Quotes from Robert Anton Wilson

It needs to be understood that--as Reich points out--Fascism is not a 20th Century invention. With the institution of slavery, the glorification of conquest and the subjugation of women, the Fascist or Dominator State already appears in history. All the early agricultural/monarchist systems contained the full body of Fascist theory and practice; Hitler and Mussolini merely revived this system after it had appeared to be in eclipse due to industrialism and democracy.

Rewriting in English Prime we find John appears unhappy and grouchy in the office and John appears bright and cheerful on holiday at the beach. We have left the realm of spooks and re-entered the existential or phenomenological world of actual experiences in space-time. And, lo and behold, another metaphysical contradiction has disappeared in the process.

The number of universes perceived by human beings does not equal the population of the planet, but several times the population of the planet. It thus appears some sort of miracle that we sometimes find it possible to communicate with each other at all, at all.

To be pedantic about it, no experiment or series of experiments entitles us to make absolute statements about mind and matter. Experiments only entitle us to say, at a date, that one kind of model seems more useful than another kind of model. To go beyond that and believe in a model remains an act of faith; the Christian Scientists recognize their own act of faith, but the Fundamentalist Materialists do not.

To say John is anything, incidentally, always opens the door to spooks and metaphysical debate. The historical logic of Aristotelian philosophy as embedded in Standard English always carries an association of stasis with every is, unless the speaker or writer remembers to include a date, and even then linguistic habit will cause many to not notice the date and assume is means a stasis (an Aristotelian timeless essence or spook).

Quantum Mechanics says an electron has a different essence every time we measure it (or, more clearly, it has no essence at all). Neuroscience reveals, similarly, that the Mary we meet on Tuesday may have a different self than the Mary we met Monday (or, as the Buddhists said long before neuroscience, Mary has no essence at all).

As we said at the beginning, the bedrock claim of existentialism holds that existence precedes essence, or we have no essence. Like electrons, we jump from one information system to another, and only those who have not looked closely believe that one essence remains constant through all transformations.

You are mistaken, he said smoothly. That boy is not your son. He belongs to society and the State, and I am society and the State. I will take him anywhere I want, I will order him to do anything I care to have done, and I will shoot him if he disobeys.

As long as the Cold War exists, the New Irrationality will have its own kind of rationality, just as Establishment-salaried Rationality has its own irrationalism.

Against the paranoia that easily infests either Establishment dogma and anti-Establishment dogma, the only defense I see is agnosticism, well-flavored with a sense of humor, and an awareness of one's own fallibility. I suspect a great deal, but as long as Government Secrets exist, I am not sure of anything.

We need to realize that the same technology, wisely used by intelligent men and women, can free us from every form of neurotic and irrational rigidity, to dial and focus our nervous systems as easily as we dial or focus our TV, turning any channel or circuit off and on as we choose. This is what metaprogramming (cybernetic) consciousness means.

This may surprise many, including the physicists who claim that quantum uncertainty only applies to the subatomic world and that in ordinary affairs we still live in a Newtonian universe. This book dares to disagree with that accepted wisdom; I take exactly the opposite position. My endeavor here will attempt to show that the celebrated problems and paradoxes and the general philosophical enigmas of the quantum world appear also in daily life.

It is venturesome to think that a coordination of words (philosophies are nothing more than that) can resemble the universe very much. — Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths

Wilson emphasizes that this model describes not only many, many infamous criminals, but quite a few of the more infamous statesmen and churchmen of history, who were not called criminals only because they were powerful enough to define what was crime in their society. Since these types have a strong power drive, most of history, as Wilson sees it, is Criminal History, the record of the crimes of one type of male.

It seems to me that existence — at this point I have doubts about the universe — is a lot like a Rorschach ink-blot. Everybody looks at it and sees their own favorite reality-tunnel.

A civilization based on authority-and-submission is a civilization without the means of self-correction. Effective communication flows only one way: From master-group to servile-group. Any cyberneticist knows that such a one-way communication channel lacks feedback and cannot behave intelligently.

I think when a critic is baffled, he becomes angry. And since a great deal baffles them, they are usually angry.

Even Aristotle, despite the abuse he has suffered in these pages, had enough common sense to point out, once, that I see always contains fallacy; we should say I have seen. Time always elapses between the impact of energy on the eye and the creation of an image (and associated name and ideas) in the brain, which explains why three eyewitnesses to a hit-and-run such as we postulate here may report, not just the blue Ford of the first speaker, but a blue VW or maybe even a green Toyota.

The sixth circuit of the brain kicks into action when the nervous system begins to receive signals from within the individual neuron — from the RNA-DNA "dialogue," the neurogenetic feedback system.

In brief, Intelligence Intensification means intelligence-studying-intelligence (I2), and the first thing discovered by intelligence-studying-intelligence (the brain studying the brain: metaprogramming) is that the more types of intelligence you have, the more fun it is to try to develop even more subtle, sensitive, futique levels of awareness; higher intelligence still.

Proudhon was a great communication analyst, bom 100 years too soon to be understood. His system of voluntary association (anarchy) is based on the simple communication principles that an authoritarian system means one-way communication, or stupidity, and a libertarian system means two-way communication, or rationality.

That's what makes you unhappy," Marcie said. "You ask too many questions.

In Zadeh's math, we can say "This animal belongs 90% to the fish family and 10% to the amphibian family." "This animal belongs 60% to the ape family and 40% to the hominid family." See? Just like the Coke can contains 60 % coke and 40% air. I told you I wouldn't leave us wandering in the dark with the Fundamentalists . . .

The entire nervous system, including the brain, has been designed like the rest of the body, by the "code" within the DNA molecule, which sends signals via messenger RNA molecules to tell the organism what to do: Grow red hair. Have blue eyes. Stand up and walk now. Start to talk. Find a mate. Etc. Our entire mental lives — our brain hardware and software — exist within the perimeters of this DNA master-tape.