“If you don’t mind haunting the margins, I think there is more freedom there. It’s like being a politician in opposition; that’s where you can be most sincere. But, of course, you sometimes look at people taking lead parts and think they’ve got all the gravy.” -Colin Firth
Unremitting travelers rarely play it safe. How could they? They are in motion. Momentum is both a liberator and a killer. But these adventurers just don’t care. They are obsessed. They are possessed. They are living on the edge…
Here, The Dawdler’s Philosophy presents a new theme: Haunting the Margins. We focus on individuals who do the unpopular thing and “get weird”. And they’re nearly always ahead of the ever-hackneyed curve to not become normal in their time even though some may think they are. Nay, they be margin haunters, outlaws, and criminals of the mainstream milieu. They may not all be original in ideas, but they are all original in their actions.
First up: Robert Anton Wilson.
Here’s to “Maybe”.
00:07:00 – Margin Haunting, Inc.
00:22:39 – RAW, the Man
00:30:00 – Margin Haunter Attributes/Margin Haunter Conditions
00:46:46 – The Incorrigible Optimist/Model Agnosticism
01:18:06 – Discordianism, Expanded/Correct Answer Machines
01:36:16 – Generalism/Drugs & Openness
3 Comments
Rasa · November 26, 2018 at 3:30 pm
Thanks for the examination of Robert Anton Wilson. Nice discussion. I think we can use a lot of Bob’s thoughts these days. Bob and I were close friends. Here’s a few thoughts and corrections:
RAW was Irish Catholic, not Irish Jewish. But you did get me wondering how many Irish Jews exist! His rejection of Catholicism played a major role in his development (see his Cosmic Trigger II, soon to be republished by The RAW Trust’s imprint, Hilaritas Press). I don’t think his continued use of his Brooklyn accent was a choice. That’s just the way he talked. The college that gave him a PhD was a real college, just very experimental. His dissertation became one of his most popular books, Prometheus Rising. He was interested in mind-altering drugs that gave some benefit. One time he told me that instead of doing cocaine, he would rather rub his nostrils with sand paper and hit himself over the head with a hammer He was sometimes called a “stand-up philosopher.”
Operation Mindfuck was Bob’s response to the “correct answer machine” syndrome. He saw it as a way, often through absurd assertions, to make people realize that anything they hear may not be real, and they should be skeptical of dogmatic certainty. In talking to Daisy Eris Campbell, who produced a play in the U.K. on Bob’s autobiography, Cosmic Trigger I, I came to realize that we may no longer need that Dada-like commentary on reality. Thinking of Daisy and her cohort of modern Discordians, I memed:
“Thoughtful Discordians have realized Operation Mindfuck worked a little too well and rather than just Operation Mindfixing it, they feel a need to outsmart the little realityfuckers who were a little too mindfucked, and so they want to turn OM into Operation Mindfox.”
I think, if Bob were here, he might like the humor in that statement, but I guess he would have his unique take as to where we are and where we are going. He spoke often of Neophobia vs Neophilia, always open to the latter.
thedawdler · November 26, 2018 at 3:47 pm
Thanks for listening and for the response! Here are a couple quick comments about your “corrections”…
I am aware he was raised Catholic not Jewish [in the sense of religion] and that was mentioned. My understanding is that he was of Irish and Jewish [in the sense of ethnicity] descent. But that might also be wrong! As Wilson liked to remind us, that might be why Joyce made Leopold Bloom’s “Jewish”-ness a mess. By 3 definitions he was “Jewish” and by 2 others he wasn’t, etc.
It strikes me as a beautiful comment on how wide ranging and fascinating Wilson was that one could blab on about him for over 2 hours and barely scratch the surface of his ideas and work. I regret that the neophilia/neophobia gloss didn’t make an appearance, thanks for reminding me of that one. And Prometheus Rising was also neglected by name, though we did touch on the Leary 8 Circuit Model which is expressed in that book (among other places). And of course there is no such thing as a “real” or “unreal” college :P, didn’t mean to give that impression.
I don’t know quite what you’re getting at with the Mindfox stuff. My impression of my culture is that it’s still plenty in need of a good fucking.
rasa · November 26, 2018 at 4:18 pm
The Irish Jewish comment went by fast, maybe I missed the phrasing, but for sure, he was not ethnically Jewish. He was mostly Irish. Here’s a quote from Cosmic Trigger II:
~~~
When I think again, I begin to recall that not everybody in Gerritsen Beach qualified as totally Irish Catholic. Even my mother, for instance, had only a half-Irish genealogy: her mother, Anna McVey, appears to have been Scotch-Irish, but my maternal grandfather, Anton Milli, hailed from Trieste — a city that has gotten shifted back and forth so often in the gang-wars of the senile delinquents who run this planet that it should have wheels on it by now. Trieste has belonged to Italy, Austria and Yugoslavia in this century, and was part of “the Austro-Hungarian Empire” when Anton left in the last century.
~~~
I agree the culture needs a good “something.” The idea for Mindfox came from the thought that we’ve come to a “post-truth” phase, and rather than continuing to try to load the world with “alternative facts” to make people doubt more often, we may want to slow down on that effort as, perhaps, we went a bit too far. Of course, as I say, it could be Bob would want us to double down. I certainly don’t want to posthumously put words into his mouth. I think in the end, maybe this favorite phrase of his gives us a clue: “Reality is what you can get away with.” Thanks again for nice podcast!