Cain contra Robert Anton Wilson

[Cramulus]

in the vein of making blog articles more visually attractive, I suggest the attached image as a header.

also, (and slightly off-topic) doesn't this look like the cover of a Choose Your Own Adventure book?




[attachment deleted by admin]

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

in the vein of making blog articles more visually attractive, I suggest the attached image as a header.

also, (and slightly off-topic) doesn't this look like the cover of a Choose Your Own Adventure book?

It does, and that idea has potential for goodness.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I personally like RAW and will play the other side for a minute, don't get mad...

OK, so you wanna know why I don't like RAW?  Why I have a tendency to stomp n00bs who mention his name, why I make fun of Illuminatus! And generally act like a jerk towards people who ape his ideas?

Because you imprinted heavily on the "I'm OK, You're Not OK" quadrant?  

Alright then.  I'll go with the aesthetics then go a bit deeper with the other stuff.  But first, I really don't like his writing style.  When I read something, I don't particularly want to be playing mental mind games with the text, or having to flip over three pages of pretentious imitation Joyce style writings about taking acid.  There's being complex due to the subject matter and then there is just being a pain in the ass, which RAW's fiction tends towards.

Illuminatus tends toward that... Schrodinger's Cat does a little (though since it's specifically exploring the idea of a multiverse there's a plausible excuse)... However, Masks of The Illuminati is written like a 'normal' book. The Historical Illuminatus Trilogy also appears as a "normal" example of writing (as does Reality Is What You Can Get Away With). The majority of Bob's writings, though are not fiction and don't have a Joycean feel to them (Cosmic Trigger series, Quantum Psychology, Prometheus Rising, Coincidance, The New Inquisition etc etc etc.) Your characterization of his writing style may be true for one (maybe two) of his books, but I don't think it applies to the 30+ other books he's written.

But the reason I really dislike RAW is he took something that was meant to be, to a degree, indefinable and went and created a whole damn subculture based around it.

Well, no... he wrote a silly work of fiction, designed to make fun of conspiracy theories and utilized a series of prank letters that Omar, Mal and some others were sending around which involved the Illuminati and Discordians fighting over all sorts of zany things. The subculture came later and wasn't intentional. Further, I'd argue that Discordianism in that book is still indefinable... if people stop thinking halfway through the book and conclude they KNOW what's going on, that's their own damn fault.

If you read some of the other stuff by Hill and Thornley, you'll notice they were quite into their Zen.  One point that really stuck with Thornley in Zen thought is that naming something essentially destroys it.  Once you have a name, you can caricature it, you can define and exclude and you can eventually subvert it.  Once something has a definable set of ideas and symbols linked with it, it'll be in Hot Topic next week.  And once the Con has its hands on a movement, it ceases to be relevant or dangerous to the prevailing orthodoxy.

So you're saying we should follow Thornley's ideas rather than Bob's? It seems to me that Thornley took the zen ideas into Zenarchy, and Bob went in a different direction. Different directions aren't necessarily wrong... especially in Discordianism.

Now Illuminatus! did contain a lot of things that were only mentioned in passing by Thornley and Hill, yet were definitely in the Principia Discordia.  The Illuminati, the fate of Ambrose Bierce and Yog-Sothoth come to mind.

You mean Bob took some Discordian memes and used them, mixing in some new Discordian memes along the way?!?!?!

But now, every aspiring Discordian seems to think they have to be into these sort of things!  If you can't jabber on for hours about the mystic import of the number 23 (none), or the majesty of the works of H. P. Lovecraft (relatively mediocre), talk like you've been dropping acid non-stop since your third birthday or act like you're stuck in the 1960s then you aren't doing it right.

As much as I hear this complaint, I find it doesn't really seem true. I mean, sure its true in some sense... some Discordians, particularly new Discordians think that 23 IS magical and that Cthulhu IS Discordian etc.  However, mosbunal Discordians I know aren't at all like that... they may occasionally go on a rant about 23 or 5 or Hastur... but they have separate and independent ideas as well. Is there anything wrong with sharing an in-joke among a subculture? What group exists that doesn't have at least some common set of memes?

I wonder if Discordians always spout 23, or if some Discordians are pattern matching in their observations?


RAW, in essence, has created his own counter-orthodoxy within a group that shouldn't stand for any of it.

Well, RAW promoted memes. Some people turned those memes into a counter-orthodoxy. If you are of the opinion that Bob, in real life (or even in most of his work) acts like a OMGZ23PINEALFNORD, then I fear you may have missed most of his life's work. Sure, there are oft repeated memes (his favorite was making Popes)... but in most of his writings there aren't Discordian lamememes, if anything, some of his best Discordian memes have been well hidden from the mainstream (like "Keep the Lasagna Flying").

Now because every basement dwelling sockfucker once played Call of Cthulhu, he thinks that makes him a Discordian.

Well, he was already a Discordian... his only flaw is that he thinks it had something to do with CoC, rather than by virtue of being born a human.

He created a set of interests every Discordian should have and can be identified by, because he created a common reality in Illuminatus! that is probably the single most harmful thing anyone has done to Discordianism since its creation.

He used a bunch of memes, related them to Discordianism and WHAT DO YOU KNOW?!?!?! the memes did exactly what memes do, they stuck in people's minds. If it hadn't been for Illuminatus, the likelihood that the PD  4th, 5th or SJG versions would have been published is near 0. Without those, how many people would be here discussing these concepts... or arguing about the book?

As for the rest... any fool who would have asked Bob for Words of Wisdom, and idiot that called him Wise, or Guru, or acted in any way like a disciple... well I think Bob's favorite term for his response was a "Zen Hotfoot". When you tell some wide eyed follower "You know, a disciple is just an asshole looking for some human to attach itself to", you can't really be blamed for idiots that still clamor for your words of wisdom afterward.

The thing is, in any set of ideas, particularly ones that fill a 'religious' or philosophical sort of slot, there will be idiots. There will be followers. There will be unthinking robots, able to do nothing more than repeat whatever they read, heard or otherwise found wandering around inside their heads. There are Christians that make statements which embarrass other Christians, because the person obviously doesn't "Think for themselves" (or they confuse the accepted orthodoxy). There are philosophers, scientists, and religious people of all creeds that behave just as the Bobbites do. Pagans call them "fluffy", Jehovah's Wittnesses say that they only have the "milk" and have never progressed to the "meat". The thing is, some people are sheep. Anything that would have popularized Discordianism, in any way, would have defined Discordianism for those sheep. In fact, I would argue that there are some people who have defined their Discordianism by this very forum, by its memes, its attitudes and its particular metaphors. That's just how reality works.

Some people don't need to follow, they can chart their own path and for them, The Illuminatus Trilogy may become a starting point for some new ideas. Some people, on the other hand, for some reason... don't think for themselves and for them, what other people have written is all they have in their head. That has nothing to do with the author or the book, it has everything to do with the mind of the individual. I think that some people confuse the symptom and the cause of RAWITES. RAWites were never encouraged or tolerated by RAW, if you couldn't think for yourself, he didn't want much to do with you. Hell, if you didn't argue with him, he'd try to goad you into arguing with him.

No, I can't agree that Bob was bad for Discordianism, I think you've got your wires crossed. Bob wrote about Discordianism, just like we all do. The difference is that his memes were catchy enough that a bunch of people liked and thus use them. It wasn't as though he defined what Discordianism IS, nowhere in any of his work does he even try (with perhaps, the exception of "Think for Yourself, Schmuck!")

In fact, by comparison, I think that I could argue he had (and espoused) far less of an idea about what Discordianism IS than some people on this forum.

But seriously, the only word for some of you people is Bobbies.  You're trying to turn this irreligion which has some pretty interesting and insightful ways of looking into the world into a Bob Anton Wilson fan club.  Didn't you fuckers learn anything from the example of Jesus?  Shit.

Now that statement seems like TROOF to me!

[Verbal Mike]

many to you, dear sir

[LMNO]

However, Masks of The Illuminati is written like a 'normal' book.

Sir, I point you to the third act, where Crowley doses Babcock, as well as all the dreams of Maria and Babcock.

[hooplala]

However, Masks of The Illuminati is written like a 'normal' book.

Sir, I point you to the third act, where Crowley doses Babcock, as well as all the dreams of Maria and Babcock.

Maria's not in Masks of the Illuminati, otherwise I agree.  His cut-upping (is that a term) gets tiring.  He understands how Finnegan's Wake sounds, but his "joyce" has nothing inside of it.

That drawing of Robert Anton Wilson is by my friend Antony, by the way: www.siteway.com

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

However, Masks of The Illuminati is written like a 'normal' book.

Sir, I point you to the third act, where Crowley doses Babcock, as well as all the dreams of Maria and Babcock.

So the drug induced scene is written in a bizarre manner... that seems acceptable to me. (and as Hoops said... Maria isn't in Masks).

I find his cut-up stuff a bit overboard occasionally, but it really isn't a mainstay in Masks... its exists in that scene (which I had forgotten) and maybe one or two others, but for the most part, I thought it was a well written book.

[LMNO]

Maria's the one with the kid... Am I thinking of the Earth Will Shake?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Maria's the one with the kid... Am I thinking of the Earth Will Shake?

Yep, she's Sigismundo's  wife

[LMNO]

No... she's Siggie's True Love.

She married Babccock, AFAIR.  He was feeling guilty for being attracted to young boys, and gets drunk on Guinness.

[hooplala]

True.  And its in The Widow's Son.

A quite excellent book, I might add.

[LMNO]

Ther first two really were pretty good. 

Then I spent 8 years looking for the third, and as it turns out, it's utter crap.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Ah yes, thats right... Sigi ended up running around with the Indians... its been a few years since I read that series 

Anyway, my point was that the "Illuminatus" style is not the only style used by RAW, it does make appearances in THIC, but overall that series is written like a series.

I also wish the third book would have been better though and I am sad that he died before finishing the fourth book. I think though that he had gotten a lotof the ideas he wanted to explore covered in the first two and just had way too much of a twisted plot that kept getting in the way of ending the book.  I know three people that were told the contents of the fourth book, sadly, I wasn't one of them... even though I tried bribing with magic brownies

[Vene]

I may be (more or less) a n00b here, but I still feel like offering an opinion in a thread over a year old.

It was RAW that first exposed me to Discordianism.  I do think that the PD is superior, but without the Illuminatus! Trilogy I would have never known of it.  I think his trilogy does do a good job of exposing Discordian ideas to other people, but since it is about the only mainstream work about Discordianism there will be people who miss the point of Discordianism.  I do agree that Lovecraft was a mediocre writer (his stuff bores the shit out of me), the number 23 is minor at best, and that drug use isn't required to be Discordian.  And, I do dislike that there are people who basically replace one form of dogma with RAW's ideas.  But, that's fanboys (and fangirls) for you, there will always be people who feel the need to conform.  I can't blame RAW that some people don't get it.  And, it is regrettable that his work has overshadowed the PD and there is no competing Discordian work.

[Verbal Mike]

Can I be the first to say that I'm much gladder if people take RAW's views as dogma than if they take almost any other world-view as dogma?
I think either a person goes for dogma or they don't. The subject matter is not to blame. When a person is starving for Truth, they can bite almost anything (even Color-Theory Situationalism :P) and hang on to it like their life depends on it. And most people could do much, much worse than RAWism.

That said, when people Think For Themselves it's even better. But you can't blame a guy for writing something just because there are automatons in the world looking for dogma.