⛧ First Church of Hypocrisy, Blasphemy, and Self-Righteousness ⛧

My favorite author, currently, is Robert Anton Wilson. I have been (in my free time) reading everything of his I can find. His writing has given me so many insights, and I highly recommend all of his writings.

However, I don't believe everything he says any more than I do anyone else (which I'm sure he'd be thrilled to hear). There are¹ a couple examples:

1. He makes a good point about how the political correctness movement sometimes goes too far (he wasn't opposed to the movement completely, just criticizing them a little). One of his examples (in "Cosmic Trigger III") was related to the gay pride events. He said that if anyone tried to have a "straight pride" event, that they'd get lambasted or worse for it. (This isn't to say he was against homosexuality; far from it, Wilson was perhaps the most open minded person in the world while he lived.) While I agree with the larger point he was making (that political correctness can be taken too far), he seems to have missed the point of gay pride events. He seems to have failed to grok the fact that such events are necessary in a mostly heterosexual society because, as the vernacular goes, "Every day is a Straight Pride Parade." So Gay Pride events become a way of opposing the status quo. Gay Pride events are a way of smashing open people's usual reality tunnel and invading. As a Discordian, I think if Wilson had understood this, he would have given it two thumbs up.

2. On page 205 of Cosmic Trigger III, middle of the second-to-last paragraph, he wrote:

"The academic post-modernists always start with the World as Puzzle view and unobtrusively slip into Puzzle Solved view. The latter, the solution to the puzzle, always curiously resembles the works of a second-rate German ideologue named Karlm Marx, whose theories, having failed notoriously in practice, live on only among these academics (and, I must admit, in China and Cuba: two excellent countries to live in, if you want to have Political Correctness hammered into you 24 hours a day.)"

Here Wilson shows ignorance yet again. I find it odd that such a great mind failed to realize that the only kind of communism we've seen in practice has been Leninized communism, which is a bastardization of Marx's philosophy. Further, communism only works if everyone in the society is truly equal. Communism works well in the small tribal model. If it can work in larger, industrialized societies (and I believe it can), then it cannot be done by force. Communism doesn't work if it's being forced upon the people by a government. This is the reason why it hasn't succeeded on a large scale yet. I don't count China and Cuba as truly communist; they are merely totalitarian governments with a vaguely Communist flavor, the same way a dead pig tastes a little like human flesh. Just as the pig tasting like a human does not mean the pig IS a human, the Communist flavor of China and Cuba does not make them true communist countries.

It is my opinion that humans are not yet evolved enough for large-scale communism to ever occur naturally, and work. I think, currently, that a good interim model would be a kind of cross between tribalism and globalism, with anarchism thrown in; humans would organize in tribes the size either of a city-state or into many tribes per city. The economy would be mostly local, with some globalization... global electricity grid, for one; some global trading for rare products; tribes experiencing a surplus of food production would share with those whose luck isn't so good, possibly in exchange for goods or services present or future; other necessities which could be shared would be, if needed (such as labor, if there appeared a labor shortage). There might possibly be some sort of organization or multiple organizations dedicated to mediating disputes, but their word would not be law in any sense.

So yes, Robert Anton Wilson may have had a lot of fascinating insights, but he's got his flaws, too. I still recommend his works highly.



1 = Damn, trying to write in E-Prime "is" extremely difficult. I keep using forms of "to be" and drawing a blank as to how to say it differently. DAMN ARISTOTLEAN LANGUAGE HYPNOTIZING ME SO EFFECTIVELY!

I have "Beyond Good and Evil" from the library now. So I shall soon be seeing what Nietzsche is all about.

I just started - and finished - Marilyn Manson's autobiography, "The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell", all in one day. It's almost 300 pages long, and I read it all in one day. I almost never do that with nonfiction, but it read so much like some work of experimental fiction that was a bit hard to believe, but all the time I was like "this was his real life." Really fun, poignant, and ultimately inspiring. I think bart_calendar, especially, would enjoy it for the talk of hard partying, copious drug use, and weird-ass things that Manson and his bandmates and friends did while high. Oh, and bondage, sex, perversion, and all that other good stuff. This book takes the "sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll" concept and multiplies it like crazy, twisting it with sadomasochism and other shocking words and deeds. I also found the talk about his grandfather fascinating, since the man unknowingly introduced young Brian Warner to the world of perversion.

Another thing I liked about it was that it was interspersed with relevant, but different, pieces of writing and quotes from Marilyn Manson and others, such that one could either read straight through or read the inserts that were ahead in case one got in the mood for something different. The best of the quotes were, in my opinion, rumors about the band started by "fans" and the false and artificially lurid "affadavits" passed out by groups like the American Family Association.

And it's late, my brain is addled, I would love to end this more coherently like a proper review, but... fuck it. I will say one last thing, though: Now I'm interested in reading Blanche Barton's autobiography of Anton LaVey.