social-anxiety is brought on by the niggling idea that other people might be judging me in the same way I judge casual passersby. Instant Karma! When my car has broken down and I’ve either needed to change a tire, wait for help, or walk for service I am incredibly, cripplingly troubled by the eyes of those driving by. My thinker seems to occasionally be a Big Brother that doesn’t exist. I know on some level that the driver of the Jeep wouldn’t remember me grabbing one of the coins at my feet an hour later, on another I feared that they would to the core of my classist being. 

On the same token, RAW talks about the Thinker and the Prover in the societal terms of anti-Semitism and Feminism. I don’t agree about accusations of anti-Semitism, or its invasiveness in our society in the same way that politicos such as Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss, or Brett“Bedbug” Stephens do- I am admittedly anti-Zionist and am married to a Jewish woman who feels the same way. It isn’t the golden calf of prejudice it was to many 20th century Americans (many of whom still gladly used the racist term “Jewed down”) and my Thinker and Prover show time and again that anti-Semitism is tied to wider racism on the right, instead of being a silent predjudice of the political left. At the same time I am as hostile as RAW was to certain forms of Feminism (Dworkin or other forms of radical, or anti-heterosexual feminism) but I also believe in its overarching goals and assessments of society. I consider myself, and all reasonable peoples, to be feminist. I would never identify with the Men’s Rights Movement no matter how much I believe that Robert Bly “got done dirty” (my beloved wife’s terminology). There are nuances and I’m not sure my Prover works as well anymore as my Thinker is constantly confused. I wish I had more convictions. 

My daughter loves Pizza Hut because of their stuffed crust pizza. Most of the time she only eats one slice and doesn’t touch the crust. The Thinker thinks and the Prover sometimes does its job. 

Steve Fly publishes new novel

Steve "Fly" Pratt -- writer, RAW expert, musician, website builder, artist, turntablist, James Joyce expert, world traveler and a few other things that I'm forgetting just now -- has just issued his new novel, Deep Scratch.

More information here. Available for $7.77 as a Kindle ebook, or you can get it by supporting Steve on Patreon.

In his foreword, Steve writes, "Sacrificing go-ahead plot and chronology for an experimental improvisational approach. Hang on in there. This novel is a work of fiction, any resemblance to entities either living or dead is purely coincidental (although often meaningfully synchronistic) that said, the author and the DJ would like to remind the reader to peek out the window and ask: am I living in a science fiction novel?"

Follow Steve on Twitter. 

Get a PDF of Bobby Campbell's Tarot cards, designed by Timothy Leary

 

Bobby Campbell created a set of Neuro Tarot Cards, based on designs by Timothy Leary, and has given me permission to share a PDF file of them. 

Bobby emailed the file to some friends and explained, "Leary's bit about the Tarot cards being a neurogenetic script reminded me that several years ago I recreated a set of Neuro Tarot Cards he designed for The Game of Life, a PDF of which is enclosed.

"He layers in a bunch of different symbol systems on each card, outlining a pretty cool sci-fi mystic narrative, just saying absolutely anything he wants :)))"

Bobby has a Weirdoverse Patreon account.  You can also follow him on Twitter.

Books read 2020

 

As I have in past years, I am listing all of the books I read in the past year, including books I re-read and books I "read" by listening to audiobooks. 

Some things I noticed: I read (or-reread) five books by Robert Anton Wilson; much of my reading is "homework" in one way or another (books by local authors, or science fiction books I read in connection with the Hugo Award or Prometheus Award); I often read books because of interests that have little to do with this blog (e.g. aviation history, the later Roman Empire, Russian classical music.)

Although I didn't put it in my "top five" blog post, Pigspurt's Daughter by Daisy Eris Campbell is very good, and I suspect just about everyone who reads this blog would like it. So that's another Hilaritas Press book I bought and read! 

1. Radicalized, Cory Doctorow.
2. Monster Hunted Guardian, Larry Correia and Sarah Hoyt.
3. A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine.
4. The Widow's Son, Robert Anton Wilson.
5. Churchill, Hitler and "The Unnecessary War," Patrick J. Buchanan.
6. Moon Rising, Ian McDonald.
7. The Testaments, Margaret Atwood.
8. Ode to Defiance, Marc Stiegler.
9. The Good Luck Girls, Charlotte Nicole Davis.
10. Empire of Lies, Raymond Khoury.
11. They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears, Johannes Anyuru.
12. Jaguar in the Kitchen: My Life with Jungle Larry, Nancy Tetzlaff.
13. Atlas Alone, Emma Newman.
14. Ruin's Wake, Patrick Edwards.
15. Pigspurt's Daughter, Daisy Eris Campbell.
16. The Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, Hugh Elton.
17. Ishtar Rising, Robert Anton Wilson.
18. The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien.
19. Nonlocal Nature: The Eight Circuits of Consciousness. James Heffernan.
20. Fandom Harvest, Terry Carr.
21. Howard Hughes' Airline: An Informal History of TWA, Robert Serling.
22. The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow.
23. The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders.
24. The Light Brigade, Kameron Hurley.
25. Middlegame, Seanan McGuire.
26. The New Inquisition, Robert Anton Wilson.
27. Loserthink, Scott Adams.
28. Assateague Dark, Bob Adamov.
29. Gideon the Ninth,Tamsyn Muir.
30. Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood, J. Michael Straczynski.
31. The Lady from the Black Lagoon, Mallory O'Meara.
32. Joanna Russ, Gwyneth Jones.
33. The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, Farah Mendelsohn.
34. The Deep, Rivers Solomon.
35. The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djeli Clark.
36. This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
37. In an Absent Dream, Seanan McGuire.
38. Nature's God, Robert Anton Wilson.
39. The Keep, F. Paul Wilson.
40. Remain in Love, Chris Frantz.
41. The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150-750, Peter Brown.
42. The Second Star, Alma Alexander.
43. Network Effect, Martha Wells.
44. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Scott Adams.
45. Last Orders and Other Stories, Brian Aldiss.
46. Is My Child Next? The Alexa Brown Story, Jonathan Walsh.
47. Piranesi, Susanna Clarke. 
48. The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov.
49. Watership Down, Richard Adams.
50. Attack Surface, Cory Doctorow.
51. Shostakovich: A Life, Fay Laurel.
52. The Starseed Signals, Robert Anton Wilson.
53. Mingo Town & Memories, Larry Smith.
54. A Time of Changes, Robert Silverberg.
55. Steel Rails and Silver Wings: The Lindberg Line to the Birth of TWA, Robert Serling.
56. Stilicho: The Vandal Who Saved Rome, Ian Hughes.
57. Assassin, Douglas R. Casey and John F. Hunt.
58. Plowing the Dark, Richard Powers. 

Five best books of 2020

These are actually not all books published in 2020 -- I have chosen to include some books I read on the Hugo ballot that were published in 2019. But still, there are all pretty new books, and older books I really liked read in the past year are included in the "I also liked" paragraph. 

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke. I was really starting to wonder when we were going to get another novel from the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Piranesi is very strange, very vivid, rather like a waking dream, about a man who lives in a gigantic, flooded palace, so big it is a world to itself. 

Middlegame, Seanan McGuire. As I wrote earlier this year, the Hugo ballot for best novel was quite good this year, but this riveting fantasy novel, by an author I had never encountered before, was my favorite. 

A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine. This is the novel that won the Hugo Award, and it was another one on the ballot I particularly loved. It's a space opera, but a very literary one, and it shows how an empire can "rule" through culture, rather than just power. 

Network Effect, Martha Wells. The first full length novel (the previous ones were novellas). Any science fiction fans who doesn't read these books is making a mistake. They can also be read as future thrillers. 

Death Sweat of the Cluster, Znore. Still finishing this, but the essays I've read so far are remarkable. I'd like to see Znore get more attention for his discussion of RAW and conspiracy theories, what to make of Ezra Pound as we go into the new century, etc. 

Other books I really liked: Watership Down, Richard Adams; Plowing the Dark, Richard Powers; The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix Harrow, and Moon Rising, Ian McDonald.  

There were three editions of RAW published this year, The Starseed Signals. Ishtar Rising and The New Inquisition. I bought and read all of them and look forward to getting Sex, Drugs and Magick: A Journey Beyond Limits soon from Hilaritas Press. 

New Facebook group for studying the Eight Circuit Model

Mike Gathers has created a new Facebook group, Forum for Intelligence Increase, devoted to discussing the Eight Circuit Model of consciousness developed by Timothy Leary and explained (and further developed by Robert Anton Wilson). 

Although it is a new group, it has already attracted a number of people who have written books on the model, including Douglas Wingate, Antero Alli and James Heffernan, and there are also many names you will recognize among RAW fandom. Wingate has posted a PDF of his book, Circuits and Shen: Models of the Evolution of Consciousness and Chinese Medicine. 

If you missed it, here is Mike's own publication. 

Many of you would enjoy Znore''s book

 

While 2020 has been a bad year in many ways, at least we got something to read. Hilaritas Press issued definitive new editions of Ishtar Rising and The New Inquisition and put out a totally new title, The Starseed Signals. 

We also got Death Sweat of the Cluster:Selected Essays from Groupname for Grapejuice, a collection of 27 literary essays by Znore, taken from Znore's Groupname for Grapejuice blog. I had my wife give me a copy of the book for Christmas and also bought a copy to give to a friend. 

Groupname for Grapejuice has a particular focus on James Joyce, but Znore's work discusses Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K. Dick, Ezra Pound and William Blake, among many others. The first essay begins with Znore walking into a used bookstore in 2008 and finding a copy of Cosmic Trigger on the shelf. I'm about 70 pages into the book so far and I've come across many references to RAW.  And the series of essays in the book about Dick's final novels should not be missed by Dick fans

One reason to buy the book as opposed to simply reading the blog (aside from the logical organization Znore gives to his collection) is the introduction, which amounts to a defense of taking literature seriously and also provides a map for what Znore is trying to do. (In a personal literary synchronicity for me, he writes that "in the widest and roughest of terms, the tradition could be called 'Platonic'." Before starting Znore's book, I just finished Richard Powers' Plowing the Dark, which explicitly references Plato's allegory of the cave. Powers' book also is all about the power of literature.)

Death Sweat of the Cluster also is a very good-looking book, with cover and interior art by Kaylee Pickinpaugh. It is only issued in paper; there doesn't seem to be an ebook edition, at least for now. 

My 2017 interview with Znore, which I enjoyed re-reading, offers some background on the book. 

Death Sweat of the Cluster is published by Sync Book Press, the publisher's website is worth a look. 

Prometheus Rising exercise and discussion group, Week Twelve

 

By Eric Wagner
Special guest blogger

I have found it sobering to examine my own Thinker and Prover. Despite decades of work on the exercises in Prometheus Rising and in using E-Prime, I still have a lot of negative self-talk. My Thinker tells me negative things about myself, often using the verb “to be,” and my Prover methodically sets about proving them. Hopefully I can alleviate this situation over the next 21 months by doing the exercises in Prometheus Rising.

I notice that stress makes the situation worse. My physical health seems OK, but I allowed myself to get behind in my grading while I felt under the weather. It has proved a challenge to get all my grading done over the past two weeks. Plus, the holidays provide some stress as well. At least my Thinking thinks so, and my Prover complies, perceiving stress and castigating me for getting behind.

My Thinker also thinks Prometheus Rising has a lot to offer, especially if one does the exercises. My Thinker has pointed out my ongoing struggles with self-fulfilling prophecies. At times in the past I have had a Kinbote-like zeal for proselytizing for Dr. Wilson’s ideas and especially for the value of doing the exercises in Prometheus Rising. My Thinker wants these exercises to prove beneficial for me and anyone else who does them, but my Thinker also has lingering doubts about their efficacy. We will see how my Thinker and Prover respond to the experiences of the next 21 months. 

Look what's on the cover

 

Cover of the first edition

Charles Faris, catching up on his reading just like me, sends me a photo of the book he has checked out of the library. It's a first edition of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan, also pictured above.

Charles remarks, " I just borrowed from library to see if I could understand understanding media now that I’m an old fuck and who knew there’s an old school computer print 23 on the cover?

"I’m also noticing how much 8circ is influenced by McLluhan. In some ways it could be helpful to think of 8circ as a media theory especially in terms of media as extension. Of course this begs the question 'extending what?' "

McLuhan also figures in the book I've begun, Death Sweat of the Cluster by Znore.