A couple of announcements

Two interesting upcoming events:

From the Discordian folks at the Liverpool Arts Lab:

"On May 23rd we will complete the latest in a series of ritual walks to re-enchant the city and strengthen our relationship with the land. Its always a joyful experience with poetry, story-telling and some daft rituals. We’d love you to come along."

More information here.

The event in Liverpool UK obviously requires access to a particular time and space, but here is an announcement for Twin Peaks fans: The folks who do the Weird Studies podcasts are offering an online course on Twin Peaks, cost $120, details here. I've often wondered why RAW wasn't a Twin Peaks fan. 

The RAW Semantics book club [UPDATED] [UPDATED AGAIN]

 

Brian directs our attention to a book on sale for practically nothing as a Kindle: "Chris Niebauer's 192-page 'No Self, No Problem Workbook' - going for £0.79 or $0.99 on Amazon Kindle format. He uses a left/right brain model, has lots of fun head "exercises", and, like RAW, deconstructs abstract generalisations and group fictions, etc." [UPDATE] Note that he's actually talking about the workbook version of the title. There are actually two very similar titles, and I bought both; both are dirt cheap. 

It sounded interesting so I bought it. Certainly the doctrine of "no self" is important to Buddhism, and I'm pretty sure Alan Watts wrote a book on it, e.g. The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Here is some of the publisher's description for Niebauer's book: 

"While in grad school in the early 1990s, Chris Niebauer began to notice striking parallels between the latest discoveries in psychology, neuroscience, and the teachings of Buddhism, Taoism, and other schools of Eastern thought. When he presented his findings to a professor, his ideas were quickly dismissed as “pure coincidence, nothing more.”

"Fast-forward 20 years later and Niebauer is a PhD and a tenured professor, and the Buddhist-neuroscience connection he found as a student is practically its own genre in the bookstore. But according to Niebauer, we are just beginning to understand the link between Eastern philosophy and the latest findings in psychology and neuroscience and what these assimilated ideas mean for the human experience."

Update: The idea of an online book club has been floated on Twitter.  If you aren't on Twitter and you want to indicate that you would take part, perhaps leave a comment here. 

Can technology help with the blizzard of information?

Brian Dean has written about the complexities of dealing with new forms of media and online news. 

It seems to me that one of the problems of dealing with all of the online "stuff" out there is  that there is so much of it, and there's only so much time for reading. 

Can artificial intelligence help with the sorting process? 

A new service calls News Minimalist "uses AI (ChatGPT-4) to read the top 1000 news every day and rank them by significance on a scale from 0 to 10 based on event magnitude, scale, potential, and source credibility." You can sign up for a daily email newsletter. 

More here. 

Perhaps other similar projects will start popping up, too. 

Has 'life extension' arrived?

The SMI2LE formula endorsed by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson calls for space migration, intelligence increase and life extension.

You could argue that space migration is on the way, given that space exploration is becoming cheaper with the SpaceX reusable rockets and all of the new advances in AI would seem to argue for increased intelligence (even if following politics convinces you people actually are getting dumber.) But where is life extension?

That's arriving, too, according to Lifespan: Why We Age—And Why We Don’t Have To by Harvard Medical School professor David Sinclair. 

Here is a summary from Richard Hanania: "Sinclair, a professor at Harvard Medical School, all but guarantees the reader immortality. Again and again, he tells you the end of aging is coming. And not only that, it’s coming soon. And not only will we stop aging, but we’re probably going to reverse aging any second now, if we can’t already."

Hanania's piece is mostly about how he plans to apply Sinclair's advice, but Scott Alexander has written a long book review. 

Rasa offers a 'Lion of Light' update

Rasa has put up a post in various groups on Facebook to provide an update on Lion of Light, the upcoming Robert Anton Wilson book on Aleister Crowley that's based on a lost RAW manuscript that Martin Wagner discovered in the Harvard library. 

The post includes a RAW quote most of us have not had the opportunity to read before:

Those who want to invoke the word “coincidence” to cover the rags of their ignorance are welcome to do so. Some of us have a new word lately, synchronicity, coined by no less than psychologist Carl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli – and I’ve read their books and must admit I came out as confused as I went in; as far as this brain can comprehend, coincidence is meaning-less correspondence, and synchronicity is meaning-ful correspondence, and if that makes you feel superior to the custard-headed clods who still say coincidence, you’re welcome to it.

– Robert Anton Wilson, Lion of Light

Rasa also discusses possible cover images for the book, including the one, above, that was submitted by Chris Mazur; to Rasa's surprise, the Mazur cartoon image was quite popular when he showed possible covers to RAW fans and asked for feedback. (I'm not at liberty to share some of the other proposed images, but put it this way, they were more like what you would expect.) 

A virtual gallery of RAW book covers

I have sometimes wondered what it would be like to see all of the book designs by Scott McPherson, aka amoeba design, for editions of Robert Anton Wilson's work published by Hilaritas Press. In my mind, it was a series of pictures hanging in an art gallery. But perhaps this is better: A virtual art gallery, posted on Twitter and available to everyone, that shows off the book covers. 

My blog on a Subreddit and other social media points

In a comment for a recent post on D.W. Griffith's movie Intolerance, Bobby Campbell wrote, "Also, anyway! I actually popped in here to say that I've set it up so that RAWIllumination.net posts will be auto posted over on the maybelogic subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/maybelogic/

"With twitter circling the drain I figure it might be smart to diversify."

I checked the site out, and mostly it has entries from this blog, but there is other material, including a recent post on how the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once relates to the eight circuit model. 

I can certainly relate to Bobby's comments. I woke up yesterday and turned on my computer and discovered that when I go to Twitter on my browser, I am no longer allowed to see my lists. No explanation, no way to figure out why some people have access to their lists and I don't, just a random change without explanation that makes Twitter harder for me to use, like the recent ban on Substack links that may or may not be in effect. I still admire what Elon Musk has done with space travel, but I wish he had never bought Twitter. I can still access my lists on the app on my phone, and my Linux laptop apparently can access my links via an app called MasterDeck, although MasterDeck says this is likely only until Twitter finishes destroying its relationships with third patty app developers. 

There was hope that Mastodon would serve as an alternative to Twitter. I duly created an account (@jacksontom at the liberdon.com server) and I'm still trying to log in sometimes and support the effort, but it seems safe to say that Mastodon has failed, at least so far, as a Twitter alternative. It hasn't built up a very large base of people, and many of the more interesting accounts I follow have kind of given up and don't post very often. I don't even see posts and articles about Mastodon anymore.  I sometimes look at the RAW pages on Facebook, but I'm not a huge Facebook fan. 

So I'm still stuck with Twitter as a way to find news for this blog. Does anyone have any suggestions? Like, is there any easy way to get my lists back that I have missed? 

Adam Gorightly on three Discordian books

Adam Gorightly has a new piece up at Historia Discordia which discusses three Discordian-related books. They are Jailbird: The Dreadlock Recollections by Kerry Thornley, put out by the SubGenius Foundation; Stalking The Great Whore: The Lost Writings of James Shelby Downard, which Adam has published and which includes a forward by Adam, and Antero Alli's Last Words: Towards an Insurrection of the Poetic Imagination. Adam says that's Alli's last book, but in fact since then Alli has released what is apparently a final last book, Sacred Rites.) 

More information on the three books at the link. Here is a little bit on James Shelby Downard.  And here is Adam's explanation. 

RAW and other topics on the 'Vayse' podcast

There are more interesting podcasts out there than I can really keep up with, but I did want to recommend the latest Vayse podcast featuring Mark Pilkington, who runs the Strange Attractor Press and also is a writer and does music. Official site here with commendably detailed links and show notes, but you should also be able to find it on your favorite podcasting app. 

Toward the end of the podcast, Pilkington and the show hosts, Peter C Hine and Stephen James Buckley, talk about Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger book and how influential it has been on many of the show's guests. Pilkington also talks about the upcoming RAW biography by Prop Anon (e.g. Gabriel Kennedy) that Strange Attractor will be putting out this fall, and promises that it will be very thorough and based on a great deal of research. 

There is also interesting discussion about Pilkington's UFOlogy book, Mirage Men (it sure sounds like it would interest anyone who enjoyed Adam Gorightly's book, Saucers, Spooks and Kooks, I was disappointed  Pilkington did not mention Adam). Other topics include Pilkington's adventures in making crop circles and Pilkington's strong recommendation of a book called Chameleo by Robert Guffey, which Pilkington calls a great Fortean book. 

Go to the show notes for links,  relevant social media accounts, etc. 

Hat tip, Tracy Harms. 

Robert Shea Week, May 21-27

 Robert Shea Week will be May 21 through 27. I ordinarily focus on Robert Anton Wilson, but I write periodic blog posts about the other Illuminatus! author, whom I also think deserves attention, and later this month I'll write a series of posts.

I mention this because one of those posts will be an invitation to discuss Shea's novel, All Things Are Lights (you might recognize the phrase from Illuminatus!) and I wanted to do one more reminder about that, for anyone who might want to have time to read it and join the discussion. 

I am currently reading Shike Book One: Time of the Dragons, Shea's first historical novel. 

Erik Davis guests on Ezra Klein's podcast

Erik Davis. Creative Commons 3.0 photo, source. 

Many of you will know writer Erik Davis for his interesting book High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies, which offered profiles of Robert Anton Wilson, Philip K. Dick and Terence McKenna; he has written other books and has a Substack newsletter, please see the Wikipedia article for more information. 

Davis has now appeared on the latest episode of The Ezra Klein Show, a well-known podcast by the New York Times pundit, to discuss  "weirdness" and artificial intelligence. From the show blurb: "We discuss how Silicon Valley’s particularly weird culture has altered the trajectory of A.I. development, why programs like ChatGPT can profoundly unsettle our sense of reality and our own humanity, how the behaviors of A.I. systems reveal far more about humanity than we like to admit, why we might be in a 'sorcerer’s apprentice moment' for artificial intelligence, why we often turn to myth and science fiction to explain technologies whose implications we don’t yet grasp, why A.I. developers are willing to keep designing technologies that they think may destroy humanity and more."

I've linked to one place to listen to the show, but it should show up on your favorite podcasting app. 

Oz Fritz on 'The Walls Came Tumbling Down'

Oz Fritz is hoping someone will step up and make a movie out of The Walls Came Tumbling Down, the Robert Anton Wilson book/film script recently published as a new edition by Hilaritas Press. In the meantime, we have the new book, with RAW's helpful explanation on how to read film scripts, and Oz' new blog post, which offers an insightful and detailed analysis of the book.

For example, Oz correctly notes that "Death, in a variety of forms - literal, metaphorical, symbolic - revolves in and out through the screenplay," and writes in a later paragraph:

"When death comes around, all your walls come down. Might as well get used to it ahead of time. The 'borderless or other-wordly consciousness' his characters frequently stumble into is called the Bardo by Tibetan Buddhists. The Bardo describes the weird territory between lives, the space after death and before rebirth. The first serious scientific effort to map this territory in the West, and enter the Bardo before Extremum Vitae Spiritum Edere (giving up the ghost) gets documented in the The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Leary, Metzner, and Alpert who all met at Harvard University - where Michael Ellis works in RAW's film. All three authors get name-checked in a single breath in an allusion to their book. (p.86); Leary becomes a minor character and obvious influence."

For those of you who take the trouble to buy the book and read it, the long Oz Fritz blog post is a nice bonus. 

John Higgs on magic and the monarchy

The Green Man, from a stained glass church window in Wales, Creative Commons photo, source. 

With a British coronation apparently looming (I don't pay much attention to such things), John Higgs has a particularly interesting essay in his latest newsletter, focusing on the role of magic in the British monarchy, and the "people's magic" that could act as a counterweight.

If I tried to quote all of the interesting things John says, I would wind up reproducing pretty much the whole essay, but I'm guessing quoting the opening paragraph will get some of you to read it:

"When the invites to Charles’ coronation were revealed, there was a minor kerfuffle about the amount of magical, supernatural or pagan imagery involved - especially the figure commonly known as the Green Man. The fuss reminded me of that scene in Casablanca, when Captain Renault closed down Rick’s bar. 'I am shocked, shocked, to find that gambling has been going on in here!', he explained, just before being handed his winnings. Monarchy and coronations are as magical and occult as things get, and to pretend otherwise is always going to be funny."

John also has some short bits on book recommendations and his ongoing tour to promote his excellent Love and Let Die book, here is my review.

Possibly related: Tyler Cowen (who also strongly recommended Love and Let Die) has posted a revisionist review of the Wings album, At the Speed of Sound.  I participate in the comments.