Author Archives: quackenbush

Quantum Psychology: Weekly assignments

Welcome. Together we will explore Maybe Logic and Quantum Psychology with the goal of teaching us to know a great deal less and suspect a great deal more, as we move from unreal certitudes to existential uncertainty.

Week One

THE DEATH OF TSARISM: Faith-based vs. research-based orientations

The end of certitude as indicated by physics, pragmatism, existentialism, ethnmomethodology, general semantics, instrumentalism, and transactional psychology. In the Course Discussion Forum, practise in writing e-prime instead of English.

Do some online research into the schools of thought listed above and discuss your findings and observations in the Quantum Board.

Readings:
Quantum Psychology: Fore-Words pg. 11-21; E and E-Prime pg. 97-110

We only have one rule in this area of cyberspace —
If you can’t achieve tolerance, at least attempt courtesy.

Open your neurons, take a deep breath, and come on in.

–Robert Anton Wilson


Week Two

Read BLACK MAGICK AND CURSES
and discuss in Board

Read chapters 1-3 of Quant Psych & do the exercizes

Skip exercizes at end of chapter 3. Replace with:

For 5 minutes Monday try to sense all experience as
occuring within yr pineal gland [“third eye”]
Increase to 6 minutes Tuesday & Wednesday
increase to 10 minutes Thursday Friday Saturday
If panic or anxiety result, STOP at once

Discuss exercizes in Quantum Board


Week 3

First of all, consider the notion that you don’t really
have a head. Use the method of Radical Empiricism
pioneered by the Scots philosopher David Hume [whom this method led
to doubt the existence of David Hume.]

Most people will tell you that you do have
a head, but empiricism condemns that as hearsay.

You can see your head in a mirror? You can see dozens
— scores — hundreds of heads, in various sizes
and colors, in various kinds of mirrors,
including “distorting” mirrors in Fun Houses. How do you know
which mirrors “distort” the most? Such “evidence” creates
confusion, not conviction. Or will you go back to majority
opinion [hearsay]?

You can reach up and feel your head? You can only grope
around a nonverbal event, lumpy in front and usually hairy
in back which opinion and hearsay dub a “head.”
Opinion and hearsay once pictured Earth as flat.

If you haven’t lost faith in your “head” yet, recall the
exercize in which we found all impressions seemed
to reduce to tingling sensations in the pineal gland. Or read
ON HAVING NO HEAD: ZEN AND THE REDISCOVERY OF
THE OBVIOUS
by Douglas Harding, Inner Directions, 2002

Now read chapters 4, 5 and 6 and do such exercizes
as do not require thee group to meet in one room in
geospace. I strongly recommend adapting Exercize 4 in
Chapter 4, using 13 items found around the house

For those with the fortitude to attempt 2 books in 8
weeks, read pp 1-50 of THE EARTH WILL SHAKE
and try to list ALL the unquestioned assumptions
that inspired Sigismundo Celine’s decision to murder
Carlo Maldonado. When [and only when]
totally convinced that the
list runs to infinity, you may stop.
If quantum theory has not profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it.
–Niels Bohr

Your theory sounds crazy, but I don’t think it’s crazy enough to be true.
–Niels Bohr


Week 4

Read Chapters 1 & 2 of Quantum Reality by Nick Herbert

Read Chapters 7-10 of Quantum Psychology

Do exercizes: chapter 7 Exercize 11; chap 8, all; 9, all; 10,1.
Cuss and/or discuss in Quantum Board

Other questions for discussion:

Which of Dr Herbert’s 8 models makes more sense to you?
Why?

Which of his 8 models seems craziest?
Why?
Whatever you say a thing “is,” it is not.
–Alfred Korzybski

Thee menu is not the meal.
–Alan Wilson Watts


Week 5

Read & discuss chapters 11 to 13 of Quantum Psychology.
Try whatever exercizes appeal to you

Read & discuss THE DEADLY DONUT

For those who want more work:

Continue THE EARTH WILL SHAKE to page 233
and discuss how the Spanish, English & French reality-tunnels expand Sigismundo beyond the Neapolitan reality-tunnnel into a “quantum” reality-labyrinth.


Week 6: BUT I SAW IT WITH MY OWN EYES

This week I want to emphasize why I call this course Quantum PSYCHOLOGY, not Quantum Philosophy.
I suggest — no, I urge and implore — that you all re-read my essay on blessings and curses, before going ahead and then reading Chapters 14 to 17 of Quantum Psychology.

Contemplate these questions:
Do all perceptions contain conceptions?

Nietzsche considered us all artists; how about considering us all magicians?

Do ideas, emotions and perceptions exist in different “worlds”

[as they do in traditional occidental neurosemantics]

or do they function as seamless parts of one circular feedback system of the organism-as-a-whole?

Discuss these perspectives and whatever exercizes in QP 14-17 seem worth your time.

Think of analogs to the farmer and the thief in your own experience, or in books or movies.


Week 7: INFINITY IN A GRAIN OF BRAIN

The Door of the Law conceals Schrodinger’s Cat?!
And Einstein’s Mouse??!
And even Wigner’s Friend!!!!??

Read text and do Exercizes in chapters 18-20 of Quantum Psych.
ESPECIALLY the exercize for Chapter 19

read pp 1-50 of INFO-PSYCHOLOGY.
Cuss and/or discuss.


WEEK 8: Subtracting from the Universe

First, I’d like to thank you all. This has seemed the brightest class so far, and I’ve enjoyed you and your contributions.

This week finish Quantum Psychology and discuss the last chapters. Also, feel free to discuss anything else from the text or course.

Consider if two or more of the quantum models might work better than one of them alone. I myself find it easy to combine the Non-local model with the Copenhagen Interpretation, in the sense that the Non-local model seems the best right now but, I still remain a Copenhagenist in the sense that the best model as of 2005 will probably not seem the best model in 2010, in 2050 or 2100.

My last sentence in Quantum Psychology [from Crowley] defining Dao as the result of subtracting the Universe from itself now appears to me less useful than defining Dao as the result of subtracting the hardware of the Universe from the Software. What do think? And how does this apply to Info-Psychology?

For those of you who would like to finish Info-Psychology and The Earth Will Shake, please do so and discuss as you see fit in the Forum.

I love you guys and gals –
Uncle Bob

Crowley 101: weekly assignments

WEEK 1: Introduction

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law

Welcome all.

Before diving into Uncle Al himself we will begin with an alternative view of the Great Beast:

http://www.mt.net/~watcher/crowleyalienlam.html

Do you think it most useful to consider Magickal critters as angels, bodhisattvas, Egyptian gods, demons, Secret Chiefs of the Illuminati, pookahs, archetypes of the unconscious, extraterrestrials, all of the above, none of the above?

Why?
Cuss and discuss….
-RAW


WEEK 2: Hunchback and Soldier

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Ponder DEEPLY the first 2 chapters of THE BOOK OF LIES

Chap 1 ‘the hunchback’ [?] represents doubt, uncertainty and search

Chap 2 ‘the soldier’ [!] represents insight, illumination, dis-covery

Do you think Crowley’s path leads to more and more hunchbacks [? ? ? ? ? ? ? etc]

or to more and more soldiers [! ! ! ! ! etc]

or to an accelerating dialectic of hunchbacks and soldiers [? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? !?!? etc]

Cuss and discuss

For those who want more work, why does Crowley’s CONFESSIONS contain 96 chapters, 3 in the third person and 93 in the first?

We just added a Crowely Tarot reading to the site. We’ll focus more on tarot and The Book of Thoth later on, but for now just get acquainted with the cards and use the readings as you see fit.

Love is the law, love under will


WEEK 3: Agnostic Gnosticism

DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW

Can we learn to live with both the soldier and the hunchback or must we try to banish one of them?

Read Book of Lies Chapters 1-23

Why does Chapter 23 reveal more about the Tarot than the first 22 chapters keyed to the Tarot Trumps?

Why does 23 play such a key role?

What does Hexagram 23 in I CHING mean?

Read Innerview [this?]

and

Kennedy Bloodline [unknown]

Exercise: for the next 5 weeks try writing all posts for this class without ever using the verb “is.”

Try to decide why I consider this exercize very important.

LOVE IS THE LAW, LOVE UNDER WILL


WEEK 4: Do What Thou Wilt

DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW

All previous Teachers have taught “Do what I wilt” and slaves rushed forward to obey, crying “We are saved!’ Perdurabo told each of us “Do what thou wilt” and mosbunall fled screaming “Monster! Cannibal! Corruptor of youth! ” Do you see something remarkable in this?

Course Text Reading: Book of Lies Chapters 24-44

Additional Reading: Great Beast & T.S.O.G.

Discussion Topic 1: What did Wilhelm Reich consider the origin of Fascism?

Discussion Topic 2: list at least 10 parallels between Russian Tsarism, German Fascism and Geo W Bush’s “neo-conservatism”

Discussion Topic 3: If you’ve followed the Ashley Smith saga, comment and argufy, especially about the role of Christianity in the case.

Exercize: continue : for the next 4 weeks try writing all posts for this class without ever using the verb “is.” Try to decide why I consider this exercize very important.

[optional]

Read part one of THE WIDOW’S SON and try to keep track of the soldiers and hunchbacks


WEEK 5: Shall Be

Overview: In the mid-1970s a San Francisco press, now defunct, began printing Thelemic books bearing the mantra: Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law.

Caliph Hymeneus Alpha protested vigorously and threatened a law suit. arguing that the “correct” version reads DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW

Cuss and discuss.

Course Text Readings: Book of Lies Chapter 51

Additional Readings:

Liber 77

http://www.official-lamp.org [dead site]

OPTIONAL: Read discussions of the 22 Tarot trumps in BOOK OF THOTH and discuss light this sheds on the more mind-bending paradoxes of THE BOOK OF LIES

Discussion Topic 1: Why did Washington and Adams consider the Second amendment vital?

Discussion Topic 2: I once called Crowley, with deliberate oxymoron, an anarcho-fascist. Which side do you think dominates his works?

Exercize: continue : for the next 4 weeks try writing all posts for this class without ever using the verb “is.”
Continue to try to decide why I consider this exercize very important.

Additional: [optional] Read part two of THE WIDOW’S SON [the tower] and continue to keep track of the soldiers and hunchbacks.

Have some of the soldiers mysteriously turned into hunchbacks???!!!


Week 6: HOW LONG,O LORD, HOW LONG?

WHEN will “Do what thou wilt” become the whole of the law?

How many centuries more into the aeon of Horus?

Or–could it prove only decades?!?!

Course Text Readings:

Book of Thoth: wands
Book of lies; Chapters 69, 70

Online Reading: the molecular biology of paradise

http://www.paradise-engineering.com/
http://www.medboardwatch.com/

Discussion Topic 1: continue practise in writing e-prime instead of English by talking about the death of the pope Discussion Topic 2:

To what “eye” does Crowley refer in BOL Chapter 70 paragraph 6?
WEEK 7: Black Magick & Curses
Crowley defined magick as the art of “causing change by act of will.”
His pupil Violet Wirth [a.k.a Dion Fortune] defined magick as the art of “causing change in consciousness by act of will.”
Did one of them over-simplify for the sake of slow learners?
Can you synthesize them?

Course Text Readings:

Book of Thoth: swords

Book of Lies: balance of book

Online Reading: black magick and curses

PARABLE

An American student asked a Zen roshi, “What happens after death?”
“I don’t know,” said the roshi.
“But you’re a Zen Master!” the student cried.
“Yes, but I’m not a dead Zen master.”

Discussion Topic 1: continue practise in writing e-prime instead of English. by talking about the 2.3 million AIDS deaths in Africa, partiallY caused by the pope’s opposition to condoms

Discussion Topic 2: Name the Great magician who makes the sky blue?

Discussion Topic 3: Name the Teacher more trustworthy than Crowley or RAW?

Optional

Read book 3 “The Living One” in THE WIDOW’S SON


WEEK 8: Open

This week YOU determine the navigation.

Post questions in the Week 8 Forum and I will answer as many of them as possible!

& don’t forget the Chat Room on Tuesday night!

Russian Magazine Interview

(Wilson posted the following to the Maybe Logic Academy main forum back in April of 2005)

My first interview with a Russian magazine….

1. Tell something about yourself for Russian readers.

I have 35 books in print in my own country, and they seem to stay in print. Some also have infiltrated Germany, Greece, Japan,    Brazil, the Scandanavian countries etc.  This seems remarkable to me because I don’t believe in anything — my whole philosophy consists of non-philosophy: persistent and vehement agnosticism — but I still remain just popular enough to stay in circulation. I’m not sure I understand why. Maybe the world has more cynics and relativists than any of our diverse Establishments suspect?

2. It seems like you want to see marijuana regulations liberalized, why?

Right now, I have personal reasons — marijuana helps a good deal with my post-polio symptoms – but I have always opposed the currentUSAanti-drug laws since I first heard about them, for three reasons. [1] the drugs on the Tabu list seem selected by highly eccentric and unscientific methods; I suspect commercial motives. As Lenin said, when you see injustice, ask: cui bono? I suspect that “our” government acts to support the major drug corporations and to stifle competition. 2. Because of its very nature, a War Against Some Drugs cannot succeed without the full apparatus of a totalitarian state, and I dread that; need I explain why? 3. At 73, I don’t feel like a child and i resent being treated like one by our Drug Tsar. I supported a wife and 4 children for most of my adult life. I think me and my doctor know what’s best for my health better than a Tsarist bureaucrat 3000 miles away, who hasn’t even given me a medical examination. I mean, it’s like living in a Kafka novel.

3. Is there any correlation between Taoists sense of humor and your sense of humor?

I often quote the old Chinese proverb, “The wise become Confucian in good times, Buddhist in bad times and Daoist in old age.” Since we live in good times [technologically], bad times [politically], and I feel as old as the last dinosaur, I’ve become Confucian-Buddhist- Daoist all in one package. I try to treat all people kindly, or at least politely, in Confucian terms; my empathy with all sentient critters has increased, in  quite Buddhist manner; and I grow increasingly detached from fixed ideas and emotions, in the Daoist mood. I don’t know whether to consider this Wisdom or just senility, but it appears harmless and doesn’t seem illegal, immoral or fattening.

4. Is there any real conspiracy that affects global processes?

I suspect that not one “conspiracy” but dozens —or hundreds — of competing gangs of goons affect global and local processes. On any given day, one of these bands of Great Pirates might have more clout than  the others, bit it’s seldom the same gang for two days, much less two years. Not  to appear evasive,the gangs I would  worry about the most, if still inclined to worry, would include the Vatican/Mafia mob, the Orange gang [Dutch-English bankers,  who own American banking, too]], the CIA, fundamentalist Islam in general, and the World Bank. But they all have lots of rivals.

5. What would you say to someone claiming there is Global Government?

I think I already said it.To say  it again, I’ll  quote Juang Ju: “There is no governor anywhere.”

6. What is the most disgusting prejudice can you point out?

That seems totally relative…asked the most disgusting, to me, I’d have to say the American prejudice against intelligence in politics. I don’t know where that began– we didn’t start that way — our first three presidents included two of the best minds of their century, Adams and Jefferson, and George Washington doesn’t seem a nitwit either….but nowadays any inadvertent revelation of intelligence by anybody in politics means their career dies immediately. We have lots of intelligent people in the sciences and arts, but politiics remains closed to them. I guess that results from the success of what  George Bush calls “faith-based organizations.”

7. Tell us, what do you think of democracy?

CONSTITUTIONAL democracy, with strict limits on government powers, seems to me the best possible government, if we must have government. Without constitutional limits, democracy easily becomes another damned tyranny. I’d also accept a constitutional monarchy, like the Decembrists. But I remain, in my heart of hearts, an anarchist.  I’d prefer contractual syndicates to any government.

8.AmericaandRussia, how do you see relationship between our countries?

I don’t feel informed enough to speculate, beyond saying I feel damned glad the Cold War has ended and I don’t have to fear that either of our crazy governments will start heaving H-bombs around

9. What do you think of the works of L. R. Hubbard?

What do you think of Stalin and Hitler?

10. What is conventional logic down side?

Aristotle’s damned either/or doesn’t make any sense to me. My thinking — or my stumbling and fumbling efforts to think — derives largely from  non-Aristotelian systems. That includes von Neumann’s three-valued logic [true, false, maybe], Rappoport’s four-valued logic [true, false, indeterminate, meaningless], Korzybski’s multi-valued logic [degrees of probability.] and also Mahayana Buddhist paradoxical logic [it “is” A. it “is” not A, it “is” both A and not A, it “is” neither A nor not A]. But, as an extraordinarily stupid fellow, I can’t use such systems until I reduce them to terms a simple mind like mine can handle, so I just preach that we’d all think and act more sanely if we had to use “maybe” a lot more often. Can you imagine a world with Jerry Falwell hollering “Maybe Jesus ‘was’ the son of God and maybe he hates Gay people as much as I do” — or every tower in Islam resounding with “There ‘is’ no God except maybe Allah and maybe Mohammed is his prophet”?

Why, the world might go stark staring sane!

11. In Maybe logic when one would encounter multiple options where to forward one’s conclusions, what is a guiding light for those who implement maybe logic groundings in applied studies?

Don’t believe ANYthing.  You will, of course, still have some suspicions and prejudices, but keep them in that category. Don’t ever elevate any of them to dogmas. Be prepared to learn more, even in startling and annoying ways.

12. Do you agree with such popular inRussiadichotomy (Due to Marx heritage) – mind – matter?

I rather tend toward the view of physicist David Bohm that the words “mind” and “matter” create endless confusion and should get put on the back shelf in a box labeled “Discarded Nonsense.” At most we should speak of “mind-like and matter-like phenomena.”

13. If there were Aliens what do you think they would be up to humankind-wise?

Any aliens aware of humanity would probably find us cute but possibly dangerous — sort of like I feel about polar bears. Or maybe that represents projection on my part — I find most humans cute but dangerous, not as cute as the bears but much more dangerous

14. How would you correlate Oriental and Western cultures?

I don’t know enough to generalize beyond their religions. I have a strong affinity with Confucianism, Daosim and Buddhism, which gives me a slight pro-Oriental bias. I regard Judaism, Christianity and Islam as three of the worst cults ever invented. Monotheism seem like intellectual poison to me. I fear all faith-based systems, including secular ideologies, which all seem like hangovers from the monotheistic dark ages.

15. If someone asked you – ‘Do you believe in God’ – what would you say?

Hell, no! Oddly, I don’t consider myself an atheist, though– not in the ordinary sense. The universe seems fundamentally rational to me, but I see no signs of a central government or a Tsar. The cybernetic concept of feedback and the Chinese concept of the Dao account for the intelligence I see in the world. To me, in my ignorance, Juang Ju’s axiom “There is no Governor anywhere” implies that “government” resides non-locally, as in a cybernetic system… or an anarchist syndicate maybe….

16. What is your favorite book?

Beyond all doubt, Joyce’s FINNEGANS WAKE.

17. What would you recommend to young people?

Don’ believe anything i say: think for yourself.

18. There is a prejudice among some Russian people that Americans are stupid, how would you comment on that?

I feel staggered. I can’t and won’t deny it. I just don’t know enough to generalize about 200,000,000 people, especially since that group includes me…For all I know, our Nobel scientists  compare unfavorably with other Nobel winners, our dentists with other dentists, our carpenters with other carpenters, our grocers with other grocers , and [gulp]  even our novelists with others, and so on. I simply haven’t done enough travel to offer an informed opinion, and     I defer to those who have.

19. What future according to you mankind is facing today?

I’m an unabashed optimist. I agree with Marx that politics follows economics, but I also agree with Buckminster Fuller that economics follows technology — and technology seems to lead more and more to decentralization of control or “Green” alternatives. Also we’re doing more with less energy every decade. Once we reach the point where Internet replaces all — or most — functions of government, we’ll solve the rest of our problems easily.

20. Do you think formal education is necessary?

That would depend on your ambitions. Most questions have no one answer. What you want determines what you have to do to get it.

21. What do you consider your most important single idea?

My “Idiot of the Century” Law. This has two sides. First, if you occasionally suspect that you have acted like the Idiot of the Century, you will act a little less like the Idiot of the Century, and the more often you entertain that suspicion, the less of an Idiot you become. Conversely, if you never confront such dark suspicions, every idiocy that ever enters your head will stay there and you might actually become the certified, undisputed Idiot of the Century, despite the heavy competition.

22.  What do you think of George Bush?

Well, he never suspects he might qualify as the Idiot of the Century, so I think he has a good chance…

23. Where can people learn more about your ideas?

http://www.gunsanddope.com/
http://www.rawilson.com/
http://www.maybelogic.com/
http://www.maybelogic.org/
http://www.alphane.com/raw.htm
http://deoxy.org/raw.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson
http://www.official-lamp.org
But be careful. It just might be me, not Bush, who really qualifies as the Idiot of the Century….

Crowley 101: Course Assignments

WEEK 1: Introduction

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law

Welcome all.

Before diving into Uncle Al himself we will begin with an alternative view of the Great Beast:

http://www.mt.net/~watcher/crowleyalienlam.html (also posted on the site in Readings: Brother Aleister Crowley)

Do you think it most useful to consider Magickal critters as angels, bodhisattvas, Egyptian gods, demons, Secret Chiefs of the Illuminati, pookahs, archetypes of the unconscious, extraterrestrials, all of the above, none of the above?

Why?
Cuss and discuss….
-RAW


WEEK 2: Hunchback and Soldier

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Ponder DEEPLY the first 2 chapters of THE BOOK OF LIES

Chap 1 ‘the hunchback’ [?] represents doubt, uncertainty and search

Chap 2 ‘the soldier’ [!] represents insight, illumination, dis-covery

Do you think Crowley’s path leads to more and more hunchbacks [? ? ? ? ? ? ? etc]

or to more and more soldiers [! ! ! ! ! etc]

or to an accelerating dialectic of hunchbacks and soldiers [? ! ? ! ? ! ? ! ? !?!? etc]

Cuss and discuss

For those who want more work, why does Crowley’s CONFESSIONS contain 96 chapters, 3 in the third person and 93 in the first?

We just added a Crowely Tarot reading to the site. We’ll focus more on tarot and The Book of Thoth later on, but for now just get acquainted with the cards and use the readings as you see fit.

Love is the law, love under will


WEEK 3: Agnostic Gnosticism


DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW

Can we learn to live with both the soldier and the hunchback or must we try to banish one of them?

Read Book of Lies Chapters 1-23

Why does Chapter 23 reveal more about the Tarot than the first 22 chapters keyed to the Tarot Trumps?

Why does 23 play such a key role?

What does Hexagram 23 in I CHING mean?

Read Innerview

and

Kennedy Bloodline

Exercise: for the next 5 weeks try writing all posts for this class without ever using the verb “is.”

Try to decide why I consider this exercize very important.

LOVE IS THE LAW, LOVE UNDER WILL


WEEK 4: Do What Thou Wilt

DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW

All previous Teachers have taught “Do what I wilt” and slaves rushed forward to obey, crying “We are saved!’ Perdurabo told each of us “Do what thou wilt” and mosbunall fled screaming “Monster! Cannibal! Corruptor of youth! ” Do you see something remarkable in this?

Course Text Reading: Book of Lies Chapters 24-44

Additional Reading: Great Beast & T.S.O.G.

Discussion Topic 1: What did Wilhelm Reich consider the origin of Fascism? ?

Discussion Topic 2: list at least 10 parallels between Russian Tsarism, German Fascism and Geo W Bush’s “neo-conservatism”

Discussion Topic 3: If you’ve followed the Ashley Smith saga, comment and argufy, especially about the role of Christianity in the case.

Exercize: continue : for the next 4 weeks try writing all posts for this class without ever using the verb “is.” Try to decide why I consider this exercize very important.

[optional]

Read part one of THE WIDOW’S SON and try to keep track of the soldiers and hunchbacks


WEEK 5: Shall Be


Overview: In the mid-1970s a San Francisco press, now defunct, began printing Thelemic books bearing the mantra: Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law.

Caliph Hymeneus Alpha protested vigorously and threatened a law suit. arguing that the “correct” version reads DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW

Cuss and discuss.

Course Text Readings: Book of Lies Chapter 51

Additional Readings:

Liber 77

http://www.official-lamp.org

OPTIONAL: Read discussions of the 22 Tarot trumps in BOOK OF THOTH and discuss light this sheds on the more mind-bending paradoxes of THE BOOK OF LIES

Discussion Topic 1: Why did Washington and Adams consider the Second amendment vital?

Discussion Topic 2: I once called Crowley, with deliberate oxymoron, an anarcho-fascist. Which side do you think dominates his works?

Exercize: continue : for the next 4 weeks try writing all posts for this class without ever using the verb “is.”
Continue to try to decide why I consider this exercize very important.

Additional: [optional] Read part two of THE WIDOW’S SON [the tower] and continue to keep track of the soldiers and hunchbacks.

Have some of the soldiers mysteriously turned into hunchbacks???!!!
Week 6: HOW LONG,O LORD, HOW LONG?
WHEN will “Do what thou wilt” become the whole of the law?

How many centuries more into the aeon of Horus?

Or–could it prove only decades?!?!

Course Text Readings:

Book of Thoth: wands
Book of lies; Chapters 69, 70

Online Reading: the molecular biology of paradise

http://www.paradise-engineering.com/
http://www.medboardwatch.com/

Discussion Topic 1: continue practise in writing e-prime instead of English by talking about the death of the pope Discussion Topic 2:

To what “eye” does Crowley refer in BOL Chapter 70 paragraph 6?
WEEK 7: Black Magick & Curses
Crowley defined magick as the art of “causing change by act of will.”
His pupil Violet Wirth [a.k.a Dion Fortune] defined magick as the art of “causing change in consciousness by act of will.”
Did one of them over-simplify for the sake of slow learners?
Can you synthesize them?

Course Text Readings:

Book of Thoth: swords

Book of Lies: balance of book

Online Reading: black magick and curses

PARABLE

An American student asked a Zen roshi, “What happens after death?”
“I don’t know,” said the roshi.
“But you’re a Zen Master!” the student cried.
“Yes, but I’m not a dead Zen master.”

Discussion Topic 1: continue practise in writing e-prime instead of English. by talking about the 2.3 million AIDS deaths in Africa, partiallY caused by the pope’s opposition to condoms

Discussion Topic 2: Name the Great magician who makes the sky blue?

Discussion Topic 3: Name the Teacher more trustworthy than Crowley or RAW?

Optional

Read book 3 “The Living One” in THE WIDOW’S SON


WEEK 8: Open

This week YOU determine the navigation.

Post questions in the Week 8 Forum and I will answer as many of them as possible!

& don’t forget the Chat Room on Tuesday night!

CCC: online chat

17:07:01 [jonnyg] Good evening Mr. Wilson!!
17:07:09 rllrjammer enters this room
17:07:51 [RAW] good evening jonny
17:08:26 [jonnyg] thanks for this chance to wrap our course up
17:08:51 [RAW] hello mr. rlljammer
17:08:55 [rllrjammer] Hi, everybody.
17:09:23 [RAW] my pleasure. any questions?
17:10:13 [jonnyg] What does the next 5-10 years look like in the future
17:10:45 [jonnyg] are you still hopeful like some of your mid 90s interviews or are you as scared as we are?
17:11:24 [RAW] i don’t know. i expect termendous breakthroughs in the sciences and the arts. and in politics i expect nothing.
17:11:52 [jonnyg] art is best left to the utterly miserable
17:12:17 [RAW] at my age you can’t get scared anymore.
17:13:05 [rllrjammer] I worry that the breakthroughs in the sciences won’t happen fast enough, or be squelched before they can occur.
17:13:08 [RAW] sorry but i disagree. beethoven was not utterly miserable when he wrote the 9th sympathy, for example.
17:13:50 [jonnyg] True…the mistake of a young man who loves to jump to conclusions…in one of your books a feminist professor calls it a hymn to rape though
17:14:11 [RAW] who is going to squelch them, and how? look at history, they break through.
17:15:40 [dan] maybe the true artist has to go underground i think Duchamp said that…
17:15:52 [RAW] she might consider van gogh’s “starry sky” as a glorification of serial killers. i think she’s nuts.
17:16:23 [jonnyg] I am interested in the kids culture jamming…putting up fake traffic signs, arrows leading to nowhere, anti bush and war propaganda posters all over downtown SF…Has anyone here seen the posters with a stencil of a man’s face and the words “OBEY”
17:17:06 [RAW] if you’re original enough you’ll end up in the underground if you live long enough.
17:17:54 [RAW] that’s all a part of operation minkfuck.
17:17:57 [rllrjammer] I hope so. I look at the efforts to stop stem cell research and the attempts to control the quantity and availability of vitamin supplements (and other medicinal products) and think they might be successful. Other times, I’m more optimistic.
17:18:32 [jonnyg] RAW you seem to be a master of intellectual reproduction…you’ve spent a life researching and learning what interests you…but the amazing thing about it is you seem to have passed on your reality tunnel to all of us…Was thata conscious plan?
17:19:57 [jonnyg] To clarify…it’s like your brain is breeding….seducing and mating with all of ours
17:22:28 RAW enters this room
17:23:24 [RAW] the holy inquistion did not stop science. i doubt george bush will do anybetter.
17:23:27 [jonnyg] everyone still here?
17:24:03 [rllrjammer] I’m still here.
17:25:05 [RAW] i think i have a drive to spread my memes the way most men want to spread their genes.
17:25:43 [rllrjammer] The mailman just arrived and left Info-Psychology on my doorstep!
17:26:10 [jonnyg] ME TOO! just kidding
17:26:30 [RAW] i think every writer wants to change people for the better, as far as you can understand what is the better.
17:28:48 [jonnyg] thanks, you have made my reality tunnel a hell of a lot more interesting….I know you hate to play the guru role…but what would you tell someone who wanted to put your memes into action and honor you?
17:30:37 [RAW] putting my memes into action in your life is something only you can understand. i don’t know enough about your life situation. there are no general rules. only individual applications.
17:32:09 [jonnyg] What can we do besides sharing your books with friends and discussing them to bring about a more “RAW” style consciousness non aristolean thinking to the masses…I don’t want to convert, but I would like more freaky peple to talk to
17:33:19 [RAW] you’ll find the freaky people online. don’t look in the mass media channels
17:35:06 [jonnyg] what have you experienced in your time on earth that you would tell us not to miss
17:35:22 [dan] yes, you have really made my reality tunnel much broader in what you teach and you’r example in buddhist teachings
17:36:09 [RAW] sex, drugs and rock and roll.
17:37:07 [RAW] buddhism is one of my three favorite religions.
17:37:29 [jonnyg] others?
17:38:13 [RAW] a long happy marriage. if you’re lucky.
17:38:48 [RAW] and an apartment with a great ocean view.
17:39:20 [jonnyg] do folks in the OTO really partake of comingled sperm and menstrual fluid in the gnostic catholic mass?
17:39:52 sjburke enters this room
17:41:03 [RAW] depends on which OTO you’re talking about. there are 1005 outer heads all leading their own OTOs.
17:41:07 [jonnyg] it makes sense…but it’s pretty dissapointing as SECRETS go
17:42:06 [RAW] what’s disappointing?
17:43:09 [jonnyg] The caliphate bickering in the east bay…politization of the freemason lodge I visit…people always find a way to mess up idealism with their humanity…And I am the pope
17:43:46 [jonnyg] I just want to get on with the business of creating heaven on earth like your jesuit Benoit
17:45:29 [jonnyg] I can’t figure if I’d be better off loving all the assholes into submission or just killing them
17:45:52 [RAW] occult politics, like ordinary politics, shows humanity at its lowest level. i try and ignore it.
17:46:55 [RAW] i believe we have a law against killing all the assholes. if you start at the top, its not even ordinary killing anymore. it’s assination.
17:47:09 [jonnyg] have you ever found an organization that satisfies our desire to share and belong and also reconciles the indviduality of each being
17:47:55 [RAW] yes, but it has no name.
17:48:13 [RAW] it just call it “friends”.
17:48:53 [jonnyg] How much do you charge for membership?
17:48:58 [sjburke] Maybe you don’t have to do either the loving or the killing
17:49:00 [jonnyg] sorry
17:49:50 [jonnyg] SJ?
17:50:20 [RAW] the middle way. more mentation and less munition.
17:50:44 [sjburke] I’m just getting up to speed here. Haven’t used chat before
17:51:21 Josh21 enters this room
17:52:04 [Josh21] Hello, sorry I’m coming in late
17:52:11 [RAW] 9 more minutes, good folks, and i must leave the computer.
17:52:27 [sjburke] Buckminster Fullers ‘livingry’ (instead of weaponry) currently gives me something to do that feels useful and helpful
17:52:46 [jonnyg] If one disagrees with the actions of their gov’t, wouldn’t it be logical to stop funding their wars and programs…Could a movement to stop paying your taxes have any real effect under our curren monetary system
17:52:47 [RAW] hi josh. btw where is everybody, in geospace?
17:52:59 [Josh21] Well, since I’ve got 9 min left, thanks, Bob, it’s been fun and freaky
17:53:18 [Josh21] I’m in cookeville, tn
17:53:23 [jonnyg] I’m typing for all of em RAW
17:53:38 [rllrjammer] Dublin, California
17:54:01 [sjburke] Everybody, I hope you got mucho from this course. It certainly rocked my monkey world
17:54:14 [RAW] i think it’s already happening. there’s hints in the media that the irs is 7 years behind auditing forms because there’s so much cheeting going on.
17:54:40 [Josh21] I’ve had a blast-lots of trouble keeping up tho
17:54:40 [sjburke] I’m Melbourne, Australia, in the beautiful sunshine
17:54:49 [jonnyg] Cajah’s Mountain, North Caroline at the fiancee’s parents(they think I’m anti-social cuz they don’t know bout RAW)
17:55:06 [dan] i’m here in old lancaster, P.A.
17:56:45 [sjburke] To keep up with this course, I’ve had to work with bigger and bigger chunks of info, until I ‘[arrived” at a colossal ‘maybe’.
17:56:46 [RAW] i’m in capitola in my apartment overlooking the pacific bay of the pacific ocean. and i love the view. for more details on the view see “Old man on a balcony” – poems on my site.
17:57:08 [jonnyg] At the risk of being schmaltzy…while I can I’d like to say thanks to RAW…for his books, ideas and the energy to grow them in all of us…RAW you have made me a better human and the world a better place…I love knowing that growing up doesn’t mean I’ll get “OLD”
17:57:35 [jonnyg] and I love the little bit I know of you
17:57:52 [RAW] thank you thank you thank you
17:57:58 [jonnyg] and everyone in this class…ya’ll are sex drugs and rock n roll
17:58:02 [rllrjammer] Jonyg speaks for me, also.
17:58:09 [sjburke] That’s not schmaltzy at all jonnyg- I’m right with ya.
17:58:37 [Josh21] I’m with jonnyg too, great point about growing up, not old
17:59:22 [sjburke] I am now officially moved- and I don’t mean ‘maybe’
17:59:49 [RAW] as betty davis said, old age isn’t for sissies. and as george burns said, it’s better than the alterative. a hell of a lot better, i think.
18:00:09 [dan] yea.. looking foward to taking the crowley and quantum courses with RAW
18:00:51 [RAW] one final word of advice. live so that people love you. you’ll need them when you get old.
18:01:23 [Josh21] thanks for the advice–have fun, bob
18:01:28 [sjburke] I return to my planet now
18:01:30 [RAW] good bye friends. see you in the later courses! -bob
18:01:35 [Josh21] see you next class
18:01:44 [rllrjammer] Thanks so much for everything
18:01:52 RAW exits from this room
18:02:04 [jonnyg] Thanks…I n I will meet again
18:03:54 [Josh21] bye,yall, its been fun
18:04:00 Josh21 exits from this room
18:05:03 [rllrjammer] Bye. everybody. Hope to talk to you all in the

Uncle Bob’s Treasury of Great Poems (selection)

No ideas but in things. Mr.

Paterson  has gone away

to rest and write. Inside the bus one sees

his thoughts sitting and standing. His

thoughts alight and scatter —

————————————————-

When the nightingale to his mate

Sings day-long and night late

My love and I keep state

In bower,

In flower,

‘Til the watchman on the tower

Cry:

               “Up! Thou rascal,  Rise

               I see the white

                                             Light

                                             and the night

                                                                           Flies!”

—————————————–

Life and death were not

Until man made up the whole

Made it lock, stock   and barrel

Out of his own bitter soul

————————————————————-

Blood, thou art blood;

Let’s write “Good angel” on the devil’s horn

—————————————————–

2 partidges

2 mallard ducks

a dungeness crab

24 hours out

of the pacific

and a live–frozen

trout

—————————————————

Night’s candles are burnt out and jocund day

Stand tiptoe on the misty mountain tops

—————————————————-

Cast away in the winter river:

A dead dog frozen

———————————————

I shall live, if she continues in life,

               I she dies, I will go with her.

Great Zeus, save the woman,

               or she will sit before your seat in a veil

               and tell out the long list of her troubles

————————————-

How crows my love, my cavalier,

How struts he like a chanticlere.

Our nest is feathered with desire

And this yard safe from fox and fire;

But fallen on the dunghill, dead,

The soldier’s blood is rooster-red.

Alas, no chick of this sad cock

Will crow for Christ at dawn o’clock

——————————————————

The track of the American locomotive

And the usual  geese

               in the moonlight

————————————————–

The ploughland has gone to bent

And the pasture to heather;

Gin the goodwife stint

She’ll keep the house together

Gin the goodwife stint

And the bairns hunger

The Duke can get his rent

One year longer

helpful bob: gin = if; bairns = babes

————————————————

Mountain pool:

               Frog jumps, PLOP–

                              lapping    slow wavelets

—————————————

The enormous tragedy of the dream in the peasant’s

               bent shoulders

Manes!  Manes was tanned and  stuffed

—————————————–

                                               Biggest damned raven

                                               I ever saw flies howling

                                               caw caw caw Lord Lord

Norbert Weiner,  co-creator of Information Theory

and thus of the Net on which we speak to each other,

wrote in 1948 that great poetry contains more information than political speeches.

We cannot measure or define Information without

including the Receiver in the  measurement or definition.

This PRECISELY mirrors the observer/observed

synergy in quantum mechnics but has

received less publicity.

The only Information scientically and mathematically

measurable = the inability of the Receiver to guess

what’s coming next [the next “signal.’] In political

speeches, measurable information runs very near

the theoretical infinitesmal; the greatest poems

[or  fragments of poems] consist of  those that

have the faintly “spooky” quality of never

losing something of their original unpredictibility,

for at least some Receivers.

These “fragmnts  I have shelved [shored]”  wd not illusrate

this so well if I had attached the author’s name

to each, thereby triggering conitioned reflexes.



Illuminatus!: Weekly assignments

Week One – Kether

Read the first trip, Kether

Read my article about Adam Weishaupt

Contribute to Forum up to 3 questions —
if I get too many to answer this week, I’ll catch up eventually


Week Two – Chokmah

Read the second trip, Chokmah
Who is Hopalong Horus?

Read the neo-Decembrist agitprop in
http://www.gunsanddope.com/

Program your search engine for Decembrist + Illuminati
See what you find

Contribute to Forum up to 3 questions and/or
comments about Chokmah and/or neo-Decembrism


Week Three – Binah

Read the third trip, Binah

Why does this trip not have a title?

If you didn’t do it last week,
Read the neo-Decembrist agitprop in gunsanddope
and set your search engine for Decembrist + Illuminati See what you find.

Forum Questions

Why did Shea and I write so much about The Dutchman?
Discuss the difference between The Dutchman and Dillinger?
“Is” The Dutchman “bad,” a “sociopath,” “confused,” an agent of the illuminati? etc.?

Re: Simon and Joe’s discussion about anarchism (pg. 112-113) What do you know about anarchism?
Does it have any role in our planet’s future?

Why do the first 3 trips end with the words “point,” “line’ and “plane”?

Contribute to Forum up to 3 questions and/or comments about Binah


Week Four – Chesed

Read the fourth trip, Chesed,
and discuss in the Forums

Read Tucker article and discuss in the Forums

If you feel sure that ‘anarchism can’t work,”
explain why in the Forum. Don’t be afraid — I won’t bite.

Review all the memos. Discuss which theories about the Illuminati seem most plausible, relatively plausible, relatively whacko, totally whacko, etc. Please discuss in the forum.

Discuss whether my opinion about the Illuminati theories should have greater weight than yours?, if they should, why — just because I wrote a book on the subject?


Week Five – Geburah

Read the fifth trip, Geburah
and discuss in the forums

Read
http://www.madsci.org/%7Elynn/juju/surr/paranoia/CP.html
and discuss in the Forums as a key to this chapter and, maybe, the whole trilogy…..

Why does this trip end with the word “motion”?
How does this relate to Geburah on the Tree of Life?


Week Six – Tiphareth

Read the sixth trip, Tiphareth
and discuss in the forum

Review all the memos. Discuss which theories about the Illuminati seem most plausible, relatively plausible, relatively whacko, totally whacko, etc.
Please discuss in the forum. Read and cuss or discuss
The Celtic Roots of Quantum Theory


Week Seven – Netzach

Read the seventh trip, netzach
and discuss in the forums

Do the following exercize —

If you can, watch the U.S. presidential debate and check off, after each speech, which type of argument the candidate used most.

If you ain’t done it yet, review all the memos.

Discuss which theories about the Illuminati seem most plausible,
relatively plausible, relatively whacko, totally whacko, etc.
Please discuss in the forum, as guided or goaded by the following notions:

Let us consider the U.S. Congress for a moment. I have chosen this body, not with the satirical intent of exhibiting a Horrible Example and not with the Platonic intent of showing an Ideal Form, but with the empirical intent of looking at how persuasion actually operates in the normal world of ordinary experience.

A new bill is before Congress, and to avoid any prejudice on my part or the reader’s, we will assume that this is a bill to distim the frammisgoshes. Since we know nothing about the frammisgoshes and cannot guess what effect distimming will have on them, we can consider this case with some objectivity.

Some Congresscritters (I am trying to avoid the human chauvinism of writing “Congresspersons”) will vote to distim the frammisgoshes because they have been bribed with money or with more intangible rewards. This is sad, but we all know it happens on occasion. For convenience, we will call this Argument by Self-Interest; it has the form

The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because you will profit from it Outside Congress, many people make important decisions on this basis. Although there is a great deal of “sincere” racism and sexism in the United States, there can be little doubt that the most outrageous racist and sexist institutions exist because certain persons are making a profit out of them; nobody who can pay Black or female workers half the salaries of white males is very eager to listen to arguments that conflict with this very potent Argument by Self-Interest.

Presumably, there would be hearings on an issue as important as the frammisgoshes and various interested parties would give testimony. Perhaps the Archbishop of Chicago, the Chief Rabbi of Los Angeles and the Celestial Yap of Cleveland will inform the legislators what the Catholic God, the Jewish God and Yog the Almighty think about distimming the frammisgoshes. In one sense, this is the classic form of Argument by Authority:

The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because various well-known deities and divinities say so.

Outside Congress, we also find many persons making decisions on this basis. Falwell hates homosexuals, for example, because the Old Testament god is on record for disliking that group.

Cynics will say that, since deities and divinities do not appear in person, this is not only Argument by Authority but also Argument by Imposture:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because certain witnesses declare that they have been informed that various deities and divinities have that opinion.

In fact, there is also Argument by Intimidation involved here, since the Archbishop, Chief Rabbi and Celestial Yap control several million voters; so such testimony also includes Argument by Self-Interest:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because you will lose the next election if they aren’t distimmed.

There will probably be expert legal testimony as well, and this amounts to Argument by Precedent:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because a frammisgosh is like a farble and distimming is like gosketing and our ancestors always gosketed the farbles.

Again, many people decide matters that way outside Congress as well as inside. The doctrine of eminent domain, which allows the government to steal anything it wants, is regarded with repugnance by most people, but lawyers say it is legal and proper, because government has been stealing things for a long time.

There will also be scientific evidence heard on such a socially important decision as frammisgoshes. Ideally, in accord with scientific method, this will take the form of Argument by Evidence:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because in 186 studies, 66.34 percent of all frammisgoshes found undistimmed were also suffering from hangnail, poor school attendance and abuse of controlled substances.

With what some will regard as incredible optimism, I assume that some Congressentities will examine this evidence and form their own opinions of whether the statistical techniques used really “prove” the conclusions alleged. With what some will regard as dark cynicism, I also assume that some Congressentities will not bother with that at all but will accept what they heard as another form of Argument by Authority:
The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because 186 scientists say so.

Again, outside of Congress many people make decisions on the basis of scientific evidence, either because they understand it, or because they think it is another form of Argument by Authority and they are conditioned to accept whatever Authority tells them. That’s why there are so many nuclear plants around these days.

There is also the Argument by Logic. This can sometimes be combined with scientific experiments and if the two mesh we have a “fit” of theory with fact and scientists are delighted. Pure Argument by Logic, however, does not require this experimental backup and only demands that the conclusions be reached by the game-rules of an abstract symbol system. In our hypothetical case, some witness might inform Congress:
All mome raths need to be distimmed
All frammisgoshes are mome raths.
Therefore, all frammisgoshes need to be distimmed.

This method of logic can lead to some remarkable results, and Lewis Carroll once employed it to demonstrate that some dowagers are thistles. It is for that reason that Pure Logic is in rather low repute in scientific circles thes days and a scientific proof is regarded as requiring not only logical coherence but experimental, sensory-sensual or instrumental verification in the space-time world of ordinary perception.

There is also the method of argument ad hominem, which consists of variations on “The frammisgoshes should be distimmed because the people who deny this are all sons of bitches.” This is a favorite form of argument with demagogues and hysterics but it has no validity. E.g., even if it were proven that Darwin was a child molester or Einstein an axe-murderer, this one would not disprove their scientific theories which still have to be judged on empirical evidence.

The Argument of guilt-by-association is the Argument ad hominem one step removed and even more obviously invalid. This is the position which holds “the frammisgoshes should be distimmed because the leader of the anti-distimmation movement was seen at a saloon in 1957 where known Communists and Satanists were also drinking.”

There do not appear to be any other methods of argument ever invented; what seem to be other methods generally turn out to be variations on these basic forms. For instance, “You better believe it or God or Allah or Yog or some other deity will throw you in Hell” is a combination of Argument by Self Interest and Argument by Intimidation. “You better believe it (or pretend to believe it) or you’ll lose your job” is a secular equivalent of this combination of Self-Interest and Intimidation.

Einstein’s equations are Argument by (Mathematical) Logic; the empirical confirmations of Relativity are Argument by Experiment; and the agreement of the two is a typical example of the synthesis of logical validity and sensory-sensual experience that science always seeks to find.

I believe that everything admirable in the modern world results form the use of Argument by Experiment together with Argument by Logic (without making an Idol of either), whereas everything heinous and terrible results from the persistence of the older habits of Arguments by Authority, Intimidation, Self-Interest and Legal Precedent, or the various forms of calling the other side sons of bitches. This logical-experimental bias in my thinking is as old-fashioned and almost quaint as my Jeffersonian notion that “no laws” means “no laws,” and I realize that I sound like a reactionary to those New Age people who much prefer Authority (if it comes from the East), Intimidation (if it is called the politics of confrontation) and Self Interest (if it is called getting in touch with your real feelings)……


Week Eight – Hod

Read the eighth trip, Hod
and discuss in the forums

Discuss the Snafu law and any conspicous examples you have noted

Discuss:

Conspiracy Digest interview

CD: How seriously are we to take your fascinating and entertaining trilogy, Illuminatus!, which you wrote in collaboration with Robert J. Shea?

Wilson: I would hate to be taken seriously. Serious people are always so grim and uptight that they make me want to dance naked on the lawn playing a flute. Of course, as Mavis says in the first volume of the trilogy, nothing is true unless it makes you laugh, but you don’t really understand it until it makes you cry. The basic situation of humanity is both tragic and comic, since we are all domesticated apes with marvelous 30-billion-cell brains, which we seldom use efficiently because of domination by the older mammalian parts of the back brain. I mean, we’re living on the Planet of the Apes, man. Is that funny or serious? It depends on how broad your sense of humor is, I guess.

CD: Specifically, are we really to believe that competing secret societies initiate and guide the various intellectual, religious, artistic, and mind-warping trends of the world? Or was the secret-society scenario just a parody of right-wing theories, a way of dramatizing authoritarian vs. libertarian trends, or simply your own brainwashing technique?

Wilson: To quote Lichtenberg, “This book is a mirror. When a monkey looks in, no philosopher looks out.” Illuminatus!, like Linda Lovelace, is all things to all men. It’s the first novel deliberately written from the viewpoint of the multi-model agnosticism of modern quantum physics. The novelist sitting on a pedestal watching the world with the allegedly Objective Eye of God is as obsolete as the tinhorn preacher bawling, “Come to my church, I’ve got the true true religion.” The only philosophy one can honestly embrace at this stage of evolution is agnosticism, or ontological pluralism. The mosaic of competing conspiracies in Illuminatus! is a parody of popular demonology on both Right and Left. It’s also a serious proposal for a more Einsteinian, relativistic model than the monistic Newtonian theories most conspiracy buffs favor. One of the readers who really seems to have understood Illuminatus! is Dr. Timothy Leary, who told me last year that his experiences with the DEA, FBI, CIA, PLO, Weather Underground, Mansonoids, Aryan Brotherhood, Al Fattah, etc., were precisely like the most absurd parts of Illuminatus!. Tim says you meet the same 24 conspiracies wherever you go. Specifically, he mentioned that he identified the same 24 paleolithic gangs fighting over the turf in Folsom Prison that he had recognized at Harvard University. The ones at Harvard speak better English, of course….

I see the power game resting on three levels of force and fraud. First, earliest and still most powerful is the government racket itself, the monopoly on force (military power, police power, etc.) which allows the governing group to take tribute (taxation) from the enslaved or deluded masses. Second, derivative from this primordial conquest, is the landlord racket, the mammalian monopoly on territory which allow’s the king’s relations (lords-of-the-land) or their successors, today’s “land-lords,” to take tribute (rent) from those who live within the territory. Rent is the daughter of taxation; the second degree of the same racket. Third, the latest in historical time, is the usury racket, the monopoly on the issue of currency which allows the money lords to take tribute (interest) on the creation of money or credit, and on the continuous circulation of the money or credit every step of the way. Interest is the son of rent, the rent of money. Since most people engaged in nefarious practices are, in my opinion, very loathe to acknowledge what they are doing, and are addicted to the same hypocrisies as the rest of humanity, I think all power groups quite sincerely believe that what they are doing is proper, and that anybody who attacks them is a revolutionary nut. Outside of the Klingons on Star Trek, I have never encountered a real predator who justifies himself on Stirnerite or Machiavellian grounds. I really think Saroyan was right, naïve as it sounds, in saying that “every man is a good man in his own eyes.”

(Preceding was written in 1976; following was written in 1979)

The difference between Conspiracy Digest and myself is that CD defines the Power Elite as somebody else. I always define the Power Elite as myself and my friends. CD and I are in basic agreement that certain kinds of power are vested in (a) those who monopolize weaponry, i.e. governments, (b) those who monopolize land, i.e. landlords, and (c) those who monopolize currency, i.e. banks of issue. We disagree in that CD regards these traditional monopolies as possessing the only kinds of power that matters on this planet; and I recognize another kind of power, Brain Power. Brain power (the work of all artists, scientists, and symbolizers since the dawn of humanity, but particularly those of the Nineteenth Century) created the “real world” over which monopolists fight each other in the Twentieth Century. Similiarly, Brain power right now, today, is creating the “real world” of the Twenty-First Century, over which the monopolies will then be struggling. The Brain people create the realities over which the Power people fight each other, and the Brain people even create the techniques of the fight…


Week Nine – Yesod

Read the Ninth Trip, Yesod

Read T.S.O.G. & cuss and/or discuss in the forum
http://www.rawilson.com/tsog.shtml

Week TenMalkuth

Read the Tenth Trip, Malkuth
Why does the novel end with the shooting of the last American eagle?
Do you regard this as rather corny and obvious symbolism?
Why does the last sentence have exactly five words?
More too-obvious symbolism?
If Joe and the others live in a novel, how about George Bush and Osama bin Laden? How about you and me?

Read, ponder and [if you feel inclined] discuss:

“There are only two kinds of artists: the plagiarists and the revolutionaries.”
— Paul Gauguin

I love this quote because it sums up my own philosophy of art so neatly.

To say it in my own jargon, Gauguin’s “plagiarists” consist of those who do relatively good or relatively bad work within “the style of the period”– the dominant paradigm or current reality-tunnel– and the “revolutionaries” create an entirely new style, i.e a new reality-tunnel (or, in the case of Picasso, a new reality-labyrinth.)

These “plagiarists” (remember: this pejorative term comes from Gauguin, not from me) may provide light entertainment but they have low information in the sense of Shannon’s “Mathematical Theory of Communication.” (where information = the negative of the probability that you can predict the “signal” in advance. If you can always predict it, it ain’t information.)

In general, dogma always produces low information; see, the Fundamentalists (Xtian, Judaic, Moslem etc.), Marxists, Objectivists, Aryan Nation, CSICOP etc.) You always know what such True Believers will say even before they say it, and they all say it in the same words as their Fuhrer. In art, the “style of the period” = an equivalent of (perceptual/conceptual.) dogma, a rigid and familiar reality-tunnel This kind of art reaches a large public immediately, because the mass consists mostly of (in Houseman’s phrase) “fellows whom it hurts to think.” People in general love the familiar and predictable and have “crawly” sensations at the unfamiliar and unpredictable. The “revolutionaries” contain high information and a whole new “style” of reality-tunnel (high unpredictability) and annoy or infuriate the general public. Later, with time, they get consigned to “starters of crazes” or elevated to Masters (those who really did enrich of experience of Universe.)

In my opinion, the primary “revolutionary” Masters of our past century include Picasso, Klee, Pound, Joyce, Faukner, Ginsberg, Frank Lloyd Wright, D.W. Griffith, Chaplin, Welles, Clint Eastwood,, Stravinsky, Gershwin, Epstein, Brancusi, Carlin : the man or woman who doesn’t know their work deeply and richly still lives in the 19th Century while the rest of us have entered the 21st. The artists on that list haven’t become familiar enough to stop surprising us. We still need to interpret our interpreters, as Ellman said of Joyce.

The “plagiarists” appear on popular magazine covers and the NY Times best-seller lists. God bless them, they live happily and sincerely in the same world as the mass audience.

Or — ignore all these leads and discuss what thou wilt…..


Week Eleven

Read appendices aleph, beth, daleth, tzaddi, vau, zain, and cheth

The novel proper mixed fact and surrealism.
Discuss the elements of each of these in the appendices.

Read and discuss
Schrödinger’s Jew

97 years ago today Leopold Bloom, a fictitious man, wandered the streets of Dublin, a real city; and Joyce scholars still argue about his odd odyssey. I would like to add to the confusion with a note about Bloom’s “Jewishness.”

“Is” Leopold Bloom a Jew?

Not according to Orthodox Rabbinical law, which defines a Jew as the child of a Jewish mother. Bloom as the child of a Protestant mother “is not” a Jew.

According to Nazi law, however, a Jew “is” a person with a known Jewish ancestor. Bloom as the son of Rudolph Bloom [born Rudolph Virag], “is” a Jew.

See how easily a person can “be” and “not be” a Jew at the same time?

On the third hand, most humanists define a Jew as one who believes in and practices the Judaic religion. By this definition, Bloom who neither believes in nor practices any religion “is not” a Jew. But Marilyn Monroe, who practiced and probably tried to believe in Judaism while married to Arthur Miller, “was” a Jew by that definition– for those few years, if not before or after.

Extensionally or phenomenologically, a Jew “is” somebody considered Jewish by all or most of the people he meets. By this standard the multi-ordinal Bloom “is” a Jew again.

Once more: in terms of pure existentialism a Jew “is” somebody who chooses to consider themselves Jewish. Bloom obviously doesn’t consider himself Jewish but Irish, most of the time. Only when under verbal assault by the anti-semitic Citizen in Barney Kiernan’s pub does Bloom define himself as Jewish [“And Jesus was a Jew too. Your god. He was a Jew like me.”] Here he obviously has in mind the “known Jewish ancestor” rule, because he adds “And so was his father,” to which the Citizen replies, as a correct Catholic, “He had no father,” and Bloom, unfamiliar with that theology — logic played with deuces, eights and one-eyed jacks wild — can only pragmatically reply, “Well, his uncle then.”

But recalling the incident later, Bloom says “And he called me a Jew, which as a matter of fact I’m not.” Here he returns to his customary “believer in Judaic religion” definition.

I suppose Joyce made Bloom such a tangled genetic and cultural mixture to expose the absurdities of anti-semitism; but I also suspect that he wanted to undermine that neurolinguistic habit which postmodernists call “essentialism” and which Korzybski claimed invades our brains and causes hallucinations or delusions every time we use the word “is.”

For more on Korzybski’s criticisms of “isness,” click
http://www.generalsemantics.org/about/ak-intro.htm


Week Twelve


The Appendices – Part Two

Read and discusss–

The Illuminatus! Play interview

http://www.paradise-engineering.com/

http://www.geocities.com/gwbushart/gallery65/gallery65.htm

Read final appendices

I’m just learning to use my new computer….more comments, farewells
Will follow–
and a chat
Tomorrow!

Ideogram Chat

16:32:28 RWelt enters this room
16:32:29 >[RWelt] Welcome to our chat. Please obey the net etiquette while chatting: try to be pleasant and polite.
16:34:39 RAW enters this room
16:35:22 [RWelt] Well hello there!
16:35:40 [RAW] test one two
16:36:07 [RWelt] receiving you five by five
16:36:41 [RAW] hello there ,I’ll be back in 15 minutes
16:37:03 [RWelt] no problem, still trying to finish dinner
16:49:16 acrillic enters this room
16:49:59 [RWelt] welcome, acrillic
16:50:01 [acrillic] Namaste
16:50:59 [RAW] hi there!
16:51:46 [RAW] refresh/30
16:51:52 [acrillic] waves hands frantic
16:52:27 [RWelt] maybe it’s still a little early, but I was expecting more of a turnout
16:53:06 [acrillic] umm, me too. thought the whole planet
16:54:10 [RAW] i just heard a few hours ago that bush and kerry are not only related to eachother (nineth cousins) bet they are also related to vlad dracul–the historical prototype for dracula
16:54:19 Matt enters this room
16:54:36 [RWelt] that’s awesome
16:54:39 [acrillic] Im reading about guts above, ive a steady hand and step. whoops, tripps and rolls off stool.
16:55:01 bandito enters this room
16:55:09 [RAW] the village voice this week has pitcture of george bush with fangs sucking the blood ofthe statue of liberty in the classic bela lugosi pose , this must mean something ?
16:55:17 [acrillic] Ooo the Impaler, they both look like they got pockers up the booty
16:55:57 [acrillic] Vampires suck.
16:55:58 [bandito] banditos in tha house
16:57:12 [acrillic] matt/bandito – hi y’all, welcome, greetings.
16:57:15 [RAW] this means bush and kerry are also related to the Usual Suspects—bonnie prince charly, the von hapsbergs, the jacobites, and the whole priory of scion genealogy, what next?
16:57:51 [Matt] Hi everyone
16:58:10 [bandito] hello…
16:58:11 [acrillic] Bloody hell, Bush and Kerry related by blood….clot!
16:58:34 [RWelt] do you think any notable figure can have figures like this in their ancestry, or is this really a special case?
16:59:20 [acrillic] I remeber a gameshow on T.V – family fortunes, where your family can compete wid others for Cash prizes, and cars and shit.
16:59:36 [RWelt] though i admit, either way, it’s fascinating
17:00:28 [bandito] sometimes I just think it’s old money types just staying within their own circle
17:00:59 [RAW] babys suck by the way, welcome bandito and matt and everyone
17:01:18 [RWelt] i think that’s probably a big part of it, bandito
17:02:19 [RAW] in an old european proverb: royals only mary royals, seems true this side of the atlantic too
17:02:49 [bandito] my baby (5.5 months) puts everything in his month – oral-survival right in front of me
17:03:21 [RAW] where are all of you on the earth?
17:03:40 [bandito] Golden, Colorado
17:04:10 [Matt] I’m in Munster, Indiana
17:04:12 [RWelt] Albuquerque, New Mexico… where Bugs Bunny makes all his wrong turns
17:04:23 [RAW] ive been there to CO, i lectured at an engineering college there once
17:04:30 [bandito] LOL
17:04:48 [bandito] No kidding! Colorado School of Mines???
17:04:51 [RAW] never been to either of those places …sorry
17:04:59 [acrillic] Brooklyn, NY
17:05:10 [RAW] YES that was it !
17:05:32 [RAW] i was born in brooklyn and proud of it!
17:05:45 [RWelt] you haven’t really missed much by not having been here
17:06:01 [bandito] I’m stunned! I have a BS and MS from Mines. My wife has a BS. We just had our 10 year reunion of sorts.
17:06:14 [bandito] small world
17:06:31 [Matt] Munster is close to Crown Point…
17:06:34 [acrillic] Yeah, i was born in Wordsley
17:07:12 [RWelt] was in brooklyn for a family wedding a few months back
17:07:15 [acrillic] Wordsly, Mid Westlands, UK
17:07:44 [RAW] can any of you guess why Simon Moon’s first words in Illumintus! are : crown point?
17:08:27 [RWelt] it has something to do with kether, right?
17:08:58 [Matt] Dillinger and the jail?
17:09:23 [acrillic] Kings. Sepheroph. wearing the crown. Kether. Top Hat
17:09:36 [bandito] Moon’s tantric practices?
17:09:47 [RWelt] all of the above?
17:09:50 [RAW] yeah kether means crown and is symbolized geometricly by a point, crown point was also the escape proof jail that dillinger blashemously escaped from in defiance to the laws of physics and the United States.
17:10:37 [acrillic] Right on Mat.
17:10:42 [RAW] yea verily
17:10:45 [RWelt] man, i’m so far behind in the illuminatus course
17:11:09 [bandito] me too, about two chapters back..
17:11:13 [RAW] since this is the end of the course are there any questions you want to ask?
17:12:02 [bandito] how do you see ideograms in relation to internet?
17:12:08 [RWelt] i still have troubles expressing what ideogrammic method “means” in words… is there a short simple way you can sum it up?
17:12:22 [bandito] montage? feedback? organism-as-whole?
17:12:34 [RWelt] i have lots of people who give me a “what the fuck” look when i say i’m taking a course on id. method
17:13:03 [bandito] I meant that as a follow up to my question, not as a reply to RWelt’s question…
17:13:21 [acrillic] what did you eat for breakfast?
17:13:31 [RWelt] lol, i assumed that… both of us hurriedly typing away…
17:13:39 [Matt] Me too, RWelt
17:13:49 [RAW] the ideograms define by giving concrete particulars , where as western philosophy defines by abstractions
17:15:02 [RAW] for example energy is the capacity to do work (western) or as against energy equals man with shovel , horse pulling cart, electric generator, waterfall, atomic bomb, etc.
17:15:11 [RAW] is that clear?
17:15:43 [acrillic] Concrete like “Root” similarity with natural phenomena
17:15:49 [RWelt] makes sense to me, looks clear enough to satisfy my friends
17:15:49 [RAW] second ex: western defines individualism as the doctrine that blah blah blah
17:17:04 [RAW] as pound defines individualism as odyseus , sigasmundo malatesta, confucius, thomas jefferson, etc.
17:17:04 [bandito] makes sense. Seems like it would go a long way in clearing lines of communication. less noise.
17:17:48 [RAW] yeah
17:18:14 [RAW] as far as internet see all of the above
17:19:14 [RAW] concrete as specific
17:19:25 [bandito] internet certainly seems like montage
17:19:45 [RAW] as william blake said : he who would do good to other must do so in concrete particulars
17:19:52 [acrillic] how does the Ideo meth in China, differ from our western “Interpretation” of the methd – of chi/ written character?
17:19:59 [RWelt] internet seems like all bandito said earlier… montage, feedback, organism-as-whole…
17:20:15 [RAW] general good is a plague of the hipocrite , scoundrel and flatterer- Blake
17:20:28 [RAW] as a poet Blake thought in ideograms
17:21:10 [RWelt] general good meaning a blanket goodness… to the whole but not necessarily to the individual?
17:21:13 [acrillic] and all the hills echoed>>>>>>>
17:21:39 [RAW] acrilic – i dont get the question, can you redefine?
17:21:56 [bandito] I remember introducing my wife to internet several years ago. She typed in the same phrase in various search engines and got different answers from each one which she found frustrating. Now we seem to have interalized the inheirent “choas” of internet
17:22:04 [RAW] general good meaning what george carlin calls bullshit!
17:22:45 [RAW] bandito – yes that what i like about internet
17:22:47 [RWelt] i love the inherent chaos of internet!
17:23:13 [RAW] i once that certitude who inly look in one encyclopedia, with internt we have various encyclopedias
17:23:22 [acrillic] How do you think the Ideo method, as practised in China “Assimilates” with our English interpretation, how can we improve the communication medium? erm…. acrillc /..drowns in his drink
17:25:12 [RWelt] i think acrillic is after… how does “our” version of id. method differ from how those in China use/see it?
17:25:33 [RWelt] or something akin to that
17:25:37 [RAW] still not sure i understand but i dont expect to become a frenchman by studying french lit or a chinese by studying ideograms yet i think studying french and chinese makes more than an ordinary american, which is worth striving for
17:25:49 [acrillic] Thanks Rwelt.
17:26:43 [Matt] Any suggestions for further study?
17:26:53 [RWelt] more than an ordinary anything is worth striving for, i think
17:27:02 bogusmagus enters this room
17:27:09 [bandito] I would guess that language has an influence on culture and that a study of Chinese culture shed some light on your question…
17:27:17 [acrillic] well Bob your about the most Chinese, irishman i can think of, can i retract the question? he he Oops
17:27:34 [RAW] matt- science and sanity by korzybski
17:28:39 [acrillic] Greetings Bogus
17:28:48 [bandito] any Korzybski popularizations you recommend before plunging into the masterwork?
17:28:50 [RAW] a friend years ago said everytime I took a psychedlelic that i looked chinese
17:28:56 [Matt] Thanks!
17:29:02 [RAW] not sure what that means
17:29:20 [RWelt] did this course give you any new perspectives or ideas that you’ll include in Tale of the Tribe?
17:29:54 [bogusmagus] Hi – just back-tracking and lurking a while
17:30:00 [RAW] welt – it certainly gave me a lot of new ideas and perspectives..yes!
17:30:16 [RWelt] wonderful
17:31:30 [RAW] you could say the use of concrete particulars vs vague generalizations
17:31:38 [RWelt] in regards to all the classes, not just this one, how much do they change from what you originally envisioned?
17:31:57 [RWelt] do they flow pretty much as you expected? or are you constantly altering?
17:32:26 [RAW] they evolved in ways I could not expect or predict. thats why enjoyed them so much and hope to teach more online
17:33:10 [RAW] like everything else in the universe they continually surprise me ( well everything except G.Bush)
17:34:00 [RWelt] I don’t know… Bush continually surprises me, but never in a good way
17:34:08 [bogusmagus] I have greatly enjoyed this particular course because so much was unfamiliar (more surprise, more information?)
17:34:26 [bandito] bogus – any new mcluhan-ideogram insights…
17:34:59 [bogusmagus] that’ll be tomorrow!
17:35:22 [RAW] bandito – there several good ones, but i dont know what is still in print….explorations in awareness by samuel bois, language in thought and action by sam hayakawa
17:35:22 [bogusmagus] Sorry people – got a tooth abcess, brain out of gear
17:35:38 [RAW] and quantumn psychology by me , still in print
17:35:52 [bandito] aha!
17:36:41 [bandito] wish we could all get together and play the world game online.
17:36:50 [RAW] ive had an abcess, god pity you sir!
17:37:06 [bogusmagus] Thanks, Bob
17:37:10 [RWelt] me too! i looked at the world game a few months ago, and was filled with a desire to play
17:37:45 [bogusmagus] Hey, how much does it cost, and how do we set up a team?
17:38:24 [bandito] $3500 for them to come to you. Didn’t see an online option.
17:39:07 [bandito] Bois’ book out of print, hayakawa available at amazon.com
17:39:48 [RAW] in that case i recommend hayakawa
17:40:10 [acrillic] Hayakawa has a great essay in Ecetera ecetera compendium.
17:40:32 [RAW] while youre at it check and see if the ‘power of words’ by stewart chase is till in print
17:41:24 [bandito] Power of words out of print. I found Bois at half.com
17:42:15 [bandito] Power of words @ half.com as well….
17:42:20 [RAW] look for operational philosophy by anatole rapoport
17:42:59 [RAW] i also recommend the open society and its enemies by Karl Popper
17:43:14 [RAW] and selected prose by Ezra Pound
17:44:05 [RWelt] I’ve already got a list of over 60 books to read….looks like it might be growing
17:44:23 [bandito] Whee! this is fun! Operational philosophy out of print, but amazon has 10 used copies. Bless internet.
17:44:24 [bogusmagus] I just got hold of a ‘popular’ book – Drive Yourself Sane – anyone know it?
17:45:02 [RWelt] bogus- i’ve heard the name, but that’s about all i know of it
17:45:21 [RAW] Ive read it…its ok, the guy who wrote it supports G.Bush, so be warned!
17:46:10 [RAW] He should try driving himself sane.
17:46:29 [bogusmagus] OK – but he’s quoting you as a ref on this website http://www.driveyourselfsane.com/dysbook/dysbook.html
17:47:08 [bandito] lol!
17:47:10 [RAW] he has a right to do that if he wants to
17:47:19 [acrillic] I picked up the Trial of Ezra Pound. Bob, do you find Julian Cornell’s book a fair, balanced work? book?
17:48:05 [RAW] acrili – almost, not entirely….balanced but far from complete
17:49:07 [bandito] I must say that reading Pound has finally put some pleasure into poetry (for me)
17:49:38 [RAW] lol
17:49:47 [acrillic] my heart raced as i read the transcripts/broadcasts, wow – MC Pound really got the party jumpin and hearts pumpin.
17:49:53 dalryada enters this room
17:50:04 [RWelt] i’ve really enjoyed Pound also…
17:50:15 [bogusmagus] Me too
17:50:31 [RWelt] most poetry i’ve read has either been poorly written, or has a message no more complex than “flower pretty”
17:50:55 [bogusmagus] It’s been hard when friends say “why are you reading a Fascist and an anti-Semite?”
17:51:01 [acrillic] Pound is a currency ?
17:51:25 [RAW] Non Illuminati carborundum
17:52:05 [bandito] hello dalryada
17:52:19 [dalryada] oh hi, i’m lurking. i know i’m really late. sorry.
17:52:25 [bogusmagus] Even when I say “he was doing broadcasts against American involvement in the war” (which those same friends should approve, maybe?)
17:52:34 [RAW] challenge the is of identity and read korzybski for christ sake!
17:52:37 [bogusmagus] Hi Dal
17:52:51 [dalryada] hi bogus
17:53:15 [RAW] signing off soon
17:53:35 [RWelt] ok, i haven’t been saying it so far, but hi to everyone who’s joined in, glad you’re here
17:54:00 [RWelt] korzybski is high on my list of books to read next (science & sanity)
17:54:01 [RAW] sorry we missed you Dalryada
17:54:03 [acrillic] A pound of currency maybe a pound of Ezra Pound’s flesh.
17:54:21 [dalryada] me too….it rained in arizona and everything went all to HELL!
17:54:48 [bandito] kinda like snow in Texas?
17:54:58 [dalryada] exactly
17:55:19 [RWelt] same way here in new mex… wonder if you got the storm that passed thru last night? not sure which way that was headed
17:55:29 [RAW] thank you all for the inspiration you have provided and the ideas you have jostled.
17:55:34 [Matt] Even though I just lurked, I found the forums very helpful. Thanks to everyone who posted. Your questions and answers helped clear up lots of things for me.
17:55:53 [RAW] See you in the Academy!
17:56:06 [bogusmagus] Be Seeing You!
17:56:09 [bandito] mutual inspiration all around
17:56:13 [dalryada] hi and bye!
17:56:16 [bandito] see you on campus
17:56:22 [RWelt] thank you Bob for giving us this wonderful opportunity
17:57:16 [acrillic] greetings
17:58:02 [RWelt] and thank all the rest of you too, for making this a pleasant experience of exploration
17:58:33 RAW exits from this room
17:59:47 [RWelt] sorry you missed most of it, dalryada
18:00:13 [bogusmagus] I’ve had a great time, but I found this the hardest course – perhaps the most rewarding – I am not sure yet…
18:00:24 [dalryada] yeah, me too. i won’t ask what you guys talked about. i’ll hopefully wait till it’s posted in the forums..
18:00:50 [RWelt] if anyone needs it, i’ve got the whole chat in a Word document
18:00:54 [bogusmagus] more good book titles!
18:01:03 [RWelt] including this stuff… hehehe
18:01:09 [dalryada] oh yeah! oh no.
18:01:16 [dalryada] including this stuff?
18:01:52 [bandito] I love that guy!
18:01:53 [RWelt] yeah, i’m getting everything until i go, which will probably be soon
18:02:06 [RWelt] i know how you feel, bandito
18:02:19 [dalryada] i’d love a copy.
18:02:36 [bogusmagus] I thought I came in after a few minutes – did you start earleir?
18:02:49 [dalryada] so….bogus, you mentioned this was the hardest course for you….me too. Others as well?
18:02:52 [RWelt] anyone who wants a copy, email me at yellowsign@comcast.net
18:02:53 [bogusmagus] I’d like a copy of the earlier stuff, too
18:03:01 [RWelt] let me know if you want a format other than .doc
18:04:49 [bogusmagus] For future reference, how did you save it?
18:04:54 [RWelt] yeah, looks like there’s a good bit before you showed up, bogus
18:05:21 [RWelt] i’ve just been copying & pasting into an open Word document
18:05:45 [bogusmagus] OK
18:06:23 [acrillic] great fun ppl, thanx.
18:06:43 [bogusmagus] Thanx for the pix
18:06:51 [RWelt] yes, again thank all you guys
18:07:23 [acrillic] thanks for the trix
18:07:56 [RWelt] i’ll probably be back online in a few hours… will send out the log to anyone who’s requested it by then
18:08:10 [RWelt] if you request later, you’ll get it within a day at most
18:08:26 [RWelt] bye!

The Ideogrammatic Method: Weekly Assignments

WEEK ONE ASSIGNMENTS

Canto 1 from The Cantos of Ezra Pound and my commentary
[Editors note: all Canto commentary here]

Read Fenollosa’s THE CHINESE WRITTEN CHARACTER

Read opening matter & Chapter One of Pound’s ABC OF READING

Read my commentary on Copulating Currency [source unknown]

In the first 2 weeks buy or rent or somehow view DW Griffiths INTOLERANCE and study it as continuous montage — i.e. Ideogrammic Method

Meditate [& if you will, contemplate] upon:

Midnight Haiku

Mottled blueblack sky.
A sudden moon — briefly!
Then: Blueblack mottled sky…


WEEK TWO ASSIGNMENTS

Read Cantos 8 to 11 with my commentaries —
an ideogrammic presentation of one
typically atypical Renaissance man,
Sigismundo Pandolfo Malatesta

Consider ideogrammic method in relation
to the concept of extensional orientation
in General Semantics —

In extension we do not define humans as
mammals, mammals as vertebrates,
vertebrates as life forms etc
as caricatured by Fenollosa.

In extension we define humans as Odysseus,
Helen of Troy, El Cid, Lorenzo de Medici,
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Tom Jefferson,
Cunizza daRomano, John Adams, Kungfutse,
Tai Tsong, Andy Jackson, Yong Ching,
JP Morgan, etc etc as in the ideograms of the Cantos.

Pound & Fenollosa consider ideogram the
heart of poetry. Korzybski thought extensionality
the essence of science. Think about this
and cuss and discuss in the forums.


WEEK THREE ASSIGNMENTS

Read Canto 12 & 13 & my commentaries

Discuss in forums the treatment of “individulism”
in the Cantos as represented thus far by Odysseus [Canto I],
Malatesta [Cantos 8-11], the usurers [Canto 12]
and Kung fu Tse. [Canto 13]

Does the poem seem pro-individalism or anti?

Or does it display a “hierarchy of values”– e.g. great,
good enough, bad, terrible?

Read posted article on language and thought.

Discuss in relation to ideogrammic method and EP’s changes in style between & within Cantos.


WEEK FOUR ASSIGNMENTS

Read chapters 2 to 5 in ABC OF READING

Discuss the equation “dichten=condensare” in the forums

Compare EP’s definitions with my own, “Greatness in writing signifies high INFORMATION.”
Do I disagree with Ez
or have I merely restated his view in cybertalk?

DARE to make your OWN personal list of Inventors, Masters etc. without reference to Ez’s list

Continue discussion in forums the treatment of “individulism” in the Cantos as represented thusfar by Odysseus [Canto I], Malatesta [Cantos 8-11], the usurers [Canto 12] and Kung fu Tse [Canto 13]


WEEK FIVE ASSIGNMENTS

Read Canto II with my commentary. Discuss
or just cuss in Forums.

Read the following selection from
Uncle Bob’s Treasury of Great Poems.

Read commentary below.  Cusss or discuss. [material unonwn]


WEEK 6 ASSIGMENTS

Read Canto 17 with my commentary.
Discuss or just cuss in Forums.


Since you didn’t do it last week,
read and comment on the selection from
Uncle Bob’s Treasury of Great Poems (now in Assignment Archive).

Read updated commentary below. Cuss or discuss.

Norbert Weiner, co-creator of Information Theory
and thus of the Net on which we speak to each other,
wrote in 1948 that great poetry contains more information than political speeches.

We cannot measure or define Information without
including the Receiver in the measurement or definition.
This PRECISELY mirrors the observer/observed
synergy in quantum mechanics but has received less publicity.

The only Information scenically and mathematically
measurable = the inability of the Receiver to guess
what’s coming next [the next “signal.’] In political
speeches, measurable information runs very near
the theoretical infinitesimal; you always know
what’s coming next.
In a “good” poem you don’t
know what’s coming next;
the greatest poems
[or fragments of poems]

consist of those that
have the faintly “spooky” quality of never
losing something of their original unpredictability,
for at least some Receivers.

These “fragments I have shelved [shored]” wd not illustrate
this so well if I had attached the author’s name
to each, thereby triggering conditioned reflexes.

How does each poetry selection illustrate —
or fail to illustrate — Weiner’s definition of high information?

If you have no ideas on any of these topics,
discuss something else, so I’ll at least know you’re alive.


WEEK 7 ASSIGMENTS

 Canto 20 with commentary

read, meditate and write your own comments in the Forum


WEEK 8 ASSIGMENTS

an ideogrammic
approach
to the ideogrammic age….. [source unknown]


Read and discuss article in the forum


WEEK 9 ASSIGMENTS

Be sure to see the movie of the week, Educating Rita,
and note isomorphisms with
Frankenstein, Simone and My Fair Lady.

Compare isomphisms of King Kong and Behind the Green Door

Based on the definitions given earlier,
write extensional/ideogrammic definitions of
men
women
pornography
Christians
Moslems
Buddhists
democracy
terrorism
government
science
energy
wealth
entropy
feedback

Guide: an extensional/ideogrammic definition of US presidents:
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Bush, Clinton, Carter, Roosevelt, Adams, Bush, Harrison, Harrison, Roosevelt etc

Read and discuss in forum:
an ideogrammic
approach
to the ideogrammic age…..


WEEK 10 ASSIGMENTS

Read E and E-Prime

and do the exercizes


WEEK 11 ASSIGMENTS

Study and discuss Cantos 31 & 32
[Commentary in the course forum…]

Compare this ideogram [Jefferson/Adams] with those concerning Odysseus, Malatesta, the Medici, Confucius, Baldy Bacon.

How much commentary seems really necesary?
How much does each ideogram ‘comment’ on the others?
Do you begin to grok ideogammic method?

Closing thoughts…..


WEEK 12 ASSIGMENTS


Well, this course ended more quickly than
I expected. I hope you all enjoyed yourselves
as much as I did — and maybe even learned as
much as I did!

Some final notions —
go to the World Game and explore [& have fun!]:

http://www.worldgame.org/wwwproject/

Does ideogrammic method help you strategize in this game?

Compare this ideogram [Fullerworld] with Pound’s Cantos
concerning Odysseus, Malatesta, the Medici, Confucius, Baldy Bacon, Jefferson/Adams.

Fuller and Pound knew and appreciated each other’s work.
How many points of isomorphism can you detect?

Hope to hear from you again, maybe in another course!

murkily,


grandpaw