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Robert Anton Wilson

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Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson or RAW (January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was a prolific American novelist, essayist, philosopher, psychologist, futurologist, anarchist, and conspiracy theory researcher.

He described his writing as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations--to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models (maps) and no one model elevated to the Truth."[1] And: "My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything."[2]

Life

"Is", "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.

Wilson was born Robert Edward Wilson in Methodist Hospital, in Brooklyn, New York, and spent his first years in Flatbush, moving with his family to Gerritsen Beach around the age of 4 or 5, where they stayed until he turned 13. He suffered from polio as a child and was treated with the method created by Elizabeth Kenny. Polio's effects remained with him throughout his life, usually manifesting as minor muscle spasms causing him to use a cane from time to time until 2000, when he experienced a major bout with post-polio syndrome that would continue until his death.

He attended Catholic grammar school, most likely the school associated with Gerritsen Beach's Resurrection Church. He attended Brooklyn Tech for high school to remove himself from the Catholic influence. While working as an ambulance driver he attended New York University, studying engineering and mathematics.

He worked as engineering aide, salesman, and copywriter and was associate editor for Playboy magazine from 1965 to 1971. He adopted his maternal grandfather's name, Anton, for his writings, at first telling himself that he was saving the "Edward" for when he wrote the Great American Novel and later finding that "Robert Anton Wilson" had become an established identity.

In 1979 he received a Ph.D. in psychology from Paideia University in California,[3] an unaccredited institution that has since closed.[4] The reworked dissertation was published in 1983 as Prometheus Rising.

He married the freelance writer Arlen Riley in 1958; they had four children. Arlen Riley Wilson died in 1999 [5] following a series of strokes.[6] Their daughter, Luna, was beaten to death in an apparent robbery in the store where she worked in 1976 at the age of 15. Her brain was preserved by the Bay Area Cryonics Society.[7]

Writings

Wilson wrote 35 books,[8] and many other works.

His best-known work, the cult classic[9] The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975), co-authored with Robert Shea and advertised as "a fairy tale for paranoids," humorously examined American paranoia about conspiracies. Much of the odder material derived from letters sent to Playboy magazine while Shea and Wilson worked as editors of the Playboy Forum.[10] The books mixed true information with imaginative fiction to engage the reader in what Wilson called "Operation Mindfuck." The trilogy also outlined a set of libertarian and anarchist axioms known as Celine's Laws (named after Illuminatus! main character Hagbard Celine), concepts Wilson has revisited several times in other writings. It included a subplot about biological warfare in which a pimp contracts a deadly form of experimental anthrax. While the pimp is able to elude agents of the US Government -- which reacts to the crisis by overriding the Bill of Rights--the pimp is eventually tracked down by operatives associated with Hagbard Celine. The story also gives a detailed account of the John F. Kennedy assassination, in which no fewer than five snipers, all working for different causes, were prepared to shoot Kennedy as he passed in his motorcade. The book's climax occurs at a rock concert in Ingolstadt where Hagbard Celine tries to rescue the audience from an illuminati plot to make them victims of a massive human sacrifice. Illuminautus popularized Discordianism and the use of the term "fnord." It also incorporated experimental prose styles influenced by William S Burroughs, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound [11]. Although Shea and Wilson never partnered on such a scale again, Wilson continued to expand upon the themes of the Illuminatus! books throughout his writing career. All of his later fiction contains cross-over characters from The Illuminatus! Trilogy, which won the Prometheus Hall of Fame award for science fiction in 1986, has been reprinted in many countries, and was adapted for the stage by Ken Campbell into a ten-hour epic drama. It has been adapted into a Steve Jackson role-playing card game called Illuminati and a trading-card game called Illuminati: New World Order, and also a comic book version was first produced by "Eye N Apple Productions" (headed by Mark Philip Steele), then by Rip Off Press.

Wilson also wrote a play called Wilhelm Reich in Hell, which has been performed at the Edmund Burke Theatre in Dublin, and two illustrated screenplays: Reality is What You Can Get Away With and The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1997).

In Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977) and other works, he examined Discordianism, Sufism, Futurology, Zen Buddhism, Dennis and Terence McKenna, the occult practices of Aleister Crowley and G.I. Gurdjieff, the Illuminati and Freemasons, Yoga, and other esoteric or counterculture philosophies. He advocated Timothy Leary's eight circuit model of consciousness and neurosomatic/linguistic engineering, which he also wrote about in Prometheus Rising (1983, revised 1997) and Quantum Psychology (1990), books containing practical techniques intended to help one break free of one's "reality tunnels." With Leary, he helped promote the futurist ideas of space migration, intelligence increase, and life extension (SMI²LE). The New Inquisition is quite a serious but very entertaining book arguing that reality is much weirder than we commonly imagine, and citing, among other things, Bell's theorem and Alain Aspect's experimental proof to suggest that mainstream science has a strong materialist bias, and that in fact modern physics has already disproved materialist metaphysics.

Wilson also supported many of the utopian theories of Buckminster Fuller and the theories of Charles Fort (he was a friend of Loren Coleman),[12] media theorist Marshall McLuhan and Neuro Linguistic Programming co-founder Richard Bandler, with whom he had taught workshops. He also admired James Joyce, and had written commentary on Finnegans Wake and Ulysses, and wrote extensively about him in his book Coincidance.[13]

Ironically, considering Wilson long lampooned and criticized new age beliefs, his books can often be found in bookstores specializing in new age material. He was a well-known author in occult and Neo-Pagan circles; he wrote about Aleister Crowley and his ideas, and used him as a main character in his novel Masks of the Illuminati. Elements of H. P. Lovecraft's work are also found in his novels. He claimed to have perceived encounters with magical "entities," and when asked whether these entities were "real", he answered they were "real enough," although "not as real as the IRS" since they were "easier to get rid of."[citation needed] He warned against beginners using occult practice, since to rush into such practices and the resulting "energies" they unleash can lead people to go "quite nuts."[citation needed] Instead, he recommends beginners start with general semantics, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Zen Buddhism, basic meditation, etc.[citation needed]

Wilson also criticized scientific types with overly rigid belief systems, equating them with religious fundamentalists in their fanaticism. In a 1988 interview, he was asked about his recent book The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science. Wilson commented: "I coined the term irrational rationalism because those people claim to be rationalists, but they're governed by such a heavy body of taboos. They're so fearful, and so hostile, and so narrow, and frightened, and uptight and dogmatic... I wrote this book because I got tired satirizing fundamentalist Christianity... I decided to satirize fundamentalist materialism for a change, because the two are equally comical... The materialist fundamentalists are funnier than the Christian fundamentalists, because they think they're rational! ...They're never skeptical about anything except the things they have a prejudice against. None of them ever says anything skeptical about the AMA, or about anything in establishment science or any entrenched dogma. They're only skeptical about new ideas that frighten them. They're actually dogmatically committed to what they were taught when they were in college..."[14]

In a 2003 interview with High Times magazine, RAW described himself as a "Model Agnostic" which he says "consists of never regarding any model or map of the universe with total 100% belief or total 100% denial. Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory."[15] More simply, he claims "not to believe anything", since "belief is the death of intelligence."[16] He has described his approach as "Maybe Logic." Wilson wrote articles for seminal cyberpunk magazine Mondo 2000.[17]

While he had primarily published material under the name Robert Anton Wilson, he had also used the pen names Mordecai Malignatus, Mordecai the Foul, Reverend Loveshade,[citation needed] and other names associated with the Bavarian Illuminati, which he allegedly revived in the 1960s.[citation needed]

Wilson's writings connect to the madcap satirical fiction of Flann O'Brien in several ways, including his free use of O'Brien's character De Selby. The views of De Selby, an obscure intellectual, are the subject of long pseudo-scholarly footnotes in Wilson's novels as well as O'Brien's. This is entirely fitting, because O'Brien himself made free use of characters invented by other writers, allegedly because there are already too many fictional characters. O'Brien was also known for pulling the reader's leg by concocting elaborate conspiracy theories, and for publishing under several pen names.[citation needed]

In one interview he was asked what the first thing he would do if he became President of The United States of America. Robert Anton Wilson gave the simple and curt answer "Resign!"

Other activities

Wilson had a long-standing relationship with the Association for Consciousness Exploration, beginning in 1982. He was the keynote speaker for their center's open house in 1984, and appeared at many Starwood Festivals. Both Illuminatus! co-author Robert Shea and Wilson's wife Arlen Riley Wilson have appeared with him at the WinterStar Symposium.[18] They served as his American lecture agency while he lived in Ireland, and hosted his first on-stage dialog with his life-long friend Timothy Leary in 1989 in Cleveland, OH,[19] entitled The Inner Frontier,[20] (the same group that had hosted Leary's first Cleveland appearance in 1979).[21][22] Wilson's book The New Inquisition is dedicated to the co-directors of A.C.E., Jeff Rosenbaum and Joseph Rothenberg.

Wilson was also a member of the Church of the SubGenius, who referred to him as Pope Bob.[4] He was a contributor to their literature, and to the book Three-Fisted Tales of "Bob", and shared a stage with Rev. Ivan Stang on several occasions. Wilson also founded the Guns and Dope Party and its corresponding Burning Man theme camp.

He and his wife Arlen Riley Wilson founded the Institute for the Study of the Human Future.

As a member of the Board of Advisors of the Fully Informed Jury Association, he worked to inform the public about jury nullification, the right of jurors to nullify a law they deem unjust.[23]

RAW held the post of American director of the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal (CSICON) and appeared at Disinformation events.[citation needed]

He was a supporter of E-Prime, a form of English lacking all "be" verbs, and preferred "maybe logic".[24]

He coined a new word, sombunall (some but not all),[25] which never quite caught on. In response, he coined another word, mosbunall (as in "mosbunall humans wouldn't know an awesome new word if it bit them in the ass."). This word caught on even less.

A lifelong experimenter with drugs and strong opponent of what he called "the war on some drugs", he participated in the weeklong 1999 Annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam.[26] He was photographed receiving medical marijuana at a 2002 demonstration in Santa Cruz to curb his chronic pain from post-polio syndrome.[27]

Wilson was a founder and primary instructor of the Maybe Logic Academy, named for his agnostic approach to all knowledge. Fellow instructors include Patricia Monaghan, Rev. Ivan Stang, Philip H. Farber, Antero Alli, Peter J. Carroll, Starhawk, R. U. Sirius, Douglas Rushkoff, Lon Milo Duquette, and David Jay Brown.

Death

On June 22, 2006, Huffington Post blogger Paul Krassner reported that Robert A. Wilson was under hospice care at home with friends and family.[28] On 2 October 2006 Douglas Rushkoff reported that Wilson was in severe financial trouble.[29] Slashdot, Boing Boing, and the Church of the SubGenius also picked up on the story, linking to Rushkoff's appeal.[30][31] As his webpage reported on 10 October, these efforts succeeded beyond expectation and raised a sum which would have supported him for at least 6 months. Obviously touched by the great outpouring of support, on October 5 of 2006 Wilson left the following comment on his personal website, expressing his gratitude:

"Dear Friends, my God, what can I say. I am dumbfounded, flabbergasted, and totally stunned by the charity and compassion that has poured in here the last three days.
To steal from Jack Benny, "I do not deserve this, but I also have severe leg problems and I don't deserve them either."
Because he was a kind man as well as a funny one, Benny was beloved. I find it hard to believe that I am equally beloved and especially that I deserve such love.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, know that my love is with you.

You have all reminded me that despite George W. Bush and all his cohorts, there is still a lot of beautiful kindness in the world.

Blessings,

Robert Anton Wilson"


"[32]

On January 6, he wrote on his blog that according to several medical authorities, he was likely to have only between two days and two months left to live,[33] closing his message with "I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying. Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd." He passed on peacefully five days later, on January 11 at 4:50 a.m. Pacific[34] His remains were cremated on January 18 with his family holding memorial services on February 18, 2007. His ashes were scattered at the same spot as his wife's off of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, California. [35] [36]

A one-off tribute show was staged in London on March 18th 2007 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, featuring Coldcut, Mixmaster Morris, Ken Campbell, Bill Drummond and Alan Moore.

Documentary

Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson, a documentary featuring selections from over twenty-five years of Wilson footage, was released on DVD in North America on May 30, 2006.[37]

Works by Robert Anton Wilson

Partial discography

See also

References

  1. ^ Patricia Monaghan: "Robert Anton Wilson". Booklist, May 15, 1999 v95 i18 p1680
  2. ^ "Robert Anton Wilson". Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007
  3. ^ "Robert Anton Wilson." St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, 4th ed. St. James Press, 1996. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
  4. ^ Martin van der Werf: "Lawsuit U." The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 4, 2006
  5. ^ [1]
  6. ^ [2]
  7. ^ Patricia Luna Wilson at cryonics.org
  8. ^ "The author of 35 books on subjects like extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, metaphysics, paranormal experiences, conspiracy theory, sex, drugs and what he called quantum psychology..." New York Times obituary.
  9. ^ "...an author of The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- a mind-twisting science-fiction series about a secret global society that has been a cult classic for more than 30 years..." from "Robert Anton Wilson, 74; Wrote Mind-Twisting Novels"; [Obituary (Obit)] Dennis Hevesi. New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Jan 13, 2007. pg. A.16
  10. ^ "The Illuminatus saga stumbles along" by Robert Anton Wilson
  11. ^ Conspiracy Digest Interviews printed in Illuminautus Papers, 1980
  12. ^ 23 Skidoo Cryptomundo
  13. ^ Bray, Faustin / Wallace, Brian (interviewers)/ Wilson, Robert Anton (speaker) (1988). Robert Anton Wilson On Finnegans Wake and Joseph Campbell (Audio CD). Mill Valley: Sound Photosynthesis. ISBN 1-56964-801-8
  14. ^ http://www.nii.net/~obie/1988_interview.htm
  15. ^ Krassner, Paul. A Paul Krassner Interview With R. A. W - High Times, March 2003 issue.
  16. ^ Wilson, Robert Anton. Cosmic Trigger: Volume I. Tempe, Arizona. New Falcon Publications. 1977. pg ii.
  17. ^ "CybeRevolution Montage", Mondo 2000 no. 7, 1989
  18. ^ http://www.wiccanfest.com/harvestfest/Useful%20Links.html
  19. ^ Lesie, Michele (1989) High Priest of LSD To Drop In. Cleveland Plain Dealer
  20. ^ Local Group Hosts Dr. Timothy Leary by Will Allison (The Observer Fri. Sept. 29th, 1989)
  21. ^ Two 60s Cult Heroes, on the Eve of the 80s by James Neff (Cleveland Plain Dealer October 30th, 1979)
  22. ^ Timothy Leary: An LSD Cowboy Turns Cosmic Comic by Frank Kuznik (Cleveland Magazine November 1979)
  23. ^ Interview of Robert Anton Wilson, (conducted August 1997) Paradigm Shift, Vol. 1 No. 1 (July 1998), accessed 11 January 2007
  24. ^ Andrea Shapiro: "Taking the High Road". Santa Fe New Mexican, December 5, 2003
  25. ^ [www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sombunall]
  26. ^ Paul Krassner: "The High Life", LA Weekly, December 17, 1999
  27. ^ "In Santa Cruz, an Official Handout of Medicinal Pot." Los Angeles Times, September 18, 2002.
  28. ^ Robert Anton Wilson The Huffington Post
  29. ^ Robert Anton Wilson Needs Our Help
  30. ^ Illumninatus! Author Needs Our Help Slashdot
  31. ^ Robert Anton Wilson needs our Help BoingBoing
  32. ^ [3]
  33. ^ Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night
  34. ^ RAW Essence
  35. ^ http://robertantonwilson.blogspot.com/2007/01/robert-anton-wilson-cosmic-meme-orial.html
  36. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ-3yk7_kLU
  37. ^ Maybe Logic

Wikiquote has quotations related to Robert Anton Wilson.

Interviews

  • [6] Man Bites Dogma -(an interview with RAW by Michael Dare)
  • [7] 23 Questions With Robert Anton Wilson
  • [8] President Hannibal Lector & the Thing That Ate the Constitution: An Interview with Robert Anton Wilson -(by David Jay Brown)
  • [9] Payton, Randy Lee (2001) The Roc Interview: Author - Futurist - M.V.P. (Most Valuable Philosopher) Robert Anton Wilson. Roc Magazine interview at the WinterStar Symposium
  • [10] Robert Anton Wilson: The Author of The Illuminatus Trilogy Expounds on Multiple Realities, Guerrilla Ontology, LSD, Life Extension and Things that Go Bump in the Night by Michael Hollingshead.(1980) High Times
  • [11] Appearance on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher May 23, 1995

Obituaries

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