Miri Swift's Key Ideas from Email to the Universe
by Robert Anton Wilson

Where the State prevents a free market, by banning any form of goods or services, consumer demand will create a black market for those goods or services, at vastly higher prices.

The reality of metaphysics is the reality of masks.

The strongest form of this non-local model, called super-determinism, claims that everything “is” one thing, or at least one process. From the Big Bang to the last word of this sentence and beyond, nothing can become other than it “is,” since everything remains part of a correlated whole.

All particles remain correlated because they never move in space or time, because space and time only exist “in our heads.”

It may seem startling to contemplate probability matrices in which everything “is” the cause of everything in one sense and nothing “is” the cause of anything in another sense, but such is the probable world in which we probably live according to current science.

nothing matters but the quality

of the affection —

in the end — that has carved the trace in the mind

dove sta memora

A basic sociological and anthropological law holds that while every culture (and every sub-culture) has different Game Rules regarding speech and behavior, each tends to believe that its own tribal rules represent the only “correct” way for humans to interact with each other. Among savages, you must learn the local taboo system quickly or your life may pay for your ignorance.

MAGICK is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in Conformity with Will. . . . 

Illustration: it is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take “magical weapons,” — pen, ink and paper; I write “incantations” — these sentences — in the “magical language,” i.e., that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct; I call forth “spirits,” such as printers, publishers, booksellers, and so forth, and constrain them to convey my message to those people . . .

If I use certain words that cause you to have certain predictable neuro-somatic reactions, I have cast a spell upon you. I have enchanted you. I may even have cursed you.

We may never achieve Total Clarity (short of infinity), but we should at least have the ability to distinguish between what humans can experience and what they can only blather about.

“Perception” consists of a complex series of codings and decodings as in-form-ation trans-forms itself through successive sub-systems of the organism-as-a-whole.

We never experience “thoughts,” “feelings,” “perceptions,” “intuitions,” “sensations,” etc. We invent those categories after the fact. What we experience, nanosecond by nanosecond, consists of continuous synergetic reactions of the organism-as-a-whole to the environment-as-a-whole.

I saw a man upon the stair,

A little man who wasn’t there;

He wasn’t there again today,

Gee, I wish he’d go away!

The first rule of politics is to use the language precisely. Otherwise, nobody understands anybody else, and everything falls into chaos.

When generalizing without statistics we should use the term “sombunall” — some but not all — in every single case where we have not in fact examined all members of a set or class. Where you feel more sure of yourself than I usually do, you may use “mosbunall” — most but not all.

If we understood our dreams better we would use our technology more wisely. Our machines manifest our dreams in matter crafted to coherence, and a psychoanalysis of our culture could easily derive from an examination of how we use science to materialize our fantasies and nightmares.

In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true or becomes true, within limits to be found experimentally and experientially. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits.

Remember that the ancient Greeks did not distinguish “Art” from “Science” as we do.

We must wonder if more than childish fantasy lurks in the concept of Donald Duck walking on air only until he “remembers” that this “is” officially “impossible” in our current reality-tunnel.

Of course, if one dares to suggest that a dream contains precognition, the Rationalist immediately declares the connection between the dream image and later waking events “is” “mere coincidence.” Those with a psychological block against recognizing electricity would probably say, similarly, that when you flick the switch and the light goes on that “is” also “mere coincidence.”

Man is ignorant of the nature of his own being and powers. Even his idea of his limitation is based on experience of the past, and every step in his progress extends his empire. There is therefore no reason to assign theoretical limits to what he may be, or to what he may do.

We have found a strange foot-print on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And Lo! It is our own!

An egg has feathers.

Study the action of the whirlpool and co-operate with it.

We can find ourselves only by losing ourselves.

I’ve recently noticed “as if for the first time” that when people pray they always look “upward” — i.e., perpendicular to whatever place they’re standing — or kneeling or groveling. I deduce that they conceive of their “god” as topologically isomorphic to a huge donut, about a thousand miles wider than Earth.

The sum total of all minds is one.

In general, no world-class artist became a “classic” by doing what somebody else had already done.

Learning “how to become what you are” takes a lifetime, but it still seems the best game in town.

RESIST MUCH, OBEY LITTLE.

I live amid wonders. which I file under the law of general semantics which states that no map can ever show “all” the territory. In fact, I think we should ban the word “all” from ordinary speech and restrict it solely to pure mathematics.

Solche Werke [großer Geister] sind Spiegel; wenn ein Affe hinein guckt, kann kein Apostel heraussehen.

Two-valued Euclidean choices — left or right of an imaginary line — do not seem very “real” to me, in comparison to the versatility of modern science and mathematics.

I am committed to the maximization of the freedom of the individual and the minimization of coercion.

Just as theories and ideologies are human creations, every perceptual grid or existential reality-tunnel is also a human creation — a work of art, consciously or unconsciously edited and organized by the individual brain.

“Reality” is a multi-ordinal concept, having different meanings on different levels of abstraction. On the lowest level of abstraction “reality” refers to immediate sensory consistency; on the highest, “reality” refers to logical consistency with a body of established scientific fact and theory. There are many other levels of abstraction and, hence, many kinds of “reality.” I call this the semantic relativity of “reality.”

Every tribe has its own weltanschauung.

Every nervous system creates its own “reality.”

To recognize this is the prerequisite of sophistication, tact, and true tolerance.

The universe may be not only stranger than we think, but stranger than we can think.

The normal does not exist. The average does not exist. We know only a very large but probably finite phalanx of discrete space-time events encountered and endured.

The normal, the average, the ordinary, even the typical, exist only in statistics — the human mathematical mindscape. Thus, unless you’re an illiterate and malnourished Asian with exactly 1.04 vaginas and 0.96 testicles, living in substandard housing, you do not qualify as normal but as abnormal, subnormal, supernormal, paranormal or some variety of nonnormal.

We never know “all” — we only know what I dub sombunall — some-but-not-all.

The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly.

Authority, by dividing people into classes, creates dichotomy, disruption, hostility, fear, disunion. Liberty, by placing us all on an equal footing, creates association, amalgamation, union, security. When the relationships between people are based on authority and coercion, they are driven apart; when based on liberty and non-aggression, they are drawn together.

A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of "monopoly in the means of production." Since humans extend their nervous systems through channels of communication like the written word, the telephone, radio, TV, Internet, etc., whoever controls these media controls part of the nervous system of every member of society. The contents of these media become part of the contents of every individual’s brain.

Nothing is known. Everything is imagined.

Nothing is true. All is permissible.

We should all try to give out as much good energy to other human beings as we possibly can.

Every bit of bad energy we put out has adverse effects that go on forever. Every bit of anger, resentment, hate, and so on that you send out passes from the target to somebody else convenient to the target, who then gets targeted, and so on, without stopping. The same is true of good energy: every bit of good energy one puts out makes someone else feel a little bit better. If people were really conscious of this psychological fact, they would put out nothing but good energy, no matter what.

The past does not always unfold chronologically. It’s the same with ideas — some are held for a long time, some are held for just one afternoon. There is no consistent ego.

Without a sense of humor, life is utterly unbearable on this barbaric planet.

Psychologist John Barefoot has studied this extensively and concludes that optimists live about 20% longer than pessimists. When the outcome remains unknown, why should I make the bet that keeps me miserable and shortens my life? I prefer the gamble that keeps me high, happy, and creative, and also increases life span. It’s like the advantage of pot over aspirin. Pot not only kills pain better, but the High boosts the immune system. High and happy moods prolong life, miserable and masochistic moods shorten it.

Like what you like, enjoy what you enjoy — and don’t take crap from anybody!

KEEP THE LASAGNA FLYING.