Robert Anton Wilson In Memoriam

Robert Anton Wilson passed away on the 11th of January 2007, at the age of 74. For some inexplicable rupture in space-time continuum, the tidings of his death reached pHinnWeb only now. An inspiration to psychonauts everywhere, Wilson (a.k.a. RAW) is best known for his 1975 The Illuminatus Trilogy, co-authored with Robert Shea (1933-1994), an anarchistic James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon-inspired mish-mash/parody/satire of occultism, post-hippie esotericism, psychedelic culture, numerology, and most of all, conspiracy theories. The same path was followed (though not exactly sharing RAW's cosmic slapstick anarchy) by Umberto Eco in his 1989 Foucault's Pendulum (and in a far, far more ham-fisted way by Dan Brown in that bestseller turd DaVinci Code).

What is the meaning of number 23? Why a dollar bill has in it an eye in the pyramid? Who were Adam Weisshaupt and the Bavarian Illuminati? What are "fnords"? These are only some of the questions The Illuminatus raises, and manages to (un)answer in a glorious way. One of the musical luminaries influenced by the book were The KLF who took the name of their side project Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu here, and countless other artists and scenesters in electronic music underground and rave culture have been influenced by the works of Robert Anton Wilson.

In a 2003 interview with High Times magazine, RAW described himself as a "Model Agnostic" which he says "consists of never regarding any model or map of the universe with total 100% belief or total 100% denial. Following [Alfred] Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory." More simply, he claims "not to believe anything," since "belief is the death of intelligence." He has described his approach as "Maybe Logic." [Wikipedia]

RAW's published output, general influence on underground culture and legacy are all too vast to be dissected here in any even nearly satisfying way, so I just recommend you follow the links below.

Robert Anton Wilson Homepage

Robert Anton Wilson @ Wikipedia

Robert Anton Wilson @ Blogspot

RAW Memorial @ MySpace

The 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness by Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson

Nine One One On And On...

Holiday in North Korea / Hercólubus, the Red Planet

Cool! Almost like here in Tampere!

And more spooky things for those of you whose brains are softened by the summer heat of the last days. Here in Tampere a non-Finnish man is handing out mysterious flyers advertising a book called Hercólubus, or the Red Planet. Hercólubus is supposedly a planet in the Barnard Star system, six light years from Earth. Some gnostics believe the planet, 600 hundred times the size of Earth, will affect our world by causing earthquakes, great floods and twisting Earth's axis. We can prevent this by developing our "extrapsychic" mental powers, as the book's late author V. M. Rabolú claims. Or something. [Cheers for the infos, Juri.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercolubus
http://home.earthlink.net/~gnosisla/March5.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~gnosisla/March4.html
http://www.hercolubus.cc/

Also watched the Richard Gere film on the "Mothman" phenomenon. Weird things are in the air -- or then, not.

Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness

Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness includes among all info on how to keep cats clean. (Don't try this at home, kids, or I'll unleash my mum's cat Regina on you.)

Cosmic Play / Money (That's What I Want)

Finnish TV 1 just showed a documentary film on Kati Sinenmaa who has chosen to live outside society in a forest stone hut built by herself. Yes, perhaps she's an eccentric freak, but as someone who has lived as unemployed since February 2001 and has struggled to make the ends meet somewhere in the margins of society, I can really relate to someone like this (especially since Sinenmaa has built her own "Web empire" too). When a person makes a decision not to prostitute oneself and drops out of the rat race, s/he will not exactly receive understanding from fellow human beings, but lives under the constant threat of being cast off and marginalised. Therefore you just have to admire her conviction.

Cosmic Play is a documentary film about Kati Sinenmaa's pursuit to live outside the society. Spring 2001 she gave up her Helsinki city rental apartment and moved to a small forest section right in the middle of the busiest intersections of railroads and bridges in Pasila, Helsinki.

Kati builds from stones a massive wall against the society. The stronghold becomes the very image of her soul: the inner being of an artist has been taken out, yet the society wants to put it in again. Kati Sinenmaa does not adapt to the lifestyle expected by the society. She does not hold a job, she does neither rent an apartment nor receive any support from the society. All her clothes and meals are donations or picked from the trash cans. She tries to be free and bound less. However, the free Internet service is the link that binds her back to the society. In the film we'll follow Kati Sinenmaa's life for four years, from moving to the woods all the way to Spring 2005. Living in the woods is full of challenges. The society Kati attempts to leave behind, does not leave her in peace.

She pours out everything at her web pages and also in the bountiful dozens of pages of replies to the demands of the society. She starts to live at the same time in the Internet, in the reality of the mind, in the physical reality and in the spirit world in between.

"Everyone has a role in this cosmic play. We all have a purpose to fulfill. We should all realize that we are part of this big play. Just like the characters in Dante's Divine Comedy, that's us".

Sad to say that I'm not personally as courageous person and of as strong principles as Sinenmaa: lately I've started to think that just receiving a big monthly stack of money would probably be the best anti-depressant for me, and nothing else... pHinn, the would-be Happy Hooker? And why is it that I always hear to this the old "money does not bring you happiness" cliché from people who hold well-paid jobs themselves...?

The best things in life are free
But you can keep 'em for the birds and bees
Now give me money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), yeah
That's what I want

Your lovin' gives me a thrill
But your lovin' don't pay my bills
Now give me money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), yeah
That's what I want

Money don't get everything, it's true
What it don't get, I can't use
Now give me money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), yeah
That's what I want

Money don't get everything, it's true
What it don't get, I can't use
Now give me money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), yeah
That's what I want

Well, now give me money (that's what I want)
A lot of money (that's what I want)
Whoa, yeah, I wanna be free (that's what I want)
Whoa, a lot of money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), yeah
That's what I want

Well, now give me money (that's what I want)
A lot of money (that's what I want)
Whoa, yeah, you owe me money (that's what I want)
Oh, now give me money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), yeah
That's what I want.

Anarchy In, Erm, Germany

[Skip this entry if you're under 18.]



http://www.kotzreiz.de/wahl/wahlspot.mp4
or
http://appd.goerres-kompakt.de/wahlspot.wmv
or
http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/0509/wahlspot.mp4
and
http://www.appd.de/wahlspot/wahlspot.php

Anarchist party's TV ad offends viewers
Wed Sep 7, 2005

BERLIN - A fringe German anarchist party has outraged national television audiences with its election campaign television spot -- a video montage of booze-fuelled chaos, syringe needles and men cavorting with topless women.

An estimated one million viewers watched the German Anarchist Pogo Party's already heavily censored political broadcast when it was shown for the first time Monday.

Rather than offer any presentation of policies, the party's campaign spot spliced together scenes of debauched revellers smashing furniture, pouring beer down each other's throats and groups of couples kissing and groping each other, all set to a frantic heavy metal soundtrack [to me it sounded more like a punk version of polka, with accordion and all -pH].

As an officially registered political party, the Hamburg-based APPD, which sells t-shirts on its Web site that proclaim "Arbeit ist Scheisse" ("work is shit"), is entitled to free television air time for its advertisements.

Karl Nagel, campaign manager of the APPD told Reuters on Wednesday that the party will continue to run the ad.

"The next broadcast is scheduled for Monday night," he said.

However, he said the broadcasting authorities may insist they remove scenes featuring needles, which he said depicted people taking a blood sample and not intravenous drug abuse.

German newspapers say the party's roughly 750 members would not have any discernable impact on the September 18 parliamentary elections.

More:

Indymedia UK
Wikinews

***

Too bad the political scene here in Finland is much more boring. As far as it goes here is a local racist/extreme right-wing bigot/village idiot spreading fake nude pics of our President on his Website (no, I won't give you the original URL where I found this hilarious(?) "pin-up" because people like that don't deserve any more publicity) -- some people do have interesting sex fantasies, though. Anyway, here's for all you real Fennophiles:



Earlier

Tao, the Russian Way

Here is the strangest Website I have seen for a while. Obviously it's about the Yin and Yang symbolism of Chinese Taoism, with chockful of mathematical formula (obviously related -- both mathematics and Russian language are out of my personal range); plus also satirical images of the US presidents Clinton and Bush, pin-up pics(?), ufos and paranormal phenomena. So, what is this all about...?

Pekka Lahtinen: Maailman yhdentyminen

If you're a conspiracy buff and can read Finnish, check this out. (The Usual Disclaimer: pHinnWeb does not... etc.) Thanks to Matias for the tip.

http://www.free-webspace.biz/heavenlyjerusalem/Maailmanyhdentyminen.htm

MAAILMAN YHDENTYMINEN
Historian petollisin hanke toteutumassa
Pekka Lahtinen:

--------------------------------------------------
TÄTÄ KIRJAA POLIITIKOT EIVÄT HALUA SINUN LUKEVAN.
TÄTÄ KIRJAA KUKAAN EI HALUA SINUN LUKEVAN.
TÄMÄ KIRJA PALJASTAA AIVAN LIIKAA.
Joten lue tämä kirja - ja levitä kirjaa eteenpäin.
--------------------------------------------------
Vaikka kirja on kirjoitettu jo vuonna 1994,
on se nyt ajankohtaisempi kuin koskaan aiemmin.
Koska kirja vedettiin pois myynnistä pian julkaisun jälkeen,
ei se ole tätä ennen päässyt suuren yleisön tietoon.
--------------------------------------------------
(Pahoittelen mahdollisia kirjoitusvirheitä tässä
kirjan ensimmäisessä sähköisessä versiossa)
--------------------------------------------------

Juri informed me that Mr. Lahtinen has also written the following books:

Tekijä(t):Lahtinen, Pekka
Teoksen nimi:Luojan lukuja : Raamatun numerologian ihmeellisiä
löytöjä / Pekka Lahtinen ; [julkaisija: Tampereen kristillinen
yhteisö ry.]
Julkaistu:[Tampere] : P. Lahtinen, 1996 (Saarijärven offset)
Ulkoasu:122 s. : kuv. ; 20 cm

Tekijä(t):Lahtinen, Pekka
Teoksen nimi:Ufojen arvoitus ratkeaa / Pekka Lahtinen
Julkaistu:Tampere : TKY, 1997 (Cosmoprint)
Ulkoasu:175 s. : kuv. ; 21 cm

Tekijä(t):Lahtinen, Pekka
Teoksen nimi:Verkko kiristyy : EU:n taustalla on suuri, salainen
suunnitelma: maailmanhallituksen perustaminen / Pekka Lahtinen
Julkaistu:Tampere : Tampereen kristillinen yhteisö, 1999
(Saarijärven offset)
Ulkoasu:224 s. : kuv. ; 21 cm


Some more conspiracy stuff at:
pHinnWeb's Neuro Links

A New Colin Wilson Interview

Here is a brand new interview of the British author Colin Wilson (born 1931).

Excerpts:

"Any intellectual who divides opinion as much as Colin Wilson has for almost 50 years must be onto something, even if it is only whether humans should be pessimistic or optimistic."

"In books on sex, crime, psychology and the occult, and in more than a dozen novels, Mr. Wilson has explored how pessimism can rob ordinary people of their powers.

"'If you asked me what is the basis of all my work,' he said, 'it's the feeling there's something basically wrong with human beings. Human beings are like grandfather clocks driven by watch springs. Our powers appear to be taken away from us by something.'"

"The critics, particularly in Britain, have alternately called him a genius and a fool. His autobiography, published in hardcover last year, has received mixed reviews. Though lauded by some, the attacks on it and Mr. Wilson have been as virulent as those he provoked in the 1950's after he became a popular culture name with the publication of The Outsider."

"That book dealt with alienation in thinkers, artists and men of action like T. E. Lawrence, van Gogh, Camus and Nietzsche, and caught the mood of the age. Critics, including Cyril Connolly and Philip Toynbee, hailed Mr. Wilson as a British version of the French existentialists."

"The Outsider was translated into dozens of languages and sold millions of copies. It has never been out of print."

"He never lost belief in the importance of his work in trying to find out how to harness human beings' full powers and wipe out gloom."

"'Sartre's 'man is a useless passion,' and Camus's feeling that life is absurd, and so on, basically meant that philosophy itself had turned really pretty dark,' he said. 'I could see that there was a basic fallacy in Sartre and Camus and all of these existentialists, Heidegger and so on. The basic fallacy lay in their failure to understand the actual foundation of the problem.'"

"That foundation, he said, is that human perception is intentional; the pessimists themselves paint their world black."

"Mr. Wilson has spent much of his life researching how to achieve those moments of well-being that bring insight, what the American psychologist Abraham Maslow called 'peak experiences.'"

"Those moments can come only through effort, concentration or focus, and refusing to lose one's vital energies through pessimism."

"'What it means basically is that you're able to focus until you suddenly experience that sense that everything is good,' Mr. Wilson said. 'We go around leaking energy in the same way that someone who has slashed their wrists would go around leaking blood.'"

"'Once you can actually get over that and recognize that this is not necessary, suddenly you begin to see the possibility of achieving a state of mind, a kind of steady focus, which means that you see things as extremely good.' If harnessed by everyone, this could lead to the next step in human evolution, a kind of Superman."

"'The problem with human beings so far is that they are met with so many setbacks that they are quite easily defeatable, particularly in the modern age when they've got too separated from their roots,' he said."

Colin Wilson @ Wikipedia

[Thanks to Juri for the tip.]

Earlier:
Colin Wilson on the "Right Man"

Email Forwarding Amounts to Ritual Gift Exchange

Email forwarding amounts to ritual gift exchange:

"Forwarding a quirky email or an amusing link or video attachment to colleagues may seem innocent enough, but it is the modern equivalent of ritual gift exchange and carries with it similar social implications, say US researchers.

Email forwarding is a familiar part of modern email communications, and has spawned many an internet phenomenon, the Star Wars kid, the Numa Numa dance, and Oolong the rabbit to name just a few.

Benjamin Gross at the University of Illinois, US, and colleagues studied email forwarding behaviour by conducting informal interviews among email users. He says forwarding emails plays a vital role in constructing and maintaining modern social ties, despite the phenomenon receiving scant attention from social scientists.

Forwarding a genuinely amusing or interesting link to a friend, for example, shows that you are thinking of them and are aware of the sort of content they like, Gross says. But passing an irrelevant or out-of-date link on to contacts can be annoying, thus lowering the sender's social status in the recipient’s eyes."

Awful Plastic Surgery

The good, bad, and ugly of celebrity plastic surgery.

More On Transhumanism

Here you can find the article The most dangerous idea on earth? by Stephen Cave and Friederike von Tiesenhausen Cave:

"In a world at war with terrorism, divided by religious fundamentalism and haunted by racism, sexism and countless other prejudices, how is it that transhumanism has earned the hotly contested title of the most dangerous idea on earth?"

Earlier

An Interesting Underwear Design

This one probably requires no further comment...

Environmental Activism, Of Sorts...

Unlike other fellow Scandinavians such as Swedes and Danes, Norwegians are often thought to be uptight about sex. Not so with this young couple, Tommy Hol Ellingsen and Leona Johansson, who are members of the environmental organization Fuck for Forest. They have sex in public and make porn -- which they distribute through the Website -- in order to raise money to save the rainforests. Originally they received money from the Norwegian government to start up their "Webshop to support the environment". The first application they sent out stated "T-shirts and similar items". The idea matured, and this is the product, even though it deviated from the first drafts...

According to the organization's Website, "Fuck for Forest are concerned youngsters, fighting to preserve the environment. We believe it is possible to use people's need for sexuality as a way to raise money for nature".

At Norway's Quart festival in 2004, as a band -- appropriately called Cumshots -- played, the couple had an intercourse right in front of the audience. A banner was raised on stage informing the audience that the couple was having sex to save the rainforest. After completing the intercourse, the couple received applause from the audience and disappeared. The festival organisers and local police were not amused, though; eventually taking the couple to the Kristiansand court. Neither was the Rainforest Foundation Norway. WWF, the World Wildlife Fund, has so far refused to take money from Fuck for Forest; argumenting their decision that they "cannot connect our brandname and logo to certain sectors of industry". Other environmental organisations haven't warmed up yet to Fuck for Forest's offers, neither has the actual porn industry.

More:

Grist Magazine

Nettavisen

Sex Herald (adults only)

The Absolute Elsewhere: Esoteric Literature

The Absolute Elsewhere: Fantastic, Visionary, and Esoteric Literature in the 1960s and 1970s
by R. T. Gault

"This is a bibliography of visionary, occult, new age, fringe science, strange and even crackpot works published between 1945 and 1988. Added to the mix are some other works which may relate to them, or at least give a sense of the spirit of the times. The main emphasis is upon works produced between 1960 and 1980, as the subtitle suggests."

"Currently available are files covering the years from 1945 to 1979. There are two small files which covers selected titles published before 1949. Keep in mind that the project has been in the works a long time, and continues to change, often on a daily basis."

Juri sent me this link, and I noticed it was already familiar to me by its Morning of the Magicians entry. I quoted this book on I, The Mutant?

On these subjects, I recommend you also to check out Gary Valentine Lachman's Turn Off Your Mind. The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius.

Other mystical, esoteric and goofy stuff at pHinnWeb:

Rosemary - The Connection Between Mia Farrow, Sharon Tate, Charlie Manson and The Beatles

pHinnWeb's Neuro Links

Bad Mags!

I just found this brilliant site called Bad Mags. As it says, it features cover art from different sorts of sleazy US magazines from the 1950s onwards. Crime, occult sex, skin flicks, gossips, bikers, rock'n'roll -- the seedy underside of America! Ungawa!

This links nice to FinnSleaze, my own cover gallery of (mostly) 1970s Finnish men's magazines. (Its mirrorsite has also a bit more images.)

Transhumanism - One Of The Most Dangerous Ideas In The World?

Francis Fukuyama calls at the September 2004 edition of Foreign Policy Transhumanism one of the "most dangerous ideas in the world". Fukuyama criticizes transhumanists that they're, through biotechnology, trying to create a Nietzschean superhuman far exceeding those qualities created by natural evolution. Here Nick Bostrom of transhumanists answers to Fukuyama.

I think transhumanists are typical utopia builders living in their high spheres but not exactly having a touchpoint with actual every-day reality. If we become physical and mental superhumans, will that also solve the economical and environmental problems of our current culture; not to speak about wars, terrorism and so on?

The Exotica Of Extreme Japan

Japan intrigues me in all its extremity and its certain cultural manifestations, which can seem totally strange and weird for a Western observer.

I emphasize I don't want to fall into any Euro-centric, xenophobic or even racistic prejudices here. "White man's burden" type of colonialistic thinking is always typified by its morbid fascination with anything reeking of "exoticism", "alien", "other" -- which can sometimes make "healthy" (or "scientific") interest in foreign cultures seem problematic or at least ambivalent.

Think of, for example, the Western interest in Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, etc.) which started with the 19th century Theosophists, continued with C.G. Jung and found its modern expression in the 1950s with American Beat Generation writers; or any phenomenon of "tribal" culture found from the so called Third World countries or the outskirts of "our" civilization: the "new primitivism" and its fascination with Native American cultures both in North and South America, the 1950s "Tiki" fad of Hawaiian/Polynesian origin, fashionable Maori tattoos of New Zealand, the all-encompassing New Age mysticism combining Hopi Indian beliefs to Sufism and Tibetan Buddhism; even the whole genre of "World Music", just to mention some examples.

Of course, as mentioned, it can get very difficult to discern the faddish interest in anything "exotic" from the genuine interest and sympathy for foreign cultures, and it's not really my task to find out which is which actually. Perhaps one can find here certain traces of Rousseau's 18th century "Back to Nature" thinking, but personally I'm more interested now in the hybrids of so called primitive or traditional cultures with our technological, modern way of life. Therefore Japan.

It's fascinating how in Japanese culture one can find Western influences that have mutated into something totally different and new, when it finds its expression in Japanese milieu and its characteristic and traditional way of thinking, code of conduct and mentality, which can appear as peculiar to us Westerners. I understand that Japanese tradition emphasizes heavily group pressure and conformity which can seem totally opposite to Western ideas of individualism and "personal freedom".

Could it be that certain expressions of contemporary Japanese culture are then some sort of "safety valves" to let off this steam: that mental pressure which is created by a strongly conforming culture? Thus, for example the often extremely violent/sexual content of manga comics or Japanese film could be expression of this psychopathology which can't be outvented in any other way in society which emphasizes a strict code of conduct, honour and conformity. And therefore these explicit and even antisocial, often unaccepted forms of expression act, in fact, as a preserving factor in society?

John Titor Hoax

John Titor was (will be?) supposedly a time traveller from 2036, who visited our era in 2000 and 2001, and left behind him a trail of e-mail messages telling a bit about the times to come. According to Mr. Titor, USA should be in for another Civil War, starting just about these days. Well, wake me up when it starts. It's amazing how time after time people fall for these prophets of doom: the world should have ended myriads of times now, if all the predictions put forth in the course of world history would have become reality. The idea of apocalypse is obviously deeply ingrained in our culture. I admit I have an interest in all things called "paranormal" or "supernatural" or whatever, but then, I guess I'm a bit of a sucker for anything fanciful. Unfortunately, in my own life I haven't experienced much anything out of ordinary, except perhaps some occasions of synchronistic telepathy, some vague forebodings of future happenings (not actually "knowing" what's going to happen, but just a feeling that something is "in the air"), but then, maybe there's really nothing "supernatural" about having developed a sort of an intuition about people and the connections of this world. (I wish I had a time machine now: my allotted time here at the library computer is about to end, and I can't write more today.)

Some spooky things @ pHinnWeb

The American Book of the Dead

http://theamericanbook.blogspot.com