Yesterday, my connection to the internet was doubleplusungood, and so I was unable to properly observe RAW Chaos Day - a novel Discordian Holyday instituted by consensus, or rather, by contagion (other methods, such as authority, not being available!) on the occasion of Robert Anton Wilson's recent (actual) death.  Now, a day late and a fnord short, I would like to remedy this by offering a few words in memery of RAW.

The most suitable memeorial I can build is to pass on a vision I might have gained by other means, but which I in fact first saw in fullness through RAW's intervention.  Because it suits my whimsy, I will borrow a framework, not from RAW, but from the Nation of Gods and Earths (or "Five Percenters"), an African-American Muslim group, of sorts - a doctrine also found, in a different form, in the Church of the SubGenius.  It runs like this:

The 85% are those without the knowledge, the mentally blind, deaf and dumb who are bent on self-destruction.  The 10% are the bloodsuckers of the poor, those who have knowledge and power but who use it to mystify and abuse the 85%.  The 10% include the "grafted" white devil as well as the orthodox Muslims and Christian preachers who preach that god is a "spook" or a "mystery god."  And the remaining 5% are the poor, righteous teachers, who are aver [sic] all of the 'dealings' of the 10% and their mission is to rescue the 85%.

(Obviously, the SubGenius variant on this soteriology takes a rather different view of how properly to (ahem) deal with the 85%!)  Like most statistics, these numbers may well be distorted - I suspect the breakdown is much closer to 98:1:1 - but the message is clear:  Most people don't Get It.  Some Get It, but keep It to themselves in order to profit from the unGettingItness of the Flock (let's call them Bad Shepherds).  Others Get It, and are inclined to benign or even benevolent use of their Hipness.

I would say that the Five Percent, so-called, may themselves break down into three subtypes (fixing the total breakdown in accord with the Law of Fives), and these are:  (1)  those who Drop Out of the game, to cultivate their own gardens, and don't interfere with the Flock;  (2)  those who use the same techniques as the Bad Shepherds, but to the presumed benefit of the Flock - shockingly, I would designate these Good Shepherds; and  (3) those who, following the model of the Nation of Gods and Earths, encourage the Flock to become like themselves - thus properly earning the title of Poor Righteous Teachers.

But what's all the fuss over?  With what are we in or out of Gettingness?  Well, opinions differ!  I'll take a crack at what I think RAW's version was - or at least what he sometimes seemed to say that It was.  From the point of view of Shepherds Good and  Bad, I suppose this means that I am breaking kayfabe again.  Shame on me, I guess!

It is widely known, but rarely understood, that all of our knowledge is obtained through experience and reflection - and that the processes underlying these are primarily sensory perception, thought, and memory.  All of these, are of course, functions of the mind.  And this applies not just to knowledge, but also to beliefs and expectations generally, and to the specific objects to which our hopes, fears, and values become attached.  Any new experience is processed by reference to prior mental content.  I see an object of a certain size, shape, color, etc., and I recognize it as, say, a cabbage.  In this way, it becomes linked to my desire for food, or to my fear of cabbages, and, more than this, seeing the cabbage means experiencing it as embedded in an entire map of the world which includes beliefs about botany, agriculture, economics, gastronomy, physics (I don't expect it to levitate, e.g.), and so on.  One might say that experience is conceptually loaded.  We cannot have an "innocent" experience of the object as a naked perception of color and form - we are condemned to see it as a cabbage, bearing with it with all that cabbagehood implies for us, and as part of an entire world about which we have a brainful of beliefs, expectations, hopes, fears, moral and practical imperatives, and so on. 

That world is not what we think it is - the actual, objective state of affairs; it is, instead, the sum and product of everything that has up to the current moment transpired in our minds.  The world we actually live in - the world of economies, of agriculture, of dangers and opportunities - is driven by information derived, via the senses, from the actual state of affairs, (maybe) but is nonetheless located entirely inside our minds.  To use the language of materialism, the brain is trapped in the skull and cannot get out of it in any meaningful sense.  Or:  It's all happening in your head.  What we endure or enjoy of life in the world is entirely constructed  by us out of the available flow of information (which I agree (probably) derives from an outside source).  For each person, that "world" will differ - slightly for people who have lived similar lives, perhaps very radically for people of different cultures or eras.  The world in which the Sun and stars travelled 'round the Earth must have felt very different from ours.  And so for worlds which include or exclude the afterlife, dangerous sorcerers, justice and other moral imperatives, gravitational and electromagnetic forces, hope, fate, gods, ghosts, the government, the law, race, and please insert your favorite concept here.  RAW called these worlds "reality-tunnels" - enclosing spaces within whose boundaries we move.

The art of the Shepherd is to skillfully manipulate the flow of information in order to design and construct the worlds in which the Flock will live.  (Read that again!)  Shepherds are the architects and masons who build the houses in which we live and the temples within which we worship.  It is probably impossible for most (if any) of us to dig our way out of our cave and into the open air above and the light of the actual Sun, except perhaps for a fleeting moment (a.k.a. the Beatific Vision) - I certainly haven't managed it!  But the experience of recognizing our condition is quite something - both liberating and empowering, in the full and robust senses of those words.

RAW's peculiar talent was to reveal our situation to us - thus playing the role of the Poor Righteous Teacher - and then (as a Good Shepherd) to deftly manoeuver us into a novel and exquisitely crafted reality-tunnel, only to suddenly tap us on the shoulder and remind us, artfully:  "Oh, by the way - none of this is real!"   Repeatedly.  He was like those master stage magicians who can tell you that they are about to do a magic trick, perhaps even tell you a bit about how the trick is done, and then do the trick so perfectly that it still fools you.  He repeated this routine as many times, and in as many ways as he could, hoping, one imagines, that the third (or the twenty-third) time's the charm.

Did he ever succeed?  I hope, for all our sakes, that he did.

 

Tags: Robert Anton Wilson ; RAW Chaos Dsy ; Memetics ; Philosophy ; Power ; Cabbages ; Five Percenters ; Illuminati ; Yeti ; Operation Mindfuck