Robert Anton Wilson or RAW (January 18, 1932 - January 11, 2007) was an
American novelist, essayist, philosopher, psychologist, futurologist,
anarchist, and conspiracy theory researcher.
His writing, which often shows a sense of humor and optimism, is
described by him 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]
[from Wikipedia]
RAW died Jan. 11. This seems a fitting time to post these excerpts from
a piece published in RAW's collection E-mail to the Universe
Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective
by Robert Anton Wilson
Our esteemed editor, Bob Banner, has invited me to contribute an article
on whether my politics are "left" or "right," evidently because some
flatlanders insist on classifying me as Leftist and others, equally
Euclidean, argue that I am obviously some variety of Rightist.
Naturally, this debate intrigues me. The Poet prayed that some power
would the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us; but every
published writer has that dubious privilege. I have been called a
"sexist" (by Arlene Meyers) and a "male feminist . . . a simpering
*****-whipped wimp" (by L.A. Rollins), "one of the major thinkers of the
modern age" (by Barbara Marx Hubbard) and "stupid" (by Andrea Chaflin
Antonoff), a "genius" (by SOUNDS, London) and "mentally deranged" (by
Charles Platt), a "mystic" and "charlatan" (by the Bay Area Skeptics)
and a "materialist" (by an anonymous gent in Seattle who also hit me
with a pie); one of my books has even been called "the most scientific
of all science-fiction novels" (by _New Scientist_ physics editor John
Gribbon) and "ranting and raving" (by Neal Wilgus). I am also frequently
called a "Satanist" in some amusing, illiterate and usually anonymous
crank letters from Protestant Fundamentalists.
I can only conclude that I am indeed like a visitor from non-Euclidean
dimensions whose outlines are perplexing to the Euclidean inhabitants of
various dogmatic Flatlands....Of course, we are living in curved space
(as noted by Einstein); that should warn us that Euclidean metaphors are
always misleading. Science has also discovered that the Universe can
count above two, which should make us leery of either/or choices. There
are eight -- count 'em, eight -- theories or models in quantum
mechanics, all of which use the same equations but have radically
different philosophical meanings; physicists have accepted the
multi-model approach (or "model agnosticism") for over 60 years now. In
modern mathematics and logic, in addition to the two-valued (yes/no)
logic of Aristotle and Boole, there are several three-valued logics
(e.g. the yes, no and maybe Quantum Logic of von Neumann; the yes, no
and po of psychologist Edward de Bono; etc.), at least one four-valued
logic (the true, false, indeterminate and meaningless of Rapoport), and
an infinite-valued logic (Korzybski). I myself have presented a
multi-valued logic in my neuroscience seminars; the bare bones of this
system will be found in my book, _The New Inquisition_. Two-valued
Euclidean choices -- left or right of an imaginary line -- do not seem
very "real" to me, in comparison to the versatility of modem science and
mathematics.
Actually, it was once easy to classify me in simple Euclidean topology.
To paraphrase a recent article by the brilliant Michael Hoy [_Critique_
#19/ 20], I had a Correct Answer Machine installed in my brain when I
was quite young. It was a right-wing Correct Answer Machine in general
and Roman Catholic in particular. It was installed by nuns who were very
good at creating such machines and implanting them in helpless children.
By the time I got out of grammar school, in 1945, I had the Correct
Answer for everything, and it was the Correct Answer that you will
nowadays still hear from, say, William Buckley, Jr.
When I moved on to Brooklyn Technical High School, I encountered many
bright, likeable kids who were not Catholics and not at all right-wing
in any respect. They naturally angered me at first. (That is the
function of Correct Answer Machines: to make you have an adrenaline
rush, instead of a new thought, when confronted with different
opinions.) But these bright, non-Catholic kids -- Protestants, Jews,
agnostics, even atheists -- fascinated me in some ways. The result was
that I started reading all the authors the nuns had warned me against --
especially Darwin, Tom Paine, Ingersoll, Mencken and Nietzsche.
I found myself floating in a void of incertitude, a sensation that was
unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. I retreated back to robotism by
electing to install a new Correct Answer Machine in my brain. This
happened to be a Trotskyist Correct Answer Machine, provided by the
International Socialist Youth Party. I picked this Machine, I think,
because the alternative Correct Answer Machines then available were less
"Papist" (authoritarian) and therefore less comfortable to my adolescent
mind, still bent out of shape by the good nuns.
(Why was I immune to Stalinism -- an equally Papist secular religion? I
think the answer was my youth. The only Stalinists left in the U.S. by
the late '40s were all middle-aged and "crystalized" as Gurdjieff would
say. Those of us who were younger could clearly see that Stalinism was
not much different from Hitlerism. The Trotskyist alternative allowed me
to feel "radical" and modern, without becoming an idiot by denying the
totalitarianism of the USSR, and it let me have a martyred redeemer
again as I had in my Catholic childhood.)
After about a year, the Trotskyist Correct Answer Machine began to seem
a nuisance. I started to suspect that the Trotskyists were some secular
clone of the Vatican, whether they knew it or not, and that the dogma of
Papal infallibility was no whit more absurd than the Trotskyist
submission to the Central Committee. I decided that I had left one
dogmatic Church and joined another. I even suspected that if Trotsky had
managed to hold on to power, he might have been as dictatorial as Stalin.
Actually, what irritated me most about the Trots (and now seems most
amusing) is that I already had some tendency toward individualism, or
crankiness, or Heresy; I sometimes disputed the Party Line. This always
resulted in my being denounced for "bourgeois tendencies." That was
irritating then and amusing now because I was actually the only member
of that Trot cell who did not come from a middle-class background. I
came from a working class family and was the only genuine "proletarian"
in the whole Marxist _kaffeklatch_.
At the age of 18, then, I returned to the void of incertitude. It began
to seem almost comfortable there, and I began to rejoice in my
agnosticism. It made me feel superior to the dogmatists of all types,
and adolescents love to feel superior to everybody (especially their
parents -- or have you noticed that?). Around the same time as my
Trotskyist period, I began to read the first Revisionist historians,
whom I had been warned about by my high school social science teachers,
in grave and awful tones, as if these men had killed a cat in the
sacristy. My teachers were too Liberal to tell me I would go to Hell for
reading such books (as the nuns had told me about Darwin, for instance),
but they made it clear that the Revisionists were Evil, Awful,
Unspeakable and probably some form of Pawns of the Devil.
I recognized the technique of thought control again, so I read all the
Revisionists I could find. They convinced me that the New Deal Liberals
had deliberately lied and manipulated the U.S. into World War II and
were still lying about what they did after the war was over. (In fact,
they are still lying about it today.)
The Revisionist who impressed me most was Harry Elmer Barnes, a classic
Liberal who was a bit of a Marxist (in methodology) -- i.e., in his way
of looking for economic factors behind political actions. I was amused
and disgusted by the attempt of the New Deal gang to smear Professor
Barnes as a right-wing reactionary. Barnes, in fact, was an advocate of
progressive ideas in education, economics, politics, criminology,
sociology and anthropology all his life but the New Deal Party Line had
smeared him so thoroughly that some people have heard of him only as
some cranky critic of Roosevelt and assume he was a Taft Republican or
even a pro-Nazi. In fact Barnes supported most of the New Deal's domest
policies, and dissented from Liberal Dogma only in opposing the spread
of American adventurism and militarism all over the world.
Charles Beard, another great historian of classic Liberal principles,
agreed that Roosevelt deliberately lied to us in World War II and was
smeared in the same way as Professor Barnes. This did not encourage me
to have Faith in any Party Line, even if it called itself the modern,
liberal, enlightened Party Line.
....
Coming from a working class family, I could never have much sympathy for
the kind of Conservatism you find in America in this century. (I do have
a certain fondness for the classic Liberal Conservatives of the 18th
Century, especially Edmund Burke and John Adams.) After I married and
had children to support, the abominations of the Capitalist system and
the wormlike ignominy of the employee role began to seem like prisons to
me; I was a poor candidate for the Conservative cause. On the other
hand, the FDR Liberals, I was convinced, had lied about World War II;
they first smeared and then blacklisted the historians who told the
truth; and they had jumped on the Cold War bandwagon with ghoulish glee.
I was anti-war by "temperament" (whatever that means -- early imprints
or conditioning? Genes? I don't know the exact cause of such a
deep-seated and life-long bias). Marxist dogma seemed as stupid to me as
Catholic dogma and as murderous as Hitlerism. I now thought of myself as
an agnostic on principle. I was not going to join any more "churches" or
submit to anybody's damned Party Line.
My agnosticism was also intensified by such influences as further
reading of Nietzsche; existentialism; phenomenolgy; General Semantics;
and operational logic.
....
Operational logic (as formulated by the American physicist Percy
Bridgman and recreated by the Danish physicist Neils Bohr as the
Copenhagen Interpretation of science) was the approach to modern science
that appealed to me in the context of the above working principles. The
Bridgman-Bohr approach rejects as "meaningless" any statements that do
not refer to concrete experiences of human beings. (Bridgman was
influenced by Pragmatism, Bohr by Existentialism.) Operationalism also
regards all proposed "laws" only as maps or models that are useful for a
certain time. Thus, Operationalism is the one "philosophy of science"
that warns us, like Nietzsche and Husserl, only to use models where
they're useful and never to elevate them into Idols or dogmas.
Although I dislike labels, if I had to label my attitude I would
accordingly settle for existentialist-phenomenologist-operationalist, as
long as no one of those three terms is given more prominence than the
other two.
In the late '50s, I began to read widely in economic "science" (or
speculation) again, a subject that had bored the bejesus out of me since
I overthrew the Marxist Machine in my brain ten years earlier. I became
fascinated with a number of alternatives -- or "excluded middles" --
that transcend the hackneyed debate between monopoly Capitalism and
totalitarian Socialism. My favorite among these alternatives was, and to
some extent still is, the individualist-mutualist anarchism of Proudhon,
Josiah Warren, S.P. Andrews, Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker. I do
not have a real Faith that this system would work out as well in
practice as it sounds in theory, but as theory it still seems to me one
of the best ideas I ever encountered.
This form of anarchism is called "individualist" because it regards the
absolute liberty of the individual as a supreme goal to be attained; it
is called "mutualist" because it believes such liberty can only be
attained by a system of mutual consent, based on contracts that are to
the advantage of all. In this Utopia, free competition and free
cooperation are both encouraged; it is assumed persons and groups will
decide to compete or to cooperate based on the concrete specifics of
each case. (This appeals to my "existentialism" again, you see.)
Land monopolies are discouraged in individualist-mutualist anarchism by
abolishing State laws granting ownership to those who neither occupy nor
use the land; "ownership," it is predicted, will then only be
contractually recognized where the "owner" actually occupies and used
the land, but not where he charges "rent" to occupy or use it. The
monopoly on currency, granted by the State, is also abolished, and any
commune, group, syndicate, etc., can issue its own competing currency;
it is claimed that this will drive interest down to approximately zero.
With rent at zero and interest near zero, it is argued that the alleged
goal of socialism (abolition of exploitation) will be achieved by free
contract, without coercion or totalitarian Statism. That is, the
individualist-mutualist model argues that the land and money monopolies
are the "bugger factors" that prevent Free Enterprise from producing the
marvelous results expected by Adam Smith. With land and money monopolies
abolished, it is predicted that competition (where there is no
existential motive for cooperation) and cooperation (where this is
recognized as being to the advantage of all) will prevent other
monopolies from arising.
Since monopolized police forces are notoriously graft-ridden and
underlie the power of the state to bully and coerce, competing
protection systems will be available in an individualist-mutualist
system. You won't have to pay "taxes" to support a Protection Racket
that is actually oppressing rather than protecting you. You will only
pay dues, where you think it prudent, to protection agencies that actual
perform a service you want and need. In general, every commune or
syndicate will make its own rules of the game, but the
mutualist-individualist tradition holds that, by experience, most
communes will choose the systems that maximize liberty and minimize
coercion.
Being wary of Correct Answer Machines, I also studied and have given
much serious consideration to other "Utopian" socio-economic theories. I
am still fond of the system of Henry George (in which no rent is
allowed, but free enterprise is otherwise preserved); but I also like
the ideas of Silvio Gesell (who would also abolish rent and all taxes
but one -- a demmurage tax on currency, which should theoretically
abolish interest by a different gimmick than the competing currencies of
the mutualists.)
I also see possible merit in the economics of C.H. Douglas, who invented
the National Dividend -- lately re-emergent, somewhat mutated, as
Theobold's Guaranteed Annual Wage and/or Friedman's Negative Income Tax.
And I am intrigued by the proposal of Pope Leo XIII that workers should
own the majority of stock in their companies.
Most interesting of recent Utopias to me is that of Buckminster Fuller
in which money is abolished, and computers manage the economy,
programmed with a prime directive to _advantage_ all without
_disadvantaging_ any -- the same goal sought by the mutualist system of
basing society entirely on negotiated contract.
Since I don't have the Correct Answer, I don't know which of these
systems would work best in practice. I would like to see them all tried
in different places, just to see what would happen. (This multiple
Utopia system was also suggested by Silvio Gesell, who was not convinced
he had a Correct Answer Machine; that's another reason I like Gesell.)
My own bias or hope or prejudice is that individualist-mutualist
anarchism with some help from Bucky Fuller's computers would work best
of all, but I still lack the Faith to proclaim that as dogma.
There is one principle (or prejudice) which makes anarchist and
libertarian alternatives attractive to me where State Socialism is
totally repugnant to my genes-or-imprints. I am committed to the
maximization of the freedom of the individual and the minimization of
coercion. I do not claim this goal is demanded by some ghostly or
metaphysical "Natural Law," but merely that it is the goal that I,
personally, have _chosen_ -- in the Existentialist sense of choice. (In
more occult language, such a goal is my True Will.) Everything I write,
in one way or another, is intended to undermine the metaphysical and
linguistic systems which seem to justify some Authorities in limiting
the freedom of the human mind or in initiating coercion against the
non-coercive.
....
I prefer the various Utopian systems I have mentioned to the
Conservative position that humanity is incorrigible and I also think
that if none of these Utopian scenarios are workable, some system will
eventually arrive better than any we have ever known. I share the
Jeffersonian ("Liberal"?) vision that the human mind can exceed all
previous limits in a society where freedom of thought is the norm rather
than a rare exception.
Does all of this make me a Leftist or a Rightist? I leave that for the
Euclideans to decide. If I had to summarize my social credo in the
briefist possible space, I would quote Alexander Pope's _Essay On Man_:
For forms of Government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administered is best:
For modes of Faith let graceless zealots fight;
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
.
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