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Robert Anton Wilson

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Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson or RAW (born January 18, 1932) is a futurist, libertarian, philosopher, psychologist, scientific theorist, and novelist.

His best-known work -- The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975), co-authored with Robert Shea -- humorously examined American paranoia about conspiracies. These books mix true information with imaginative fiction to engage the reader in what Wilson called "Operation Mindfuck". (Much of the odder material derived from letters sent to Playboy magazine while Shea and Wilson worked as editors of the Playboy Forum.) It was advertised as "A fairy tale for paranoids." Although Shea and Wilson never partnered on such a scale again, Wilson has continued to expand upon the themes of the Illuminatus! books throughout his writing career.

In Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977), he made Discordianism, Sufism, Futurology, the Illuminati, Zen Buddhism, Occult/Crowleyian magyk, and other esoteric or counter-culture philosophies accessible to larger audiences. He is also a proponent of Timothy Leary's eight circuit model of consciousness and neurosomatic/lingustic engineering, which he writes about in Prometheus Rising (1983, revised 1997) and Quantum Psychology (1990), books of practical techniques to break free of one's "reality tunnels". He famously claimed to 'not believe anything,' since he thought 'belief was the death of thought.' With Leary (who he thought was one of the smartest people he ever met), he helped promote the futurist ideas of space migration, intelligence increase (enhancement), and life extension (SMI2LE); he is arguably a more cogent and persuasive exponent of Leary's "imprinting circuit" theory of psychological development than Leary himself. Wilson was an advocate of the many of the utopianistic theories of Buckminster Fuller, as well as those of media theorist Marshall McLuhan and Neuro Linguistic Programming co-founder Richard Bandler with who he has co-taught workshops. James Joyce has remained a favorite literary figure of his, as well, and he has written commentary on Italic textFinnegan's WakeItalic text. Wilson has also been a proponent of life extension and the use of smart drugs.

Ironically, considering Wilson has long lampooned and criticized new age beliefs, his books can often be found in bookstores specializing in new age material.

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 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." Wilson wrote articles for seminal cyberpunk magazine Mondo 2000.

RAW holds the post of American director of the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal (CSICON). He has summed up his basic philosophy of life as one of cheerfulness, love, and optimism.

Bibliography

See also

Reference

  • Smoley, Richard and Jay Kinney, "Doubt!: The Gnosis Interview with Robert Anton Wilson", Gnosis No. 50 (Winter 1999).
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