The new Scott Adams book on framing

Rob Pugh writes to tell me he is reading the new Scott Adams book, Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success and reports that much of it reminds him of what Robert Anton Wilson wrote about reality tunnels. (I am often not a fan of Scott Adams' politics, but Rob knows I liked a previous book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life.)

Rob writes, "I'm in the middle of the new Scott Adams' book 'Reframe Your Brain' and (sadly) it took me about half of the book to realize 'Oh, he's changing reality tunnels using language.' I'd long categorized 'framing' in the political/spin category and didn't give it much thought. But he's basically using Sapir-Whorf linguistic to change channels on reality tunnels. IMO/YMMV at least. The next chapter that I'm about to start is literally called 'Reality Reframes.' It's an interesting and possibly useful book, I think, so far.

"I've never run across any direct Adams/RAW links, but given he goes on about his hypnotist bonafides, there's probably at least some NLP/Bandler'esque overlaps."

I got a followup email from Rob the next day. In a passage of the book, Adams writes, "I can see a valid argument for either optimist or pessimism about the current state of the world. I don't know which filter is more accurate, but I do know one makes me feel better than the other. So I choose the happy-making one."

Rob posits, "This is a just another way RAW said 'I prefer to create for each hour the happiest, funniest, and most romantic reality-tunnel...' "

Rob does not mention it, but it sounds like the Adams book could be a companion for Lazy Person's Guide to Framing: Decoding the News Media by Brian Dean, which is sitting in my Kindle reader, waiting for me to get to it. Here is Brian's pinned post on the book at the RAW Semantics blog. I am not suggesting that Brian is interested in Scott Adams' book, only that they (apparently) tackle a common subject. 

Did RAW revive interest in Crowley's magick?

Aleister Crowley in 1925 (public domain photo). 

When I read the Illuminatus! trilogy back in the 1970s, when I was in college in Oklahoma, I didn't know anyone who was seriously into magick or Aleister Crowley. I did know quite a few libertarians; in fact, all of the people I knew who read the book were libertarians, and so I was under the impression that libertarians were the core audience for the book. Of course, there are plenty of libertarians who have read the trilogy, and read other work by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, but I did not realize how many RAW fans really were more into magick than political philosophy. When I began this blog in 2010, I assumed that most of the people who bothered to read it would be libertarians, and I was surprised at the number of people I encountered who identified with the left instead, or who were into magick.

While my views about RAW's audience have shifted, I am still capable of surprise. I am reading Lion of Light because I am taking part in the ongoing online reading group at Jechidah, so I duly read the pieces by Lon Milo DuQuette and Richard Kaczysnki, and a couple of passages caught my eye.

DuQuette: "Ordo Templi Orientis is now arguably the largest and most influential magical order in the world. In the first 15 years since our local lodge in Newport Beach officiated scores of Degree initiations. Of the new initiates I interviewed in those  years at least 75% told me they had been initially drawn to magick and Aleister Crowley because they had read The Illuminatus! Trilogy and the works of Robert Anton Wilson."

Kaczynski: "In the late 1970s, when I dove into the sci-fi con and pagan festival circuits, one or both of Wilson and Leary were frequent guests of honor. To me it seemed like more of the attendees had come to Crowley's magick through The Illuminatus! Trilogy than all of the aforementioned 'establishment' authors combined." [Kaczynski says that in 1974, the occult "establishment" was Israel Regardie, Francis King, John Symonds and Kenneth Grant.) 

So it sounds like the revival of Crowley's magick is another way Illuminatus! has influenced the culture. 

Oz Fritz on Duquette, Kaczynski and 'Do what thou wilt'

Lon Milo Duquette (Creative Commons photo by Alan Corcoran,  source.)

The second post in the online reading group for the new Robert Anton Wilson book,  Lion of Light,  has gone up. Oz Fritz covers the history of the phrase "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," discusses the Lon Milo Duquette and Richard Kaczynski pieces in the book and even provides a nice anecdote about Brian Eno, so check it out. The information about Jimmy Page's interest in Aleister Crowley also interested me.

Was Mozart the world's greatest achiever?

Mozart in a portrait dated to 1781, when he was 25. (Source). 

Today's blog post will be in honor of the fact that RAW loved classical music. 

On his blog, Tyler Cowen makes the case that Johann Sebastian Bach was the greatest achiever of all time: "I’ve been reading and rereading biographies of Bach lately (for some podcast prep), and it strikes me he might count as the greatest achiever of all time.  That is distinct from say regarding him as your favorite composer or artist of all time."

Tyler lists a variety of criteria in his argument, including quality of work, being better than contemporary rivals, staying power over the centuries, overcoming obstacles, and so on. (The whole post, not terribly long, is worth a read.) One of the criteria is "consistency of work and achievement," and that's certainly true. Like most people who are into Bach's music, I listen to a wide variety of music -- cantatas, keyboard pieces, concertos, pieces for solo organ, work for solo violin and on and on. It's all really good. 

I certainly don't want to diminish Bach in any way. But it still seems to me that one can make a case for Mozart, who seems at least as amazing as an overachiever. Perhaps I am influenced by the fact that I have lately been obsessed with Mozart's piano concertos and listening to them every day for days, but I think a good case can be made for Mozart.

Brilliant Classics has issued a complete box set of all of Bach's music. It comes to 155 CDs. But the Brilliant Classics boxed set of Mozart adds up to 170 CDs! 

Yes, Mozart's early music, written when he was a child, is not not as interesting as his later work, and the music that is played the most was written late in his life. For example, among the 27 piano concertos, the last eight are the ones that are most often played, and recorded over and over again.

But consider also, that Bach lived to be 65, and Mozart wrote more music despite living to be only 35! 

And if you compare works written while an adult, the consistency of quality for Mozart is very good. 

Bach got to live 30 more years than Mozart. During the time he was alive, Mozart wrote furiously.   In 1788, Mozart completed the famous last three symphonies, 39, 40 and 41, and 1788 also included Piano Sonata Number 15, Piano Concerto No. 26, Piano Trio No. 4, Piano Sonata No. 16, Violin Sonata No. 36, Piano Trio No. 5, Divertimento in E-flat and Piano Trio No. 6. 1791, the year Mozart died in early December, obviously was not his best year, but it still included two operas, the last piano concerto, a clarinet concerto, much of the Requiem and many other works.

If you listen to classical music radio stations, you'll notice Mozart as the composer who is probably played the most, fulfilling the same role that Led Zeppelin plays for classic rock stations. 

It is painful to think about what Mozart could have written if he had just five more years and lived to age 40. It is mind boggling to think about Mozart living into his 60s, like Bach, or even making it to age 56, like Beethoven. 

New Bobby Campbell newsletter

 

Bobby Campbell has released his latest occasional newsletter, and it underscores how he's had a busy and productive summer: A new episode of "Buddhafart," his excellent "Living in a RAW World" essay for Maybe Day, and other bits.

There is also an intriguing announcement: "Additionally, a top secret new project has popped up on the horizon, prompting a frenzied explosion of pre-production activity, and a vague notion that everything has been building towards THIS :)))"

Friday links

 Always on our minds? (Photo by David Köhler on Unsplash)

Production of AI opera "Valis." 

The persecution of pain management doctors.  I keep trying to draw attention to this, and in general no one cares. Here is an article on the doctor's conviction, and notice how the stupid, lazy reporter, Tracy Gladney, simply writes down the government press release. 

New episode of Bobby Campbell's "Buddhafart." 

What men really think about (maybe). 

Saudi man sentenced to death for Tweets. 

Cherokee tribe in North Carolina votes to legalize marijuana. 

C.J. Stone on the revised Higgs KLF book [Now with an exclusive update!]

The KLF and Tammy Wynette, performing a KLF song inspired by the Illuminatus! trilogy. 

Of all of John Higgs' excellent books, the one he wrote on the KLF, The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds, arguably is his weirdest and certainly is the one that discusses Robert Anton Wilson the most.

So when Nick Helseg-Larsen sent me a link to "Footnotes to a Discordian Fable," a review by Christopher James Stone of a new edition of the book, I was interested.

As you know if you regularly read my blog, Higgs has issued a new edition of the book, updated with thousands of words of footnotes. I had a better idea of what the new edition is like after reading Stone's review. 

I'll let you read the review for yourself (you should read it), but a couple of things. Stone has a comment about John's career which seems insightful: "This is part of Higgs’ genius: his ability to identify neglected stories that need to be told."

There's also an anecdote about John, not really related to the review, which illustrates the determination and drive which also has been a part of John's success. John and Mr. Stone, who have become friends, travel to Stonehenge and are knighted by "King Arthur," a biker turned Druid who is the subject of a book by Stone and an unproduced screenplay by Stone. "He vowed to remain in the stones till dawn. It was an awful night, raining constantly, and I soon gave up and sat in the car. Higgs remained true to his word and stayed out all night. When he finally joined me after dawn he was shivering with the cold and dripping wet. We turned on the engine so that the fans blew out a stream of hot air."

In the review, Stone reveals that one the structures of the book is that it focuses on five topics, conforming to the Discordian Law of Fives, e.g. "Bill Drummond, Robert Anton Wilson, Ken Campbell and Doctor Who." but then lists only four topics. Is this a joke that I'm not getting, or did the reviewer make a mistake? Update: After I asked about this on the Social Media Platform Formerly Known As Twitter, Stone wrote: "Ah yes, how could I have missed that? The fifth element is Alan Moore, the comic book writer. He's mentioned earlier."

Notes on 'Perdurabo'

 

I thought I would offer a few notes on Perdurabo, the biography of Aleister Crowley written by Richard Kaczynski. 

I wanted to get background of knowledge about Crowley before reading the new Hilaritas Press book by Robert Anton Wilson, Lion of Light: Robert Anton Wilson on Aleister Crowley. I think Perdurabo succeeds in providing good information about Crowley's activities and beliefs, his Book of the Law and his belief that he was a prophet for a new creed. I read the "revised and expanded" edition, which runs to 720 pages, including the notes. It took me awhile to finish it. 

I should  note that it's also a pretty good read; whatever you think of Crowley's character, or the way he treated other people, there was seldom a dull moment in his life as a magician, mountain climber, poet and a person who apparently had dozens of sexual relationships. If you like name-dropping, you also will like this book: Crowley had relationships with or at least ran across many different famous people. And so you read about Crowley's feud with William Butler Yeats. You read about how one of his lovers had a teenage son, Preston, and that Preston and Crowley loathed each other, and eventually Kaczysnki reveals that "Preston" is Preston Sturges, the famous Hollywood film director and screenwriter. And so on and so  on. 

But while I generally enjoyed the celebrity portraits, one of them displeased me. At one point, Crowley had dealings with Walter Duranty, the infamous New York Times reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for his articles about the Soviet Union; Duranty is known now as the perhaps the most famous liar in journalism. He is best remembered for suppressing the truth about how Stalin starved to death many residents of Ukraine. The Wikipedia article gives a  useful summary and how the current situation with Russia and Ukraine has not lessened awareness of the matter, or criticism of the New York Times. Kaczynski covers all this by writing that when Crowley met Duranty just before World War I, "Years would pass before he [Duranty] would be acclaimed for his coverage of World War I and the rise of Joseph Stalin." This seems a little bit like writing, about the young Adolf Hitler, "Years would pass before he would be acclaimed for his pioneering work in dealing with anti-Semitism."

Speaking of politics, as I read the book I kept in mind the comments of D.M.S. on my blog post announced the new Lion of Light reading group; D.M.S. wrote, "I would like to know more about RAWs views on the more ugly sides of AC, his sexism and racism (as well as misusing other people, losing his own will to a heavy addiction and sometimes being just a plain asshole) as it has been documented in many ways.

"I am having a hard time just to focus on his spiritual work and 'Ignore his morals, ignore his political views, ignore his very clear lack of understanding for most people' as an admittedly well written post an reddit says."

Most of D.M.S.' accusations seem true about Crowley's ugly sides, although the book does document that he became a heroin addict because he was given heroin by doctors to treat his bronchitis and asthma, which troubled him much of his life (bronchitis is part of what killed Crowley at age 72 in 1947.) And to give Crowley his due, he sacrificed his wealth and much of his time and energy to a single-minded dedication to learn what he believed he had discovered. Apparently he really was sincere.

The only comment from D.M.S. which puzzled me was the reference to Crowley's "political views." Insofar as he had political views (I could not make out after reading a book hundreds of pages long if he ever voted or had a favorite political party) it seemed to me he had little use for fascism, Nazis or Communists. Perdurabo documents that Crowley was booted out of Italy by the Fascist regime (a big setback, he had established an Abbey of Thelema in Sicily) and that Crowley responded by writing anti-Mussolini poems; that Crowley denounced the "peace in our time" pact that sold out Czechoslovakia and temporarily delayed World War II, and that Crowley wrote a scathing letter to a pro-Nazi Thelema follower in Germany, denouncing anti-Semitism, and that Crowley referenced "Murder and terror in Soviet Russia, Concentration Camps and persecution in Germany (Page 498). Crowley's political views were one of the few items of his personal life that did NOT bother me, as opposed to, for example, his cruel treatment of women and the often callous way he treated other people. But  I am not an EXPERT on Crowley (as RAW sometimes spelled the word) and Crowley may well have had repugnant political opinions I am just not aware of. 

Much of Crowley's misbehavior can be explained (but not excused) by his single-minded dedication to his mission. I read a biography of Prokofiev, the Russian composer, a couple of years ago, by Harlow Robinson, and the biographer remarked that Prokofiev treated other people as if he assumed the most useful thing they could do in their lives would be to support him in writing as much music as possible; Prokofiev was likely correct, but that does not excuse how he treated everyone, Robinson wrote. Crowley had a similar belief about his own importance. 

Kaczynski recently announced on Facebook that an audiobook of Perdurabo is on the way; no details yet, but he has promised to post updates. 

'Lion of Light' reading group begins

 

The Lion of Light online reading group has begun at the Jechidah blog. Lion of Light is the new Hilaritas Press book of Robert Anton Wilson's writings about Aleister Crowley 

As per usual for online reading groups here or at Jechidah, everyone else is invited to join in by posting comments. There are two blog posts so far at Jechidah, one to announce the reading group and the first actual entry, posted last night to further discuss the group and to cover Mike Gathers' "Editor's Note" in the new book, which provodes the story of how the book came together. Future postings will go up each Sunday, with Gregory Arnott and Oz Fritz alternating.

Gregory and Oz both contributed to the new book. Both have spent many years reading RAW and also studying Aleister Crowley. The new reading group is an excellent opportunity for RAW fans, people interested in Crowley and people who like magick.

The "read inside the book feature" at Amazon's page for the book will let you read Mike's piece, so if you don't have the book yet, you can order it and get started in the meantime. You don't have to buy the book from Amazon, of course; see the other options at the bottom of this web page. 

Ebooks on sale that might interest sumbunall of you

I like to buy cheap ebooks, and I sometimes note ebook sales here; recently I posted about sales for an historical novel about James Joyce and Richard Kaczynski's Perdurabo, which I'm currently reading. 

A couple of new sales that caught my eye: In the U.S., Enochian Vision Magick: A Practical Guide to the Magick of Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley by Lon Milo DuQuette is available for $3.99 at the U.S. Amazon, (I checked, and it's not on sale at Barnes and Noble.)

British readers may want to know  that John Higgs' William Blake Vs. the World is just 99 pence at the Amazon UK.  Unfortunately, there's no corresponding sale in the U.S.; on Amazon, the ebook is a pricey $18.99. 

Hilaritas readies book on RAW's politics, and other publishing news

I heard from a couple of different folks that Hilaritas Press is working on a book about Robert Anton Wilson's political writings. I also heard reports that a RAW book on magick might be in the works.  I wrote to Rasa and asked for an update on Hilaritas' immediate plans. and he kindly took time to respond, as is his wont. 

About the reports on planned new titles, Rasa wrote, "Yes, we are working on a few ideas. The 'RAW Politics' book (working title) has been picking up speed with Mike Gathers, Chad Nelson and Jesse Walker all working to get a collection of RAW articles together."

About other possible books that haven't been announced yet, Rasa wrote, "Two books that we’ve been thinking about for a while are also on my mind recently: Playboy’s Book of Forbidden Words, and The Sex Magicians. I just last week scanned Forbidden Words. RAW obtained the copyright for that book when he left Playboy. 

"Mike Gathers had a couple ideas for compilations of RAW essays for a few other books: RAW on Magick and RAW Interviews are in that list. We’re still thinking about those."

Meanwhile, if you look at the Hilaritas list on the publisher's home page of the 21 publicly-announced RAW books officially announced by Hilaritas, 19 have been published and only two remain: Reality Is What You Can Get Away With and Chaos and Beyond. 

Rasa gave me an update on those, too, explaining that they have been last because of technical difficulties:

"We are still trying to figure out how to get permission to use the Hollywood stills that RAW put into Reality Is What You Can Get Away With – The  Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences no longer has ownership of the original photos, so that’s been a hassle to track down current owners. Christina is working on that copyright usage. 

"The other book, Chaos and Beyond: The Best of Trajectories, was a bit of a hassle because, like all the old New Falcon titles, we didn’t have the original files, so we had to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) versions. Chaos and Beyond was one book where RAW used a lot of the goofy fonts that came with early Mac computers. That drove the OCR software nuts, and so I have not been eager to tackle that reformatting, but just last week I had the thought to ask Scott Apel, the book’s editor and publisher, if he had the original files, and Praise Eris, he did! So this week I’ve been slowly going through that book, working on a newly formatted version. I’m guessing that will be our next book to release."

Peter Lamborn Wilson's RAW obituary

 This is via Chad Nelson, who writes that while doing research, " stumbled upon this on JSTOR. I thought it was pretty good! I know PLW published another RAW obit, but this one was news to me.

"The citation in case anyone wants to find it on JSTOR is Spring 2007 Fifth Estate, Volume 42, Issue 1(375), 56 pages." 

Friday links

 The KLF in concert in 1997 (Creative Commons photo, link)

The "Transmigratory Adventures of Philip K. Dick" Kickstarter. 

1961 panel discussion, features RAW (via Prop Anon on X). 

The KLF Share Unreleased Music Via British Library

Saudi man sentenced to death for Tweets.  

St. Thomas may actually have gone to India.