[I finally got a scanner! From time to time now, I'll be passing along some old articles that seem worthy of attention but have somehow never made it onto the web.--DC]
This was published in _Critique: A Journal of Conspiracies and Metaphysics_ #27, in 1988, and to my knowledge has never been reprinted.
Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective
by Robert Anton Wilson
Our esteemed editor, Bob Banner, has invited me to contribute an article on whether my politics are "left" or "right," evidently because some flatlanders insist on classifying me as Leftist and others, equally Euclidean, argue that I am obviously some variety of Rightist.
Naturally, this debate intrigues me. The Poet prayed that some power would the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us; but every published writer has that dubious privilege. I have been called a "sexist" (by Arlene Meyers) and a "male feminist . . . a simpering pussy-whipped wimp" (by L.A. Rollins), "one of the major thinkers of the modern age" (by Barbara Marx Hubbard) and "stupid" (by Andrea Chaflin Antonoff), a "genius" (by SOUNDS, London) and "mentally deranged" (by Charles Platt), a "mystic" and "charlatan" (by the Bay Area Skeptics) and a "materialist" (by an anonymous gent in Seattle who also hit me with a pie); one of my books has even been called "the most scientific of all science-fiction novels" (by _New Scientist_ physics editor John Gribbon) and "ranting and raving" (by Neal Wilgus). I am also frequently called a "Satanist" in some amusing, illiterate and usually anonymous crank letters from Protestant Fundamentalists.
I can only conclude that I am indeed like a visitor from non-Euclidean dimensions whose outlines are perplexing to the Euclidean inhabitants of various dogmatic Flatlands. Or else, Lichtenstein was right when he said a book "is a mirror. When a monkey looks in, no philosopher looks out." Of course, we are living in curved space (as noted by Einstein); that should warn us that Euclidean metaphors are always misleading. Science has also discovered that the Universe can count above two, which should make us leery of either/or choices. There are eight--count 'em, eight--theories or models in quantum mechanics, all of which use the same equations but have radically different philosophical meanings; physicists have accepted the multi-model approach (or "model agnosticism") for over 60 years now. In modern mathematics and logic, in addition to the two-valued (yes/no) logic of Aristotle and Boole, there are several three-valued logics (e.g. the yes, no and maybe Quantum Logic of von Neumann; the yes, no and po of psychologist Edward de Bono; etc.), at least one four-valued logic (the true, false, indeterminate and meaningless of Rapoport), and an infinite-valued logic (Korzybski). I myself have presented a multi-valued logic in my neuroscience seminars; the bare bones of this system will be found in my book, _The New Inquisition_. Two-valued Euclidean choices--left or right of an imaginary line--do not seem very "real" to me, in comparison to the versatility of modem science and mathematics.
Actually, it was once easy to classify me in simple Euclidean topology. To paraphrase a recent article by the brilliant Michael Hoy [_Critique_ #19/ 20], I had a Correct Answer Machine installed in my brain when I was quite young. It was a right-wing Correct Answer Machine in general and Roman Catholic in particular. It was installed by nuns who were very good at creating such machines and implanting them in helpless children. By the time I got out of grammar school, in 1945,1 had the Correct Answer for everything, and it was the Correct Answer that you will nowadays still hear from, say, William Buckley, Jr.
When I moved on to Brooklyn Technical High School, I encountered many bright, likeable kids who were not Catholics and not at all right-wing in any respect. They naturally angered me at first. (That is the function of Correct Answer Machines: to make you have an adrenaline rush, instead of a new thought, when confronted with different opinions.) But these bright, non-Catholic kids--Protestants, Jews, agnostics, even atheists--fascinated me in some ways. The result was that I started reading all the authors the nuns had warned me against--especially Darwin, Tom Paine, Ingersoll, Mencken and Nietzsche.
I found myself floating in a void of incertitude, a sensation that was unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. I retreated back to robotism by electing to install a new Correct Answer Machine in my brain. This happened to be a Trotskyist Correct Answer Machine, provided by the International Socialist Youth Party. I picked this Machine, I think, because the alternative Correct Answer Machines then available were less "Papist" (authoritarian) and therefore less comfortable to my adolescent mind, still bent out of shape by the good nuns.
(Why was I immune to Stalinism--an equally Papist secular religion? I think the answer was my youth. The only Stalinists left in the U.S. by the late '40s were all middle-aged and "crystalized" as Gurdjieff would say. Those of us who were younger could clearly see that Stalinism was not much different from Hitlerism. The Trotskyist alternative allowed me to feel "radical" and modern, without becoming an idiot by denying the totalitarianism of the USSR, and it let me have a martyred redeemer again a I had in my Catholic childhood.)
After about a year, the Trotskyist Correct Answer Machine began to seem a nuisance. I started to suspect that the Trotskyists were some secular clone of the Vatican, whether they knew it or not, and that the dogma of Papal infallibility was no whit more absurd than the Trotskyist submission to the Central Committee. I decided that I had left one dogmatic Church and joined another. I even suspected that if Trotsky had managed to hold on to power, he might have been as dictatorial as Stalin.
Actually, what irritated me most about the Trots (and now seems most amusing) is that I already had some tendency toward individualism, or crankiness, or Heresy; I sometimes disputed the Party Line. This always resulted in my being denounced for "bourgeoisie tendencies." That was irritating then and amusing now because I was actually the only member of that Trot cell who did not come from a middle-class background. I came from a working class family and was the only genuine "proletarian" in the whole Marxist _kaffeklatch_.
At the age of 18, then, I returned to the void of incertitude. It began to seem almost comfortable there, and I began to rejoice in my agnosticism. It made me feel superior to the dogmatists of all types, and adolescents love to feel superior to everybody (especially their parents--or have you noticed that?). Around the same time as my Trotskyist period, I began to read the first Revisionist historians, whom I had been warned about by my high school social science teachers, in grave and awful tones, as if these men had killed a cat in the sacristy. My teachers were too Liberal to tell me I would go to Hell for reading such books (as the nuns had told me about Darwin, for instance), but they made it clear that the Revisionists were Evil, Awful, Unspeakable and probably some form of Pawns of the Devil.
I recognized the technique of thought control again, so I read all the Revisionists I could find. They convinced me that the New Deal Liberals had deliberately lied and manipulated the U.S. into World War II and were still lying about what they did after the war was over. (In fact, they are still lying about it today.)
The Revisionist who impressed me most was Harry Elmer Barnes, a classic Liberal who was a til of a Marxist (in methodology)--i.e., in his way of looking for economic factors behind political actions. I was amused and disgusted by the attempt of the New Deal gang to smear Professor Barnes as a right-wing reactionary. Barnes, in fact, was an advocate of progressive ideas in education, economics, politics, criminology, sociology and anthropology all his life but the New Deal Party Line had smeared him so thoroughly that some people have heard of him only as some cranky critic of Roosevelt and assume he was a Taft Republican or even a pro-Nazi. In fact Barnes supported most of the New Deal's domest policies, and dissented from Liberal Dogma only in opposing the spread of American adventurism and militarism all over the world.
Charles Beard, another great historian of classic Liberal principles, agreed that Roosevelt deliberately lied to us in World War II and was smeared in the same way as Professor Barnes. This did not encourage me to have Faith in any Party Line, even if it called itself the modern, liberal, enlightened Party Line.
(I have never been convinced by the Holocaust Revisionists, however, simply because I have met a great many Holocaust eye-witnesses, or alleged eyewitnesses, in the past 40 years. Most of these people I seemingly met by accident, in both Europe and America. A conspiracy that has that many liars planted in that many places--or has always paid such special attention to me that it placed these liars where I would meet them--is a conspiracy too omnipotent and omnipresent, and therefore too metaphysical, for me to take seriously. A conspiracy so Godlike in its powers could, in principle, deceive us about anything and everything, and I wonder why the Holocaust Revisionists still believe that World War II occurred, or that any of past history ever happened.)
I reached 20 and became an employee (i.e. a robot) in the McCarthy Era and the Eisenhower years; my agnosticism became more total and so did my suspicion that politics is a carnival or buncombe (as Mencken once said). It seemed obvious to me that, while Senator Joe was a liar of stellar magnitude, a lot of the Liberals were lying their heads off, too, in attempts to hide their previous fondness for Stalinism. That was something
> [I finally got a scanner! From time to time now, I'll be > passing along some old articles that seem worthy of > attention but have somehow never made it onto the web.--DC]
> This was published in _Critique: A Journal of Conspiracies > and Metaphysics_ #27, in 1988, and to my knowledge has never > been reprinted.
> Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective > by Robert Anton Wilson
I think this is a good example of the expression, "so open-minded your brains fall out" :)
I enjoyed reading it, and agreed with some of it, but don't understand a fear of dogmatism (and a philosophical skepticism) so powerful that one thinks that there are no correct answers, while simultaneously claiming to be searching for the answers that maximize individual liberty. It's contradictory.
> [I finally got a scanner! From time to time now, I'll be > passing along some old articles that seem worthy of > attention but have somehow never made it onto the web.--DC]
> This was published in _Critique: A Journal of Conspiracies > and Metaphysics_ #27, in 1988, and to my knowledge has never > been reprinted.
> Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective
> by Robert Anton Wilson
Great article! I'll have to read those authors that he mentioned.
This was an interesting post, Dan. I have to admit that.
I have to differ with Mr. Shafto about radical skepticism being contradictory with a drive towards maximizing individual liberty. If all of our answers are merely guesses, if we see through a glass darkly, how can we justify shoving answers down anyone's throat?
> This was an interesting post, Dan. I have to admit that.
> I have to differ with Mr. Shafto about radical skepticism > being contradictory with a drive towards maximizing > individual liberty. If all of our answers are merely guesses, > if we see through a glass darkly, how can we justify > shoving answers down anyone's throat?
I never said anything about shoving anything down anyone's throat, you misrepresent me.
A philosophical skeptic searching for the best way to maximize individual liberty is like a deer hunter getting all dressed up and going out in the woods, but who doesn't want to believe in deer. Even if he sees one, he'll just rub his eyes and shake his head.
One thing I know for sure, the correct answers to theft and slavery are "no".
This isn't to say that there is not something to what the author of that article calls the "Correct Answer Machine", and that the right/left dichotomy is a false alternative. There are correct answers both on the "right" and "left", in popular political parlance. Just enough correct answers to keep each team supporting the cause, but not enough to get anything done. They couldn't have one team with all the correct answers, and another with all the wrong answers, that would be a rout, and very bad for the guys who rely on soaking society for all it's worth.
-- "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." -- Winston Churchill
"Hewpiedawg" <hewpied...@hotmail.com>: | This was an interesting post, Dan. I have to admit that. | | I have to differ with Mr. Shafto about radical skepticism | being contradictory with a drive towards maximizing | individual liberty. If all of our answers are merely guesses, | if we see through a glass darkly, how can we justify | shoving answers down anyone's throat?
A common criticism of rad skep is that it suggests an antinomianism in which only power matters. That is, there is no reason _not_ to shove answers down anyone's throat, so since one presumably wants to, one does.
--
(<><>) /*/ }"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{ { http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 5/17/02 <-adv't
> "Hewpiedawg" <hewpied...@hotmail.com>: > | This was an interesting post, Dan. I have to admit that. > | > | I have to differ with Mr. Shafto about radical skepticism > | being contradictory with a drive towards maximizing > | individual liberty. If all of our answers are merely guesses, > | if we see through a glass darkly, how can we justify > | shoving answers down anyone's throat?
> A common criticism of rad skep is that it suggests an > antinomianism in which only power matters. That is, there > is no reason _not_ to shove answers down anyone's throat, > so since one presumably wants to, one does.
Not to mention the inherent nihilism of it.
I have yet to meet a self-professed moral skeptic that doesn't have some ideas against/for something, they can be some of the most self-righteous folks one can meet. Philosophical skepticism is often the way they try to justify their pre-existing moral beliefs.
Philosophical skeptics are constantly borrowing concepts from other philosophical positions.
> > I have to differ with Mr. Shafto about radical skepticism > > being contradictory with a drive towards maximizing > > individual liberty. If all of our answers are merely guesses, > > if we see through a glass darkly, how can we justify > > shoving answers down anyone's throat?
> I never said anything about shoving anything down > anyone's throat, you misrepresent me.
That was not an accusation, John. Rather it was an explication of why one is likely to come to libertarian conclusions as a result of skepticism.
> A philosophical skeptic searching for the best way to maximize > individual liberty is like a deer hunter getting all dressed up and > going out in the woods, but who doesn't want to believe in deer. > Even if he sees one, he'll just rub his eyes and shake his head.
Is that true? I have my doubts.
> One thing I know for sure, the correct answers to theft and slavery > are "no".
It may be that a "live and let live" attitude is a matter of temperament, and that some, with different temperaments will want to see "theft and slavery" in a light of skepticism and doubt that they are so bad. It certainly is not a necessary result of skepticism to do so, however. Moreover, it appears that most of those with great faith apply their principles with dubious consistency.
It could be that given that we are all going to die someday, finding meaning while we are here precludes the enslavement and coercion of others.
> This isn't to say that there is not something to what the author of that > article calls the "Correct Answer Machine", and that the right/left > dichotomy is a false alternative. There are correct answers both > on the "right" and "left", in popular political parlance. Just enough > correct answers to keep each team supporting the cause, but > not enough to get anything done. They couldn't have one team > with all the correct answers, and another with all the wrong answers, > that would be a rout, and very bad for the guys who rely on soaking > society for all it's worth.
I have to say that there are those who have believed in such CAMs which are now considered entirely dysfunctional by just about everyone today. That didn't stop some such CAMs from becoming dominant, for a time.
Doubt helps to prevent such machines from ruling one's consciousness.
> "Hewpiedawg" <hewpied...@hotmail.com>: > | This was an interesting post, Dan. I have to admit that. > | > | I have to differ with Mr. Shafto about radical skepticism > | being contradictory with a drive towards maximizing > | individual liberty. If all of our answers are merely guesses, > | if we see through a glass darkly, how can we justify > | shoving answers down anyone's throat?
> A common criticism of rad skep is that it suggests an > antinomianism in which only power matters. That is, there > is no reason _not_ to shove answers down anyone's throat, > so since one presumably wants to, one does.
Yes. I suppose the aphorism, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted" comes into play here. I have my doubts about the validity of that, however.
John Shafto wrote: > "G*rd*n" <> wrote > in message news:adku3c$9uv$1@panix2.panix.com... >> "Hewpiedawg" <hewpied...@hotmail.com>: >> | This was an interesting post, Dan. I have to admit that. >> | >> | I have to differ with Mr. Shafto about radical skepticism >> | being contradictory with a drive towards maximizing >> | individual liberty. If all of our answers are merely guesses, >> | if we see through a glass darkly, how can we justify >> | shoving answers down anyone's throat?
>> A common criticism of rad skep is that it suggests an >> antinomianism in which only power matters. That is, there >> is no reason _not_ to shove answers down anyone's throat, >> so since one presumably wants to, one does.
> Not to mention the inherent nihilism of it.
> I have yet to meet a self-professed moral skeptic that > doesn't have some ideas against/for something, they > can be some of the most self-righteous folks one can meet. > Philosophical skepticism is often the way they try to justify > their pre-existing moral beliefs.
> Philosophical skeptics are constantly borrowing concepts > from other philosophical positions.
Like solipsism and nihilism, radical skepticism is unassailable, but, also like those others, it is uninteresting. Nothing is revealed, nothing interesting entailed by it.
Unless existence is truly random (another unassailable position that leads to nothing interesting), a person's continued existence testifies to an operational belief in propositions, regardless of what discursive position he or she may adopt. For example, the act of eating betrays an operational belief that eating is needed for survival and that survival is good. The eater may protest that he or she lacks belief in these propositions but the act of eating belies the voiced belief.
> "John Shafto" <> wrote > > "Hewpiedawg" <> wrote
> > > I have to differ with Mr. Shafto about radical skepticism > > > being contradictory with a drive towards maximizing > > > individual liberty. If all of our answers are merely guesses, > > > if we see through a glass darkly, how can we justify > > > shoving answers down anyone's throat?
> > I never said anything about shoving anything down > > anyone's throat, you misrepresent me.
> That was not an accusation, John. Rather it was an > explication of why one is likely to come to libertarian > conclusions as a result of skepticism.
I see what you were getting at now, but I don't think it is necessary to go to the extremes of philosophical skepticism to be libertarian. In fact, if it is your moral position that "right" is "do as you will, so long as it harms none but possibly yourself", then you have taken a moral position. That contradicts skepticism, how can a moral skeptic defend libertarianism?
> <snip> > Doubt helps to prevent such machines from ruling one's > consciousness.
Considering all moral positions is different than believing that none are more correct than others. Reconsidering your accepted correct positions in the light of new information is also important.
-- "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -- Aristotle
> [I finally got a scanner! From time to time now, I'll be > passing along some old articles that seem worthy of > attention but have somehow never made it onto the web.--DC]
> This was published in _Critique: A Journal of Conspiracies > and Metaphysics_ #27, in 1988, and to my knowledge has never > been reprinted.
> Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective
> by Robert Anton Wilson
> Our esteemed editor, Bob Banner, has invited me to > contribute an article on whether my politics are "left" or > "right," evidently because some flatlanders insist on > classifying me as Leftist and others, equally Euclidean, > argue that I am obviously some variety of Rightist.
> Naturally, this debate intrigues me. The Poet prayed that > some power would the giftie gie us to see ourselves as > others see us; but every published writer has that dubious > privilege. I have been called a "sexist" (by Arlene Meyers) > and a "male feminist . . . a simpering pussy-whipped wimp" > (by L.A. Rollins), "one of the major thinkers of the modern > age" (by Barbara Marx Hubbard) and "stupid" (by Andrea > Chaflin Antonoff), a "genius" (by SOUNDS, London) and > "mentally deranged" (by Charles Platt), a "mystic" and > "charlatan" (by the Bay Area Skeptics) and a "materialist" > (by an anonymous gent in Seattle who also hit me with a > pie); one of my books has even been called "the most > scientific of all science-fiction novels" (by _New > Scientist_ physics editor John Gribbon) and "ranting and > raving" (by Neal Wilgus). I am also frequently called a > "Satanist" in some amusing, illiterate and usually anonymous > crank letters from Protestant Fundamentalists.
> I can only conclude that I am indeed like a visitor from > non-Euclidean dimensions whose outlines are perplexing to > the Euclidean inhabitants of various dogmatic Flatlands. Or > else, Lichtenstein was right when he said a book "is a > mirror. When a monkey looks in, no philosopher looks out." > Of course, we are living in curved space (as noted by > Einstein); that should warn us that Euclidean metaphors are > always misleading. Science has also discovered that the > Universe can count above two, which should make us leery of > either/or choices. There are eight--count 'em, > eight--theories or models in quantum mechanics, all of which > use the same equations but have radically different > philosophical meanings; physicists have accepted the > multi-model approach (or "model agnosticism") for over 60 > years now. In modern mathematics and logic, in addition to > the two-valued (yes/no) logic of Aristotle and Boole, there > are several three-valued logics (e.g. the yes, no and maybe > Quantum Logic of von Neumann; the yes, no and po of > psychologist Edward de Bono; etc.), at least one four-valued > logic (the true, false, indeterminate and meaningless of > Rapoport), and an infinite-valued logic (Korzybski). I > myself have presented a multi-valued logic in my > neuroscience seminars; the bare bones of this system will be > found in my book, _The New Inquisition_. Two-valued > Euclidean choices--left or right of an imaginary line--do > not seem very "real" to me, in comparison to the versatility > of modem science and mathematics.
> Actually, it was once easy to classify me in simple > Euclidean topology. To paraphrase a recent article by the > brilliant Michael Hoy [_Critique_ #19/ 20], I had a Correct > Answer Machine installed in my brain when I was quite young. > It was a right-wing Correct Answer Machine in general and > Roman Catholic in particular. It was installed by nuns who > were very good at creating such machines and implanting them > in helpless children. By the time I got out of grammar > school, in 1945,1 had the Correct Answer for everything, and > it was the Correct Answer that you will nowadays still hear > from, say, William Buckley, Jr.
> When I moved on to Brooklyn Technical High School, I > encountered many bright, likeable kids who were not > Catholics and not at all right-wing in any respect. They > naturally angered me at first. (That is the function of > Correct Answer Machines: to make you have an adrenaline > rush, instead of a new thought, when confronted with > different opinions.) But these bright, non-Catholic > kids--Protestants, Jews, agnostics, even > atheists--fascinated me in some ways. The result was that I > started reading all the authors the nuns had warned me > against--especially Darwin, Tom Paine, Ingersoll, Mencken > and Nietzsche.
> I found myself floating in a void of incertitude, a > sensation that was unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. I > retreated back to robotism by electing to install a new > Correct Answer Machine in my brain. This happened to be a > Trotskyist Correct Answer Machine, provided by the > International Socialist Youth Party. I picked this Machine, > I think, because the alternative Correct Answer Machines > then available were less "Papist" (authoritarian) and > therefore less comfortable to my adolescent mind, still bent > out of shape by the good nuns.
> (Why was I immune to Stalinism--an equally Papist secular > religion? I think the answer was my youth. The only > Stalinists left in the U.S. by the late '40s were all > middle-aged and "crystalized" as Gurdjieff would say. Those > of us who were younger could clearly see that Stalinism was > not much different from Hitlerism. The Trotskyist > alternative allowed me to feel "radical" and modern, without > becoming an idiot by denying the totalitarianism of the > USSR, and it let me have a martyred redeemer again a I had > in my Catholic childhood.)
> After about a year, the Trotskyist Correct Answer Machine > began to seem a nuisance. I started to suspect that the > Trotskyists were some secular clone of the Vatican, whether > they knew it or not, and that the dogma of Papal > infallibility was no whit more absurd than the Trotskyist > submission to the Central Committee. I decided that I had > left one dogmatic Church and joined another. I even > suspected that if Trotsky had managed to hold on to power, > he might have been as dictatorial as Stalin.
> Actually, what irritated me most about the Trots (and now > seems most amusing) is that I already had some tendency > toward individualism, or crankiness, or Heresy; I sometimes > disputed the Party Line. This always resulted in my being > denounced for "bourgeoisie tendencies." That was irritating > then and amusing now because I was actually the only member > of that Trot cell who did not come from a middle-class > background. I came from a working class family and was the > only genuine "proletarian" in the whole Marxist > _kaffeklatch_.
> At the age of 18, then, I returned to the void of > incertitude. It began to seem almost comfortable there, and > I began to rejoice in my agnosticism. It made me feel > superior to the dogmatists of all types, and adolescents > love to feel superior to everybody (especially their > parents--or have you noticed that?). Around the same time as > my Trotskyist period, I began to read the first Revisionist > historians, whom I had been warned about by my high school > social science teachers, in grave and awful tones, as if > these men had killed a cat in the sacristy. My teachers were > too Liberal to tell me I would go to Hell for reading such > books (as the nuns had told me about Darwin, for instance), > but they made it clear that the Revisionists were Evil, > Awful, Unspeakable and probably some form of Pawns of the > Devil.
> I recognized the technique of thought control again, so I > read all the Revisionists I could find. They convinced me > that the New Deal Liberals had deliberately lied and > manipulated the U.S. into World War II and were still lying > about what they did after the war was over. (In fact, they > are still lying about it today.)
> The Revisionist who impressed me most was Harry Elmer > Barnes, a classic Liberal who was a til of a Marxist (in > methodology)--i.e., in his way of looking for economic > factors behind political actions. I was amused and disgusted > by the attempt of the New Deal gang to smear Professor > Barnes as a right-wing reactionary. Barnes, in fact, was an > advocate of progressive ideas in education, economics, > politics, criminology, sociology and anthropology all his > life but the New Deal Party Line had smeared him so > thoroughly that some people have heard of him only as some > cranky critic of Roosevelt and assume he was a Taft > Republican or even a pro-Nazi. In fact Barnes supported most > of the New Deal's domest policies, and dissented from > Liberal Dogma only in opposing the spread of American > adventurism and militarism all over the world.
> Charles Beard, another great historian of classic Liberal > principles, agreed that Roosevelt deliberately lied to us in > World War II and was smeared in the same way as Professor > Barnes. This did not encourage me to have Faith in any Party > Line, even if it called itself the modern, liberal, > enlightened Party Line.
> (I have never been convinced by the Holocaust Revisionists, > however, simply because I have met a great many Holocaust > eye-witnesses, or alleged eyewitnesses, in the past 40 > years. Most of these people I seemingly met by accident, in > both Europe and America. A conspiracy that has that many > liars planted in that many places--or has always paid such > special attention to me that it placed these liars where I > would meet them--is a conspiracy too omnipotent and > omnipresent, and therefore too metaphysical, for me to take > seriously. A conspiracy so Godlike in its powers could, in > principle, deceive us about anything and everything,
> > [I finally got a scanner! From time to time now, I'll be > > passing along some old articles that seem worthy of > > attention but have somehow never made it onto the web.--DC]
> > This was published in _Critique: A Journal of Conspiracies > > and Metaphysics_ #27, in 1988, and to my knowledge has never > > been reprinted.
> > Left and Right: A Non-Euclidean Perspective
> > by Robert Anton Wilson
> > Our esteemed editor, Bob Banner, has invited me to > > contribute an article on whether my politics are "left" or > > "right," evidently because some flatlanders insist on > > classifying me as Leftist and others, equally Euclidean, > > argue that I am obviously some variety of Rightist.
you as RAW appear to be very categorizeable. I hope this doesn't mean that if I want to ask a question I would necessarily have to plug several people in to each other
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