Hilaritas Press releases 'RAW Memes'

Hilaritas Press has announced the release of RAW Memes, a collection of memes by Richard Rasa built around Robert Anton Wilson quotes.

RAW came up with many memorable epigrams, and I've always enjoyed Rasa's memes and have often featured them here. I've put the book on my Christmas list.

Rasa says, "When Hilaritas Press was launched, I was rereading Bob’s books, and making note of my favorite quotes. To advertise our new editions, I started using those quotes in illustrated memes. At the time of writing this, Hilaritas Press has published 20 books. I’ve created a couple hundred memes for Hilaritas Press, the RAW Trust and Flying Lasagna Enterprises. The memes in this collection of RAW Memes are my favorites."

See the link for more.  The book is available from Amazon and the other usual places; you can buy it from Barnes and Noble, for example, if you want to help keep your local chain bookstore open. 

Natural Law reading group, Week Three, the title essay

Photo by Samuel PASTEUR-FOSSE on Unsplash

By Chad Nelson
Special guest blogger 

I thought about steel manning the case for natural law, but realize I cannot do a competent job of it. The extent of my homework was to re-read Rothbard’s chapters on the topic in Ethics of Liberty, but it only left me with more questions. I turned to a Clarence Thomas web search hoping to find something more basic. Thomas’s belief in natural law was a point of controversy during his Senate confirmation hearings in 1991, albeit one that took a back seat to the Anita Hill allegations. It’s telling that one can find a litany of academic articles attempting to explain natural law, but very little in the way of a Cliff’s Notes version. Why does it take a law review article to explain something that’s supposed to be so self-evident nobody in their right mind would deny it? Furthermore, why don’t its proponents lead with actual examples of natural law? It ought to be the easiest way to make the case. If these “laws” are so timeless, cross-cultural, and intuitive, surely citing a few of them would give dimwits like us the lightbulb moment we need to recognize it.

After an admittedly weak effort to become a “metaphysical wizard…like Konkin and Rothbard” (p.54), I’m still left thinking that natural law is “ontological spaghetti” (p.45). I’m not clueless about it. I generally understand what its advocates are getting at. It just doesn’t seem possible to ever arrive there. Indeed, natural law seems only able to exist as high-level abstract theorizing. A fun thought exercise, but lacking “real world” applicability, it becomes worthless. Recognizing this, RAW uses his essay to "bring his adversaries down from out of the clouds” as Oz noted in last week’s comments. Or, as RAW puts it, “To come out of our heads…means to come to our senses, literally…” (p.83)

One of the more effective strategies RAW employs is to detribalize, as when he compares and contrasts some of the claims of competing natural law cultists: Mormons, Catholics, Objectivists, feminists, ecologists, Mayans, Aztecs, Nazis, Druids, libertarians, etc. No ideology is spared. These examples are endlessly amusing of course, but if you’re self-aware, they also make you wonder which of your own absurd beliefs might land you on this list. 

If we can barely find agreement among today’s tribes on what is “natural,” how can we ever move backwards in time to evaluate generations past? Can’t we find one such law to put to the test? Says RAW, “about the only rule all tribes agree on is the one that says people who criticize the rules should be burned, toasted, boiled in oil or otherwise discouraged from such heresy.” (p.46) (An interesting aside: heresy “comes from the Greek, heiress, to choose…” (p.62))

The funniest parts of the essay for me come out this smorgasbord of cultural skewering. The whole thing has the feel of a George Carlin special. Indeed if Carlin was “the dean of countercultural comedians,” RAW may well be one of the school’s co-founders. I imagine RAW would have a comedic field day in 2022 given how many more competing natural law cults have arisen.

I found the most interesting line of RAW’s thinking to be his juxtaposition of scientific and natural laws. Natural law advocates are fond of claiming to have discovered the “Science of Justice” (Spooner), so it’s nice to see a philosopher with laboratory experience and scientific know-how confront the claim. Wilson says the claim stems from their misunderstanding of “laws” of the scientific variety, which, if we are being precise, are more appropriately termed approximations, current best guesses, models, etc. Yes, some prevailing scientific laws may be so reliable that we may take them for granted, but as we know, paradigms shift. Besides, scientists, unlike natural law cultists, never resort to burning, toasting, or boiling each other in oil for questioning or seeking to revise what we know. Err...

Perhaps natural laws are like scientific laws in that way though. Not quite universal, but so darn close that questioning them is reserved for only the nuttiest among us. 

RAW: “[N]atural law in [George] Smith's sense would be akin to an absolutely Newtonian scientific prediction and would be equivalent to a kind of practical science, like saying, ‘if you jump off a tall building without a parachute, you will get hurt.’

"One trouble with this unexpected and incongruous intrusion of pragmatism into metaphysics, as I see it, is that it takes the spooky religiosity out of Natural Law, opens the matter to debate and discussion, examination of real details of actual cases, how to gauge probable outcomes, etc., and thus approaches real since, almost. This tendency seems to me a step in the right direction, but it relinquishes the metaphysical Absolute Truth that people like Rothbard and Konkin and other metaphysicians are seeking. That which is placed in a practical sensory-sensual space-time context is no longer absolute, but becomes a matter of pragmatic choice, tactics, strategy and the relativity that obtains in all empirical judgments.” (p.31)

(Another interesting aside: This study of human action, praxeology, is a central component in Rothbard’s and other Austrian economists’ philosophy, and comes from the Latin for the “customary way of doing things — i.e., the tribal game-rules.” (p.18))

After all is said and done, we are left with the conclusion that natural law is just a way for men to “rationalize their own prejudices.” (p.44). A word that appears frequently throughout the essay is “word” itself: “word-and-symbol hypnosis," “webs of words,” “word-play,” “snarl words,” etc. This is obviously no coincidence -- much of this debate over revolves around language, and how we map it to “sensory-sensual experience.” RAW shows that when coupled, “natural” and “law" happen to be two words that “do not correspond to any real territory.” (p.5)

An update on the Illuminatus! TV series

My AI-produced movie poster for Illuminatus!, see this blog post. 

If you missed it, Rasa posted a comment this weekend to provide on update on the efforts to make Illuminatus! into a TV series: There's nothing to report now, but efforts are continuing.

Rasa wrote, "There are machinations underfoot, but alas, nothing that can be reported on.

"RAW's daughter, Christina, laughs often about the fact that trying to get Illuminatus! to the screen has been an ongoing effort for decades. She is optimistic about the current efforts, but realistic enough to know that you just don't know until you know, and even then you have to see the credits roll before you really believe it."

Saturday links

Prometheus Rising audiobook coming soon.  

J. Christian Greer on the overlap between "acidheads" and "tree huggers."

End of the year updates from Joseph Matheny. 

Works in Progress magazine, more ways of things getting better. 

Over-the-counter naloxone may be getting close. 

Ted Hand talk on Terence McKenna and alchemy. 

Some good news for optimists

Unsplash photo 

I don't know anyone happy with politics these days, but Robert Anton Wilson, who generally had little good to say about modern politics and modern politicians, was an optimist about how advances in technology can  make life better. That's one of the themes of Cosmic Trigger 2, and of course it's reflected in his writings elsewhere.

In a remarkable article for The Atlantic, Derek Thompson discusses ten big technology breakthroughs during the past year. Thompson wrote on Twitter, "Genuinely some of the most inspiring and interesting reporting I’ve done all year," and it seems hard to disagree.

Prometheus Hall of Fame finalists announced

 

[If you read this blog, you can probably guess I have a soft spot for underrated writers. I not only promote Robert Anton Wilson here, I also write about Robert Shea (who can use more help than Wilson, as far as I can tell). I did a website devoted to George Alec Effinger years ago that I need to revive.

Another writer I like is R.A. Lafferty. A story I nominated for the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, "Primary  Education of the Camiroi," has bee named a finalist. The members of the Libertarian Futurist Society will vote on the award next year, and a winner will be announced in a few months. Here is the official press release -- The Management.]

2023 PROMETHEUS HALL OF FAME AWARD FINALISTS ANNOUNCED

HEINLEIN, LAFFERTY, LEWIS, LONGYEAR AND PRATCHETT RECOGNIZED

The Libertarian Futurist Society has selected five finalists for the 2023 Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction.

This year's finalists – first published between 1945 and 2000 - include novels by C.S. Lewis and Terry Pratchett, a Robert Heinlein novelette, an R.A. Lafferty story and a collection of linked stories by Barry B. Longyear.

* “Free Men,”  a 1966 novelette by Robert Heinlein first published in his collection “The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein” and later collected in “Expanded Universe,” offers a strong defense of freedom and American ideals. The novelette focuses on the aftermath of an invasion and U.S. occupation after a nuclear “20 Minute War” and how a small band of heroic but practical guerrilla fighters survive, adapt and resist tyranny at great cost.

* “Primary Education of the Camiroi,” a 1966 short story by R.A. Lafferty reporting on a fact-finding trip by an Earth delegation to study education practices on the planet Camiroi. The story offers a scathing and satirical critique of the top-down approach and lack of rigor in public/government education, arguably more relevant now than when it was first published. Besides incorporating flashes of Lafferty’s deadpan original voice and distinctive brand of humor, the story shows how to train youth to be competent and capable adults – rather than serfs – who can accept liberty and its concomitant responsibilities.

* That Hideous Strength, a 1945 novel by C.S. Lewis (Book 3 of his Space Trilogy), revolves around a sociologist and his wife who discover a totalitarian conspiracy and diabolical powers scheming to take control of humanity, in the guise of a progressive-left, Nazi-like organization working for a centrally planned pseudo-scientific society literally hell-bent to control all human life. Its cautions about the therapeutic state and the rising ideology of scientism (science not as the value-free pursuit of truth, but as an elitist justification for social control) seem prescient today.

* Circus World, a 1981 collection of linked stories by Barry B. Longyear that imagines how Earth’s circus troupes have evolved on a far-distant planet into a circus- and magic-defined culture without a government but with strongly individualistic, voluntary and cooperative social norms and only One Law, designed to make it nearly impossible to impose government regulations or other legislation, that helps the planet’s citizens peacefully cooperate in resistance against coercive human invasion and statist tyranny.

* The Truth,  Terry Pratchett’s 2000 novel, first nominated in 2001 for a Prometheus in the Best Novel category, is part of his satirical but historically informed Discworld series. With his usual tongue-in-cheek style, this novel focuses on politics and the development of newspapers, when a struggling scribe who’s the son of a privileged family conceives the notion of producing his newsletter with a new printing press. All too timely in its focus on misinformation and its theme of freedom of speech and press, the novel portrays how journalists report the facts (or not) and communicate “the truth” amid pressure from competing political factions. 

In addition to these nominees, the Prometheus Hall of Fame Finalist Judging Committee considered three other works: The End of Eternity,  a 1955 novel by Isaac Asimov;  “The Trees,” a 1978 song by Neal Peart and Rush; and “Or Give Me Death,” a 1955 short story by Donald Westlake.

The final vote will take place in mid-2023. All Libertarian Futurist Society members are eligible to vote. The award will be presented at a major science fiction convention and/or online.

Nominations for the 2023 Hall of Fame Award can be submitted to committee chair William H. Stoddard (halloffame@lfs.org) at any time up to Sept. 30, 2023. All LFS members are eligible to nominate. Nominees may be in any narrative or dramatic form, including prose fiction, stage plays, film, television, other video, graphic novels, song lyrics, or epic or narrative verse; they must explore themes relevant to libertarianism and must be science fiction, fantasy, or related genres.

First presented in 1979 (for Best Novel) and presented annually since 1982, the Prometheus Awards have recognized outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that dramatize the perennial conflict between Liberty and Power, favor private social cooperation over legalized coercion, expose abuses and excesses of obtrusive government, critique or satirize authoritarian ideas, or champion individual rights and freedoms as the mutually respectful foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance, civility, and civilization itself. 

The awards include gold coins and plaques for the winners for Best Novel, Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame), and occasional Special Awards. 

The Prometheus Award is one of the most enduring awards after the Nebula and Hugo awards, and one of the oldest fan-based awards currently in sf. 

The LFS welcomes new members who are interested in science fiction and the future of freedom. More information is available at our website, www.lfs.org and Prometheus blog (lfs.org/blog/).

New AI speaks out on Robert Anton Wilson! (After I prompted it)

 

Photo by Christopher Burns for Unsplash

If you pay any attention to technology news, you will know about ChatGPT, the new artificial intelligence writing program. You can learn about it at the website, and you can register at the site and try it out.

Here's what I got when I asked it about Robert Anton Wilson:

RAWIllumination.net: Is Robert Anton Wilson a great writer? Will he be remembered 100 years from now? 

ChatGPT: Robert Anton Wilson was a prolific and influential writer, known for his books on topics ranging from philosophy and religion to conspiracy theories and the counterculture. He was a master of the written word, and his work continues to be highly regarded by many readers. It's difficult to predict exactly how he will be remembered 100 years from now, but it's likely that his writing will continue to be studied and appreciated by future generations.

Jesse Walker/Reason news

Given all of the current hysteria over gay people and trans people, I thought this Tweet from Jesse Walker was interesting: "I spent much of the last few months working on a long magazine feature about some big things the Rufo "groomer" crusade gets wrong. It'll be out later this month. There is almost certainly material in here that you have not seen before. Reason makes this work possible."

I've put the graphic on this post that Jesse used. Jesse is hoping you will contribute to the Reason webathon. 

Natural Law online reading group, Week Two, the title essay

 A committee of five presents the first draft of the Declaration of Independence (John Trumbull painting). 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

So says the Declaration of Independence, which evokes natural law (i.e. in the previous paragraph it mentions "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.") Natural law posits that there are "values intrinsic to human nature," as this Wikipedia article explains. These notions are what Robert Anton Wilson is taking on in his essay. 

I wonder if my American readers think it is "natural" to drive on the right side of the road, and my British readers think it is "natural" to drive on the left side? Here is something interesting: "In the UK and Australia, people tend to turn left when entering a building. In the US, they turn right. It’s important to remember if you’re booking a trade show booth." (Source, third item). 

A few annotations: 

Loompanics, Page 3. Boy, did this publisher push the envelope. "According to Gia Cosindas, Amazon.com, eBay, and Google refused to allow Loompanics to advertise on their sites, since some of the books' content violates their editorial guidelines. Specifically, Google wrote, "At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain 'the promotion of violence [and] drugs or drug paraphernalia."

New Libertarian, Page 3. The Samuel E. Konkin III magazine. For back issues, including the "Natural Law debate" issue, Vol. IV, No. 13, that Wilson cites, go here.  And I quite liked The Fractal Man, J. Neil Schuman's novel about Konkin.

Samuel Konkin III

"politics remains such a depressing paleolithic and murderous spectacle," page 9. See also Gene Healy on how politics makes everyone dumber. 

For a New Liberty, Page 10. For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto by Murray Rothbard, an anarcho-capitalist tract, was a big part of the libertarian surge in the 1970s. I had a hardcover copy, when I discovered libertarianism while in college from Illuminatus! and other sources, and it was very influential. I would guess that many serious libertarians have read it; I'd be surprised, for example, if Jesse Walker or Chad Nelson said they had not read it. Rothbard, by the way, was a strong peacenik, like RAW (he was a big influence on the late Justin Raimondo, the founder of Antiwar.com), and that allows many of us to overlook his other sins. (In fact, Raimondo wrote a book about Rothbard.)

"all three at once," Page 17. This business about "the hide of the Easter Bunny" is really funny; did you catch that RAW also is making a joke about the doctrine of the Trinity? 

Simon Newcomb, Page 22 -- Simon Newcomb (1835-1909) was an accomplished mathematician and a very smart guy, but just as RAW mentions, he did argue that airplanes are not possible. (The Wikipedia article, buttressed by footnote 23, says that "When Newcomb heard about the Wrights' flight in 1908, he was quick to accept it," so in Wilson's terms he behaved like a scientist, not as a dogmatist: When he received new evidence he accepted that he was wrong. (I cannot resist repeating the famous saying of Arthur C. Clarke: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Simon Newcomb

"Doubt everything. Find your own light." Page 23. This seems like a rather free translation. In What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula, the last words are given as, "Transient are conditioned things. Try to accomplish your aim with diligence." The Fake Buddha Quotes website also wonders where this version of the the Buddha's last words came from. 

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Page 53. One of Robert Heinlein's most famous novels, published in 1966,  is a favorite of science fiction fans (it won the Best Novel Hugo) but also is a favorite of libertarians (it was the first novel to win the the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, from the Libertarian Futurist Society, in a tie with Atlas Shrugged (Nineteen Eighty-Four and Fahrenheit 451 had to wait another year). I read it as a teenager and am overdue to read it again; Tyler Cowen re-read it in 2017 and found that despite his low expectations " it nonetheless holds up very well and in fact has aged gracefully."

Arthur Hlavaty, Page 56. The prominent science fiction fan and critic, read  his fanzines! And here are some top quotes, and here is a useful biography. Arthur also founded The Golden APA, which had both Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea as members, see my interesting interview with him about it. 

Arthur Hlavaty

"I am writing in defense of personal choice here (if you haven't guessed that already); I merely object to having personal choices proclaimed as new religious revelations which we all must share or be damned," Page 57. RAW's version of libertarianism, and also another comment on what he sees as the irony of debating natural law with libertarians. 

John 8:7, Page 63, the "admirable remark" which Wilson says "ought to be burned into the backside of every moralist, with a branding iron," is (in one translation), " So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

psittacine, Page 68, birds of the parrot family.

Next week: More on the Natural Law essay, featuring guest blogger Chad Nelson. 

Robert Anton Wilson's conspiracy class

I've been mentioning Prop Anon a lot in these blog posts recently. There's a reason for that. He's been posting a great deal of material about Robert Anton Wilson, now that he's finished his upcoming biography of Wilson. 

One of his latest projects is that he's been posting material from Wilson's Maybe Logic Academy class on conspiracies. Access the postings at Prop's Chapel Perilous website. 

What's up with the Illuminatus! TV show?

There's been no news on the effort to turn Illuminatus! into a TV series since the attempt was announced in 2019, and now one of the people who was working on it has a new job.

Hunter Gorinson has been named president and publisher of Oni Press/Lion Forge, apparently an indie comics outfit in Portland, Oregon, more here.  He had been listed as an executive producer for the planned Illuminatus! adaptation, as you can see from the other link.

Does anyone have any updates on the Illuminatus! TV show? I've heard notbing since 2019.

Rasa's inspiration?

The above photo was posted by Rasa on Facebook; it shows Mount Shasta, near where Rasa lives. Can we speculate that one of the inspirations for the great job Rasa does running Hilaritas Press is that he lives in a beautiful part of the country? (One of the albums from Rasa's music group is a live album from Mount Shasta.) 

Rasa lives in Weed, California, named of course for local pioneer Abner Weed. 

After I mentioned to Rasa that I was reposting the above photo in my blog, he sent me a bonus photo below, for the readers of RAWIllumination.net, showing a view of Mount Shasta from his living room window. This is a World Exclusive not published anywhere else!

'There is no governor anywhere'

 

 

Zhuangzi

Chad Nelson's introduction to Natural Law begins with this quote from RAW character Hugh Crane (from Schroedinger's Cat but also the story "I Opening" from Natural Law): "There is no governor anywhere: you are all absolutely free."

The quote can be traced back to the Taoist Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, who supposedly said,  "There is no governor anywhere."  I am unable to supply any context for the remark; perhaps there is a Taoist scholar (or RAW scholar) among us who can help? 

Robert Shea's anarchist zine, No Governor, took its title from the Zhuangzi statement. In the first issue of No Governor, the statement is given as "There is no governor present anywhere," and it is attributed to Chuang Tzu, an alternate spelling. 

PDF copies of No Governor are available via this blog; see the "Robert Shea resources" section on the right side of this website. 

Here is a quote derived from from the second Cat book, The Trick Top Hat: “There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled — by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.”

I don't have the text of the omnibus edition of Cat; in my copy of The Trick Top Hat, one of the three original paperbacks, much of this is on page 196.