Review notes – ‘A Non-Euclidean Perspective’

‘The American people nowadays never vote for anybody they suspect of being more intelligent than themselves.’ – RAW, ‘Why I Voted for Michael Dukakis‘ (1989)

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I read the new Robert Anton Wilson anthology from Hilaritas Press over the weekend, and I’d planned to write a long review. But clock-time has intruded, and I’m left with a bunch of notes. When I read through them just now, some of my writing seemed a little tired (in fact I was physically tired at the time). Normally I’d bin those and rewrite at some point in the future. But I’ll post them raw anyway, for immediacy’s sake… I recommend you get the book!

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The benign and savvy 21st century Taoist Sage’s remark, “I don’t give a fuck… fuck it all!”, appears to come from a different universe of “meaning” than the exact same verbal expression of a nihilist teenager with a gun, ready to shoot his teachers and classmates. How can that happen, semantically speaking?

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The apparently pissed-off advice to not vote because “it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference”, voiced by the same man who often voted and saw fundamental differences between two US presidential candidates (Gush and Bore, no typo), yet said they’d both “be doing the same damned things” across the board politically…

Don’t expect smooth surface consistency and neat little category boxes from someone as prolific, pluralistic, open-minded and adaptable-to-situation as Robert Anton Wilson. That’s the “warning” I’d give to someone, new to RAW’s work, about to read this amazing and exhilarating collection.

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Drawing a line – a border – between the “political” and the “non-political“ in Robert Anton Wilson’s writings seems an impossible task to me, because the two blend like digital fountain-fill (or watercolour washes). Isolating the “political” perspective sometimes seems as tricky as finding the vanishing point in a late Picasso.

That’s before you even get to political subdivisions – all those labels denoting political dichotomies, linear-scale extremes and middles and… non-Euclidean models or muddles. All the seeming contradictions, semantic noise and licence for misunderstanding that such labels bring.

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The new RAW anthology does a fantastic job of the selection of RAW material – loosely “politically” themed – in a way that brings coherence to the potentially chaotic info-load. I was thrilled to see a few of my favourite RAW interviews (by DJ Steve Fly Agaric 23 and Lance Bauscher) included – and also ‘The Spaghetti Theory of Conspiracy’, previously the long intro to a 1987 Falcon Press book by Donald Holmes.

Richard Rasa provides a fascinating afterword with some material (including emails from Wilson) throwing a light on the Guns and Dope Party – plus some further insider details and thoughts on where RAW stood politically. And Jesse Walker supplies an intro – a pretty good gathering together in one place of biographical fragments, quotes and other RAW “political” miscellanea that serves as a historical overview of the collected Wilson material.

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On the difficulty of separating the “political” from the “non-political”, we can dive straight into an included piece from 1961 (Can Even Living Be Forgotten?, originally from ‘The Minority of One’). It doesn’t really mention politics, per se – no specific political system, philosophy or type of economy referred to (except “capitalism”, once); no political party, situation, event or personage cited. And no commentary about government failures, etc. Instead, RAW writes here about conformist and authoritarian social “norms” that arise from epidemic levels of anxiety – and as he points out, these precede modern states and democracies by thousands of years, but have remained persistent on our precarious planet despite attempted democratic “civilising” processes. He writes about Reich’s notion of “emotional plague”, ownership society, rent and usury (in their broadest, oldest senses). And repeatedly about anxiety – survival anxieties and social anxieties in ancient (and modern) ownership oligarchies.

‘The authoritarian social structure of so-called “civilisation” has not changed radically, at the root, in 6000 years. This authoritarian social structure remains basically an oligarchy at all times; dictators and tyrants escape this oligarchical structure no more than democracies do.’ – RAW, Can Even Living Be Forgotten? (March 1961)

You could argue that an article like this doesn’t rate as any more “political” than almost any other piece selected at random from RAW’s vast oeuvre – since so much of his output has a comparable level of political implication (and these implications represent fairly consistent threads throughout his work, regardless of any seemingly changing and contradictory political labels applied). But its inclusion in the book seems fitting to me – it fits the surreal sequence of key ideas/insights presented throughout the volume. One also witnesses the development of RAW’s style in the jumps from the 60s/70s to the late 80s/1990, and then to the 2000s (all interviews, but style still comes through in Bob’s eloquent informal replies).

‘Luther’s hatred for capitalism led him to a theology of anxiety which flowered into the Protestant Era’s embrace of capitalism.’ – RAW, Can Even Living Be Forgotten? (March 1961)

Other early articles, on the other hand, do focus “directly” on political systems/theory. For example, RAW’s 1962 piece, Proudhon’s Economics: Socialism without Tyranny. Several of the political ideals that seemed enduring for Wilson possibly-probably originate with the impact of Proudhon’s book, ‘The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th century’. For instance, the idea – in practical (not just vaguely theoretical) form – of the peaceful dissolution of the giant coercive State into a non-coercive system of “contractual associations”.

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Freedom from coercion & force

I think this “freedom from” rates top of RAW’s political-value hierarchy. This value appears consistent in all his seemingly chameleon-like political-identity label shifts. It also seems reflected in his style and personality – he didn’t like to impose on others.

‘Everything I write, in one way or another, is intended to undermine the metaphysical and linguistic systems which seem to justify some Authorities in limiting the freedom of the human mind or in initiating coercion against the non-coercive.’ RAW, Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective (1988)

(Of course, anyone can shout “freedom” from the rooftops – or from an aircraft carrier – and make it their special thing. Most American demagogues do that. That’s clearly not what we’re talking about. Neither are we talking about the kind of “freedom” pursued by Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Donald Trump or Charles Koch – the “freedom” to do whatever the fuck they want at the expense of anyone or anything, including the planet, that gets in their way.)

Proudhon went into detail on how to transform society from a tyrannical system of economic coercion and state-enforced laws into an authority-free society based on contracts. He also had practical recommendations for ending the “capitalist-state” monopolies of banking and land ownership. To quote RAW:

‘Proudhon shows how poverty, crime, disease and war are caused directly by these monopolies; and he shows how they can be abolished, without violent revolution and without expropriation.’ – RAW, Proudhon’s Economics: Socialism without Tyranny (1962)

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It helps to read RAW’s early pieces defending Proudhon’s ideas alongside his own later remarks about different types of “socialist” states. This will help in avoiding any misunderstanding over his anarchistic ideal of abolishing coercive government. Some anti-state, eg “anarcho-capitalist”, advocates tend to regard the Bad State, government in essence, in terms of socialism, which they see as the source of coercive force and oppression. And they regard unregulated “free market” capitalism as the cure. RAW recognises that the Soviet-style socialist government feared by these anti-statists doesn’t reflect the evident reality in Western Europe (and indeed America, Canada, Australia, most of the so-called “developed” world) – of mixed-economy governments (mixes of market economics and government welfare, tax, regulation, etc). See, for example, RAW’s remarks in the 2001 ‘Utopia USA interview’ by Lance Bauscher, included in the book.

RAW’s primary value of freedom from coercion/force applies against all kinds of government in which coercion manifests – not just the Soviet-socialist bogeyman kind. He writes about Proudhon’s “attack on the chaos of capitalist-democracy” adding that the state has its origins in “theology and demonology”, “an invention of kings”, which always threatens to fall back into more authoritarian, fascist forms.

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The book’s title (I assume) refers to RAW’s well-known ‘non-Euclidean’ essay, which is included. That essay has stimulated a lot of commentary among RAW’s fans (including myself) on the question of political labels – especially “left” and “right”. Rasa and Jesse both comment on the left/right thing.

I agree with Rasa’s take on the forward-backward dichotomy (aka neophilia vs neophobia) in politics. Where RAW has taken stances traditionally labelled as “leftist”, they tend to fall into the avant-progressive or “matrist” class of “left” – or at least a type of “left” that doesn’t exhibit regressive, paranoid, authoritarian attributes. (Or the kind of ressentiment Nietzsche wrote about).

And where he has landed on a few seemingly “rightwing” views, they have tended towards optimistic, extropian, adventurous moving-beyond-frontiers trajectories and avoided reactionary, conservative, fearful “Golden Age of the past”-seeking. Obviously he’s avoided anything stinking even faintly of fascism. And he’s consistently spoken against Capitalist dogma (or what we’d now call Neoliberalism, which includes quite a lot of what currently passes as “libertarianism”).

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Guns & Dope Party

The Guns and Dope Party makes a bunch of intelligent and serious points about the US political situation, but in a funny-absurd satire not to be taken too seriously (to my understanding). Take a few of its listed goals (or positions, of which it has 69):

• freedom of choice, free love, free speech, free Internet and free beer
• Lotsa wild parties every night by gun-toting dopers

The juxtaposition of “free speech” and “free beer” cracks me up! Free internet and free beer suggest the economic notion of “free lunches” or “hand-outs”. And the folks in America who talk loudest politically about “freedom” (eg Dubya) or “free speech” (eg Musk) as special-sacred American objects, also seem the ones who protest loudly against the notion of free lunches for anyone – as being somehow Communist, un-American.

The guns aspect, which Rasa discusses in his afterword, reminded me of a quote from RAW that I’ve been posting for some time on social media – but I don’t think it’s been picked up anywhere beyond the 4 or 5 views that my SM posts typically get. I find it a super quote:

“My main problem with the gun lobby is that, in the first place, I’ve lived in a country without guns – Ireland. And I liked it a lot better. I don’t think a country without guns means tyranny. Ireland seemed lovely to me.” – RAW, Trajectories #16/17, 1996 (‘Politically Incorrect’ piece)

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One of the trailing ironies of the Guns and Dope Party comes from the emergence of “actual” loose coalitions of traditionally socially-liberal/left “wellness” New-Age types with MAGA and survivalist gun nuts, at least in their support of Trump and their fervent belief in some of the more crackpot-paranoid political conspiracy theories. Naomi Klein writes about this in her book, Doppelganger. And she writes about a related online-political “coalition” of sorts between “diagonalist” dissenters (some of whom claim to transcend “left” and “right” categories) and more obviously hard-“right” agitators (eg of the Steve Bannon variety).

This irony has a bitter taste for me because these “coalitions” (or “bespoke realities”, as Renée DiResta calls them) pushed for the victory of Trump. And the result of that: rapid regression into Fascist madness. Some things seem very obvious, but you feel you have to say them anyway to avoid being misunderstood – so I’ll add that I don’t blame any of the above on – or remotely associate it with – RAW’s Guns and Dope Party! (But if we do ever end up with free Internet and free beer, I’ll certainly credit RAW as inspiration).

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Digression trivia to ponder: Peter Thiel has described the Star Trek universe as “Communist”. (From 2017 NYT feature. Thiel said: ‘“Star Wars” is the capitalist show. “Star Trek” is the communist one’.)

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Liberals & fundamentalists / “liberals” & “anarchists”

If the overtly “anarchist” pieces included (and the advice to not vote, “as it only encourages them”) make you feel like a wimpy “liberal” because you vote out of fear that someone like Trump (or, say, Farage in the UK) might win, don’t worry about it. In one piece (from 1989) RAW describes how he sometimes votes out of such fears. He voted for Michael Dukakis, who he didn’t like or trust, because of his fear that George Bush (senior) would win. Elsewhere (not included in the book) he likened Bush senior to Hitler – which might reassure those who followed the “liberal herd” in likening Trump to Hitler as far back as 2016. (Few consider that a sign of lib hysteria anymore – not even Glenn Greenwald, apparently).

One hears a lot about generalised “liberals” these days – usually (if you’re on social media) bad things. RAW uses the dichotomy of liberal vs fundamentalist in The New Inquisition, and in that broad sense of “liberal” as meaning “open-minded”, “not rigid”, as opposed to (fundamentalist) dogmatic and strict, we can validly label him as liberal – without relying on Euclidean metaphors too much.

Moral of a lot of these stories: don’t read too much into political-identity labels, especially when they’re used as hyper-generalisations. But you knew that already.