💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › robert-anton-wilson-neurological-relativism.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 13:33:21. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Neurological Relativism Author: Robert Anton Wilson Date: 1978 Language: en Topics: philosophy, psychology, skepticism Source: Retrieved on 19 February 2011 from http://www.rawilsonfans.com/articles/NeuroRelative.html Notes: Originally published in the March 1978 issue of New Libertarian, p.8
In my previous two columns, I have presented the case for the ultimate
skepticism (i.e. solipsism) as strongly as I could, indicated that it
not only can be defended on rigidly logical grounds (cf. Hume, David,
works of), but also that is seemingly confirmed empirically by the
practice of silent-level meditation.
Of course, I am not a solipsist. Having fathered four children in this
highly competitive society, I have had to confront the nitty-gritty
gut-level reality of the iron laws of economics in a manner and with a
persistance that makes me as much of a believer in “external reality” as
any Marxist or Objectivist could wish.
I have even been on Welfare twice in my 45 years, for over a year each
time. (It is a most educational experience and every libertarian ought
to go through it, just as every Marxist ought to have the experience of
running a business and meeting a payroll.) Nobody who has gone through
the rituals of social degregation involved in falling from Associate
Editor of Playboy to Welfare “case” (Americanus nondesirabilis) can be a
solipsist. To get off Welfare and become affluent again, as I have also
done, is an even better cure for solipsism; if I hadn’t figured out some
of the laws of that part of the “external world” known as publishing, I
would still be on Welfare.
Nonetheless, my skepticism does verge very close to the solipsistic
extreme, and Mr. John Walker had ample excuse to wonder, as he did in
NLW 93, how somebody as close to solipsism as I am does manage to deal
with the external, sensory-sensual, existential world at all.
The answer is the same as Godzilla gave on Saturday Night Live when Baba
Wawa asked him, “How do you and Mrs. Godzilla do it?”
“Very carefully,” said Godzilla. And that’s how I deal with “reality.”
As the result of the yogic and alchemical disciplines I have practiced
during the last 15 years, I know that the solipsist position is the
minimal truth, i.e., that all we really know is a stream of sensation.
The common sense hypothesis that there is an Ego (“me”)
observing/experiencing this stream, are unprovable, but denying them
seems to lead to worse confusion than (tentatively) accepting them.
But I also know that everything I think I know about the Ego (“me”) and
the External World (“it”) is woefully little, and very misleading (more
“untrue” than “true”) because it is such a microscopic fragment of what
the total Me and the total Universe must be. Blake said, wisely, that
“Every thing Capable of being Believed is an Image of the Truth;” but it
is also true, as Blake no doubt realized, that Every thing Capable of
being Believed is Self-Hypnosis.
It is emperically known to me, through neurological experiment, that
every time I manage to change to focus of my nervous system, a new Me
appears, and a new External Reality, and that these mingle in curious
ways, and each grows steadily bigger, weirder, more mysterious and more
humorous as my researches proceed.
Artemus Ward put it this way: “The trouble with most folks is not that
they don’t know enough but that they know so much that ain’t true.” Or,
in the more slashing style of Neitzsche’s soaring sarcasm, “We are all
much greater artists than we realize.” Whatever we know of Me and The
Universe through the filter of our nervous system is much more of a
record of the structural functioning of the nervous system itself than
it is of the enormous mysteries of the real Me and real Universe.
That is why Discordianism is such a jolly flavor of nihilism. There is
joy ineffable in freedom from fixed ideas, even if those trapped in
fixed ideas cannot imagine such a state and dread it “as the devil
dreads holy water.” Since I am mildly puzzled all the time, I am
continously curious and hence passionately involved. I deal with the
world “very carefully” because I respect its mystery, whereas those who
hold fixed ideas deal with the world (and each other) in blind and
brutal ways that each of them can see how mad all the others are but
none can see that his/her own fixed ideas are equally mad.
As Timothy Leary and I write in Neuropolitics (Peace Press, Los Angeles,
1977), “It is the function of the nervous system to focus, select,
narrow down; to choose from an infinity of possibilities the biochemical
imprints which determing the tactics and strategies of survival in one
place, status in one tribe. The infant is genetically prepared to learn
any language, master any skill, play any sex role; in a very short time,
however, he becomes rigidly fixated to accept, follow and mimic the
limited offerings of his social and cultural environment...
“Because we are all imprinted with our own social bubbles, it isn’t
generally recognized that each reality map held by humans — however
eccentric and paranoid — makes nearly as much sense as any other. People
are vegetarians or nudists or Communists or snake worshippers for the
same reasons that other people are Catholics or Republicans or liberals
or Nazis.”
This neurological relativism is not incompatible with adopting a
belief-system involving predictions, assumed regularities or “laws,”
valuations and ethical judgements, etc. But one recognizes each belief
system as a gamble, “my latest best guess,” and does not confuse it with
Truth, Reality or any other variety of eternal verity. Each
belief-system, or reality-tunnel, is temporary — one except to replace
it with a better system, more inclusive, more flexible, more amusing and
more precise, if not by next Tuedsay after lunch, certainly by the
middle of next Winter.
All around one the True Believers trudge by, mouths grim, brows
furrowed, ulcers and worse eating at their innards. This “desperate
company of oddfellows” (Thoreau) live in what psychologists call
“cognitive dissonance.” Because their reality-maps are, one and all, too
small to cover the vast, eerie, amusing world in which we live, they are
perpetually frustrated: the world does not live up to their fixed
beliefs. They are all convinced that there is something radically wrong
with the universe itself, or with the rest of humanity, and they never
suspect that the real trouble is in their own rigid and robotic nervous
systems.
Thus I “believe” in libertarianism, in strict scientific method (the
objective yoga of the West), in yoga (the neuroscience of the East), in
Space Migration, in Life Extension, and in dozens of other things. But I
can suspend any of these beliefs at will, or all of them, and look
impassively into the Buddhist void, or switch around to other beliefs
temporarily, to check out how the world looks to those who hold those
beliefs.
Yea, brethern and sistren, now abideth doubt, hope and charity; these
three; and the greatest of these is doubt. For doubt puffeth not itself
up into pomposity; doubt suffereth long, and is kind. With doubt all
things are possible.