#16 for 2011
The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
It is quite trippy (actual level of perceived trippiness depending on how trippy you already are, so, not nearly as trippy to me as to, say, an ordinary person). (Seriously, I am trippy. At one point I picked up this book and carried it all the way to the other room to read, before realizing I had actually picked up
Do Penguins Have Knees? And yes that is a book and yes I have it. And yes penguins have knees. And no it looks nothing like
The Illuminatus! in size or color or design.)
And it is quite quite raunchy (actual level of raunchiness may blow your mind if you are conservative). You have been warned.
-Notes, Quotes, & eTc.ness
"I really don't think so," I say politely. "They don't think it makes any difference whether Eisenhower or Stevenson is in the White House. They say the orders will still come from Wall Street." [<--
]
.... "That's the wonderful thing about this country," she finally gets out, "even people with opinions like that can say what they want without going to jail."
"You must be nuts," I say. "My dad's been in and out of jail so many times they should put in a special revolving door just for him. My mom, too. You oughtta go out with subversive leaflets in this town and see what happens." (p.61)
Observe nowadays, where green is the new red (ie, green activists are considered to be the top domestic terrorist threat in America)...
"If you work within the system, you come to one of the either/or choices that were implicit in the system from the beginning. You're talking like a medieval serf, asking the first agnostic whether he worships God or the Devil." (p.86)
x
“Don’t you see, Barney? Whatever they’re really up to, they keep creating masks so all sorts of scapegoat groups will get the blame for being the ‘real’ Illuminati.” He shook his head dismally. “They’re smart enough to know they can’t operate indefinitely without a few people eventually realizing something’s there, so they’ve taken that into account and arranged for an inquisitive outsider to get all sorts of wrong ideas about who they are.”
“They’re dogs,” Muldoon said. “Intelligent talking dogs from the dog star, Sirius…. Lord God, I’m almost ready to believe it.” (p.107)
x
"It isn't only political power that grows out of the barrel of a gun. So does a whole definition of reality. A set. And the action that has to happen on that particular set and on none other. "
..."That's just Marx: the ideology of the ruling class becomes the ideology of the whole society."
"Not the ideology. The Reality." He lowered his handkerchief. "This was a public park until they changed the definition. Now, the guns have changed the Reality. It isn't a public park. There's more than one kind of magic."
"Just like the Enclosure Acts," I said hollowly. "One day the land belonged to the people. The next day it belonged to the landlords."
"And like the Narcotics Acts," he added. "A hundred thousand harmless junkies became criminals overnight, by Act of Congress, in nineteen twenty-seven. Ten years later, in thirty-seven, all the pot-heads in the country became criminals overnight, by Act of Congress. And they really were criminals, when the papers were signed. The guns prove it. Walk away from those guns, waving a joint, and refuse to halt when they tell you. Their Imagination will become your Reality in a second." (p.150)
x
Why do we never use language to convey meaning? Why must we always use it to conceal meaning? Why do we never speak from the heart? Why do we always speak words programmed into us, like robots? (p.157)
You don’t act from the heart; where the hell do you act from? What in God’s name does motivate you? (p.158)
x
"All human beings consider themselves sinners. It's just about the deepest, oldest, and most universal human hangup there is. In fact, it's almost impossible to speak of it in terms that don't confirm it. To say that human beings have a universal hangup, as I just did, is to restate the belief that all men are sinners in different languages. " (p.248)
x
"...To arrive at a cultural turning point where you decide that all human conduct can be classified in one of two categories, good and evil, is what creates all sin- plus anxiety, hatred, guilt, depression, all the peculiarly human emotions. And, of course, such a classification is the very antithesis of creativity. To the creative mind there is no right or wrong . Every action is an experiment, and every experiment yields its fruit in knowledge [notice, not necessarily wisdom]. To the moralist, every action can be judged as right or wrong- and mind you, in advance- without knowing what its consequences are going to be..." (p.248)
x
"This study demonstrated graphically what many psychologists have long suspected: the life-history which most of us carry around in our skulls is more our own creation (at least seven percent more) than it is an accurate recording of realities. As Malignowski concludes, 'Reality is retroactive, retrospective, and illusory.'" (p.281)
Depends on what he means by "reality", but if he means what most people mean by it, then, yeah. Although I bet it's more than 7% our own creation/interpretation!
[Simon] shouted "Bingo!".... Behind him, the luminous figure said, "Do this in commemoration of me."
"I thought we were supposed to do the bread the wine bit in commemoration of you?" Simon objected.
"Do both," the ghostly one said. "The bread and the wine is too symbolic and arcane for some folks. This one is what will bring in the mob." (p.324)
*cough cough*
We never know for sure whether we're diving or just sinking. (p.325)
It is sometimes impossible to tell the difference.... :(
Drake read what was to become the National Security Act of 1947. "This abolishes the Constitution," he said almost in ecstasy. (p.347)
He would have loved the Patriot Act.
"Don't get pedantic."
"Can I get semantic?"
"Yes. You can get semantic. Or antic. But not pedantic." (p.395)
Yeah I just wanted to save that. :D
"Why did you never tell us before that all categories are false and all Good and Evil a delusion of limited perspective?" (p.489)
x
Every citizen in every authoritarian society already has such a "radio" built into his or her brain. This radio is the little voice that asks, each time a desire is formed, "Is it safe? Will my wife (my husband/ my boss/ my church/ my community) approve? Will people ridicule and mock me? Will the police come and arrest me?" This little voice the Freudians call "The Superego," with [which?] Freud himself vividly characterized as "the ego's harsh master". With a more functional approach, Perls, Hefferline, and Goodman, in Gestalt Therapy, describe this process as "a set of conditioned verbal habits". (p.497) All authority is based on conditioning men and women to act from the logogram [these conditioned verbal habits], since the logogram is a set created by those in authority. (p.498)
"Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you'll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you'll be tempted to say to the people around you, 'How can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?" /Daniel Quinn, Ishmael
"You've got to realize," Hagbard went on, "that life is a coming apart and death is a coming together. Does that help?" (p.500)
?
The redundant do not change their scrip; the flexible continually keep changing, trying to find a way of relating constructively. Eventually, the flexible ones find the "proper" gambit, and communication, of a sort, is possible. They are now on the set created by the redundant person, and they act out his or her script. (p.518)
Story of my life. Time to write my own script...
"What Mortimer [Adler] means by the Great Tradition," hawk-face interrupted rudely, " is a set of myths and fables invented to legitimize or sugar-coat the institution of privilege." (p.552)
"Privilege implies exclusion from privilege, just as advantage implies disadvantage," Celine went on. "In the same mathematically reciprocal way, profit implies loss. If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trad: neither or us profits and neither of us loses. But if we exchange unequal goods, one of us profits and the other loses. Mathematically. Certainly. .... [In this society is observed] a steady profit accruing to one group and an equally steady loss accumulating for all others. Why is this, professor? .... You have named it yourself, or Mr. Adler has: the Great Tradition. Privilege, I prefer to call it. When A meets B in the marketplace, they do not bargain as equals. A bargains from a position of privilege; hence, he always profits and B always loses." (pp.553-554)
x
"I know who I am and why I'm here. Adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine."
"How did you ever forget?"
"Hagbard grinned. "It's easy to forget. You know that." (p.585)
Easy to forget or just not fulfilling a basic need? "Who am I- Why you're nobody really- Oh really wow Hey what is the meaning of it all- Oh there's no meaning- Oh okay well that was easy dum de dum de doo" Sorry but I *need* there to be a meaning, so either I have to find the meaning or I have to find out why I have that need and deal with the root cause. I can't simply shut off the need just like that, though- needs are NEEDS.
(And now I am thinking to myself, what a strange word, needs. Who thought that one up? Sounds Dr. Seussian... Try it- say out loud "needs are NEEDS"- see what I mean? Where's my Do Penguins Have Knees? book again...)
I loved doing it women who claim they don't are just liars
(p.640)
For all the philosophical trippiness and insight of the book, it is still written by a couple of males who have thoroughly pissed me off with their portrayal of women. They don't know women; they know the myth of women, and guess what they wrote the damn myth. How effing convenient. Women are real people and we don't fit into your damn categories and boxes and desires. Talk about not dealing with reality...
Welcome to the place prepared for you from everlasting to everlasting. Now truly you will never die. And the mind of Wolfgang Saure, imprisoned like a living fly in amber, knowing that it must remain so for billions upon billions of years, screamed and screamed and screamed. (p.653)
Yeah, I really don't see how existing eternally within the presence of oblivion is supposed to be a reward.
"Here, let me show you. The last card, Trump 21, is actually the first. It's where we all start from." She held up the card known as the World. "This is the Abyss of Hallucinations. This is where our attention is usually focused. It is entirely constructed by our senses and our projected emotions, as modern psychology and ancient Buddhism both testify- but it is what most people call 'reality'. They are conditioned to accept it, and not to inquire further, because only in this dream-walking state can they be governed by those who wish to govern."
Miss Portinari held up the next card, the Last Judgment. "Key 20, or Trump 20, or Atu 20, whichever terminology you prefer. It's actually second. This is the nightmare to which the soul awakes if it begins, even in the slightest, to question reality as defined by society...."
"The next card is the Sun... This is what happens if you survive the Last Judgement, or Dark Night of the Soul, without becoming some kind of fanatic or lunatic. Eventually, if you miss those attractive and pernicious alternatives, the redemptive force appears: the internal Sun...."
"Last," Miss Portinari said finally, "is the Fool, Key 0. He walks over the edge of the cliff, careless of the danger. 'The wind blows wither it will; even so are all they that are reborn of the Spirit.' In short, he has conquered Death. Nothing can frighten him, and he can never be enslaved." (pp.716-717)
That, the reinterpretation of the tarot, could have been its own book, and I would definitely have read it.
"At first, mountains are mountains. Then mountains are no longer mountains. Finally mountains are mountains again. Only the name of the voyager has changed to preserve his Innocence." (p.718)
when I have gone over the hill, and down the other side
and when I have known this hill and start another climb
I am still me, yet I am new again
"That's the very model of what a true scientific law must always be: a statement about how the human mind relates to the cosmos. We can never make a statement about the cosmos itself- but only about how our senses (or our instruments) detect it, and about how our codes and languages symbolize it." (p.742)
It's all subjective.
The mystical number is 11, which means "a new start" in Kabalism and "error and repentance" in most other systems of numerology. (p.751)
(Just noting that because I will forget where I got that from, later.)
Look up She-Woman-Forever-Not-Change (Hopi) from page 435...
