RAW “will”

‘But at the first Gate, the guardian demon forced Ishtar to surrender her sandals, which the wise men say symbolizes giving up the Will.’ – RAW, Cosmic Trigger (Introductory Fables)

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This post consists of a 15-yr-old “self-help”(!) article about “the will”, plus some introductory comments bringing things up to date – and firmly into a Robert Anton Wilson context.

I’m no Crowleyite, and while my reading of Regardie, Ray Sherwin, Peter Carroll, and a few others, preceded my discovery of RAW’s books in the 1980s, I haven’t really looked at that material for around two decades.

My 2009 piece originally appeared in a beautifully produced (hardbound, thick creamy paper, old-school typesetting, commissioned illustrations) book edition of The Idler, titled “Smash The System”, a diverse collection of essays, loosely on the theme of revolution. My idea was to present some of the “everyday” ideas and practices scattered around Aleister Crowley’s writings, but shorn completely of magick/occult context (in fact fairly mundanely worded), to assorted idlers, slackers and lazy anarchists.

Even back then, this particular objectification of “the will” didn’t resonate with me, and you can possibly detect my awkwardness with the whole semantics of that. Still, the article might be pitched at an interesting level for sombunall RAW fans. And although written before the rise of social media, it seems relevant to the algorithm wars currently being waged over our “attention” neurologies.

(Note: check out, if you haven’t already, the new Hilaritas Robert Anton Wilson book, Lion of Light: Robert Anton Wilson on Aleister Crowley).

(Also: sorry about the WordPress ads now likely appearing. The costly ad-free option, which I’d been paying for, has run out.)

2024 (ie new) intro – “Will” & “freedom”

Why do those who verbally fetishize “freedom” often support political authoritarians? One thinks currently of Trump’s followers and some US Republicans, who apparently love certain repressive “strongmen”, eg Putin. Going further back, Augusto Pinochet’s friend Margaret Thatcher promoted “free markets”, but “clamped down” on civilian freedoms with draconian “law and order” measures. Bush (Dubya) came on like a “freedom” evangelist before invading Iraq and enforcing the Patriot Act, etc.

We know what Robert Anton Wilson thought of the kind of “freedom” virtue-signaled by G. Bush and M. Thatcher, because he wrote explicitly about this. Indeed, some of his most biting social/political commentaries come from those years. RAW remarked witheringly about Bush’s infamous quip, “If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier… as long as I’m the dictator”, and what he said about Mrs Thatcher, during the time he lived in Ireland, I found very enlightening.

Maggie Thatcher, incidentally, got nicknamed “the Iron Lady”, which recalls “iron will”, an idiom for a strong, unbreakable resolve. “The lady’s not for turning”. RAW criticised Thatcher’s attribute of unbending resolve – “resolution and dogma”, he commented, make a dangerous combination in a social/political milieu. And there lies a semantic problem. “Grit”, “determination”, “firmness of purpose”, “strong will”, etc, combined with noises about “freedom” can make an attractive combination for a person – at an individual level, on one’s own terms. Who wouldn’t want “freedom”, “willpower”, “strength”? But, socially and politically, “freedom” has different, bitterly contested “meanings” (eg commercial freedom to pollute versus freedom to not be polluted), and the kind of “freedom” promised by the hardline demagogic “strongman” or “Iron Lady with iron resolve” doesn’t give me warm feelings or optimism.

(Update: In Trajectories #15, RAW makes a similar point about Ayn Rand. He says of Rand: “She had no common sense whatsoever. She did have dogma and resolution. I hate people with dogma and resolution. They scare me.”)

Moral of the story, I guess: don’t confuse the semantics of the personal, individual “level” with those of the social/political. Different metaphors for different domains. Along with “toughness of resolve” (ie “will”) you have metaphors of cleanliness, purity, renewal, “shaking things up”, etc, all of which may have good, positive connotations for individual “self help”, but typically ominous implications for sweeping social/political plans. Bob Wilson warned of Thatcher-style political “will”, and he said it gave him the willies when ideological groups talked in terms of “the Great Cleansing”.

“Why don’t you leave him?” Doris asked.
“It’s voluntary,” Rhoda said stonily. “It’s my True Will.”

Robert Anton Wilson, The Trick Top Hat

My 2009 Idler article on “the will”

(Original title – not mine, and I wasn’t keen on it: “My Will Be Done”. I’ve shortened and edited the article for this blog).

Our attention span appears shorter than it used to, according to Neil Postman (1931-2003), the celebrated media theorist and author of Amusing Ourselves to Death*. Many of us do seem prone to distraction, which suggests we’re unable to focus attention or summon “willpower”. It’s as if our education ignored a crucial mental faculty, so that we grow up having no real will, only a set of rapidly-changing inclinations and wishes.

(*Postman cites Robert MacNeil’s 1983 paper, “Is Television Shortening Our Attention Span?”).

Bookshops/Amazon appear full of self-help tomes which address focus and concentration, but we probably forget their advice after the initial enthusiasm wears off. We move from one desire to another and our efforts may seem to cancel each other out. Little gets achieved except the emptying of our bank accounts and the fragmentation of our volition!

To make things worse, it might look as if advertisers and “the media” conspire to have us associating distraction with enjoyment, as if a broken will is the essence of fun. And although distraction originates “outside” us, it soon becomes internalised and self-reinforcing. So after a busy, distracting day, we pursue more distraction (phone, TV, etc). Eventually our own minds become the main source of distraction, while the will atrophies like something evolution has no more use for.

What can be done to improve things? Some sort of mental “vigilance” seems necessary, although this term (along with “discipline”, “regimen”, “self-denial”, etc) has a somewhat puritanical/policing air for me, and sounds inadequate for what we’re talking about. The same could be said of management jargon, with its emphasis on control and efficiency. Maybe it says something about our culture if the lexicon of volition is monopolised by control freaks or authoritarians? Watchfulness? Attentiveness?

We’re in the realm of what cognitive scientists call “hypocognition“, which means that the vocabulary and concepts necessary to “do justice” to the subject don’t exist in our society. The cultural/semantic deficit might be due to the fact that in earlier ages the flowering of the will was, in many cases, punishable by death or torture – so people didn’t talk about it much. (The “development” of the will still has sinister associations for some – amoral Nietzschean supermen, Nazis dabbling with the occult, etc).

Even allowing for the inadequate semantic framing, training the mind to serve the will looks like a complex and difficult business. One of the biggest obstacles is a sort of forgetfulness, which you can demonstrate with an experiment. For a few days, always walk through doorways, inside your house or office, with your left foot first. Will you “remember” to do this, or will your mind be on something else as you walk into the kitchen five hours from now?

You can try a simple gimmick, based on operant conditioning, which helps us to “remember” what we willed. Practice of this mental device (which I’ll describe in detail below) seems to create a subconscious watchfulness which triggers a gentle internal warning whenever we’re about to do something against our will. It’s typically used for conquering habits, but has much wider and more profound applications.

Another device, the formal “oath”, might seem odd to many people, but it works “like a charm”. Think of a New Year’s resolution list, but invested with a different kind of importance. To take it lightly would defeat its purpose. On the other hand, it shouldn’t be permanent – more scientific experiment than religious duty.

As an example, it might declare that for twenty-three days you’ll avoid certain foods, watch no TV before 9.30pm, read no news, never scratch your head, and meditate for 20 minutes every day before dinner. Or it could be altogether more imaginative. The contents of your oaths may be meaningful to you, and will probably seem arbitrary and weird to anyone else. But then it doesn’t seem like a great idea to broadcast what you’re doing. It’s no company mission statement bullet-point list.

Eliminating “bad” habits? No doubt a useful practice, as they can waste time and energy – but this isn’t about transforming yourself into the Mrs Thatcher of Trappist monks. Righteous, dogmatic resolution probably isn’t the kind of personality trait most idlers [or Robert Anton Wilson aficionados] want. Maybe ditch the sense of worthiness/purity that sometimes accompanies such practices, unless you wish to become a sanctimonious zealot!

It sometimes appears that “development” of the will comes into conflict with social standards and ethics. You’re dismantling habits of thought, speech and action, and the deeper into it you go, the more likely that you’ll break down those automatic behaviours which function as the minimum standard for entry into social respectability.

For example, suppose you identify a compulsion to elicit people’s approval by being over-polite. You then manage to bring the automatic speech patterns concerned under control of your will. How will people react when their own habitual conversational manner is not immediately reflected by something equally mechanical? “Hello, how are you?” Silence, an odd look, an awkward moment. (I don’t recommend continuing this experiment for long periods. Harold Garfinkle’s “ethnomethodology” – which you might have seen mentioned in Robert Anton Wilson’s books – investigates this breaking of social taboos in relatively subtle ways).

What happens when you break up local socially-approved patterns of eating, sleeping, working, etc? It may appear “disruptive”, or just odd to others. There’s no particular benefit to such experimentation by normal social standards, but you’re practicing overcoming “internal” resistance regardless of the outer circumstances. Having achieved this, it should be easier to conquer external resistance. To quote Crowley’s analogy, “In a steamboat the engine must first overcome its own inertia before it can attack the resistance of the water”.

Outer conditions may, of course, be too strongly opposed – it’s hard to stop working for a month if you need a salary to pay the rent. Manifestation of a strong will in one area of your life doesn’t necessarily extend into other areas. And the degree of wilfulness doesn’t necessarily correspond with the level of intelligence behind it. Take, for example, the workaholic entrepreneur who, by sheer will, ends up rich, only to find that they can’t switch off their obsessive pursuit of money (and “results”, achievements, etc) long enough to really find peace.

You put a lot of hours and work into pursuing a goal, only to find that by the time you achieve it, the goal hardly seems worth the effort – it’s already been replaced in your mind by what you consider to be wiser goals. Some “Eastern” business philosophy might provide better semantics here, but its viewpoint doesn’t really buy the “Western” notion of individual free-will. The idea of acting independently from, say, the “universal will” (or way of things) would seem insane to begin with.

The semantic deconstruction of will, desire, goal, purpose, etc, provides an endless diversion, but meanwhile we’re faced with practicalities. If the will needs a “desire” (or goal or purpose) as a fulcrum, to give it the leverage necessary to overcome social distractions, it doesn’t follow that this desire or “aspiration” must be permanent or unchangeable. It’s just the “highest” conceivable to a person at any given stage in their life. It changes as one gets older. It can change/grow faster than the will itself.

Perhaps we’re happier if what we aspire to seems “objectively” unattainable by definition? Beauty, illumination or peace, say, rather than possessions, status or achievements. It’s easier then to disassociate from the anxious, grasping, result-oriented mentality which commercial (etc) culture typically encourages.

Consider the cliché of the yearning (starving) artist, or idealistic quester (seeker, sucker), rather than the smug overachiever – but balanced by broad interests and good humour, so that one doesn’t end up needing psychotherapy. It seems unlikely that someone could get far “developing” their will without some kind of grounded sense. Ambition can be an overrated quality, and there’s nothing “wrong” with giving up (it’s no sign of “moral weakness”), but it becomes a disheartening habit, and makes it tempting to return, via the path of least resistance, to the world of social automata.

Many of our habits and actions obviously appear motivated by the pleasure/pain duality. When the will acts against this mechanism – eg by attempting to overcome an addiction – it’s usually defeated. The conditioning device that follows uses this principle to your advantage. It arranges things so that your visceral drives towards pleasure and away from pain are operating in the same direction as your conscious intent.

Suppose you have a habit which you want to stop. You may have taken a decision that you will stop. A few days later, however, you catch yourself in the act, and realise you’ve been doing it for the past ten minutes without noticing. You also suspect that you may have had other, unnoticed, lapses. A simple decision alone usually isn’t enough to stop long-standing patterns. At this point you apply the technique as follows:

1. Whenever you find yourself indulging the habit, immediately employ a device that will associate it with pain or discomfort. The type of device depends on your squeamishness. You could eat or drink something that revolts you, use one of those joke electric-shockers on yourself, put an elastic band round your wrist and pull it far enough so that when you let go it gives a sharp pain, etc. (Aleister Crowley suggested cutting your forearm with a razor, but you might not want the lasting scars).
2. Continue to use the device as soon as possible after you catch yourself at your habit. When you first start you may have to employ it often. In theory, your “subconscious” (or whatever) will associate the habit with pain, and you’ll find yourself becoming more “vigilant”, until you stop permanently (or until you decide to take up the habit again). This works surprisingly, and lastingly, well.
3. To begin, pick a “neutral” habit, such as crossing your legs, which isn’t loaded with any emotional need. After successes with overcoming insignificant habits, you can apply the technique to speech and, the relatively tricky one, thought. For example, to get rid of some phrase that you habitually use, or to eliminate all thoughts about work when you’re out of the office.

The applications are limited only by your imagination. Since the aim is to generate a sort of subconscious “vigilance”, it’s easier to target behaviours which occur fairly frequently, otherwise you’ll simply “forget” between occurrences of the habit and end up aborting the attempt before you’ve begun.

The idea is to build an inhibitory faculty which doesn’t depend on continued conscious attention – it becomes automatic, like a reflex reaction to pain, but consciously directed to serve the will – essentially a self-conditioned reflex. The advantages are obvious when attempting to concentrate or meditate. Distracting thoughts are kept out of your head – it’s analogous to being asleep with no need to concentrate on preventing yourself from falling out of bed.

One thing to remember when experimenting with these neuropsychological gimmicks is that they create a sort of strain under which “temptations” become difficult to resist. As Crowley put it (when referring to the ego-complex as a snake): “The tighter you hold the snake (which was previously asleep in the sun, and harmless enough, to all appearance), the more it struggles; and it is important to remember that your hold must tighten correspondingly, or it will escape and bite you.”

Finally there’s the battle between the will and “motivations” to consider. There’s no shortage of motivations – in fact the whole of society could be viewed as one giant behaviourist rat-maze, with an array of rewards and punishments to ensure that we’re motivated in the “right” way. Behind motivations are the thoughts and emotions which fill our heads, and behind those are the stimuli we’re subjected to – through education, jobs, the media, the economy, etc. The behaviourist perspective would see “motivations” as the reaction to what’s put into our heads (and bodies).

Unaccounted for by the behaviourists, however, is the relatively autonomous will with which we can determine what fills our heads. We can choose to stop watching mindless TV, stop working in a pointless job, stop thinking certain thoughts, stop reacting in certain ways. Of course, it’s not that simple. Strong motivations can seem indistinguishable from the supposedly autonomous will, which makes the above process seem circular – the will being both a product and a cause of what we put into our heads. At this point we get tangled up again in philosophical, semantic rumination.

Still, the practicalities remain. The practices have undeniable effects – fewer robotic reactions, less distraction, less “conformity”, less of the kind of forgetfulness that Buddhists call “ignorance”. You could say the will increasingly determines which “motivations” are strongest for you by determining which ideas occupy your mind. But that seems only part of it.

*** Article ends ***