Robert Anton Wilson: further musings by steve fly

 Robert Anton Wilson: further musings by steve fly


Robert Anton Wilson spent over 50 years producing original thoughts and ideas, criss-cossing academic boundaries like a flock og migrating birds. All-at-once an independent scholar, social critic, comedian, playwright, poet and novelist. RAW lived through WWII, the cold war, the 1960s counter culture explosion, the digital technological millennium and the globalization of humanity by way of the world wide web. RAW kept a front row seat next to other great scientific philosophers of the 20th/21st century, observing patterns and communicating with great care and attention to language, meaning and clarity, what he suspects is going on.

RAWs approach to the questions confronting all American citizens, and so by default the entire planet, currently under the boot of the U.S.A, are critical alternative perspectives and insights desperately lacking from both the public and academic discourse, and that have new roads into almost every department of any existing academic center you care to think of. Yet, what i find most stimulating about RAW and his ideas circles around his fierce independence and adherence to the principle of thinking for oneself, questioning everything and constantly reformulating based upon new data.

Every human being on earth can benefit from literacy, and RAWs particular take on the human condition features the development of language and critical reasoning as tools to enable good functioning in a chaotic universe, inhabited by shadows, distractions, illusions and disinformation. I feel that RAW left us all with examples of how best to confront confusion, propaganda and low level information warfare, his life as a case study and scientific experiment, in the tradition of R. Buckminster Fuller and Dr John Lilly, where they're own mind-body system is recognized to be a scientific laboratory itself, and so the nervous system and linguistic operating system also can be seen as scientific instruments.

It strikes me, when i surf around the web and more often read newspaper headlines and/or watch TV shows, that in 2013 a large proportions of professional scientists, and almost ALL politicians seem to have not picked up on this principle of 'inprobable objectivity' at all. On the contrary, the direction of most political and popular scientific discourse seems to be skewed towards materialist ideology and a 'bad' use of language, manipulated and squeezed through various filters to attract either/or investors, voters, or whatever ends maybe required, e.g, higher carbon monoxide limits, or the use of genetically modified seeds. There are an increasing amount of people waking up the coercion and trickery played by authoritarian structures, so as to keep the position of authority right where it is, with a centrist, top down, capitalist model. An Aristotelian war-head.

RAWs ideas and special writings smash away hundreds of rotten foundations that support these authoritarian monsters, often targeting the strongest parts of his opposing arguments, so as to be sure to totally demolish them. RAW has referred to himself as a libertarian anarchist, and a 'guerrila ontologist' in the past. I think these descriptions help distinguish his kind of constructive and cheerful criticism from the dull speculations and sensational garbage i detect in many of today's so called 'exposers of the truth' not least those who claim to be uncovering the all powerful 'Illuminati'. A hugely popular meme in 2013, largely due to the bastardization of RAWs ideas, along with a handful of others during the 1960s war on some culture.

 --Steve Fly Agaric
23 November 2013.
Amsterdam