Interesting new article on James Joyce

A 1922 photograph of James Joyce by Man Ray. (Public domain photo). 

 "James Joyce Was a Complicated Man" by Henry Oliver, an article posted at The Fitzwilliam, starts out by zeroing in on the date James Joyce chose for Ulysses: 

"After Nora Barnacle masturbated James Joyce under a bridge, she became his muse. It was their first date, and Nora thought it a way of keeping her ardent admirer at bay. The glove that Nora had removed, Joyce kept by him in bed as a young man. But this was more than infatuation. That day became the centre of Joyce’s imaginative work, the day on which Ulysses was set. 

"A few years earlier, Joyce had been seduced by a prostitute, down by the River Liffey, an encounter which began his retreat from religion and religious authority. Now Nora was bringing him towards his central idea: the role of love in human affairs, and the notion that, as Richard Ellmann put it, the ordinary is the extraordinary; Joyce’s novel is the 'justification of the commonplace.' What happened between him and Nora that day wasn’t crude or immoral or disgusting: it was life. And it became the foundation of Ulysses."

Lots of other interesting observations in the article, too. This passage, for example, could be read as a restatement of how Ulysses influenced Illuminatus!: "Consciousness is fragmentary and so, to depict consciousness, novels must become fragmentary too. As T.S. Eliot said, 'the number of aspects' in Ulysses 'is indefinite'.” This seems like a restatement of RAW's comment that Ulysses does not have one objective point of view. 

The author, Henry Oliver, has his own Substack. 

Bobby Campbell's big comics collection

Omnibus 777 is a digital comics bundle that has been put together by Bobby Campbell. $5 for hundreds of pages of comics that can be downloaded individually, or as one big bundle. Available here. 

"OMNIBUS 777 - Your Passport to the Weirdoverse! A digital comix bundle collecting together 12 comix and 4 zines from Bobby Campbell and his amazing friends :)))

"Featuring: Weird Comix #0, Weird Comix #1, Weird Comix #2, Agnosis! #1, Agnosis! #2, BUDDHAFART #1, BUDDHAFART #2, Daze of Future Pastime, REJECTED, Psychonaut Comix #1, Psychonaut Comix #2, EITHER/OR, New Trajectories #1, New Trajectories #2, Maybe..., and Meet the Others.

"Bundle comes with access to PDF versions of all 16 releases, with CBR, Mobi (Kindle), and Web versions of all 12 comix. Download them individually or as a .zip file collection from the OMNIBUS 777 PDF guidebook."

"The idea is to make Omnibus 777 both the cheapest & best way to access my work," Bobby told me. 

Michael Johnson recommends three books on cannabis

[If you look at this blog, I hope you have noticed that the comments have been really interesting lately. Most of them should not really be taken out of context, but Michael's three book recommendations, as part of other comments for the March 7 blog post, seems to stand alone, and I decided to turn them into a blog post to make them easy to access, not least to remind me to read them. The Management.]

Three good books about cannabis

By R. Michael Johnson 

Peter Grinspoon's book from 2023, Seeing Through The Smoke: A Cannabis Specialist Untangles The Truth About Marijuana is to be recommended.

On the neurobiology of cannabis and the endocannabinoid system that is probably the master regulatory system in the body: see Cheryl Pellerin's Healing With Cannabis: The Evolution of the Endocannabinoid System and How Cannabinoids Help Relieve PTSD, Pain, MS, Anxiety, and More: it's quite readable for the intelligent layperson.

For cannabis and philosophy, I have a heavy bias toward Sebastian Marincolo's Elevated: Cannabis As A Tool For Mind Enhancement, put out by Hilaritas, with an Intro by some jackass*, but Marincolo's book is da bomb.

Read all three, digest what they have to say, then settle back with a few hits of a hybrid and try not to ponder the amount of BS that the government and industries that felt threatened by weed got far too many people to believe. The data/info/knowledge in those books couldda been common by the 1960s if there was no concerted disinformation program against this plant. (AKA Stanford professor Robert Proctor's term: agnotology: the business of creating un-knowledge) This is no small point: tens of thousands of people have done heavy time in prison for small amounts of what grandma is now scoring from her local dispensary, 'cuz it helps with her arthritis and the side effects are negligible.

Do that for a few minutes, then drop it - cannabis helps you easily to drop this kinda of anger - and just enjoy music, poetry, or movies. Or art, food and sex. Just a thought.

* [Foreword by R. Michael Johnson]

Do psychedelics make everyone better? Maybe the answer is obvious ....

Douglas Rushkoff

 Article spotted on Twitter by R.U. Sirius: "Ego tripping: Why do psychedelics "enlighten" some people — and make others giant narcissists?" 

"Crossing paths w. everyone from Leary and McKenna to  RAWilson & R.U. Sirius Rushkoff was an early proponent of  the crossover between technology & psychedelics." Rushkoff is is quoted a lot, so your mileage may vary depending on what you think of how his thinking has evolved. 

More here. 

My Robert Shea FOIA

Robert Shea. Photo from Bobshea.net. 

Via Jesse Walker on X, I read an article in the Intercept which says that the FBI "the FBI maintains a program specifically for combating anarchists, called the Anarchist Extremism Program."

"An internal FBI threat advisory obtained by The Intercept defines Anarchist Violent Extremists as individuals 'who consider capitalism and centralized government to be unnecessary and oppressive,' and 'oppose economic globalization; political, economic, and social hierarchies based on class, religion, race, gender, or private ownership of capital; and external forms of authority represented by centralized government, the military, and law enforcement'.”

Robert Anton Wilson's interest in anarchism waned somewhat over the years, but Illuminatus! co-author Robert Shea called himself an anarchist, put out the anarchist zine No Governor (see the Robert Shea Resources at the right side of this page) and was otherwise active on the anarchist zine. He was rather strictly opposed to violence (he equated violence with statism), but I wondered if he showed up in the FBI files, anyway.

So I've filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see if there is anything. Naturally, if I get something, I will post about it here. 

As I wrote in 2013, there have been attempts to get information on what the FBI files had about Robert Anton Wilson. Apparently, there's not much there. 

Robert Anton Wilson on Daniel Defoe

[A literary observation posted on Facebook by Jamey-Heather Davis. I thought it would share it with you. Jamey-Heather Davis is a teacher in Eugene, Oregon, and a member of Robert Anton Wilson Fans group. The Management.]

As an undergrad, I got an A+ on a paper where I demonstrated Wilson's use of other author's voices (in my paper, Joyce and Burroughs) to communicate certain states of mind. But my all time favorite passage of his doing so is this: "Maria had been reading a chryselephantinely over written book called Moll Flanders in the coach, and very definetely thought the somber, passionate, tragicomic and picaresque story was most absorbing, and certainly presented the dark, sinister, underground side of English life in a vivacious and veridical manner that carried conviction, but she wished Mr. Defoe were not so in love with ornamentally excessive adjectives and long, stentorian, and somewhat inchoate sentences that, even by the standards of the time, seemed to twist and turn through curlicues and arabesques and wind on and on through ever-increasing clauses and sub-clauses, including abrubt changes of subject and total NON SEQUITURS (italics in original), even if he did seem to be making a unique effort to understand a woman's perspective on the world, which was all to the good, and it was less monochromatically monotonous (she had to admit) than the other one he wrote with virtually nobody in it but that one ingenious mechanic on the island , living in total isolation unitil he found that one  ineluctable footprint; and yet it could all be told as well and be more pleasant to read if those sentences did not get so totally out of control and sprawl all over the page so often in positive apotheosis of the lugubrious style, and then she wondered if reading so much of such labyrinthe and arabesque prose for so long in the hot carriage had affected her own mind and she were starting to think like that herself....." ~ RAW, Nature's God, Hilaritus Press edition, p. 17 - 18

Thursday links [Updated]

 Erik Davis in the Paris Review, an article adapted from his upcoming book,  Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium, about a museum of LSD blotter paper. 

Republican nominee for governor in North Carolina. 

"Marijuana use is associated with lower odds of subjective cognitive decline." News for older people, but I don't know what to make of this and it may not be the final word. UPDATE: Here is another encouraging study (clickable link for the study Michael mentions in the comments.) 

Conspiracy content at the film festival. 

There's a huge increase in young women taking antidepressants.

Powerful psychedelic may hold key to breaking opioid addictions

 

Iboga is described as "an evergreen rainforest shrub native to Central Africa." It produces ibogaine. (Creative Commons photo via Wikipedia, information here). 

While we all wait for SMI2LE to be fulfilled (we may not have the space colonies or life extension yet, but we're getting the intelligence increase, in the form of AI), it's worth noting again that Robert Anton Wilson apparently had a point when he condemned the long ban on psychedelic research.

Here's a New York Times story about ibogaine, a powerful psychedelic from Africa I had not heard about before:

"Ibogaine, a formidable psychedelic made from the root of a shrub native to Central Africa, is not for the timid. It unleashes a harrowing trip that can last more than 24 hours, and the drug can cause sudden cardiac arrest and death.

"But scientists who have studied ibogaine have reported startling findings. According to a number of small studies, between a third and two-thirds of the people who were addicted to opioids or crack cocaine and were treated with the compound in a therapeutic setting were effectively cured of their habits, many after just a single session."

Full story here.

The article is written by Andrew Jacobs, and the byline says he "writes about psychedelic medicine." Think about that -- the New York Times has a psychedelic medicine reporter. 

'John Lilly was a creep'

 

John Lilly 

There apparently was quite a dark side to John Lilly, the dolphin and consciousness researcher whom Robert Anton Wilson wrote about. 

On X, Jesse Walker writes, "John Lilly was a creep. He bragged to a military audience that he could do dolphin experiments 'that one could not do with man without getting into severe moral, legal, or ethical problems.' Then he wrote a book calling dolphins 'humans of the sea.' "

Jesse links to an article written by historian Benjamin Breen, the author of a new book on LSD research I mentioned recently.  

Jesse notes that the quote he mentions does not appear in the article he linked to, but does appear in  Breen's Tripping on Utopia book, which Jesse reviews in the latest issue of Reason magazine. I'll link to the review when it appears online.

The article Jesse links to says the "most unsettling feature" of Lilly's research "was the fact that his dolphins kept dying." It says that Lilly relied on "using pain to control animal behavior."

And this New  Yorker article says four of the seven dolphins Lilly gave LSD to died. 

Joseph Matheny releases free digital comic

 

Joseph Matheny has announced a new free digital comic version of his latest novel, Statio Numero.

"Due to popular demand, I have added a CBR and CBZ format to the free Internet Archive version of Statio Numero.

"CBR and CBZ are standard digital comic formats. There are lots of free readers for tablets and desktop/laptop computers. You should read these on a tablet or laptop/desktop computer, not a phone, for legibility reasons. Of course, the links won’t be clickable in this format, but the art and text have good-quality resolution."

There's a lot of other Matheny material at the Internet Archive, including work of interest to Robert Anton Wilson fans. The Lost Studio Session audio recording of Robert Anton Wilson also remains available. 

Did the Guns and Dope Party win?

A graphic for the Guns and Dope Party, from Rasa's website. 

When Robert Anton Wilson ran for governor of California in 2003, he ran as the candidate of the Guns and Dope Party. The name comes from these positions in the party's platform: "Guns for everybody who wants them; no guns for those who don't want them. Drugs for everybody who wants them; no drugs forthose who don't want them." The Guns and Dope Party seems generally libertarian, if you overlook the satirical aspects of the party's platform. 

While the two main American political parties have arguably become less libertarian in recent years, the U.S. also has become more libertarian, at least in terms of regulating personal behavior. 

This trend seems certainly true in Ohio, where I live. Last fall, voters approved two state questions. One puts legal abortion in the state constitution. The other legalizes possession and use of marijuana; marijuana stores for the general public will open in Ohio later this year. 

Here in Ohio, I am also allowed to set off fireworks in public during numerous holidays during the year, not just the the Fourth of July. That's a relatively new law. Gun laws, never very restrictive in Ohio, have become even less so. For example, in 2022 Ohio dropped requiring permits for the concealed carry of a handgun. Now you can tote one around without a background check or any training requirements. Betting on the outcome of sports games also recently became legal. Casino gambling was legalized some years ago and is available in all of the big cities. No one has to go out to buy porn anymore; it's on the Internet. It's become easier in Ohio for people to choose what schools their kids will go to; most people except the quite wealthy can obtain vouchers to make it easier to send their kids to private schools, including religious ones. 

In some cases, Republican lawmakers who control the legislature simply passed laws; in a few cases, as in last year's state questions, they blocked action and the voters overrode them. 

The trends I am citing are generally true in the U.S. States continue to legalize marijuana in the U.S. Casino gambling and gambling on sports, once mostly confined to Las Vegas, has spread to many areas of the U.S. The people who support "school choice" vouchers for everyone have won in several states. Gay marriage has become the law of the land and is generally accepted. 

Even in nonpolitical ways, life has become less restrictive. You choose your gender. American football was on TV only two days a week when I was young; now in football season, it's most days. Major league baseball when I was  young was only on TV one time a week, on Saturday afternoon, until the playoffs arrived. Now baseball is on TV every day, during baseball season. 

This seems like an impressive list for doing what you want to do in your personal life, not just in comparison to repressive regimes such as North Korea and Saudi Arabia, but also in comparison to most countries of the western world, where legal marijuana and buying all the guns you want is not really the norm. 

There are a couple of apparent exceptions to my general rule about the country becoming more libertarian. 

The Supreme Court overruled the Roe v. Wade decision and allowed abortion to be decided by the states, and many states have criminalized the procedure, so on the surface that's an example of less free choice. 

But in every state where the issue has gone on the ballot as a state question in the wake of the ruling, the pro-abortion side has won, including in Ohio. This statement is true about both liberal and conservative states; when the people themselves are allowed to decide, they vote not to let the government interfere with medical decisions. As a political matter, abortion (and most recently, IVF) has become the biggest issue Democrats can use to attack Republicans, with the possible exception of the existence of Donald Trump.

And I think it's possible that on guns in Ohio, left leaning political groups may succeed in putting gun control on the ballot and imposing certain restrictions that seem generally popular, such as background checks for all gun sales. But even with such changes, I doubt Ohio will become more restrictive than most western countries. I suspect the opposite will remain true. 

Libertarians debate universal basic income

As a libertarian-leaning thinker who said he wasn't "that kind of libertarian"  because "I don't hate poor people," Robert Anton Wilson was interested in maximum freedom but also advocated helping the poor. One of the ideas he was interested in was the universal basic income, sending money to people to make sure they aren't totally broke.

Two libertarian college professors whose work I follow closely, Bryan Caplan and Chris Freiman, recently held a debate on the UBI, with Freiman arguing in favor and Caplan against. I plan to try to watch this over the weekend. 

RAW Semantics on censorship and free expression

A new blog post at RAW Semantics is always interesting, and one that has just posted takes on a hot topic. "RAW restricted" features Robert Anton Wilson's views on censorship and how accusations of censorship can become a political tool in an era when few views actually are suppressed. Quite a few issues are explored; Brian has influenced my thinking. 

In the discussion of "shadow banning" on X, he mentions an incident in which the @RAWilson23 X account mentioned one of my blog posts and a reply post on X was for mysterious reasons was hidden from readers. As the RAW Semantics post remarks, "This was the only reply. It contains nothing offensive, but it got hidden. (The hidden tweet has a link to then US Democratic Party candidate Marianne Williamson – does this seem relevant? And would some folks cry “censorship” if RFK Jr got “shadow-banned” in this way?)." I had not noticed the whole odd incident. 

Anyway, interesting post, so join the discussion.  As per  usual, the illustrations are quite witty; I've nicked one for this post.